しーまブログ 2012年05月20日
Rain, unfortunately.
It is actually cold! I might be feeling cold because I am still wet after riding my bike through the rain. I really want to go to sleep in my warm bed.
Today I heard from a friend that that old dragon, Queen Elizabeth, had "lunch" with monarchs from over 30 countries. That's a lot of countries. Old Lizzie is said to have had this massive "lunch" to celebrate the diamond anniversary of her being the Queen of England. I thought it sounded a bit on the suspicious side, and I wondered what, if any other reason might be at play for this mass gathering of parasites?
So Old Lizzie had her tea and cucumber sandwiches at Windsor, and later on, the grotesque horde shuffled over to Buckingham Palace, with the polo-playing clown called Prince Charles acting as host - for dinner (or left-over sandwiches from their earlier bash at the 'castle').
I was surprised to hear of this huge cluster of royals because there was nary a word in the press about it. The logistics for their transportation must have been a nightmare, but somehow all those extremely wealthy blood-suckers managed to have their 'lunch' without anyone much knowing anything about it until after it was over and they'd gone home. Most interesting I thought.
One reason I thought it was a bit odd was because the Q has only been crowned as Queen of England for 59 years. But my friend told me she was effectively queen since 1952. In my mind was the fact that she didn't have her coronation until 1953, so I thought her term only counted to 59 years - well whatever! I remembered her coronation day because it was the same year that Edmund Hillary scampered up Mt Everest.
So what's going on? Was it really only a luncheon event? I was very curious about what happened at the Palace afterwards when Prince Charles was host. I wondered if all those royals had been called together for a special meeting?
One thing's for sure, and that's that Queen Elizabeth is supposed to earn her keep by providing lots of spectacular events in the media, so this clandestine luncheon appointment with the royals of over 30 countries appears to be a case of the taxpayers failing to get value for money from their odious investment.
And did I say it was cold?
2012年05月20日
My new patient
Here is another scooter I have just started to repair and return to useful service.
There are quite a few things which need doing. The frame is basically OK, but I'll clean the rust off it and prime it. Only a very small part needs a bit of welding.
The front forks need replacing. That's a bit expensive, but it is necessary. The throttle cable needs replacing, as does the rear brake cable. Doubtless I'll discover other parts which need replacing as well, but I've only just started.
Here is that Honda "naked."
2012年05月20日
Locks
Have you ever lost a key? Did you know that it isn't so difficult to open a lock without a key?
Some locks are very difficult to open, but most locks use a simple system of metal bars fitted into a cylinder.
The barrel of the lock (the part which turns), is prevented from turning when anything but the right key is used, because the key raises small metal bars (pins) to precise heights against a spring tension so that all the bars are exactly level with the diameter of the barrel．
The level where all the tabs allow the barrel to turn is called the "shear-line."
It isn't difficult to make a set of tools which can open a lock, and opening a lock can be an interesting and satisfying pastime. Some open locks as a hobby.
A lock-pick can be made from a hacksaw blade, or the stainless steel insert in windscreen wiper blades. Both of those two materials are strong enough to move the 'pins' inside the barrel of a lock, but a carefully cut hacksaw blade is preferable because it is harder and stronger.
Stainless steel inserts from wiper blades are easier to fashion into lock-opening tools, but they bend more. The hacksaw blades can make stronger lock-picking tools, but they might snap if you use too much force.
I enjoy being able to open locks, and I have even helped a few people open locks when they have lost their key. One of my neighbours was locked out of his house. I noticed him climbing up to the windows on the second floor trying to get in, and when I understood the problem, I went over and opened his door in a few seconds with a tool I made myself.
I first became interested in opening locks after I lost the key to my bike. I couldn't use the bike for a long time, and eventually I decided to learn how to open the lock. It took half an hour to open the lock the first time, but after practise I could open it in seconds. I could also open many different kinds of locks using the same or very similar tools.
The photos here are of a lock I decided to 'hack.' The lock was from a scooter my neighbour had lost the key to.
First I picked the lock so I could slide the barrel out, then I changed the order of the pins inside so I could use a different key. My neighbour was surprised I could do it.
Sometimes I need to change a part on a bike and I end up with a different lock. Its awkward to need two or three keys for one bike, so these days I open the locks and arrange the pins so that one key fits all of them.
2012年05月17日
Done the Dio.
This is a Honda Dio I've just finished fixing. It's been completely stripped-down and rebuilt.
Today I'm going to the Shiakusho to get a number-plate for it, then I'll ride it around for a few days to make sure everything is OK, and I'll repair and/or change parts if necessary.
The pictures were taken in the rain, which is a shame because if the pictures were taken on a sunny day, the colour would have looked much nicer.
If anyone likes it, then I'll sell it for 40,000 - or maybe I'll accept less in an offer. If you are interested then please contact me at maelstrom@po2,synapse.ne.jp (.)
2012年05月16日
The lawn tractor I fixed.
I just wanted to show you some pictures of an old machine I worked on.
I enjoy repairing things. I'll try to repair anything. When I see an old machine or device which is thrown away, I feel I would like to give it a new life. I really like old stuff that was made in Europe, the US, or Japan. I am not usually interested or happy to repair Chinese stuff.
It is extremely difficult to find any European things here in Amami which are old. There are a few European items for sale here, but if you look on the box you may find it was really made in China... Just the European brand name is European.
It makes me feel upset to work on Chinese-made things because a lot of the things are made under duress in 'political re-education' prisons. I understand things electric and electronic, and I can look at a circuit board and see that the Chinese things are made by people who have no pride in their work. I can easily imagine a team of undernourished political prisoners being forced to work in poor and unsafe conditions for no wages, with armed and sadistic guards watching over them. At least I feel the poor Chinese making the garbage electrical things are unlikely to be able to afford to buy them themselves, and the electrical things the Chinese buy are even worse than the crap they export to places like the US and Japan.
Old Japanese electrical things are usually beautifully made, and the circuit boards look like minature cities to me. Old Japanese electrical things used components with plenty of tolerance to spare, so they don't overheat or fail very often.
Old US-made stuff is perhaps even better. I have repaired some things made in the States which really surprised me because they were practically over-built, with things like tiny roller bearings on every moving part ... but I digress, and anyway, both US and Japanese stuff is often made either in China or with Chinese parts nowadays. This is why things don't last long. Apart from generally careless work, the components used in modern electrical appliances are chosen because they are the cheapest possible to do the job. But these cheap components have no tolerance and tend to overheat or spontaneously fail. Garbage, it is!
But wait until the Chinese get too expensive for the greedy corporations, and their work is out-sourced to Africa. Can you imagine driving a Toyota made in Africa by Africans? Such a thought scares the willies out of me.
Anyway, back to the tractor. I was waffling on about how the old stuff is good as opposed to newer things, because this Yanmar YC750 is forty years old, and it is built to last! The owner didn't maintain this old machine for over a decade, and during that time it got pretty rusty, and some parts were damaged by corrosion.
I was perplexed when I first got the machine because it looked impossible to fix. The tyres were cut, and flat, the wheel rims were badly rusted-away, the diesel injector pump was seized, a belt had broken, the front-end had been crashed, and the headlight was broken.
None of the controls moved because the cables were corroded. The rotating tiller on the back had a hole so the oil leaked out. The cover for the rototiller was completely rusted away. Generally, it was quite a mess (and I didn't take pics of it before I fixed it).
I welded the rims, and used pieces of steel I had lying about the place for filler. The holes were very big, and I even welded the edges. After it was welded, I sandpapered it, and then put a layer of epoxy over the whole inside area. I thought there might be too many sharp edges, so the epoxy was to make the inside smooth.
The injector pump was a big milestone to pass. I'd never worked on a diesel engine before, and I was afraid I wouldn't be able to adjust the pump volume or timing correctly. I had studied a bit on the internet about setting the diesel pump, and what I read made me feel that diesels needed special equipment and trained personnel to set properly.
Unfortunately I erroneously took the injection pump off the engine before realizing I had no way of knowing where the adjustment was set. Anyway, I took the pump to pieces, cleaned all the pieces up, tested it a bit, then re-installed it in the engine. I guessed that the governer would be set so it would adjust the flow to zero-flow within a small movement of the governer cam - and I was lucky, because I guessed it perfectly.
The body of the tractor was very tatty. I spent a long time sandpapering, priming and painting the machine. The cables all had to be removed and repaired. A lot of the nuts and bolts didn't want to move due to being severely corroded, so I had to cut many off with a grinder. Also, several threads were snapped-off inside the frame, so I had to drill them out and re-tap the threads.
But it was the working portion of the machine that needed the most effort. I am not an experienced welder, so doing a big welding job is something that I would prefer to avoid unless I had all the right stuff. Well all I had was some metal scraps, and I had to find a way somehow to make a strong cover for it.
Anyway, I hope you like the pictures I took of it. I'm quite pleased with myself for managing to fix that tractor. It took around 50 or 60 hours to repair.
It runs well, and everything works.
Wanna buy it? I'll let it go for 100,000 yen - or maybe I'll take an offer?
Another thing I've just done is I've just today finished rebuilding another scooter. This time it's a Honda Dio. I'll do a piece on that scooter in a day or so. I want to sell it, so if you are interested then contact me. I'm asking 40,000 yen for it, but again, I might accept a near offer.
2012年05月14日
Things on my mind
It is wet weather now. It's windy. The wind has blown the cover off the garden-tractor I fixed, which is cluttering up the parking area. I'm planning to write a piece on that tractor, and as soon as I get the pictures uploaded I'll publish it here.
The other side of the parking area has two scooters. One of them, a Honda Dio, is almost finished. One of my hobbies is fixing things, and as I have quite a good relationship with the owner of a bike shop, I get old bikes for free, then I order parts through the shop, and sell them cheaply. I have fixed and sold about a half-dozen scooters now - maybe I should make this a part of my job? Anyway, I want to write at length about the scooters I fix because I'd like to use this site to try to sell them.
It's difficult to get enough scooters to sell. Scooters are very much in demand at the moment. People don't have much money these days, and so cheap (but reliable) scooters are very popular.
If anyone has a scooter that needs fixing inexpensively then you might like to ask me to fix it for you? For example, an old scooter might need a bit of welding on the frame, new tyres, a new muffler, new mirrors, a new seat cover and maybe a few other parts. I can do all that with new parts for around 30,000 yen.
I was hard at work in my garden today. I planted 'nira.' My garden is mostly rocks, so it takes a very long time to dig a trench, then put compost, fertilizer and soil in it. It took me four hours to dig a trench 1.2 metres long, 40cms wide, and 30cms deep. I use a steel bar and a spade to dig the trench, and I mix the new soil with a small hoe ... I managed to break two hoes today. They both need new handles. Two weeks ago I broke the cutting edge off one of the (cheap) hoes, so I welded it back (I'm so cheap).
So I got a lot of exercise today. There's NO DOUBT that trying to make a garden with poor soil is a massive undertaking. Basically all that poor soil needs to be removed and replaced with organic stuff. I've been trying to get some decent vegetables growing in my garden for over a year, and I've moved tons of rocks and shifted tons of soil. I've added all the organic stuff I can find for the past year, and still now only a quarter of my garden has good soil. The rest of the garden is still waiting for me to dig up the lifeless inorganic rock and replace it with rotted vegetation.
As well as planting about a hundred 'nira' seedlings, I and my wife also planted some green peppers, some cucumbers, some 'okura,', some lemon-grass and a few other things. The 35 tomato plants I grew from seed and transplanted into my garden are all looking fine. Last year, an early typhoon killed all my tomato plants, so I hope I'll be lucky this year.
Near to my garden I am planning to build a home for my son's turtles. The turtles were about 4cm long when we bought the turtles for my eldest son, and now they are about 20cms long. There are four turtles. At first the turtles were OK in a modified aquarium. It was a 60cm fish tank, and I fitted it with a heater, a heat lamp, a place to sit above the water, and a water pump to recycle and clean the water. That tank was OK for a year and a half, but they grew too big. Then I made a bigger home for them using the top of a discarded 'kotatsu.' I made a hole in the centre and put a 40cm plastic bowl there for them to swim in, and I made a cover with a hinged door so it could be accessed. A 20W fluorescent light meant the turtle's home could be maintained when it was dark. But unfortunately even that home is too small now.
Now there is a 70cm aluminium bowl set into the ground near my garden. As soon as I get some materials, I'm going to build a new home for them around that bowl. This time it needs to be a permanent location outside because they are too big for a practically-portable home. I'll make a small waterfall and build a small hill inside a fenced-off enclosure, and I'll fit some kind of removable lid. I hope I can make the waterfall run off solar power.
I thought of using lots of rocks insulated from the ground, so that in the early morning, the dew will condense on the rocks and provide a small, but reliable source of water to keep the turtles' bowl filled.
Every few weeks I cut the grass around our apartment building. Then I rake it all up and put it all in a pile so it can become compost. Wow! Such hard work! Of course I could buy some good soil, but it is expensive and I can't afford it.
Why am I feeling listless tonight? Maybe not enough sleep? I suppose I've got all the jobs I planned to get done today finished, so I should be feeling satisfied. Over time, if I am not careful, I can get quite messy with my jobs. Sometimes I have two or three jobs being done at the same time, and so my bench becomes cluttered. Then sometimes I manage to have a pile of tools on the kitchen table. If I don't do a big clean-up then it is possible for me to become stuck. Then I am forced to do a blitz and clean everything up. It takes me only an hour or so, and I feel a lot better when the place is tidy and I know where all my tools are.
I always feel bad because I am unable to get my photos up on this blog. The reason is my own laziness, because I still haven't learnt the Japanese instructions of a lot of the programmes on this computer. This blog is all Japanese of course, and I can understand just enough to post a simple entry - such as this one. My wife is very busy these days, and I keep forgetting to ask her to upload my photos for me.
How many people can understand what I write here? I expect the number must be very small - that's why I want to put lots of pictures up, because a picture is worth a thousand words, and the language is not so much of a problem if you can see the issue being written about.
For a while now I've been thinking about making a diary here. It's a big undertaking if I decide to do it, because for a diary to be useful, it should be regularly updated, and really ought to have a new page every day - or every few days at the most.
I decided to write this piece because I am trying to push myself to make the effort to make this blog more alive. My conscience nags me because I don't update enough.
Well - it's late, and I should go about the place and just make sure everything's done, then I'll head for bed. Before I sleep I'll be planning tomorrow's activities. I must get that scooter done. The scooter is in the kitchen at the moment because I haven't as yet put the plastic cover on it, and if it sits outside in the rain, water will get all over the engine and all the bits the plastic cover conceals.
The wind is gusting - it's rattling the loose parts on this old building. Tomorrow we are set for a day of rain, and that's good because of the plants I put in today. It's not so good as far as my getting the scooter finished though.
One more thing I am doing now, is I've got a friend's lead/acid battery hooked-up to one of my homemade pulse-chargers. The battery was severely sulphated, and by pulsing a high current with a sharp leading edge to the spike it is possible to remove the hardened sulphates. Yesterday when I began pulsing the battery, my hydrometer registered the electrolyte was virtually water. The float indicated the battery was off the scale. The meter I use indicates a green band when the electrolyte's specific gravity is good, a yellow band if it is a little weak, and a wide red band indicating the battery is unfit for service. All six cells were beyond registering on even the red band.
Now, after a little over 24 hours, all the cells are inside the yellow area, and a few cells are almost in the green area. The electrolyte should be sulphuric acid and water of a concentration of 36%. The specific gravity should be at least 1,265. Many people have heard of desulphating systems, and some pay a lot of money for such devices in the shops. But as far as I can tell, all the shop-bought units are practicably ineffective. I have compared a friend's pulse-charger bought from Nishimuta, and it is useless. It is, however, quite satisfactory as a regular charger.
I spent five years making and experimenting with circuits until I found what worked, and now I'm pretty confident I can get any sulphated battery back into service. My neighbours use batteries I have desulphated with my machines, as do quite a few of my relatives. All the batteries I use are ones I've desulphated after they were scrapped. I think my Honda Cub's battery must be over 20 years old now - that's the oldest one I've got.
