Designed to Fail!

Posted on June 8, 2013 by George B.

But when?

honda mower compost

honda mower compost

Above: One of the few design flaws in the Honda mower I’ve found. This depression is a bath tub of sorts that allows the spring to rot in wet dirt. The remedy is easy to apply, remove the spring, drill some drain holes, oil the spring, and keep it wet with oil..

I have touched on this before, companies that knew they had to join the crowd and design throw away equipment or simply fail to sell their goods. Arguably, Honda is one of those companies, and I believe lawn mowers were one of the products that built the company in the early days.

I bought one of the first hydrostatic drive Honda mowers with OHVs I saw. I bought it on Honda’s reputation, and perhaps my Dad’s Honda rototiller and the excellent service it provided did the deal.

But…  I’m not the ordinary guy shopping for a lawn mower, we have nearly an acre of lawn, and that lawn is in the Puget Sound Basin where we mow lawns often and for a much longer season than many if not most areas.

But, there’s another factor, I also like to get my last dime out of equipment, so when others throw a lawn mower on the junk pile and buy new, I’m attempting to rebuild or repair the weak link and get another year out of it.

I’ve mentioned that the little Honda OHV engines have provided 10,000 hours of service running battery chargers for off girders, and it’s not just one of them claiming the longevity and trouble free running.

As for the Honda Lawn mower, I did find the weak links in mine, and one of them is the bushings the drive shaft runs in, I have rebuilt this area three times, and I think the front wheels have nearly fallen off twice, or was it three times?

I did retire the first Honda mower to our Easton Summer property, but I’m not sure retire is a proper term as the mower has spent many eight hour or longer days mowing there.  You can say you’d be on a rider, but my wife says.. why is it you’d take regular walks for the exercise and not walk behind a mower?

Hats off to Roger Sperle down the street from me.. he tears lawn mowers apart as a hobby, refurbishes a few, and junks the aluminum and steel as a hobby. Since we are friends, we trade favors and help all the time, and one of his grand gifts is access to junked Honda mowers where I am able to find serviceable parts for that first mower! As I say, it mows at least four times as much lawn as most people do, and it’s well over 20 years of service and ALWAYS starts on a first or second pull.

I don’t like the bushing and bearing designs on the wheels, but who can be disappointed with the service I’ve gotten? So much for a rebuild able and more commercial walk behind.

Yes, we did think we were gambling on the old Honda, so about 12 years ago, we bought a Harmony Hydrostatic, a residential grade mower with an OHC, internal cam belt, and even a plastic cam!

I doubt anyone rebuilds this engine, but after 12 years of mowing four times as much lawn as most people have, we are still going, and I have found many of the weak links are exactly the same as in the commercial grade machine.

The bushings are easy enough to replace, but if they were bronze, and there were some grease fittings, and if you greased regular, you might keep the dirt and grit out. Grease?.. an environmental hazard! A grease gun for the average home owner? Well, there’s a problem..

After two Honda mowers, one commercial, one throw away, I can only say the through away is doing fine.  I just got two more serviceable wheels from Roger, and I replaced the bushings up front that made the wheels all floppy, might be good for another three years of mowing four times as much?

Now I did find something today that I will call a design flaw. The area where the spring lies that tensions the rear door for the bagging system is a depression that holds dirt, and water,. The spring eventually starts to rust and the end of the spring eventually snaps off. A bungie cord helped with the problem till I robbed a spring off a junked Honda today. One thing you need know.. we never leave a mower outside in the weather, we know people that do.. and even leaving them in the sun can cause more trouble than you might know, we do however hose it off, and this may have helped that spring fail.

Money saved is the same as money earned..

GB

 

 

Posted in DIYer Skills, Earth & Energy | Tagged , | 5 Comments

Question of the day 5/20/2013, Aeromotor Fan

Posted on May 20, 2013 by George B.

A question from Jeff H.

Subject: windmill retrofit

Message Body:

I was curious about retrofitting old Aeromotor windmills with a belt reduction to a commonly available truck alternator. With the advent of serpentine belts, it sounds that much more possible. My old 2003 Chevy duramax diesel truck had a serpentine belt perimeter of appx 11.5 ‘. My question is; could the 20″spacer ring of the old Dayton rear truck wheels be machined and modified and attached to the fan for that purpose. It’s otherwise impossible to find a serpentine pulley that large. Any thoughts on that would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Jeff

George’s Answer:

It’s rather amazing what Engineers of the past were able to do with so little wind energy.  I think that’s the case with the old Aeromotors…. lifting the cover off that gear rack, and studying the simple but elegant method to drive the sucker rod is a delight.

I think your first goal should be to identify how much electrical power you would need to generate in order to be happy with your effort, and then another important study might be what the folks of the day did to make electrical power.

How many brands of electrical wind chargers were there? RCA, Zenith, and Winco for Three. If you study their design, they’re all direct drive units that operate at higher RPM, and hopefully deliver enough energy to power a radio.

My first thought is IF there was an easy way for Aeromotor to have gone after that business of selling wind chargers with their existing fans, they would have done so,  but I would imagine their fan was optimized to drive that sucker rod via a reduction box to start work in lower winds with low energy, they knew a Rancher needed water not bragging rights that his outfit pumped the most during a storm..

Consider that the Aeromotor fan was designed to drive through a reduction box and driving a sucker rod whose mass was often ‘countered’ with a weight set up by the Erector to assure that every grain of energy went into lifting water. You’d be taking a fan tuned for a specific chore and adding a speed increaser to drive your Generator.  I have seen such things, but why did all the popular wind chargers of the day go direct drive?

But here’s a more specific reality for you.. a typical truck alternator is quite inefficient, some are able to convert about half the mechanical energy that is put into the generator shaft into electrical energy, others are a bit better, but as I see it.. you are attempting to mate a tiny source of power with a device that was engineered to survive under the hood of a truck, in high heat, produce energy required over a wide range of RPMs, and to be made quickly and cheaply. Perhaps one of the last priorities of the design is efficiency.

Fabricating your very large pulley is a job for sure, some experimenters have used a bicycle rim in the past, and some have even used tiny cable instead of belts.

I think if you define your ‘power’ expectations, and then attempt to calculate the power potential of the beautiful and simple Aeromotor fan, you’ll find a miss match, and decide to invest your time with the more popular designs.

Here’s my advice: The Aeromotor fan is a thing of beauty, leave it unmolested, maybe put it up for sale? Look up Hugh Piggott, (a must read)… visit the website “otherpower.com”  and study some of their easy to build wind turbine designs. You’ll likely have fun, and the learning never ends.

So.. you now have my unprofessional advice, but don’t forget to study your property and determine if there’s ever enough wind potential to merit your efforts to capture a bit of it..

Oh yes.. you knew I’d get this in.. didn’t you? And Jeff, I don’t claim you are afflicted.. only a warning to you.  The Gang Green Mind has no patience for figuring.. if they see a breeze come through that causes the leaves in a tree to move, their minds often envision a whirly gig making power equal to what the power company delivers….. everything is simple in their minds.  For the rest of us, it’s best we learn how to measure before we build, and our Carpenter Friends warn us.. measure twice before you cut!

All the best….

George

 

—

 

Posted in Alternative Energy Sources, Critical Thinking, DIYer Generator, DIYer Skills, Free Energy, Off Grid Power, Projects, Questions & Answers | Tagged , | 18 Comments

Shineray 250cc Water Cooled Engine Wiring

Posted on May 15, 2013 by George B.

What do you do when you search the net and every blog and can’t find the wiring info? What are all those wire leads out of the Shineray 250cc Water Cooled Electric Start unit with Reverse?

If someone is offering you an engine kit, you might assume it comes with the info to hook up the ignition, but I didn’t find that so easy..

Here’s what you need to know:

That blue/white wire is key! This wire and the Green wire are needed to get your DC Powered CDI unit working. Either the 4 pin or the 6 pin CDI units can be used. DO not attempt to use an AC powered unit, unless you have a rectifier with the correct lead to power and AC powered CDI unit.. That’s what I am being told at the moment..

Remember that green wire coming out of the engine needs to be referenced to battery ground and needs to be run to the CDI unit. You will need 12 volt Battery positive for the CDI unit, and you can provide this via the ignition switch to kill the engine when desired.

That group of smaller wires (six of them on my water cooled 167MM engine are all transmission gear indicator leads, and they each provide a ground for reverse, Neutral and the four forward gears.

Lite green with red tracer = neutral

Red with white tracer= reverse

Solid Pink= first gear

Blue Red Tracer = second gear

Green with black tracer = third  gear

Yellow with red tracer= 4th gear

I’m sure this engine WILL be used in a lot of Chinese domestic transportation, and I expect it will replace a lot of cast iron we see in the two wheel tractors there. and of course, this engine will be exported and find it’s way into go karts, ATVs, UTVs, and more. If you think different, just imagine the energy used to make cast iron products, and the amount of energy required to haul around this bulk in the vehicle over a lifetime. The cost of fuel will dictate lighter and more efficient vehicles.

China and others will likely find cast iron too expensive to ship, and due to the added layer of RED Tape and home land security, it’s likely cheaper to ship a single 67 pound engine via air mail than by SEA if you are shipping to the USA. Will we see a Chinese manufacturer in North America making engines? I think so.. RED tape is expensive.

If you find an English manual for this engine, please consider sharing the info.

G

 

 

Posted in Engines, How Tos, Projects | Tagged | 3 Comments

May 10th, Muse of the DAY

Posted on May 10, 2013 by George B.

Internet Sales Tax..

Why buy it and pay tax when you can print it at home?

Printer

Meanwhile.. we have folks doing mindless work, like limiting the size of soft drinks. It’s obvious their less than elastic brains are unable to grasp that the world is in the midst of turning upside down.

Just how long from now will we have a home appliance that will build at the molecular level? It might be closer than you think..

We have all longed for a flat tax, and we know why there’s resistance, but what is just around the corner will likely force the flat tax into existence.  The issue of EVs and collecting Road tax is complex enough, but that is only the tip of the iceberg, how things are made and where they are made is about to change in a big way. Regulating what is made and how it is made is likely to become cost prohibitive. BUT we shouldn’t expect people in Washington DC to be paying attention, they are fully focused on what’s best for them!

And I’ll make special mention of Frank Lautenberg, a New Jersey  politician, he’s working to control substances easier to make than pancake mix! I can imagine this boy in an Air Raid shelter… he’d be busy picking lint off your suit, and asking you to return the favor by voting for him…

Have a great day!

G

 

Posted in DIYer Skills, In The News, Strange Stuff, Survival Skills, Your Wasted Tax Dollars | Tagged | 7 Comments

Who could have understood the impact?

Posted on April 29, 2013 by George B.

 

Crystal Ball

Did Douglas Adams have a working Crystal ball?

 

I was thinking about my friends the Fishers, our Governor just added so many to their numbers.. gone is the term Fishermen from the State’s dictionary of terms. You out there with the fishing poles or nets are all simply ‘Fishers’ now.

But my muse is about the word processor, and the ability of using the search and replace function. Can you imagine how many additional hours it’d be if you had to set type, and reprint the book, and all at the tax payers expense.
…
Gone are the bounds of paper, and now we have the age where simple rules or laws can be well defined…. in 20,000 pages or more.. it all fits in a cloud..

Hats off to Douglas Adams, he had the muse so long ago.. imagine writing for the State, your word processor tuned to warn you of so many illegal terms.  and the ability for the state to write laws with more pages than you can read..

 

Posted in Critical Thinking | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Some rare news about Amonix this Month.

Posted on April 29, 2013 by George B.

George comments in blue..

I’ve placed my bets on Amonix, and my bet is that the folks that own the 7700 power plants will wish they had something else.

Read this article, it’s pretty good… copied below and comment added. 

New Hampshire, USA — Amonix has posted new record conversion efficiency numbers for its concentrated solar photovoltaic (CPV) module in outdoor testing, inching ever closer to a cost profile that would make CPV competitive with more mainstream solar technologies.

Imagine that! they say it could be competitive with more mainstream technologies! I suggest you call Amonix and ask them what they’d charge to install a bare 7700 tracker (no panels and no inverters) for, I bet the price is far higher than you’d even imagine. I also suggest you pay attention to their irrelevant focus on conversion efficiency, who cares?  The real world is interested in $ per watt including ongoing maintenance costs, and don’t we know CPV has a LOT more maintenance that needs to be done over cheaper and trouble free conventional panels. 

The new mark, measured in outdoor testing at NREL from late February to April, achieved an outdoor efficiency rating of 34.9 percent under “international standard operating conditions” for CPV: DNI of 900 W/m2, 20°C ambient temperature, and 2 m/s wind speed. Peak efficiency for the new CPV module touched 36.2 percent on March 14 under a DNI of 876 W/m2, ambient temperature of 16°C, and instantaneous wind speed of 1 m/s. Amonix’s previous records were 33.5 percent efficiency rating and a peak of 34.2 percent.

At least the NREL got out of the Lab, how amazing, but how they work in the first, second or even third year means very little to a power company, what will CPV be doing when there’s water and crap growing inside? and how many field hands will you need to keep them tracking and clean?

Amonix’s new record CPV modules use the same-generation ~40 percent efficient Spectrolab CPV cells as they have for the past two years, with a cell-to-module conversion efficiency exceeding 90 percent, according to Amonix founder and CTO Vahan Garboushian. (Earlier this month Spectrolab unveiled a 37.8 efficient cell but that was multijunction, not CPV.) Amonix also has further improvements underway “in cell efficiency and additional advances in our module technology,” he added.

Two months ago Amonix and Solar Junction formalized a partnership bringing together the current record-holders in CPV cell and module conversion efficiency: Amonix’s at-the-time 33.5-percent-efficient CPV module from May 2012, and Solar Junction’s 44-percent-efficient cells as of last October. This new record module efficiency mark using Spectrolab cells doesn’t change Amonix’s stance on pursuing that partnership for higher-performance CPV, according to an Amonix rep.

Improving CPV module efficiency from 30 percent to 35 percent (a 2017 target) would chop a current $2.95/W down to $2.29/W, according to Ed Cahill from Lux Research. Other solar PV technologies are pushing below $2/W but CPV can be competitive enough without getting down that low, he said.

How about LUX doing something useful and dig up the maintenance records for Hatch and Alamosa…how bout we talk real numbers?

Now.. go back to this article and read the single comment.. the guy is right on the nut.. and the NREL? I wonder if they’d ever be honest about how many of these cells have burned up in the field?

G

Lead image: Amonix CPV solar power system

 

Posted in Critical Thinking, Earth & Energy, In The News, The New Green Movement, Your Wasted Tax Dollars | Tagged , | 6 Comments

Call of the Day..and a you tube clip you’ll enjoy.

Posted on April 23, 2013 by George B.

No doubt, we are all tired of politics, so I thought I’d tell you about the Call I got today.. A guy wanted a serpentine pulley to put on an electric motor so he can drive one of my PMGs he bought some years back. He’s going to make some free juice. I started to tell him how it is, but he replied that I’m missing a few facts, and I just need to run higher RPM..

It was a nice day and I told him I had to go… it’s like pissing into the wind.. I might as well have been  talking to my own Senator.

But this gets us into critical thinking, and you might ask… what’s wrong with this idea?

 

 

 

Posted in Critical Thinking | Tagged , | 13 Comments

I wanted that Car! Fiskers Joins others in failure or bankruptcy?

Posted on April 8, 2013 by George B.

Another note on Marketing.

Starship Enterprise

Starship Enterprise

As I read the papers and other publications, I note opinions about why the EVs are not as profitable as predicted.  I think of the many people who want to own a Tesla but can’t afford it.  Some blame Standard Oil, they rationalize that it is the oil companies that attempt to deny them the right to buy the car at far less than what it cost to build, (to kill the subsidies, or to oppose the expansion of them).

For those who have experience in marketing products, you know how important it is to research who would buy what you plan on building before you build it.

I must admit, I dreamed of owning the full scale working replica of the Star Ship Enterprise, and I’m still a little upset it wasn’t made affordable to me, there were so many places I wanted to go.

I did hear of a plan that might help balance our forced investments, and that is simply to force tax payers to buy! Why is it we allow Citizens to buy the wrong cars, live in the wrong places, or to waste money on hair cuts for that matter?

And for those who said they loved the idea of EVs, the ones who posted “you need die if you oppose the effort”, if they didn’t buy, what’s wrong with putting them in a work camp and allowing them to help work off the debt?

It’s all about balance, when Government forces us to invest, they simply need to force us to buy.

GB

 

 

 

 

Posted in Critical Thinking | Tagged , | 9 Comments

A Cloud Edge Effect?

Posted on April 7, 2013 by George B.
Could these clouds help deliver more energy to your panels?

Could these clouds help deliver more energy to your panels?

In a world so full of BS, skepticism pays a rather huge dividend, but this is real….

Was it yesterday,  good friend and excellent PE Bill Rogers sent me a picture of his Outback Display, and a higher KW reading than he’s ever seen before.

His note follows:

Guys – I’ve just seen the highest peak output ever from my solar array.

I’ve read about what’s called the cloud edge effect, and now I’ve seen it for myself. The edge of a cloud can focus the sunlight somehow and cause higher than normal output. Yesterday was a mostly cloudy day, but the clouds would periodically break up like you see in the second pic.

That apparently sets the stage for the edge effect to manifest itself. I saw a high of 6150 watts on my 5400 watt rated system. By the time I grabbed the camera it was down a bit but still very impressive. It lasted for several minutes. The clouds were just the right size and shape and moving at just the right speed I suppose. Very interesting phenomenon. Glad I saw it for myself.

Power in well above what the owner sees on a crisp cloudless day

Power in well above what the owner sees on a crisp cloudless day

Another note arrives:

Panel specs are attached. The temp gradient for Pmpp (power at maximum power point) is -0.45% per DegC. What I observed was about 14% above the STC rating on the LOAD side of the charge controllers (not the panel

side.) For the power increase to be entirely due to temperature, the panel temp would have to drop a little over 31 degC or 88 degF. I’m NOT asserting that temp had no impact – it very well could have – it simply can’t account for all of it

 

Here’s an explanation of the effect:

 

But this isn’t the end of the story, here’s a link where there’s some discussion about the cloud edge effect, and even a report of fuses being blown.

140% of IMP ??? Help!

Other links that discuss cloud edge effect..

http://solarhomenews.wordpress.com/2009/09/03/edge-of-cloud-effect-may-not-be-what-you-think-it-is/

http://forums.energymatters.com.au/solar-wind-gear/topic1507-10.html

http://www.nmsea.org/Solar_Fiesta/Solar_Fiesta_2007/Solar_Fiesta_Presentations/2007_Solar_Fiesta_Edge_of_Cloud_Effect.pdf

Interesting huh? I learn something new every day..

GB

 

 

 

Posted in Critical Thinking, Earth & Energy, Free Energy, Off Grid Power, Questions & Answers, Strange Stuff, UtterPower Articles | 2 Comments

Save Money, Small 9 Volt Batteries

Posted on April 5, 2013 by George B.

How many times have you opened a small battery operated device and frowned when you saw it was powered by one of those small rectangular 9 volt alkaline batteries with the button connectors on top?

Yes, they’re expensive most places, and it’s normally not the battery you keep around for a spare.

I have a Sears garage door opener that is 35 years old, it’s given me a few years to study the use of these 9 volt batteries pulling duty in small transmitters where the battery spends a second or two running a tiny transmitter and then going back into a no load state.

It’s some years before they go dead normally, but always good to look at the date on the battery and know how old it is when you put it into service.

About seven years ago, I decided to take some test clips and put one of the  9 volt batteries that was too weak to power the garage transmitter across a 12 volt battery, I may have left it there for about three or four minutes and then back into the transmitter. It worked for more than a year, and I do use it quite a bit in the shop. Next time it went dead, I did the same thing, and another year or two of service.

And several days ago , I looked around and no spare! So I charged it again! working just fine…

So Yesterday, I’m at a place where nothing gets fixed.. there’s a remote key pad between the garage doors than has had a dead battery in it for the last six months or longer. on the floor, I see a standard 12 volt car battery charger.. I gave it a three minute charge and presto!

I know, we hear you shouldn’t do this, but I did, and it does seem viable is this application.. the power draw is very small, the stand by position is open circuit across the battery..

I’ve seen no leaks in this one battery, but that’s always a risk.. keep the charge short, and do experiment..

GB

And who are these people in the picture?

Nothing at all to do with batteries..Marc Chirico and Francis Rogollo. Marc is a local PG Instructor and Rogollo’s simple brilliant design allowed a lot of us to take our very first foot launched flights, two of my Hero’s.

.

 

 

 

 

Posted in DIYer Skills, Free Energy, Survival Skills, Things I like | Tagged , | 11 Comments