Member postings for Jelly

When it comes to brakes, clutches, and tyres, the driver's care/skill will always make a far bigger difference than the parts...

I have to agree I have found a marked difference in quality between true OEM parts and aftermarket "pattern-parts", but by god do some manufacturers make it awkward to interact with their parts departments and the service offered is dire compared to using a decent auto-factors.

Maybe it's because I started driving when modern engines were already a thing, and started repairing my own vehicles out of economic necessity in a way that pushed me to try things that felt out of my comfort zone...

But honestly, it's not nearly as hard as you might be deceived into thinking by appearances!

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Sure there's a handful of tasks that need you to plug in a computer (and I do mean a handful), and some emissions system sensor faults which are easier to diagnose if you at least have a cheap code reader box from the auto factors.

But even on a modern, ECU controlled engine which is packaged very tightly indeed, there's nothing to stop a mechanically literate person making their own repairs, especially if they have reference to a good workshop manual (ideally the OEM's one), other than having the confidence to try.

I think that's more testimony to you having developed a very measured driving style (and possibly doing the kind of journey that are kindest to clutches); than it is to the quality of modern vehicle clutches.

Average clutch lifespan is reported at between 30,000 for drivers in very congested cities, to 100,000 for drivers who drive predominantly outside urban areas, the OEM's target design life is usually for 60,000 miles.

Not just for assembly but for manufacturing in a more general sense.

With a FWD vehicle it would be very possible to put the clutch and housing outboard of the gearbox (rather than between gearbox and engine) using a hollow shaft, this would hugely reduce the expense and difficulty of the most significant wear-part replacement most cars ever receive, without much increase in mechanical complexity.

But, you couldn't use that design on a RWD/AWD/4WD vehicle, so suddenly you have to produce two variants of that particular engine if you want to offer those as options...

So it's No Bueno, because you're giving up a significant efficiency saving in being able to reuse the same engine in as many models as possible.

My personal bugbear is not different styles of heads, because as SOD says they're usually selected to serve a functional purpose...

It's the fact that many manufacturers seem to mix standards.

On pretty much every modern vehicle I have worked on, there has been a nonsensical mix of ISO and DIN, or DIN and JIS preferred sizes, with a few vehicles using all three, sometimes on the same sub-assembly.

Which defeats the point of preferred sizes altogether and forces you to have (and if working away from your workshop, carry) significantly more tools than should be required.

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Having worked on lots of industrial projects where maintaining standards and designing for maintainability was a big deal, it really feels like sloppy engineering to mix and match like that, especially as there have been no instances I have seen where the size difference between a 12 or 13mm headed M8 bolt (JIS or ISO/DIN), or a 16 or 17mm M10 bolt (ISO or DIN) would make a blind bit of difference to the packaging of the overall assembly.

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And don't get me started on reduced head sizes on bleed screws... When you put a 9mm AF external hex on an M12×1 thread with about 20mm of engagement you're just asking for that head to get rounded off the second there's a whiff of corrosion...

Also, despite it being a part which is both essential to vehicle functioning and an obvious failure point, you've made it so bizzare that it's nearly unobtainable to the extent that as the vehicle manufacturer you're air-freighting them from the OEM in the far east whenever one is ordered.

Not that I'm bitter or anything, honest.

There have been a number of threads about this over the years, and if you can recruit someone "in the know" to help you it will make things a lot easier.

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If your stepfather was a member of any model engineering clubs, I would absolutely start by asking them for help... If not, if you can contact local clubs they will also be quite helpful.

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If it is all too much to deal with in the time you have, don't go to a house clearance firm. There are specialist dealers/firms who will take on workshop clearances, who will be both better equipped to move things, and more likely to preserve and re-home the equipment with people who value it.

"Home and Workshop Machinery" is the one which jumps out at me, but there are others, they will obviously only pay you a proportion of the full value of the equipment, but that might still be the right choice for you and your family.

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If I can find it with the search function I did post some advice on how to advertise equipment to sell, and what to expect when people come to collect, so you're at least mentally prepared for what can (depending on the size and location of the item) be a bit of a palava, and I'll repost here.

Funny Iain mentioned Statfold Barn...

A friend of mine contracted with Statfold Engineering to complete part of the overhaul works on his Hunslet, and has been very happy with the workmanship (although also knew them and chose them for that reason).

Their "Steam Road Vehicles" page lists boiler work, including new-builds as a service they provide.

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More generally there are far more firms who have the capability than who will advertise what you're looking for specifically...

It depends what you want exactly mind:

• If you have detailed design drawings and calcs which are signed off to Eurocode (or equivalent) then I'd be ringing round all the fabricators who do pressure vessel and fired heater work (and there's loads of them, most of whom will be advertising to industry) for quotes rather than focusing on people who target the model/heritage market.
• If you only have the mechanical drawings for a boiler from a historic design which predates the PSSR, then you would need to find a company which has both fabrication services and a design office, and get a quote for them to do the calcs (and any re-design) and fab work... You'd probably be able to get them to commit to a fixed price on the design work and a ±30% estimate on fabrication at first contact.

I'd be happy to dig up the names of some firms I've worked with previously if you wanted to approach commercial Pressure Vessel fabricators for comparison quotes.

But you would need to be absolutely sure to:

• specify anything that's essential to your final engine build in the contract with them, and
• examine any final design documents with a fine tooth comb before you sign off for work to start,

because unlike a specialist they won't catch anything or match your assumptions and will build exactly what you request without querying.

I received a nice letter from the IChemE confirming that I have now justified that between my HND, 13 years experience and MSc, I do indeed meet the knowledge and understanding requirements for Chartered Chemical Engineer...

So I can now submit them a new form showing my mentoring program which developed me to an appropriate level to submit the next form.

I really don't think the Engineering Council ever considered that people would apply at different career stages, or how painful they were making it for applicants when they standardised the CEng requirements between institutions.

Changed the clutch in a Toyota Celica for a friend who was in a real bind.

As per every clutch change job ever, changing the clutch was the easy bit...

Unlike most clutch jobs, the hard part was releasing what might be a candidate for the "worst designed engine mount bracket ever" nearly 3 hours to get it out of the ridiculously tight gap and release the middle engine support after unbolting it in 10 seconds flat.

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There were also a number of bolts that could only be accessed using a 12" extension on a universal joint, on another 12" extension, on the impact gun... Not the best design for maintainability I have ever seen.

Really feeling it today at work.

I think there are ways one could do a manual lift safely.

Slinging the mill from beneath with a pair of short slings connected with a d-shackle and passing a stout bar or scaffold pole through allows you to get as many people as will fit in the space round it and for them all to have a good grip with no pinch hazards.

Assuming the bench isn't too high, and the slings are short, four people lifting and a fifth person controlling the load to prevent swinging would be pretty safe, better still if that fifth person can have some blocks to hand they can slide under allowing the people lifting to reposition between the floor and full height to maximise lifting with their legs and avoid putting their core muscles under too much stress.

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If going a manual route the important thing is that everyone knows their limits, knows proper lifting form, and keeps well within both.

I remember having ergonomics training where they drilled into us that the oft quoted HSE guideline of 25Kg for a man and 20kg for a woman is based on average people of working age, and that it is perfectly acceptable for someone to lift more if they have a demonstrated ability to do so safely and it's been assessed, but it is also wholly unacceptable to ask someone to lift something they were uncomfortable with just because it was under the guideline number.

If in doubt add more people.

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Ramps do work really well, but setup is everything because there's a lot of inherent instability in using them.

I would personally be inclined to use rollers or a thin sheet of metal to minimise the static friction, having had experiences where a load jerked violently on a ramp when it overcame friction and became unstable.

But that then means you do need a progress capture mechanism or a winch/pulley system which can do the whole move in one go, and allows safe lowering.

Hiring a Tirfor for the day would give all of that very nicely, and is usually pretty cheap.

I assume you haven't had to buy spare parts for any large plant equipment recently... The combination of OEM markup (because service is how they make a lot of their money), with logistics costs layered on top if you're not in N. America or W. Europe is a big part of what makes remanufacturing and third-party manufacturing a viable enterprise.

That said, the price of an equivalent piece of steel stock to make the rod would be £15 per 25mm (from M-Machine) so even before the hard-chrome, induction hardening, and grinding which could double to treble the price, a 3m long rod is in the region of £1800 (3500 AUD), so even making a replacement rod would start at $7k-$10.5k australian before machining and welding.

This is before accounting for the fact that you might be losing $2k-$4k per day in depreciation alone every day the machine is stood idle, plus the loss of production and/or short term hire-cost which could easily reach tens of thousands of dollars...

Edited By Jelly on 26/06/2023 14:57:53

As a craft-trained engineering technician with 20 years experience working on that kind of heavy plant, a strong relationship with various OEM's and OEM dealers (to the point of re-manufacturing parts for OEM's prior to delivery to the customer, when machines arrive in Australia with damage from transit) and consent from the owner of a multi-million pound quarrying excavator...

I think it's probably reasonable to assume that his decision is rooted in sound engineering practice.

If the rod was designed so close to the yield strength that going from 128mm to 125mm on such a long and large thread would be problematic, then I'd say the OEM's design was negligent to begin with 

Edited By Jelly on 26/06/2023 14:51:42

Bottled up a substantial quantity of Sloe Port, and started the last batch of Sloe Gin from last year's haul... That should mature in time to do one final batch of Sloe Port before we get started on the Crabapple Gin which will finish in time for starting the Plum wine before this year's Sloe harvest...

I am less clear when or how we're going consume the sheer volume of port, gin and wine being produced, but we can work on that.

My neighbours cat is all too frequently interested in getting close to recently welded or cut steel outside the workshop, he's a very sweet cat and I'd hate for him to get burned in pursuit of a warm place to curl up, so I am forced to sit in a deck chair and distract him with cat toys...

The hardship!

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As far as keeping workshop temperatures down goes, I bought a pallet of spares and repairs air-con units at an auction some years ago, and managed to assemble 3 working ones from about nine, one lives in my office, one lives in the workshop, and one failed catastrophically during the day that reached 40°C last year.

It's probably a luxury, but one I would fully endorse if you have the space.

If anyone is tempted:

• December/Jan is (unsuprisingly) by far the best time to buy air-con units on the used market,
• when buying portable units the type with two hoses to the outside is substantially more energy efficient for real use cases because they don't create negative pressure drawing new warm moist air into the room, and
• Strategic use of draught excluders in the room to be cooled will save 5-8% more energy for a given set temperature .

Looks like they still have them in stock.

That's likely down to your browsing profile (or lack thereof)...

Almost every Google ad I see on the site when browsing on my phone or personal laptop is engineering related.

However, the adverts are random and a little bizzare if I visit on my work laptop.

The difference being that my personal devices are connected to my Google account where I have given them limited permission to collect profiling data to serve relevant adverts (If I'm going to be subjected to them either way, then they might as well at least occasionally show me a thing I might actually want), whilst my work laptop isn't logged in to a google account and has advertising trackers blocked by the security settings,

If it's too thin to MIG I'd probably OA weld it, TIG is a skill I have consistently failed to master... And I'm well aware that to most people it sounds crazy to find gas welding aluminium easier, but my fine motor control isn't up to holding a consistent arc length without dipping the tungsten or moving so slowly I blow through.

Yeah it is!

Although I'm not sure quite what the implications are in this case, I suspect that I probably don't want to put the generator enclosure and chassis into the welding circuit of a machine which is protectively earthed to that self-same chassis... My gut feeling is that it could go badly wrong.

A lot of the patching is on panels which I can lift off and do in my booth with the MIG (Halleluja!), but some of the bits of the chassis proper, I may need to do with the stick welder instead.

The first owner was clearly HSS Hire (it's been blacked out in some places but not well) and it's in HSS's corporate shade of blue, so presumably if you order enough welders at once, Migatronic will paint them a custom colour from the factory...

I'm wondering if it's a unit that was on-hire for so long that when the time came to return it at the end of a contract, HSS just sold it to the customer for whatever the remaining book value was to avoid having to deal with collecting and servicing something they no longer wanted on the books... Which would explain how it ended up in storage and being sold for peanuts to me.

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For the Alu Welding I'm hoping to be able to get set up with a water-cooled push-pull gun, a friend of a friend has one going spare so I need to go over and see them about it at some point.

If that doesn't work out a spool gun like your setup is my fall-back, but I'd have to make a bypass loop for the coolant circuit and use manual settings rather than the synergic mode to avoid the power-source unexpectedly frying the gun with more current than it's rated for.

Depending how long it takes, I might get a small spool of Alu wire to give it a go through the wire-feeder, but I'm not holding out hope that it will cope well, with the torch lead itself being 4m and all.

Tell me about it, I swear workshop equipment is a hitherto undiscovered type of gas, expanding to fil the space available.

An extension is something that I have been working on plans for (there's an additional 4m×3.2m of space I can claim going backwards towards the house before it negatively effects the garden)...

But to justify the expense, it will really need to accommodate a dedicated office space as well so I can have my guest room back.

Edited By Jelly on 14/06/2023 23:25:04