Member postings for John Doe 2

I only know what has been written in this thread, but I understood that the 'wet' belt frays and the fibres from that gradually block the oil sump pick-up, (which has a coarse gauze in it), and that blocks the oil flow before it can reach the filter?

So a standard service for these engines needs to include dropping the oil sump to check and clean the oil pick-up gauze. Perhaps that what the official Ford garages do?

@Taf_Pembs: All common questions, but all a bit defeatist.

In WW 2; did we say "Oh blimey" we haven't got enough aircraft or resources to fight and repel the Nazi air force, so we will just have to surrender"?

Nope, we just got on with it and worked out how to defeat them, and built what we needed.

Yes, there are - and will be - problems, but we won't solve them by saying how challenging it might be.

Just a quick example might be to lift the kerbstones along each pavement and replace them with purpose made blocks designed to carry electrical cables and have inbuilt charging sockets, for electric cars parked in the street. Yes, that will be disruptive but roads have been dug up for gas, water, sewerage, telecoms, cable television supply etc. and we all got over it.

Looking good, but I would not put my drill press in a corner like that. What if you need to drill holes in a long length of something - or even just something > 400mm ?

Put it near your mill and that shelving, I would.

Edited By John Doe 2 on 13/06/2023 00:53:06

Surely, Duncan, you would generate from solar and store into batteries for nights and cloudy periods?

Regarding planning permission and pylons: I have always wondered why 'they' don't put a modest horizontal wind turbine on top of every electricity pylon? The pylons already exist, so no planning permission required, and they offer an easy distribution network.

There must be thousands of electricity pylons already in place.

For what it's worth, I needed a small pipe bender to bend some small bore central heating tube, and purchased one exactly like the red one in the photo above. But I found when I got it home that it creased the tube on the bend.

I looked at it very carefully and noticed that the part with the straight grooves that you draw round to press the pipe into the curved grooves, was slightly - about 1/2 or 1/3 of a mm perhaps - offset sideways from the curved fixed part, meaning that the top grooves were not exactly in alignment over the bottom grooves, and this is what caused a crease in the side of the tube on the bend.

I went back to the shop and explained the problem, and they let me open the boxes of all the small benders they had in stock - about 8 of them, and check each one for this alignment. Most were also slightly off but I found one that looked pretty well spot on, and this one did not crease the pipes.

So I would suggest going to your local professional plumber's merchants rather than buying online, so you can make the same check before buying.

.

Edited By John Doe 2 on 12/06/2023 22:48:54

Andrew: 2nd paragraph of the very first post

What a xxxx by Ford. Why didn't they recall the cars and change the belts once it was known the belts were causing a problem? No, it's alright, I know the answer - similar to the Boeing MCAS disaster.

Perhaps the Ford garages pulled the sumps off at every oil change and checked and/or cleaned the gauze pre-filter.

Edited By John Doe 2 on 10/06/2023 16:44:07

Many thanks for the info

It certainly is very impressive. And with electronic control, they have solved the clutch activation - my Audi DSG gearbox feels as it if had a fluid torque convertor, (without the losses), but it has two conventional friction clutches, actuated automatically by servos. They have got the logic of the clutch engagement just right, and pulling away from rest is absolutely smooth and seamless. Very clever.

All this and 7 gears + reverse in a front wheel drive gearbox housing

Edited By John Doe 2 on 09/06/2023 10:05:37

Hardly a "rubber band". More like a heavy duty V belt.

I owned a modern Audi with a CVT (constantly variable transmission) auto gearbox, which used two hydraulically variable cone pulleys and a belt, and it was really good, although it required a different driving technique: Instead of setting an engine power with the throttle, you used the throttle to set a speed and the gearbox adjusted its ratio according to the road gradient to produce that speed. This was counter-intuitive to many drivers, but as an Airbus pilot, I was open to this type of automation, and got on with it very well.

Yeah, I would have tried reseating all the internal interconnections before buying a new HDD though. Nothing to lose.

A report of an HDD fault does not necessarily mean there is an actual HDD fault. It could be a problem with the data from the HDD not reaching the main board, or being corrupted, owing to a poor connection.

Having said that, I agree with Sakura and would have been back to the shop manager first.

Modern DSG gear boxes are really good, and very clever: combining two clutches and two gear boxes concentrically. Electronic control and learning is a real game-changer as well.

As a young lad, building simple gearboxes in Meccano, I assumed that gears in a gearbox were physically moved in and out of mesh, so was surprised to learn from the Ladybird book of the car that all gears are in constant mesh, and are engaged to the shaft when required with synchromesh hubs.

I found it surprisingly easy to drive and change gears with a manual synchromesh gearbox without using the clutch, (apart from starting off, obviously). Just requires being gentle; lifting the accelerator and matching road and engine speeds to the next gear - and then gently holding the gearstick 'against' the next gear, until it slips in after the synchro does its work.

Edited By John Doe 2 on 06/06/2023 12:25:15

By "looking at" engine revs and wheel revs. But hydraulically, and mechanically, not electronically. There was a throttle pedal position input, and some gearboxes had an engine manifold vacuum input, I think, but they were mechanical, not electronic. They moved hydraulic valves in the gearbox.

Gear selection by the driver was also hydro-mechanical - just a valve block to lock-out a lower gear or whatever.

Those types of gearbox, e.g. Borg Warner 35, only had 3 forward gears and were not as good as modern 7 or 8 speed electronically controlled DSG 'boxes, and were quite inefficient. If you had a big torquey engine they were OK from a driving point of view, but MPG figures were awful - below 20 MPG, owing to the constant slipping of the torque convertor, which replaced the clutch and gave some ratio variation, as well as the actual sun and planet gear sets.

The old boxes were very fluid level and pressure dependant, if you had a small leak, they could misbehave quite badly.

My memory is of auto boxes slamming into gear when you selected 'Drive', shocking the drivetrain, which was not comfortable at all.

Very nice print, iNF.

Shapr3D is a CAD App specifically designed to work on an iPad or a computer. I have been using it for a few months, and it seems very good, although I have only used 2D TurboCAD before and none of the others available.

3D printing is just brilliant. I can wake up with an idea in my head, then CAD it and set it printing to be ready that afternoon or the next morning. Even silly little things, such as A replacement lid for our bird feeder; Brackets to repair the clothes drying horse; A jockey wheel for a child's toy caravan, A holder for a set of specialised plumbing tool sockets which have a round profile but a large flat on one side, New plastic soft jaws for my crab clamp....The list goes on, and be warned; it gets addictive !

To make those in a machine shop would require a workshop and thousands of pounds worth of lathes, mills and tooling, plus I don't have the skills, experience or accuracy to work in metal. I don't know how you would even begin to cut the shapes for the plumbing sockets.

When you have a moment I would be interested in the advanced settings employed in your Cura if that's what you are using to slice:

Outer wall wipe distance, (0.3mm)

Infill wipe distance, (0.15 mm)

Retraction distance, (7.00mm)

Retraction speed, (25.0mm/s)

Retraction retract speed, (25.0mm/s)

Retraction minimum travel, (1.5mm)

My settings in brackets, for PLA filament.

With PLA I am getting a lot of stringing where the nozzle moves between elements on my prints, which require a lot of post print finishing, and I would like to reduce this.

I have not used ABS yet, but had trouble with PETG detaching, until I put the bed temperature up to 80°C.

Nylon was difficult, and really needs an enclosed print space apparently.

Don't know but before you do, take the mains plug out of the wall socket, then open the Freesat box and very carefully and one by one; remove and replace all the mutli-connectors you can see, starting with the one from the HDD block to the main board. Bear in mind some have locking tabs.

If you are not familiar with electronics, don't touch any metal or components - there is a small possibility of power supply capacitors giving you a shock - only touch plastic multi-connectors.

Then replace the housing and try the box again. 80% of "electronic" faults are due to interconnections going bad, so you might be lucky.

A pity though that a rough unfinished item is now considered good enough to sell, without caring what the customer thinks? Even the casting flashing has not been removed.

Ah OK. So you HAVE had people trying to steal things from you electronically, (via Paypal).

And you don't worry about hackers intercepting scans of passport and driving licence etc. in open emails? It's something that worries me.

Apple iMessage is encrypted between Apple devices.

How do you deal with emails, when a company wants a scan of your passport, or other personal data, address, bank account number, for example?

Not having a go at all; genuine question. Do you use encryption software or something?

Nice print !

My graphics are sunk in rather than being proud of the surface - I can't think of the word to describe that, inverse embossed, I suppose.

I originally intended to drip ink or paint in, to fill the numbers, but I now worry that I will mess it up.

Now those last two ideas are very good - I had not thought of that.

Too late for this particular print, (which took 19 hours), but I will certainly remember it for next time.

Am just thinking that any paint or ink might run along the tiny furrows between the filament ridges around the number 'troughs' in my 3D printed items and prevent a crisp edge?

Edited By John Doe 2 on 31/05/2023 12:06:04