Recent content by Ulu

The unistrut steel is 12ga (0.105”) thick (!) and only 33ksi. Softer than ordinary structural beams, It’s designed from soft metals so the special toothed nuts bite into the strut. Compare that to my Mongoose based bike, which is much thinner 16ga (0.06”) & much stronger 50ksi steel tube, and...

Unistrut is sort of heavy for bikes. Worked great to mod my boat trailer though.

As you will enjoy hours of cleaning the mud out of all that tiny openwork with a little brush, I feel you will increasingly appreciate the invention of tubing.

Progress in the laboratory! First test was A-OK!

The OT bench clogged with electric gear. I paused my car building to do a couple little projects that grew longer and longer. There I am building a battery charger. Here is a tiny welder, in process…

I am experimenting with a low-voltage AC welder. I changed one transformer from 16 to 7 volts but the lams were welded, so it was not easy to make it neat. The used wire needed lots of straightening.

My education really started when Dad gave me his 1964 Popular Electronics magazine on simple TV repairs, back about 1967. TVs needed much more repair in those days, but the repairs were commonly simple. Not much worse than changing a lightbulb. Unless component values had drifted enough that...

Thank you Kevin. I don’t get bored easily, or such tedious jobs would be less attractive. Transformers don’t need to be complicated, but sometimes they are. This one had windings I didn’t want, and removing them was a pita (but with very positive results.) But it was not frightening. I wound...

Lovely man’s bike, but with a girl’s name.

Years ago in a fit of tree-hugging self congratulations, I junked my outboard engine and converted my little boat to electric. It runs on 36v from three 12v Lead/acid deep cycle marine batteries. Since that time I have been charging the batteries with individual Schumacher 12v chargers. Which...

I find myself doing small easy fun stuff, instead of the long boring parts of my 3 year car project, which I’m letting drag into 4. (One is going on 10 years, but it’s on hiatus, collecting new rust.) I still have rust to scrape and paint, but the rains this year have been much nicer than...

Mickey’s was popular in Calif in the mid 70s when we were young and poor. In Minnesota you could get Grain Belt. Oooof! It’s like 36oz of GB = 12oz Molson. Golden Ale was popular too. They had a 12pack, half Golden, half Canadian. It was called “the six of one/half dozen of the other”.

People in Canada drink that, when they have Molson? I don’t get it.

Yikes! We don’t need faulty wires! Today I got the second rod in at my welder subpanel. Now I am well grounded at both extremes of the house. This one had to go through the patio concrete, but it actually went in easier than the first one.

I haven’t given up yet, guys. The rains keep coming and going, and so I haven’t been working on the car much at all. Also everything has been crashing here in one month. The ice maker died, the water heater leaked, and the sewer cracked and it had to be dug up and patched. I discovered a bad...