I think I might repair this.

 

It's a motor off a mobility scooter that the mother bought very cheaply. I can see why now, I think it must have been underwater. Prices for bits aren't cheap so I'd better clean it up, at least the bearings are common and very cheap skateboard ones that I already have at home.

Cleaning isn't my forte :(

About right now.

 

Some may have noticed the high odometer reading on a previous post, that was from a bit of playing that created a headache that took a lot of investigating to correct, the short story is Oscar has two chips in separate places to record distance and they can only be easily modified upwards, now at last I again have about the correct number showing. 

The trip meter is accurate 503 km using a bit less than half a tank, much of that (way too much) has been driving around town barely warming up but a big chunk was a trip to Innisfail to buy some vitamin B12 and smell the flowers. Oscar is a very economical car on the highway, extraordinary actually, Google Peugeot 307 HDI if you're cynical. 

I've also found that I've been saying the unpronounceable Peugeot name wrongly as Pug-a-lot, it seems Pay-Joh (named after the greatest ever Premier of Queensland no doubt) would be more correct but I'll have to train Jimby's tongue and swallow some pride to do it. 

Teeth be gone.

Jimby had fun at the hospital today, a morning visit where they took an impression so they could add to my partial plate, then an afternoon visit so they could pull my front teeth, and as usual it was a major job with them stubbornly resisting efforts to extract them. They were sound but needed work and apparently my bite was such that it would destroy any repair in short order, and our free system doesn't cater for advanced repairs, so out they came. This is the rear view as they were in my mouth.

This is how things look now, they slapped the plate straight in and advised me to try not to remove it for a while. A little bit of blood but they stitched things and it isn't gushing out like it did after my last extraction. That rotten looking tooth on the lower right of photo is scheduled to be filled next month, if it remains viable, it was slated for March but a little thing called COVID-19 and a lot of scaremongering got in the way. I might even try to learn to smile with my teeth showing now :)

Weather station dropping out, look for frogs.

 

If you have one of these weather stations and it drops out fairly often then it may not be batteries or only good for throwing in the bin, I've found they're a haven for frogs, they love them and cause us here in Ingham NQ plenty of headaches.

The fix is to get the frogs out and block their reentry. Take the unit off the post and undo the six screws around the base, a number 2 philips head will do that. Next undo the 4 number 1 philips screws holding the little housing I've marked in magenta here. That little housing is where the frogs love to hide, it also houses the electronics that transmit the signal to your indoor console. The cyan markers on this photo also show where you should probe with wire to see if froggies are hiding away, the long of it is look everywhere.

You'll have to pull the mainboard out of the housing and care should be taken as it's a tight fit, often the aerial will snap off (it looks like a spring) but it's an easy job to resolder it. Take care with the wires as they get fragile and can be a nightmare to try and fix, I've lost sleep over that (sorry Alan). This shot shows some of the frogs that were in Chris's unit when I cleaned it a week ago. Give the board a clean before carefully refitting.

One of those frogs about to be relocated, I love the little things so they're safe with me but nature and birds will take their toll and that's nature.

The cyan areas marked here are what I think are the entry points, there's three little oval ones near the mounting pole and a fair gap between the temp/RH sensor housing and the body, I block them with hot melt glue but find whatever you can and bung them up. The most important entry point is through the mounting pole, make sure you bung that up, a bit of rag will do but a great coincidence is that at 30 mm it's the same size as a soft drink bottle cap, easy peasy.

Showing me wire probing.

Edit: It appears google now trim the piccies to be that rather irksome vertical style that phones love, so I suggest you double click on the piccies to open them up to see what I've written about.

Goners.

I saw the dentist (the lovely Brittany) the other day and she advised me that's time to call it quits on my two upper front teeth. They're sound but any filling she could do would be only a short term repair due to my bite putting undue pressure on them, as it destroyed the previous repair job.

Oh well it'll just be an even more gummy Jimby in the near future.

Poor Brittany really feels for her patients so I'll have to make sure I put her at ease about this job on me when she gets me in the chair for the job. She's a great dentist and deserves any success that comes her way but I hope she stays in the public system. 

I think she's a gunna make another set of dentures too, I'll likely need to use them a plenty too.

I love this, 1100 km until empty.

We went to Townsville today and I bought two tyres for Oscar, good Chinese ones that have ratings, not brand name ones that offer no information to the customer except they have a tread pattern and come in various sizes, I'll fit them in the near future.

I've been working on improving Oscar's economy and 1100 km is a good predictive range considering Oscar had done 135.9 km since filling its 60 litre tank, and done with the A/C on the whole time too, as well as stuck in the traffic jungle of Townsville.

This genuine Anchee is what Oscar will soon be wearing, note that it has both USA and EURO ratings which are quite reasonable, Australia it seems has no rating system for tyres and it sure seems that the makers don't want us to have any knowledge either.

The UTQG of 420 is the USA wear rating number, probably too low to be acceptable in the USA market but likely way too high for our traders to handle.

Caliper bolt.

The upper caliper bolt fell out of Oscar the other week when I was at Chris's place to check his weather station, my fault as I'd failed to torque it properly, this created a really weird problem as the caliper rotated and wedged cam like against the inside of the wheel rim, you can see the contact point at the lower right of this photo. Anyway Chris was a hero to me and even drove me up the road to get a bolt that fits, which got me out of trouble until the fancy proper one arrived.

I was really rattled for a while having a car that wouldn't drive forward yet could be reversed. Another case to put into your memory bank.