Neuton NT8000 tyre

Not a fix, just some information.

I've been fitting these Neuton tyres to my trusty ST24 for the past few years. Originally it was the NT5000 but more recently its been the NT8000. I buy these tyres because they are cheap yet very good indeed. They cope very well with my "nose heavy" car, and the V6 grunt it has. Point of this post is this: even though there are plenty of positive reviews of this tyre, there doesn't seem to be anything on its Euro specification. So, here is the label fitted to one of the tyres that arrived today:

More soon, no doubt....


D

Remington HC500A hair clippers: battery replacement

Here we have my trusty Remington hair clippers.

I've had them for about 7 or 8 years.

They've saved me a fortune in hair cuts and must have paid for themselves many times over by now. However, for the last few years they've been suffering from a knackered battery. The battery does charge but I only just manage a single hair cut out of it. My concern is that one day I'll only manage half a cut....

So, I thought I'd have a look inside and see if the battery could be replaced. I opened these up a couple of weeks ago and it turns out that battery replacement is quite straightforward. In short, the original battery is actually three rechargeable (NiMH) AAA batteries soldered together to make a pack, and then soldered to a circuit board. I've got a drawer full of rechargeable AAAs so my first thought was to make something up. Then, for reasons unconnected to this project, I joined Amazon Prime and thought I'd have a poke about to see what was available. Eventually I settled on these from BAKTH which at 900maH have slightly more oomph than the Sanyos that are fitted into my clippers. A triple pack (3 x 3) comes in at £6.99 delivered so I thought I'd take a punt.

As I say, I've already had these clippers open once so taking them apart today was very easy. However, taking them apart last week was a bit harder. This is because it is difficult to see how they are actually put together. In the picture below a screw hole is clearly visible. However the holes are actually bunged up with plastic. Stick a sharp screw driver into the bungs and lever the plastic out. This basically destroys the bungs but they are only there for aesthetics.

With the bungs out, remove the screw from each hole. Note that the longer screw is fitted at the charging point end. Then remove the blades by undoing the two small flat screws...

If this is the first time you've had the blades off, now would be a good time to give this area a good clean :). The knob on the side which angles the head is next. Remove the plastic cap and screw inside...

Now remove the orange trim which is just clipped on...

In the picture below I'm splitting the clippers in half. Note the area that I've circled - there's a (probably rusty) staple in there which needs pulling out first...

The clippers are now in half. Back to the head. Remove the white gear....

Remove the head itself (after noting where the cam on the motor shaft fits). Note also the small spring-loaded brass thing (which has become detached in this picture)...

Undo the screw for the battery retainer and remove it...

Slide the old battery pack out. Remove and retain the foam padding...

Note the polarity of the wires, cut and trim them, and solder the new pack in. Replace the foam and slide the new battery pack in...

Before re-assembly (which is the reverse of the above procedure), check your handy work has been a success by pressing the little blue button inside the clippers (highlighted below). If all is well, the motor should operate and you can reassemble.

Easy!

More soon, no doubt...



D

STONE NT310-H laptop - hard drive replacement

This post is as much for my own records as anything else. This fine Stone laptop came back to me having been dropped. Symptoms were permanent hang on the boot-up splash screen and an unpleasant clicking sound coming from the hard drive. The OS was/is Windows 8. Diagnosis - knackered hard drive. Having obtained a replacement drive (same WD Blue but 500GB rather than 320), I set about the repair.

Here's the laptop from the top.

The hard drive is accessed by removing the two screws and small panel from underneath:

Ta da!

The hard drive is just wedged in. The two screws towards the right-hand side simply hold the plastic dust cover on. The top side of the drive has some foam pieces on it to take up the space in the enclosure: 

It's about as budget as humanly possible...

Here are the old and new drives (with the foam pieces swapped over):

So, with the new drive slotted into place, I re-fitted the cover. Easy. But what about re-installing the OS? I knew from a previous pic I'd taken that the machine had been running Windows 8.1 before it went wrong. But with the old hard drive broken, it was impossible to check for the license key and Windows 8 machines don't have COA stickers. What to do? I started the machine:

Eh? So I ducked into the BIOS (F2 on start-up). Turns out this machine is running UEFI. Since I've never had to deal with that before I did a bit of reading. The good news was that the Windows 8 key was hidden somewhere in the BIOS. The bad news was that I had no idea which version of Windows 8 was previously running and installing the wrong one would mean the key stored in the BIOS would not work. So I took the plunge with bog-standard Windows 8.1. I downloaded the ISO direct from Microsoft (by way of the Media Creation Tool). I then burned the ISO to a USB stick using Rufus and the special settings required for UEFI: 

Installation went smoothly (with these details in mind) but it did ask me for a key. This meant I was on the wrong version of Windows 8. I continued with the install using a key borrowed from this site. 

The installation completed and Windows 8 was up and running. I then ran ShowKeyPlus with the following results. You can see which key I used to get the install done. You can also see the actual OEM license key on the machine and which version of Windows 8 I should have installed:

So, I went through the process again but first downloaded Windows 8.1Pro from Microsoft for the install. No key was required during the install and once up and running, ShowKeyPlus returned the following result and Windows activated itself:

Happy days. I ran windows update and the first thing it suggested was the free upgrade to Windows 10. Obviously, this was always on the cards and having obtained consent from the owner, I'm putting the laptop through that process now:

More soon, no doubt...

D 

[Update - the upgrade to Windows 10 Pro went without a hitch]

Kenwood dishwasher fun (KDW12ST3A): door lock latch replacement

Well, it's been a few months since I last had my dishwasher apart. And then last week the door lock/latch began playing up. More precisely, after pulling the door open the mechanism in the door would re-lock itself. This meant the door couldn't be locked shut and the dishwasher wouldn't run.

The temporary solution was to remove the inner door skin, remove the lock/latch mechanism and reset it manually (using a screwdriver). To put that another way, I've managed to keep using the dishwasher but not without some faffing about. I therefore investigated a new lock/latch mechanism. If, like me, you're in the UK, a search for the part on Google will first bring up ebay and espares:

On ebay, a new mechanism is £22

Espares do them for £10 plus £6.99 P&P

On Amazon the part is a truly astonishing £30

Bearing in mind the nature of the part, my view was that even £17 is way over-priced. The P&P charges at espares are also ridiculous. And the sellers on ebay and Amazon were obviously just taking the piss. So I wondered whether I could get anything else to fit. After a few minutes research I happened upon this:

It's the door lock/latch mechanism for various Hotpoint, Indesit and Creda dishwashers (part number C00195887). Typical price is about £10 delivered however at Bartyspares on Amazon, the price was £5.48 delivered. Even though the overall shape of the part is different, the mechanism itself and the screw holes seemed to match the Kenwood part. The microswitch is also on the opposite side but I was confident that I could do something about that if I needed to. I ordered the part and it arrived today.

So, will it fit? First, the original lock/latch in situ:

Door skins separated. The lock/latch is held in place with two self-tapping screws. Two spade connectors to the micro switch need to be disconnected:

Here are the two parts for comparison purposes. They look significantly different but it is the placement of the screw holes that is important. They're the same!

New part goes on with no trouble. The only "modification" I had to do was to detach the two wires to the switch from the existing loom (by cutting the cable ties). There was then enough length in the wires to reach round to the micro switch which is now on the right-hand side. Here it is, job done :)

All working fine. The new mechanism comes with a new micro switch. For the record, here is a picture of the micro switch from the Kenwood part:

More soon, no doubt....

D

Update 12 October 2020: well, the replacement latch failed yesterday. I can't really complain so I just bought another. Bartyspares seems to have gone from Amazon so the new latch came from a different seller and cost me £10.65. Just fitted it now and all is well again. D.

Sime Ecomfort Plus - replacement diverter motor and cartridge

All I can say is this: The diverter motor and cartridge for the Sime Ecomfort Plus (Sime part numbers 6319620 and 6319625, respectively) are identical to:

• the motor which can be found on a Potterton Performa 24 (part number 720064401); and
• the cartridge on the Biasi Activa A Plus (part number BI1351109)

In each respect, the parts are made by a single manufacturer of boiler components. The only possible explanation is that Sime, Potterton, Biasi, etc, buy these parts off the shelf and then use them to make "their own" boilers.


The only difference is the price. 


Buying the Sime labelled parts (from ebay, for example) will come in at about £140.

Buying the alternatives that I have suggested comes in at less than £60 (ebay again).

My research shows that the price of these parts from several different plumbers merchants is correspondingly different (although far more expensive). This, then, is not just a quirk of ebay.

I'm sure you'll agree that "the trade" has a lot to fucking answer for.

More soon, no doubt...

D

Kids ride-on beetle: custom sound board (Adafruit Audio FX)

So, this is a project that I 99% completed last year. I finished the final 1% today when I removed one part that I'd added on a temporary basis and replaced it with something more permanent.

First - the car. It's a 12v (2 x 6v) ride-on car that we got for my boy last spring. Here's some advertising blurb:

You'll see that the car comes with sound effects (a starting-engine sound and a horn) and the facility to plug in an ipod or other mp3 player so as to play one's music through the car's speaker. My boy doesn't have an mp3 player but was extremely pleased with the engine/horn sounds until, after about a week of ownership, they stopped working. As it happens, the volume for the horns (or mp3 player, if plugged in) is controlled by the knob on the dashboard. The knob operates a potentiometer which is attached to a small board which is programmed with the sounds and operates the led lighting. I've highlighted the knob on this library picture. The display next to the knob shows the battery voltage:

Now, we could have sent the car back to the seller at this point however that would have meant denying my boy his new toy. It would also have meant taking the whole thing apart and shipping the lot back to the seller. I decided that I would fix it myself and to hell with the warranty.

My first attempt at fixing the sound simply involved replacing the volume pot:

 This made no difference and my attention turned to the sound/lights board. To be fair, I couldn't really make head nor tail of it. However, I could see that it was horribly soldered and so I set about looking for a replacement. In the end, I settled on the Adafruit Audio FX Sound Board. I chose this because it comes with a built in 2x2W amplifier (the car's speaker is 7w and actually sounds pretty good). The soundboard will play WAV or OGG files and can hold 16MB of data. Data is added via the on-board micro-usb port. More to the point, the board can cope with 11 triggers which meant that I could add more buttons and sounds :). Here's a link to the official site and the picture below is the blurb and board I bought:

Once the board arrived I needed some more gear. This was mainly switches and wire. I also added an led to mount in the car's dash so that it was possible to see when the board was switched on (the board actually has it's own led but its surface mounted and cannot be seen if, like in this project, the board is to be mounted out of site). I also bought a key and barrel so that my boy could pretend he had an ignition key. Finally, since the car runs at 12v and the board runs at 5.5v max, I bought a battery holder for 3 AA batteries. I would use this to power the board and keep it separate from the car's own wiring. I got everything from CPC:

One balmy Saturday evening I set to work. First, some more holes in the dashboard for the extra switches. I also retained the car's original switches. The first picture below shows the standard dashboard. I removed the volume pot and the jack for the mp3 player. I also cut everything that looked like it was connected to the audio side of things on the car's sound/lights board. I then drilled holes for the five extra buttons, and modified two existing holes for the key and new led:

I then set about making the loom for everything:

Unfortunately I didn't take many pictures of that but the basic premise is that the new key switches the power from the battery pack. This illuminates the new led and powers-up the board. We then have a total of seven switches controlling sound. The switches are basic on/off type. The way the board responds to the switches is determined by the names given to each sound file. So, some switches play one sound in full when pressed. Others play a sound on a loop until pressed again. And one only plays a sound as long as the switch is actually pressed. Clever stuff. Here's a bad picture of the finished article:

And here's a vid of all the buttons doing their stuff. I downloaded the sounds off the internet. I was particularly pleased with the engine start sound which really does seem to be a VW Beetle setting off!

So, that was last spring. Since then, we've been through about four sets of batteries. That's not so bad, but since I didn't want my boy to fiddle with the batteries, I'd mounted the holder behind the dash. This meant removing the dash each time the batteries went flat. This was always a pain in the ass which brings me to the final 1% of the project: removing the separate batteries and wiring the sound board into the car's power using mini step-down transformer:

You can get these all over the place but I ordered mine from FastTech because I happened to be ordering a load of ecig stuff at the time and FastTech were only charging £1.30 rather than £15 or so from a UK seller. Today I cut the transformer into the power circuit for the car's LEDs. The circuit runs at 12-14v and I set the transformer to step-down to 3.9v. The board will work with a supply as low as 3v but the volume is a bit lower at that rate:

Everything is now back together and working well. Hopefully I'll never need to take that dashboard off again...

The video above is from last summer.

More soon, no doubt....

D