what mechanical works are you doing now that you are locked in your house

[bluecoupe30!]

These projects are fun, let's keep them coming! For me, entering the busy season with my beehives, mites to check, feeding, preparing for the wasp attacks on so on. But also have had time to "freshen" my Healey. Every year, on The Queen's birthday, (21 May) there is a large British car meet in a botanical garden in Vancouver. Cancelled for this year of course, but it is always a date to shoot for while trying to complete repairs and detail those areas that have been neglected. Met my goal, so now I am finally undertaking the long-awaited renovation of my 1967 Airstream Overlander Land Yacht! Had it for many, many years, it has served the family well, and is now but a lawn ornament, but I have embarked upon its recreation into our retirement home. We see now that nursing homes may not be for us, so we have begun the adaptation into a nice small home for the two of us. Hey, there is room here on the farm!

 

[dave v. in nc]

Gotta love an Airstream!

 

[Gazz]

The patio, veranda, porch, whatever that I have been assigned to paint. Old Mission Brown posts and Sierra Madre railing to new Hogbristle white all over. If you look carefully in the pic showing the lawn you will see Norbert the Water Dragon keeping an eye out for banana and grapes. Just another crap day here on the Gold Coast - 27 degrees with a cool Sou'easter seabreeze. What virus?

 

[Lenoxx]

-Flushed the break fluid on my coupe with racing blue.
-Made a new backing for the coupe's door panel. Removed and stretched original door panel vinyl over new backing and neoprene foam padding. (It's not perfect but temporary)
-New tigerwood veneer for the coupe's door panel trim.
-Re-anchored my car lift with new oversized concrete bolts. (It sheered a bolt last week and suddenly dropped about 6 inches with my car on it. Me and car survived )
-Finished building the final cabinet and doors to finish my kitchen remodel.
-Played Jenga with my daughter. She won. She's 2 and thinks the object is to knock it down.

 

[deQuincey]

So far I've undertaken the following on the CSL since I've had to work from home:

Had my Alpina mags refinished, now having tyres fitted;
Ordered carpet from KHM for the CSL;
Block off to be re-bored;
Ordered the last of the engine/gear box bits from W&N;
Sent off the steering rod to be lengthened for the RHD manual box;
Ordered some misc parts from Jaymic as they were literally closing the shop;
Sent my CSL radiator to be re-cored;
Had the starter motor re-conditioned.
Sent prop shaft off to be re-furbished;

Figured if things get bad here I want the parts handy so I can keep working on her. Will update the build thread soon.

Have also built a veggie garden, painted part of the house and drunk a lot of good wine

no photos, no fun...

 

[deQuincey]

-Flushed the break fluid on my coupe with racing blue.
-Made a new backing for the coupe's door panel. Removed and stretched original door panel vinyl over new backing and neoprene foam padding. (It's not perfect but temporary)
-New tigerwood veneer for the coupe's door panel trim.
-Re-anchored my car lift with new oversized concrete bolts. (It sheered a bolt last week and suddenly dropped about 6 inches with my car on it. Me and car survived )
-Finished building the final cabinet and doors to finish my kitchen remodel.
-Played Jenga with my daughter. She won. She's 2 and thinks the object is to knock it down.

hey, racing blue is nla !

 

[Lenoxx]

hey, racing blue is nla !

Racing blue is nla? I didn't know. I had 2 cans of the gold and blue sitting on my shelf. I forgot that I had them.

 

[dang]

Finished building the final cabinet and doors to finish my kitchen remodel.

I kept my original 44 year old cabinets but had to build new drawer boxes. I'm not a wood working guy so it took some time. I used Blum bottom mount sliders for everything and love them. That was the easiest part.

 

[deQuincey]

Racing blue is nla? I didn't know. I had 2 cans of the gold and blue sitting on my shelf. I forgot that I had them.

racing blue is not allowed to be sell anymore
the issue was covered here some years ago
ate is not selling this blue brake fluid anymore

 

[HB Chris]

Racing blue is nla? I didn't know. I had 2 cans of the gold and blue sitting on my shelf. I forgot that I had them.

Judging from the pic of your can, it’s been on the shelf for a few years!

 

[Stevehose]

I have an unopened can of Blue if anyone would like it for a reasonable cost

 

[Lenoxx]

Judging from the pic of your can, it’s been on the shelf for a few years!

Yes. Maybe 10 years. It was unopened and i decided to use it because the auto parts store was closed. It's old but better than what was already in the brake system.

 

[Lenoxx]

I kept my original 44 year old cabinets but had to build new drawer boxes. I'm not a wood working guy so it took some time. I used Blum bottom mount sliders for everything and love them. That was the easiest part.

I thought about using bottom mount sliders, but I went with the side mount because my supplier had more of them on hand. But they are the self closing type which is sort of cool.

This was my first attempt at building cabinets -even woodworking for that matter. My old cabinets were maybe 10 years old. But they were dated and nobody wanted them, so I threw them out. I redesigned the kitchen layout, which behooved me to build all the cabinets from scratch. But I might have gone too far. I gutted more of my house than I had planned. I ended up knocking down walls, running plumbing and elec, welding up custom staircase rails and having to reinforce some of the floor and ceiling joists so it didn't all come tumbling down. But the top level is mostly wide open now.
It was mostly a fun project and ultimately worth the effort, but I won't do it again. Working alone and living 4 months in a hotel kind of sucked and my wife and kids are glad it's done.

Anyway, I finally get to work on the coupe, but this crazy pandemic is getting in the way of that.

 

[dang]

I'm curious about this photo and the routing of your rain gutter (assuming that's what that pipe is). Are you required to keep storm water from running off your property or does that help keep your pool full from all the evaporation?

 

[Markos]

Two more projects:

1. Replacing the drive gear on the kitchen aid. Turns out it was in pretty good shape. I wanted to replace before selling. Our sour dough was a little too much for this unit, so we got a “professional” mixer. Lot’s of youtube videos that walk through this process.

2. Replacing the batteries on my son’s go kart. Stupid wires are soldered and hot melt glued. I used terminals instead of solder. I’m returning the $70 in UPC batteries if it is a motor problem. Charging now.

 

[Gazz]

I'm curious about this photo and the routing of your rain gutter (assuming that's what that pipe is). Are you required to keep storm water from running off your property or does that help keep your pool full from all the evaporation?

Storm water is typically routed from a house, or other, to the storm water system in the streets. However, in Australia it is quite common to have rainwater capture tanks, ( we have two 2500 litre tanks ), as we can and do have long periods with little rain. Such as the period which occurred in the lead up to our bush fires late last year and early this year.

In the case of the gutter outlet over the pool yes it is to refill the pool to recover the loss of water due to evaporation. There is nearly always a sea breeze here and with the open expanse of the lake you see in the picture the pool is quite exposed, so there is therefore a high rate of evaporation. We have a cover that we use when necessary. I could pump directly from the lake which is a spring water system created by runoff from the surrounding hinterland but I ask myself "what if everyone did that"?, even though the lake is 13 metres deep in places and is nearly 4 kilometres in circumference.

That redirected pipe was another DIY project after I realised the gutter's potential.

Update - I have just been advised of another possible colour change. I knew it I knew it I knew it I knew it.

 

[Nicad]

Mostly motorcycle stuff for me, also making a pedestal with wheels for a very heavy sculpture a friend of mine has. Fixing up two old bikes, a 1982 Yamaha XJ650RJ Seca (The same as the one I had in 82') and a 1984 Honda VF500F. Making a new taillight of my own design for an off road touring bike I hope to complete in the next week or so. (Yamaha WR250R). Made a shelf for my helmets out an old bench a neighbour threw away. This year has been a real year for acquiring perhaps extraneous stuff as I am up to 7 bikes, most with a very low purchase price. Dragged home two Honda VF500f's for $250 USD last week, with one of them running. Added a parts Yamaha Maxim 650 to donate running gear to the Seca if needed. It's mostly going under the porch to replace the void left when I purged 30 years of Corvair parts. Hoping my wife doesn't notice. She has quit looking at most things that interest me, so I could probably come home on a Chopper and say I always owned that one.

 

[Markos]

If my wife and kids needed to drive my coupe it would be restored by now!

Iteration #2 on my electric go-kart repair. Batteries
didn’t work. I had to put it up on a lift and perform a bare plastic restoration.

The 24v motor responded well to bypassing the drive-by-wire throttle, and the EMS system. The one-speed planetary gearbox was not stripped, but does look like a weak point if I add HP in the future.

Turns out that the throttle wire had started to frey, causing intermittent power. It eventually snapped. The wire needs to flex as the front wheel turns. After time it gives up inside the protective coil spring:

Soldering station. Removing the freyed negative
and the cut positive. Figure it is best to replace
both. This exercise reminded me how god awful my cheap iron is.

 

[dang]

Waited over five weeks for my backsplash tile to come in. Got it in this weekend with a few minor things left, plus grout. Blurry photo but after seeing Mark's photo I figured it was fine.

 

[Markos]

Blurry photo but after seeing Mark's photo I figured it was fine.

Not my fault, I was drinking! Your kitchen looks great!!!