Mechanics

Something pertaining to the disassembly and fixing of any mechanical device.

Tall Bike

I recently received a few extra bikes from a friend and decided to try making a tall bike from one of the frames. It is basically just an upside-down bike since I just flipped the frame. The seat post and handle bars needed to be longer since the pedals were so much higher. It took a bit of welding and some work getting the chain tensioned without the derailleur. It’s functional, but also a bit scary being so far from the ground. In the future, I would make the bend for the handle bars closer to the frame, as it is a bit awkward to steer.

Replacing A Fan’s Thermal Fuse

We bought a decent pedestal fan a couple years back and it randomly died recently. It still didn’t work after cleaning it so, I decided to try bypassing the thermal fuse. It worked, but I couldn’t leave it that way with any peace of mind. After using a magnifying glass to read the small print, I bought a couple new fuses online.

I soldered a new one on, but I got it too hot from the soldering iron. I did it again and left more room between the fuse and the solder point. It works great now, and it just took a cheap little fuse to fix!

Taking Apart A Freewheel

My bike recently started to develop a wobble on the back wheel. I realised that it was due to the bearings failing, so I decided to take it apart and try to fix it. I found another rear wheel that had been bent, so I had some spare parts to use.

Once I pulled the gears off, there was this piece with bearings on it. I counted and there were 88 bearings in total. There are 9 bearings on each side of the axle. There are then 39 bearings around this piece in the picture, and then 31 that go on the gear piece.

The hardest part was making sure that there was the proper amount of bearings in each part. Once I got it all back together, it worked great, and it no longer had the wobble because I replaced the broken part.

Ford Focus Block Heater

It is winter now and the weather is pretty cold where I live. My battery is weak and there is cold weather on the way, so I decided to test the block heater out. I was told by a friend to plug it in, and then unplug the block heater quickly. If the heat plug had any draw it would create a spark when I unplugged it. It did not create a spark so I figured that the block heater was not working for some reason. I traced the cable and found that it was just dangling at the back of the engine bay. After some research and feeling around the back of the engine, I found the block heater plug.

From the top of the engine looking to the right you can see the orange end of the block heater cable.

Because of the angle, I used a mirror to get a picture of the plug. It now works great, and I still test it regularly by checking for a spark when unplugging it.

Cleaning Lenko Snow Machines

I was recently introduced to two Lenko snow machines and was really interested to see them working. Because of the multitude of nozzles making a fine mist, they are supposed to make snow really well. Upon firing it up, however, most were dribbling, and many more were clogged up altogether.

I started going through the work of removing the nozzles. There were 450 nozzles per machine plus an inner piece that needed disassembling as well to make a total of 1800 parts that needed cleaning!

I used CLR and an electric toothbrush to slowly clean all of the pieces. They were very calcified and the o-rings were cracking. After cleaning, I found that they were quite tacky and gave all the parts a hot water bath. I put new o-rings on as I assembled all the nozzles.

The difference after cleaning was visually striking. We flushed the machines with no nozzles in them to try to blast any residual build up out of the rings. Then we put all the nozzles back by hand to avoid over tightening or cross-threading. The machines work amazing now, and produce a lot of snow.