Brrrrrrr! It's COLD Outside!

 First major winter storm heading in tonight. It's currently about SIX degrees, and it'll be -10* or colder at night during the coming week.

It's supposed to bring ~3" of snow, which is a pittance compared to what we've had in the previous years since we moved here. My electrically heated gloves are charging, I finally have a good stocking cap, and I serviced the snow blower last year in between hospital stays.

If you live here I don't have to tell you to watch out while you're out-and-about, and to pack an emergency box sufficient to keep you alive for (minimum) 48 hours. I really feel for the ranchers, farmers, and everybody else who has to work outdoors in this weather. I've done it decades ago, and it was brutal. I remember having my flashlight die out in my hand because the batteries froze. I had to keep it in my jacket, but I didn't want to open my jacket!

Anywhoo.....Keep your head on a swivel, and watch out for frostbite!

What's Up, Doc?

 Not much other than the progression of days....and work!

My "work" is mostly stuff I enjoy doing, along with the usual household chores, house upkeep, yadda, yadda, yadda.

I finally have all the parts I need (belts, idler tires, and capstan pressure rollers) to finish the #2 Nakamichi BX-300, so that will consume some time. The mechanical and electrical alignment take a fair amount of time to do, so this one is in sick bay for another several weeks.

The previous BX-30 I rebuilt is now in it's new home, and the new owner is quite happy.

Got this old Heathkit IG-37 "FM Stereo Generator" out of here to a new home and the guy really wanted it, warts and all.

And two people are very interested in the Heathkit "Harmonic Distortion Analyzer", and the Heathkit "IM Distortion Analyzer", both of which have been rebuilt and meet all Heathkit Specifications.

The "Audio Generator" I'm keeping, as it's an excellent piece of gear for doing what it does. Excellent frequency stability, and the distortion is well under .1%.

And I'm accumulating a YUUUUGE pile of clean, refurbished Toyota parts for the Supra. This is about 1/4 of what I've cleaned up this Winter.

Both sections of the Intake Manifold and all the Fuel Injection parts are (finally) off the car, and waiting their turn at "Dr. Jim's Health Spa for Decrepit Automobiles". I'll have to drag them into the basement shower to scrub them. Since I'm doing the cleaning work inside the house, the use of solvents is verboten, and I've been using Simple Green to scrub them with. It's not as fast as using mineral spirits, but it does the job, is low odor, and won't ignite. I also have some "Secret Sauce" I mixed up for cleaning things that I use.

And since it's been such a mild Winter (so far...), I've been able to work out in the garage on the car without freezing my tail off. The main thing I'm working on now is removing the bolt that holds the Harmonic Damper/ Balancer to the Crankshaft. It's a big bolt, it's in there with 169 ft-lbs of torque, and it hasn't moved in 40 years. Using my impact with fresh batteries only resulted in the crank during about 10* CCW, so I stopped. I needed a way to hold just the hub of the balancer while I let my impact worry away on it. You cannot apply any differential torque to the balancer, as in twisting the center while holding the outside. It will over-stress the bonded rubber layer between the two pieces, and lead to separation of the pieces. Trust me, you do NOT want your Harmonic Damper to come apart and exit the car while doing 6500RPM. I've seen it happen, and it ain't pretty. Not as bad or as violent as a clutch explosion, but it will most likely ruin your day. Or engine. Toyota had a 3-piece set of "Special Service Tools" to hold the hub, but good luck finding them. You can see in this shot, that the harmonic balancer has tapped holes in it. The SST attached to the bolts in the hub, had an 18" handle on it, and kept the hub from rotating while you wailed away on getting the blasted bolt loose.

I'll clean out the tapped holes with a .30 cal bore brush, as it fits perfectly, and then run a re-threading tap through them to get the stubborn stuff out.

 Seeing as the Special Service Tool is "Just a plate with two holes and a handle", I'm going to fabricate one. With a bit of clever design, I'll also be able to use it to hold/rotate the camshaft sprockets. too. No, I don't know if they were made by Spacely. There's a "scrap metal" place not far from here where I can get the stock, and I have enough tools to build it build with one exception.

If I'm going to fab metal, I need one of these:

Yes, it uses flux-cored wire which can make messy welds if you're not careful, but I've been welding off-and-on for over 40 years, so I think I can figure it out.

Be nice to have a welder in the family!

I'm well on my way to "Decrapifying" the driver's front corner of the engine bay. Since I had to dissect the wiring harnesses and move them out of the way, I had room to get into there and scrub some of the crud out. It's slow going, but I'll spend 15~20 minutes per night scrubbing away on it. I'll still have to sandblast and paint the areas with the surface rust, but it looks like that damage is highly contained to the area immediately under the battery tray. 

So that's "What's Up, Doc?" for the last week or so. Gonna get down to sub-zero temps over the coming weekend, and while there's snow in the forecast, I doubt we'll get much accumulation.

Be good to each other, and stay in Condition Yellow outside the home.

Happy New Year!

 Here's hoping '24 will be better than '23. I really don't need any additional Hospital Time.

Winter's been a big bust so far. There's been a decent amount of snow in the mountains (still below normal), but nothing down here in the foothills. We have no snow on the ground, and it's hasn't rained in quite a while. The yard plants are desiccated, and without a snow cover, things around here just look all dried-out , desolate, and dead.

So here's my best wishes for all my friends to have a Happy New Year. Keep your head on a swivel, be vigilant, and may you all Live Long and Prosper.

Failed to Publish. Try Again Later... Say, What?

 Huhhhhh....Can't reply to comments in my previous post. It just belches out the reply in the title.

Wonder if I can make a new post? Good Gravy, it's freakin' WINDY tonight. The weather station is reporting pretty steady ~20MPH winds, with gusts to ~35MPH. Sorry guys, can't do it in knots. The weather station only gives me MPH and KPH, although with a bit of code editing, I could add that feature pretty easily to the software used to get it on the network. Gotta love Open Source.

Here we go....bonna pull the pin and lob this with the "Publish" button.

Merry Christmas

 All the kids and the littles will be over this evening to have our Traditional Christmas Dinner of Sloppy Joes, French Fries, and other things to nibble on.

Wishing you all the best for Christmas and the coming New Year.

I just hope the road's a bit smoother this coming year!

Peace to All Men of Good Will.....

How Do You Guys (and gals) Manage Your Blogging?

 I just don't understand how people who blog can be so prolific, and on a continuous basis. There are times I posted daily, like when I rebuilt the suspension on the Supra, or on various other projects, and during our move here, but it seems like I just run out of steam at times.

I stick to techie and humor stuff, things I know well, and stay away from politics, which others know far better. Besides, I have to watch my blood pressure, and discussing politics gives me heartburn!

So here it is, a week from Christmas. We have *some* snow still laying around, the streams and drainage ditches are full of frozen water, and the damn geese are all over the place, but it doesn't feel like "Winter" this year. Houses are decorated, and our neighbor at the end of the street collaborated with his next door neighbor, and have "crossover" decorations. One of which is the Grinch and Sam, in neighbor #1's yard, pulling down the lights from neighbor #2's eaves. Funny and creative, and I'll bust out my tripod so I can get some decent 'available light' pix of it. NWS is saying there's a "Chance of Snow" for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and the Denver and Front Range Weather guy on Fakebook says it might be nothing, and we might get clobbered, as there's TWO systems which will converge this weekend.

So have a good week, stay observant, and always remember....

Geez....AWOL again, Jim?

 Yeah, been another week lurking in the basement slaving away over some "Hot Tinkers". Can't show you pix as it was a paying customer with a God-Knows-How-Old-It-Is sick Fender Twin Reverb (A blackface, no less!), and he wanted it yesterday. As in BIG $$$, Have The Parts Shipped Overnight, yesterday.

 Made me an offer I couldn't refuse for my labor. I've worked on quite a few of these, and the whole key is understanding their lineage. This one dates to the late 1960's, and while well used, it was in Very Good condition.

This will help with the Christmas gifts I purchased over the last couple of months.

As promised, we had an episode of "Baking With Grandma!" take place over last weekend. This was the "Don't bother us, we're doing the second batch!" scene:

And I'm busy doing several things.

1)Finishing up those speakers that got delivered during The Week Of The Femur Fracture. Should have them in use by Christmas Day, God willin' and the paint dries hard!

2) The aforementioned Fender Amp repair.

3)Misc things involving the recommissioning a Windows 7 PC, and getting my instruments on the HPIB. Anybody know HP/Agilent/Keysight VEE? Any LabVIEW users? I really want to get my HP-8903B Audio Analyzer automated so I can do swept measurements automagically, and plot them.

4) And I'm doing my "second batch" of Nakamichi BX-300. Since I can find no evidence of the cover ever being removed, this is quite likely the first time anybody's ever been in the unit. I took a lot of detailed photos of mundane things like how the cables are run, how many, and where, are all the cable ties, and other stuff of interest.

Here it is with the transport out. These are much easier to work on than that Pioneer I got burned on. I think it's built better, too.

This will have all new belts, a new idler assembly, and a set of "Athan" pinch rollers when it's finished. This one is a much later SERNO than the one I just shipped out, so it should sound really good when finished.

Oh, I'm building a 1:12 scale model of a 1982 Supra. I have all the various kits of Supras that I was able to find, and I picked the simplest kit to start with. Simple interior, no engine, and the white plastic the body is molded from is very close to the white my 1:1 scale is painted. The interior was molded in black, so I painted it with SEM "Shadow Blue", which is an exact match for the real interior out in the garage.

Still Here, Still Busy, Proper Post in Progress!

 Been super busy down in the shop. I had a PC I built for Audio/Video work some time back, so I finally took a deep breath, and decided to repurpose that one as the "Lab PC". All my HP equipment has an HPIB/GPIB Interface, and I have plenty of various length HPIB cables, and a Prologix HPIB-to-USB interface. Ultimate goal is to automate my audio testing with the HP-8903, and automate generating RF signals from my HP-8657B, modulated by the HP-8904A Multifunction Synthesizer.

And I have some "Baking with Grandma" stuff, too.

Enjoy your coming weekend, and stay observant.

Tap...Tap...Tap...This Thing Still Work?

 Yo...been incognito for a while. Sweet Little Wife had the flu, and COVID, and then it was my turn. Which occurred at the same time I was having the post-op results (passing blood, clots, discomfort) of the TURP procedure. I mean like LOTS of passing of Red Stuff and Chunks of Red Stuff. Not real pleasant, and I went through a whole package of Depends. But, all things must pass (couldn't resist it) and this did, too.

And I'm still having some "echoes" of the August-spend-your-birthday-in-the-hospital incident. Have an appointment tomorrow afternoon about that, so I'm hopeful.

So.....I (finally) finished the Nakamicih BX-300 cassette deck, and shipped it out to a very patient member of the Audiokarma forum. Thanks, Bob!

And Ye Gawds....does it sound GOOD!

I haven't heard Buffalo Springfield sound so good in 50 years!

Of the two decks I bought, this one was the "beat-up" one. It was filthy inside and out, and the belts had turned to goo, but the heads scoped out perfect, so I went ahead gave it the Full Monty. Even beat-up, it had several bits in better condition than the #2 unit, so it donated those. While this one has all the warts and blemishes of both units, it works spectacularly well, and the buyer gets a 100% functional, but not pretty, deck for half the going price. And I made a few $$ on it, too. I'll never get rich doing this, but it helps defray the cost of my stereo habit!

Well that's it, comrades. Still here, still ornery, and still above ground. Been a bumpy ride this year, and we're hoping the coming year won't be like the last.

I got too much stuff to do!

Meanwhile, Back On The Workbench....

 Where I've been finishing up a Nakamichi BX-300 cassette deck. I bought two of these on eBay, and pulled the best cosmetic parts off both to make one nice unit.

This one has all the warts and bruises from both units, but works perfectly. I put in new belts and idlers, gave it a complete cleaning and lubrication, and then started going through the Adjustments and Calibration section of the service manual.

And there's a ton of adjustments for each of the three types of tape it can use. "Type I" is good old recording tape. Been around since the 50's, and still works fine. "Type II" are the "Chromium" tapes, which came out in the late 60's. "Type III" are the "Ferrichrome" tapes, which never caught on, and "Type IV" are the "Metal" tapes, and are the height of analog cassette recording.

And they're all buried under the wiring harness. It took about 30 minutes of cutting cable ties and rerouting the cables in the harness just to get this access to them:

These six are for the Record Equalization (aka Frequency Response), and there are six more for the VU Meter Calibration.

Should be a very nice deck when I'm finished with it.

SLW and I have been under the weather with a bug, so that's why the light posting.

Spectacular Weather

 What a gorgeous day! 

70*, blue skies, puffy white clouds, and light breezes. I'm pretty sure this is The Last Gasp of Summer before Old Man Winter stomps his foot down.

The front and back yards are covered with leaves, and the trees still have leaves, so we're calling off the Great Leaf Extraction for now. We just can't see doing it twice when if we wait another week or two most of the leaves will be down.

Supra parts cleaning is going well, and all the bits I removed from the engine will soon be cleaned and bagged. Re-installation will wait until I clean up the left side of the engine block and cylinder head. The fuel filter with an Unknown History will be replaced, along with a preemptive strike to change the starter for a Denso Re-manufactured unit. I'm going to do a Forensic Analysis of the fuel filter by cutting it open, and seeing what it's trapped over it's service life. Probably be interesting and should give me some idea if the fuel tank is rusty. I'll be replacing the master and slave cylinders for the clutch "While I'm In There", and I'm replacing the flexible hose between the master and slave with a stainless steel braided line. AFAICT it's the original hose, and they get soggy over the years resulting in them ballooning up when the clutch is pressed in. It's much nicer to put clean parts back on a clean engine than to fight with the grease and crud. Makes it much easier to see all the bolts, too. Supplies have been ordered to rework the wiring harnesses in the engine compartment, and I'll be pulling the battery cables out tonight so I can figure out what length and configuration I need to order from the vendor.

Election Day is coming, and our ballots are filed out. We're voting NO on most of the items, especially Prop HH, which is a thinly disguised end run around TABOR, our Taxpayer Bill Of Rights. It's similar to what "Prop 13" was in SoCal, but has other provisions included.

Enjoy your weekend, and keep thine head borne by a swivel!