eBay And Its Cohorts...

    I started out on eBay, way back in the naughties, but abandoned it more than a decade ago when Aliexpress began to get its act together.  That, and the fact that Amazon seemed to be breaking to the upside as well.  With that duo catching their stride, eBay's days seemed numbered. 

    But there are still instances where eBay can surprise, and spare parts from the Motor trade is one of them.  Following a motoring calamity (slipped timing-chain) and after exhausting most other avenues, I'm back cap-in-hand, to eBay, in an attempt to get my wheels back on the road.  Initially, I went the usual route, attempting to track down a competent mechanic to do the work for me.  It proved easier said than done.  The garages I contacted, told me that they were either too busy, or it was too big a job, and it would be easier to fit a 'new' second-hand engine, rather than to repair the old one.  The other thing they were reluctant to give me was an estimate, other than a vague, "it would be expensive - a couple of thousands anyway."  Annoying.

    I was left with two choices, buy a new (used) car, or try doing the work myself - I've chosen the latter - worst case scenario, it won't work  out and I'll lose a couple of hundred for my efforts.

    First thing I needed to find out was what actual damage had been done, and it quickly became apparent that with my current range of tools and skill-set, that wasn't gonna happen!  VW delights in using as many different bolt types as they can, so I've had to order spline sockets/bits, torx bits, allen bits, a valve-spring compressor, a Haynes manual, etc, etc.  So I've been working piece-meal on the project, ordering tools as necessary.  As of right now, I've managed to strip it down to the block, and as far as I can discern, no real damage has occurred.  The head, block, pistons, and liners, are all fine.  All of the exhaust valves are also fine.  The inlet valves didn't fare as well, with all 6 being slightly bent and needing to be replaced.  Those, and the cause of all my woes, the timing belt assembly.  I have no way of knowing if it is the original chain, which is a possibility as the car is only 10 years old.  I got it four years ago, and have 'only' clocked up 40,000km in the interim.  The only thing that was readily amiss on removing the cam-chain cover, was that the end of the plastic tensioner had snapped off, hence the reason for the slippage.  The timing chain and its associated sprockets, seem, to my untrained eye, to be in remarkably good condition - particularly the sprockets.

    I haven't ordered a timing chain kit yet, but I'm really curious, when I do, to compare & contrast the new versus old chain, to see how much (if any) the chain has stretched.

    What I did order this evening, via eBay, from a UK Seller, was the inlet valves, head gasket & the head bolts.  The guy I ordered from is a cynical sod.  I messaged him yesterday for confirmation that the stuff I was ordering was indeed right for the car in question.  eBay's 'Enter your car details' is flaky as fuck - do a general search and it correctly lists parts for your car.  Click on one of these listed parts however, and the part is no longer listed as compatible!  Anyway, yer man messages me back the following message;

    A 'Special Offer' - how nice of him - NOT.  See, his actual ad, the stuff I wanted to order, was the following;

 

 

Clicking on his 'Special Offer' shows this;

 

Apparently, the crafty sod thought I wouldn't notice that he had swapped his original £40.71 price, for £48.85 - the numerical value 48.85 being almost the same as the current Euro/Pound exchange rate (£40.71 =  €48.29).  To add insult to injury, the promised 5% Discount, down to £46.41, was never applied - the price remained at £48.85.  Even worse, he also increases the Postage I need to pay in his Special Offer.  I ended up rejecting his 'Special Offer', instead opting for the original price, and saving myself €10 or thereabouts.

    That said, he was the only one I could find selling inlet valves at a reasonable price.

    So that's where it currently stands.  Hopefully, I'll soon be able to start reassembling stuff.  I'll post an update here on my progress, or lack thereof, come what may. 
 

Update 1.

    Well, I got the stuff.  I also got the valves 'lapped' and fitted (see pic).  My one concern was that Cylinder 1's valve-seats might have gotten malformed when the chain slipped - a compression test had shown ZERO PSI after the event, with Cylinder 2 about 50 PSI, and Cylinder 3 being normal, at around 280 PSI.  It turned out, on removing the head, that although all three cylinder's inlet valves had been bent, only Cylinder 1's valves were stuck open!

Valve-grinding

 

    With the valve-grinding and their fitting complete, I subjected each valve-set to a quasi 'seal worthiness' test using a vacuum, which I had first seen done on this YouTube video.  Only, I didn't spend big money on a big compressor like he had done - I have a small 12v vacuum pump that is more than capable!  The vacuum gauge I've had lying around for years, begging for a purpose.  I ended up drilling a 5mm hole in its brass input, threading it, then threading a similar-sized piece of copper pipe that I'd sourced on Aliexpress.  This screws neatly into the tapped-hole in the gauge.  Add to this little ensemble, some yellow transparent tubing, and we're good to go (see pics).

 

 

    First off, the small vacuum pump has no problem attaching the gauge to the engine head via suction, with enough suck to also support itself - the pump is dangling from the gauge in the pics.  Second, note the voltage, a mere 5v!!!

 

Cylinder 1

Cylinder 2

 

Cylinder 3

 

    Upping the voltage to 9v, note the gauge readings for each inlet passage - virtually the same, a promising sign!   Irrespective of the voltage chosen, the vacuums measured are very close to the same.  Note that each inlet passageway has two valves, not one, so that's double the opportunity for air to 'leak' in.  What is missing from this contraption is a one-way valve that would retain the applied vacuum when the motor is powered off, in order to check for how long the vacuum is held.  Though I think this is a moot point, as there is probably far more air leakage from the foam (see YT video linked to above), than from the valves.  

     Moving on, today, I ordered the cheapest timing chain kit I could find online!  I've read many warnings about, 'you get what you pay for', etc. but if a 'genuine' timing chain (read, expensive), is rated for 200,000kms, which coincidentally is a little less than the mileage on my odometer, and I will get only a quarter of that distance for being cheap, that will still be more mileage than I have done in the last 5 years - and I plan to have changed cars long before then!

    One more thing.  I've watched & read a lot on Youtube about the  problems encountered while valve-grinding manually.  People mostly complain about the suction cup on the grinding tool failing to stick to the valve face while grinding.  Even though it was my first time doing this, I encountered no such issue, the suction cup pretty much remaining glued to the valve throughout.  Sure, if you get paste on the valve, the sucker will often slide off while grinding - so the trick is to keep the valve face clean!  I have also seen a YT video where the user complains about the non-sticking issue, while also highlighting the poor surface finish of the valve-face in question.  He had a point - the valve shown seems 'mottled' with tiny imperfections!  With this 'a priori' knowledge, I was genuinely surprised with the almost perfect finish of the valves that I had ordered (see above photo)!!!

    Onward and upward. 

Sunster Diesel Heater Meanderings...

    Another 4 months fly by since the last entry here - time definitely is the enemy!

    Anyway, this is about a diesel heater I bought in January 2024 - so a relatively new acquisition - that has received practically no use, but is already giving me trouble.  I already had a Mikuni diesel heater on a boat I bought a few years back, which also had problems.  Turned out to be a relatively simple glow-plug issue, but being curious, I also dismantled it, to see what made it tick, and was surprised to find how clean its innards were - this will have a bearing on what's coming!

    This Sunster diesel heater was to remain a landlubber however, and destined for an old caravan that has seen better days.  I had tried the usual route, namely heating via the built-in gas heater, but this had proven both expensive & dangerous - a full 11.54 Kg gas canister had unceremoniously liberated its contents, in the space of a few days.  The leak, as it turned out, was a faux-pas on my part, a copper-pipe-to-fridge connector had gotten wrenched as I tried fixing other stuff.  I eventually fixed the leak, but not being a firm believer in my prowess as a plumber, I figured a diesel heater would be the safer option in the long run.

     In the year I've had the Sunster, I haven't gotten close to fitting it in the caravan.  The main reason was my reluctance to go cutting holes in it, complicated by the fact that exhaust & inlet holes really need to be on different sides, so Carbon monoxide wouldn't become an issue.  This required the purchase of more pipework from Aliexpress, the appropriate lengths of which proved surprisingly hard to source.  But source them I did, along with the inlet & exhaust ports that bolt to the caravan body, and connect the pipework to the heater.  Slow, but progress nonetheless.

    Until the heater stopped working!  I had been intermittently running it in the shed for the past year, to ascertain its running costs, having seen loads of Youtube videos celebrating how inexpensive they were - as far as I'm concerned, the jury is still out on that one!   When I say the heater stopped working, what was happening was that the burner would apparently fire up OK, but it would then start producing loads of smoke, before it appeared to 'smother itself' - all the while, producing practically no heat.  It wasn't even throwing up an error code, instead just entering its powering-down mode, then switching off. 

    Opening the heater was surprisingly easy.  When I opened the boat-heater, the halves seemed 'stuck' together, as if in addition to a gasket, they had used some kind of gasket sealant as well.  It was so well held together, that the gasket came off in two halves!  This caused me no end of problems.  Finding gaskets/Glow plugs etc. for The Sunster, or any other Chinese Eberspacher copy is a doddle, and dead cheap into the bargain.  Finding stuff for the Mikuni, not so much!  So, I slapped the boat-heater together, broken gasket and all, and hoped for the best.  It turned out bad.  After 15-30 minutes with the heater running, it became apparent that clouds of carbon deposits were wafting throughout the boat!  Rather than run for the hills to buy a new gasket, I instead abandoned ship, leaving the heater to run for 12-15 hours on its lonesome.  I figured that the gunk being given off, would self-seal the cracked gasket, and lo & behold, it did!!!  But, back to the present.

      The Sunster heater, once opened, was a sight to behold - as can be seen in the pics.  All of this build-up, in less than a year and after having used, at most, 25 liters of tractor diesel - I was gob-smacked!  Youtube is full of people telling the world that they're burning every kind of crap, from used vegetable oil, to waste engine oil in their heaters, and it continues to run perfectly for years.  Whereas, here am I using exactly what is recommended, and not even getting a year's worth of heat out of it.  Not a happy Camper.

    The one plus was that it was dead simple to clean out.  That, and the fact that it then started up straight away, with barely any black smoke coming from the exhaust.  One thing that I had forgotten to clean was that wire mesh thingy that the glow plug fits in to.  The other thing I had forgotten about (and YT has just reminded me of!) was that you need to periodically run the heater flat out for a while, which will result in all the soot you see in the photos here, getting burned off of their own accord.

    I must remember that one!!!
 

Li-ion DC-DC Battery Technology.

    A year ago, maybe two, I was not aware that Li-ion AA-type batteries were even a thing.  The closest thing I had come across, involved a Gofundme or Kickstarter-sourced idea that had 'ordinary' batteries sitting in a barely non-existent holder, with an even smaller DC-DC circuit module, that generated a constant output voltage for the duration of the battery life.  Thing was, it didn't work anywhere near as well as the developer suggested, and the people that funded the venture, ended up losing hundreds of thousands as a result.  But it appears to have got people thinking, and possibly was the chicken that ended up laying the egg I'm referencing here. 

    Instead of dealing with 'ordinary' batteries, this new battery technology starts with high energy-dense Li-ion batteries.  Curious as to how they performed, I bought a handful of type AA's and a pair of PP3 type 9 volters.  The 4 AA's weren't cheap, costing €30, but that included the charger as well.  The PP3's were a more reasonable €6 each.

 

 

    Performance-wise, both types fared well, with each subjected to the same 100mA current draw.  The Liitokala brand, though fairly well regarded, claim a ludicrous 1100mAh capacity.  Their actual capacity is closer to 350mAh.  Instead of fibbing, Liitokala should instead have listed the battery capacity in Watt-hours (Wh), which provides a more accurate capacity measure where DC-DC supplied outputs are involved - in this instance, between 3.1 to 3.2Wh from my measurements.

    The Hixon AA batteries more sensibly use Wh for claimed-capacity from the get-go.  The battery manufacturer itself seems highly regarded, and my measurement results would tend to bear this out.  Rated at having 3500mWh capacities, all four AA batteries measured significantly higher in my testing, coming in between 4.3 and 4.4Wh.

    The main downside with this type of DC-DC battery is that you have no clue as to their remaining state of charge.  A secondary unexpected annoyance is that, in use, they supply power for appreciably less time than say, NiMH batteries.  This became evident over the Christmas period when I was using them to power Christmas lights.  The reason is obvious when you think about it.  Their constant voltage output means that they provide constant power for the duration of their charge - meaning, my x-mas lights maintain a constant brightness throughout - whereas Nimh battery voltage drops appreciably as they discharge, so lights glow less brightly, over time, but stay lit for a longer time.

    In summary, it's interesting tech, but not awe-inspiring.  Certain electrical appliances whose performance are effected by voltage fall-off while running, will benefit.  But generally, normal rechargeables will do just fine.  I won't be ordering more any time soon.

 

UT-210E Clamp Meter Repair...

     Another quick post, and a tip of the hat to the New Year.

    I'm sure I've raved about it already in a past post, namely, that I'm a huge fan of the UT-210E Clamp Meter.  I bought my 1st (of 3) around about 2015, well before the dirty little secret of how capable they were became common knowledge.  As a result, at the time, they were cheap - my first cost just €20 & change!!!  This is the meter pictured below, along with the original, broken LCD.

 

    This damage came about as a result of my throwing in disgust a DC power monitor that I had just bought, in the meter's general direction, when I discovered what a piece of shit it was.  Unfortunately, it came housed in a hefty anodised aluminium case, so was akin to whacking the meter with a hammer!

    On realising what had transpired, my second impulse was to toss the meter in the rubbish bin - I had already realised my first impulse - to take an actual hammer to the offending power monitor!  After a cooling-off period, I went scouring the internet for a replacement LCD, and after failing in that pursuit, I figured the only recourse left was to order a replacement UT-210E, this time priced €30-something.  The broken one I boxed for posterity.

    That was 5-6 years ago.  In the interim, I had purchased my third UT-210E, though at a much inflated price, in the region of €45-50.  More time passed, right up to about 2 months ago in fact, and while perusing the web, came across Sellers asking €62-€65 for the same meter, which got me wondering if anyone was now selling LCD's for a meter that was now costing 3 times what I had originally paid for it.  Lo And Behold, there was - UNI-T themselves, as it turned out - and for €20.48 to be precise - I jumped at the chance!!!

    

 

    Probably the most satisfying €20 I've ever spent - yeah, I like my UT-210E's.
         

My Metal Detector Missive...

     I recently bought on AliExpress, a Tianxun, TX-850 metal detector.  This I'm sure I read at some time or other, is a direct copy of a once high-end American design, virtually identical in everything, but price.  Indeed, I don't think I've seen one negative review of it on YouTube, even if it was a reluctant 'thumbs-up' from one or two 'Purists' out there!  I'd love to be able to tell you that I've put it through its paces, and found it to be a winner, but I can't - as it's still sitting unused in the corner, and will likely remain so, til summertime.

    My only real critique thus far is the volume-control omission - what was the designer thinking!!!  It's ear-splittingly loud, a major distraction, I would have thought, not to mention, no friend, where battery longevity is concerned - a single 9V PP3-type.  So, headphones with a means of adjusting the volume is a must-have.

    While this is the first metal detector I've ever bought, it's not the first one I've owned.  Or, 'Built', rather.  My first build was a simple affair, based around an equally simple circuit, that I came across in the long defunct Practical Electronics (P.E.) magazine. Its regular, "Ingenuity Unlimited" feature-article, consisted mostly of  P.E. reader's circuit submissions.  This design worked, but had rather low sensitivity.  It was however easy on the 9V battery, an important consideration to an 'always-broke' teenager, when Zinc-carbon batteries were the norm, and the only rechargeable option then available was expensive, 'then-hi-tech', Ni-Cads.

    But as 'much always wants more',  I finally got the chance when P.E. published Andy Flind's, 'Magnum Metal Detector', project.  This proved far more capable, and another defunct entity, Maplin Electronics, took much of the heavy lifting out of the build, by supplying the necessary PCB's, electronic components, knobs, case & meter - easy-peasy!  A PDF of the project, that I scanned & uploaded as a torrent decades ago, also available from Maplin, is downloadable from here. 

 

Innards 2

 

Innards 1

 

 

 

 

 

 

Magnum MD

 

  The only challenge remaining was construction of the detector head - which proved a major pain!  Not the coils per-se, but the coils enclosure.  The head proved ultra-sensitive to false triggering, a slight bump off the ground being all that was needed to set it off.  I remember scouring the local hardware store in the search for a suitable enclosure, in the guise of  a 'heavy-duty' flower pot, or the like, but all in vain.  I finally settled on gluing the coils assembly to a piece of extremely rigid resin-type material, a sheet of which I came across at the place I then worked, then gluing this inside a typically flimsy flowerpot base.  This worked wonders where false-triggering was concerned, though still far from perfect, but the best I could manage back then.

    All done more than 40 years ago - how time flies!

Morse Tutor Reprise...

     Another quick post.  This involves a little program I wrote on the Oric Atmos, way back in 1992 - so over 30 years ago!  The Atmos was not my first computer - that distinction belongs to the Sinclair 48K - but it was my first love, in the silicon sense, and still is.  In fact, I still have, and dust off, my Oric setup on occasion, which is more than I can say about the rest of my 'retro' computer collection.

    Anyway, I acquired my Oric computers (1 Atmos, & 2 Oric-1's) during my time in the UK.  I also subscribed to an enthusiast-run magazine, the 'Oric User Monthly', (OUM), published by the irrepressible Dave Dick.  'Published' is probably too strong a word - this was pre-internet, so we're talking about dot-matrix printouts, that needed to be photocopied and posted out by Dave to subscribers, no doubt, an arduous task.  When I first joined, OUM had well over 100 subscribers - a number which only grew.  Before long, I had resolved to learn to program in 6502 assembly, and what better way to start, than to code something substantial, involving a subject I knew practically nothing about, but that had always interested me - morse-code.

    Long story short, over the course of about 2 months, I wrote a 'Morse Tutor', a little program that allowed the user to both listen to, and key in, morse-code.  I then sent it to Dave Dick, hoping that he'd include it on the Oric User Disk, that was published a couple of times yearly.  Needless to say, I was chuffed when Dave said he'd add it to the upcoming disk.  He even reviewed it in the magazine, a gracious, yet balanced review, pointing out some of the issues he encountered.  Morse Tutor had some huge problems, the biggest of which involved the morse-encoding option.  Basically, there was no easy way of exiting the encoding loop, short of turning the computer over and jamming your pinkie into the Reset-button hole, in order to return to the program's Options Menu.  The scandalous thing was, I deliberately programmed it like this!  I figured that if people found it useful, they'd complain and I'd graciously fix it - thing is, no one complained, in all likelihood because they found it infuriating to use!

    And there things lay.  I had always planned a fix, if only for myself, but life got in the way.  Fast forward 32 years, six months ago, I finally had a look at it.  Fixing the 'stuck in loop' problem proved relatively easy, improving existing features, or adding new ones, has proven anything but!  Even though I still have the original source-code, it has been a real hassle trying to figure out how, say, the drop-down menus work.  As a result, right now, my enthusiasm for continuing is non-existent.  But I figure that by posting this, future-me will be cajoled into giving it another shot.  Only time will tell.

New Erying Computer Ahoy!

     And we're on a roll!  Another one, this time about my new computer, the latest in a very short line of current computer hardware that I've bought.  Given AMD's ongoing 'blitzkrieg' of favourable opinion in the computer press, I was sorely tempted, almost swayed, towards a Ryzen-based solution, but eventually ended up with an Intel setup.

     I came across Erying motherboards on AliExpress many months ago and was intrigued by the notion of low power, high spec laptop CPU's - many being pulled straight from laptop motherboards, so essentially, 'e-waste' - being reacquired and given a new lease of life, in desktop PC motherboards.  Since most laptop CPU's are now soldered straight to the PCB, it ends up a case of, 'til death do we part', as there is no way of upgrading the CPU.  And that's just the first 'caveat', of many!

     While Erying, the company behind my purchase, do supply boards with current Intel CPU offerings, these will almost double the final price of the motherboard being bought.  The much cheaper solution, and the route I chose, is to opt for their 'Engineering-sample' (ES) CPU's.  As the name implies, Intel & AMD, and probably any CPU manufacturer, provide sample chips to board makers etc. on the run-up to the final design being settled upon.  And from what I can see, there are a lot of these cheap ES chips about.

    Oddly enough, though possibly seen as, 'incomplete', there seems to be no one having issues with them in operation.  And thus far, that has been my experience as well!  But there is more than ES chips to contend with, at least with the board that I bought, so yeah, another caveat.

 

 

 

     Erying have a selection of boards where they have removed the main PCIe connector entirely, apparently because there were major issues (read, complaints) when a graphics card was fitted.  My purchase falls into this category.  Thankfully, all of Intel's laptop CPUs have integrated graphics, which is also not too shabby, but still not up to playing top-rated games.  Luckily, a game-player I'm not, so that's a moot point, but it would still have been nice to have had the option of a graphics card, for the likes of accelerated hardware-encoding of movies etc.  Alas, that will remain a pipe dream.  One plus, discovered recently, is that my ES CPU's integrated graphics, which was listed as having just 80EUs (Execution units), has in fact 96EUs, so there's that.  The actual CPU, though an ES, is based on the 13th Generation, i7-1360P laptop CPU, featuring 12 cores - 4 Primary, 8 Efficiency cores, 16 threads in total.

    That is just the motherboard, which cost €142.  I needed to buy 500GB of M.2 NVME storage, and 32GB of DDR5 memory, the combination costing €164.  I also bought a 550W power supply, that turned out to be not needed as the old Corsair 450W that I had,  proved sufficient.  Another purchase, not strictly needed - as much cheaper options are available on AliExpress - but I felt like treating myself, was a snazzy LED keyboard, having USB, Bluetooth, & 2.7G connections.  This cost €79.  Then there is the Erying 4-pipe radiator/fan combo, costing €28, and the AC9560 network card, costing €16.  Lastly, a mouse, which similarly, has both Bluetooth & 2.7G wireless connections.  This, and the accompanying mouse-mat,  cost another €16.  All housed in a case that had  been lying about, gathering dust for years, complete with DVD recorder.

 

    The final caveat with this build has gotta be the BIOS.  This appears to be a hacked version from American Megatrends, and as a result, many options don't seem to work correctly, or not at all.  Add to this, Erying is upfront in saying not to expect BIOS updates, like EVER!!!  While I think of it, another real annoyance was the discovery that the motherboard comes without a PS2 mouse/keyboard connector, but that was on me.

    But how does it run, I hear you ask!  Very well, as it happens!  It highlights just how slow the old Dell laptop (XPS M1210) runs with current OS's.  Having 1080p HEVC videos run silky smooth with barely 5% embedded graphics utilisation, was a real novelty for a while.  Even better was finding that the CPU supports HEVC (H265) hardware encoding!  Needless to say, AVC (H264) hardware encoding is also supported.  My excitement was tempered somewhat by the realisation that AV1 hardware encoding is not supported, even though Handbrake, the video transcoding app I use, will allow AV1-generated videos utilising the CPU.  It turns out from my experimenting, that large (2-3Gig) video downloads, transcoded with a constant video bit-rate of just 350K, will produce excellent quality, feature-length films of between 300-600Megs - one-third to one-quarter of the original in size!!!  While H265 & AV1 encodes end up with a similar file-size, I find that AV1 encodes at this low bit-rate, have practically no unwanted artifacts - in foggy/smoky scenes, for example - whereas they are intrusively obvious in HEVC encodes.

    The latest Linux distros, Mint 22 in this instance, also run silky smooth.  The only 'penguin in the ointment' I've discovered relates to the new keyboard & mouse - the BT connection option simply does not work with either, whereas it works perfectly with Windows 10!  I've tried posting for help online, to no avail so far.

    They say, 'there's no such thing as a free lunch', and this is partly borne out here as well.  Idling, the computer consumes about 30W - my laptop uses 25W.  100% CPU utilisation  sees the power consumed rocket to about 110W - flat out, the laptop's 2-core, 2 threads, consume 55W.

    In conclusion, caveats aside. I'm happy with my purchase.  The BIOS is really poor though.  Having obvious stuff like the CPU's fan running flat out 100% of the time, despite the BIOS having a comprehensive (non-working!) fan-configuration option sums it up.  Were I to have a glass-half-full moment, I would of course point to the Erying fan being rather quite in general.