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Volvo UEM rear view mirror repair.

Vaizdas
 Just as I thought that my Volvo can't surprise me anymore it comes around and does it yet again. But I persist and I will not back down to pain in the ass engineering. Each day this car presents me with new challenges and so I will make the most of them by turning them into content for this blog. So what is it this time you ask? Simple, the rear view mirror tinting fluid leaked and turned it into a lava lamp. I mean, how bad can it be? Just buy a replacement and replace it. It's just a mirror right? Riiiiight???  Foreshadowing aside, I went head first into this problem with a replacement mirror for 20€. And without suspecting any funny business started tearing the interior apart. Pulling this mirror off was quite simple. The plastic trim over the lights comes off with just a few clips and after that a pair of M6 bolts and a handful of springy retainers are all that hold the light assembly and the rear view mirror in place. After this, a T30 torx is needed to undo the single sc
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Volvo ETM repair by retrofitting a BOSCH throttle position sensor.

Vaizdas
 My SAAB is currently not very drivable, so I opted to try out buying a Volvo. The one I sprung for is a second gen V70 with a turbocharged 2.4 liter engine that produces a pretty okay 184kW. Yeah nah, it barely drives. Had I known Volvos were so unreliable I would have avoided these like the plague, but silly me has a problem to contend with now. This car is like a rabbit hole - the ETM will go bad, the PCV will go bad, the VVT pulley will go bad, the MAF will go bad, the gauge cluster will go bad, the fuel pump controller will burn out, the automatic gearbox sucks and the engine mounts tear out on a regular basis. And did I mention that the cam seals will just pop out and leak all your engine oil out in the engine bay? Yeah they do that. In my case I already had the seal pop out and my VVT pulley is on it's way out. But the bigger issue I had was the ETM failing, for which there is no easy fix. Used ETM's cost at least 100€ will come with the same problem and new ETM is 450€!
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Old LPG tank makes for a pretty robust grill.

Vaizdas
      We had this old grill that was all in tatters, quite literally. And for whatever reason noone, except for me, wanted to replace it and just kept adding on more scrap metal to keep it together.  I thought enough is enough and I'm not cooking anything on that pile of scrap anymore and started making a new grill.     For my grill I took one of my brother's LPG tanks that he had cleaned and modded to be used as a compressor tank. But that was 4 years ago and not much has happened, besides the rust on the tank because it basically sat forgotten outside the whole time. So I've decided to yoink the tank and turn it into a grill.  LPG tanks in particular have an expiry date, after which they need to be re-inspected but the inspection usually costs almost the same as a new tank so people choose just buy a new tank instead. This means that there's a surplus of old LPG tanks. But the amount isn't huge as the inspection period is 10 years. Since these tanks are made to h
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Homemade injection molded silicone heatblock sock leads to some new discoveries along a stinky surprise.

Vaizdas
      I'm using a clone of a E3D V6 hotend on my homemade 3D printer and it's having problems with stability. Part of that instability is caused by part cooling as it seems my hotend is only capable of handling only the slightest breeze, otherwise it can't can't keep up and my PID loop goes wild.  So, inspired by Stefan from the CNC Kitchen YouTube channel, I decided to make my own.      Starting with the model of the block, I took a drawing of the heatblock I found online and made a copy of it in Fusion360. Then I created a new solid by offsetting the surface of the heatblock by 2mm, which is my desired thickness for the silicone sock. Then I cut out parts of the body where the nozzle, the heater and other components had to stick through, along with the holes for the screws. Next, the whole thing was placed in a block and a cavity within the block was created. After that the block was sliced into pieces and screw holes were added to clamp the assembly shut.  Once the
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Modding a laptop power brick into a lithium pack charger and some Manhattan style prototyping.

Vaizdas
      I've built a few 4S lithium battery packs but I didn't have a charger. So I decided to make one by modifying a switch-mode power supply. The power supply I used had a special plug on it with three pins. One of them being a sense pin to change the voltage. On this plug an adapter would connect, which would have a resistor in it that would change the voltage on the output. This power supply is nothing special, though. All this wire does is go straight to the REF pin on the TL431 reference IC inside. How do I know that? Because I accidentally blew the TL431 and had to pull the power supply apart to replace it. If you're willing to pull apart a laptop power supply you can add this wire to the TL431 reference and you'll have basically the same thing I have.     Opening them can be a pain. Mike from mikeselectricstuff shared in one of his youtube videos that whacking the weld/glue seam on the power supply will crack the joint and the power supply will come apart. But I&
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Old leather SAAB seat makes for a pretty comfy chair.

Vaizdas
    I used to have a SAAB 900SE, which I lost in a car crash. It was the S pecial E dition meaning that it had all the bells and whistles, including the black leather interior, which I kept in the hopes of either selling or using in the future.     Some years later I found myself sitting on the most uncomfortable, raggedy wooden chair ever and decided that it's about time I do something with those SAAB seats.      So I found some material to make a simple and quick frame to hold the seat up at a good height. To find out what height it needed to be I just measured the wooden chair I was using before. The material I found was a 2m piece of 30x50mm pine lumber that I had left over from my shelf build.     I cut the liece of lumber into six pieces, two 40cm long and four 30 long. Then screwed them together into "U" shapes. These made the legs of my chair. I then needed to tie the two "U" pieces together but didn't have any more of that pine lumber, so I scramble
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Damaged 3D printer glass bed repaired with 5-minute epoxy!

Vaizdas
     Just recently I had a print tear out a huge chunk of glass out of my print bed. I was printing a cover for my 18650 battery holder and this cover had a large, completely flat surface laying on the glass bed. This is great for surface finish but in my case it stuck too well and took chunks of glass with it when I pulled the print off.  And it had only been two weeks since I made my homemade heated glass bed so I did not feel like throwing it out and making a new one. Fortunately the chunk was not in the middle of the bed but even then I would lose 30-40% of my print area because I would have to avoid the pit caused by the missing glass. But as one wise man said many times - "I'm not havin' it!".     So I hatched a plan to fix the heated bed and to do that I decided to use the cheapest 5-minute epoxy from the grocery store. I mean, what's the worst that could happen? Worst case the epoxy just pulls off the glass with the print and I'm left with exactly what
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