Dodge Caravan/Voyager Strut tower repair

I know that I do not blog much about car problems. There was a day when I fixed most of my own car problems. However this repair was a bit over my head. My drivers side strut mount had rotted out as you can see in the picture below. If it is not fixed the strut can come up through and the car will then fall down and be totally disabled.

This problem would send most cars to the junk yard. But I thought I would research the problem first. It turns out that most places will charge you around $1000 and they will weld in a replacement strut mount from another car.

Well it turns out that if you will go to the car dealer, they have what is essentially an upgrade to the strut mount. I got it done on my van for $450 and taxes. There is a place in Ohio that says they will do it for $300. However I did not think my car could be driven that far.


This is what the repair looks like. They did both sides. As I understand it, the repair piece is also glued in place besides the several bolts that you can see.

Here is a link to the guy who fixes them in Ohio for $300. He uses rivets instead of bolts and that should be a better fix IMO.

http://cleveland.backpage.com/AutoServices/_300_dodge_caravan_voyager_rusted_strut_tower_repair/classifieds/ViewAd?oid=1233952

Another virus thwarted

It seems like every few months I get a virus that I have to deal with. My favorite thing is to switch to another hard drive with a clean install and then copy my files back off the old hard drive via an IDE to USB adapter. However I did not have a spare laptop hard drive available and the first two I won on eBay did not work!

The last two virus' on my computer both came from searching the web. I remember when it was safe to search the web. In one case I was looking for help in fixing a LCD TV that just has a blue screen. The second time was from searching for how to remove the password from a laptop hard drive. It seems like there has to be a way to remove the password short of tossing the whole hard drive. I had Windows XP SP3 installed with all the updates, AVG running and telling me what sites are safe to visit, you name it I was protected, but it all failed to protect me.

The symptoms of the infection included lots of pop ups so I installed Spybot Search and Destroy. It found 38 problems including something that had shut down the Windows firewall. Upon restarting the computer, the virus was still there, so next I ran AVG in safe mode. It found two files and removed them. They were some sort of Trojan Horse Generic, but the virus was still there.

So then I went into manual virus removal mode. The first weapon was startup.exe, there were two strange programs running so I shut them down. That did not work, they came right back, as can be seen in the picture below. I found the files in the windows\system32 directory after I had turned back on the ability to view hidden system files in file manager. Then I tried to delete them or even to rename them all to no avail. Next I restated the computer in safe mode and was able to delete the files and also disable them using startup.

Earthquakes, rumblings, and volcanoes

This is an ongoing story and I thought I would update it. Below is the seismometer located on Redoubt Alaska. Needless to say it was going crazy Sunday March 15th. It has since calmed down once again. Here are some links of interest;

Pictures from the small eruption at Redoubt;

http://www.avo.alaska.edu/volcanoes/volcact.php?volcname=Redoubt&page=images&eruptionid=610

Article about earthquakes in Richland Washington;

http://www.kndo.com/Global/story.asp?S=9975897&nav=menu484_2

Article about earthquakes in Geyser California;

http://seismo.berkeley.edu/faq/gey_0.html

This is a picture of the smoke starting to rise over Redoubt.

Now for the big catch. According to their seismometers there are other volcanoes about ready to do something. Unfortunately I cannot get web cams to capture pictures from the other volcanoes.

A while back I commented on the strange rumblings that are going on. Well, they continue but after being quiet for a few weeks the number of earthquakes is on the rise once again. This picture below shows that there were 1003 earthquakes in the US in the last 7 days. That number is like off the chart! When I first started watching there were about 700 earthquakes a week in the US.

They were worried about Yellowstone. Now they are worried about Alaska. Alaska is really a rumbling. Note the cluster of earthquakes just to the left of the upper blue box. Is that a likely volcano site or what?

Then there is California. Need I say anything about that? You cannot even read 'Los Angles' for all of the earthquakes that are happening around there. There is also a hot spot in Geyser California, north of San Francisco.

Hp Laptop Motherboards

Is it just me or are there a lot of HP motherboards with a broken power jack? Replacing the jack will not fix it as the board is damaged around the back, center connector.

The real solution is to run a 24 gage jumper wire from the shiny pad to the left just behind the power jack and just in front of the modem plug to the center connector of the power jack on the bottom side of the circuit board. That will replace the burned out traces on the top side of the circuit board. You might just be able to solder the jack on the top side if the run is not totally destroyed already. In most cases there is nothing left to solder it to on the top side of the board.

Africa March 2009

We are back in Accra Africa. We already received a testimony from the equipment that we brought over with us;

"Please Dad [Fred] tell uncle Robert that last Sunday we where on the campus for projection and 115 students gave their lives to Christ, Priase the Lord!"

This shows the van packed full. We had three suitcases and a carry on suitcase for each of the three of us. So there are a total of 12 suitcases for the three of us all stuffed into the van. Why is the background all white?

On this trip we brought;
9 Video Bible Schools
6 DVD players
6 Laptops
3 Printers
3 Projectors
1 Desktop Computer
1 Photocopier
1 Music Keyboard
1 Video Camera

On our first day we purchased a 17 inch computer monitor for $35 and a 25 inch Sony TV for $100. Both were purchased used at pawn shops.


This is Aldous with his new desktop computer. We dropped him off in Tamale to start a new Video Bible school there. He has everything he needs to make the teaching materials except for a stapler. Oops.
Young Albert with the computer we gave him.

Fred meeting with pastors in Accra.
Sunday we headed off on a trip to Tamale. We had to fix several problems with the van. Here is the list of needed repairs;

Growling sound from rear end? Not fixed yet.
Shows no oil pressure - was working, started working again.
Right headlight out - Type 9004 but no 9004 types fit it!!
Drivers side mirror - taped together.
Rear seat adjuster - taped together.

We spent about 2 hours trying to find a headlight that fits. Every 9004 light we tried did not fit the van. So it must be a special 9004 for a 92 Ford Econoline van.
We made it back to Accra with most of the driving done during the day because of the bad headlight problem. We did get one warning for speeding but it is hard to tell if you are in town or out of a town as there is sometimes little difference. LOL.

Fred speaking at the new Bible School in Tamale. We had 16 students interested in attending the Video Bible School. Aldous and Fred spoke and we saw a sample video from the school.

The students at the Tamale VBS watching a ISOM video on the TV


The sound guy at Cotonou Benin, with one of the donated laptops being used to record the message. They had been hauling around and using a desktop computer.

Do you remember VW bug stuffing? They used to see how many people you could fit in a VW Bug. We took that a step further. How many people can you fit in a bug and still drive on African roads? We could not make it over a cement bump at the top of one hill until Fred got out.

Marie-Louise found this little kitten at one place where Fred was teaching. It is so young that its eyes were not even open yet.

Well that's it for my part in this trip to Africa. Now I am working on stuff to send back over to them.

Government Stimulus

I thought I would give my opinion on the so called 'Government Stimulus'.

Since when does taking money from the poor to feed the rich solve all of the problems with the economy?

Since wanton government and financial company waste got us into a really big mess, why would encouraging more of the same solve the problem?

Since 'we the people' are getting out of debt, why would more government debt solve the problem.

So we should borrow money from our children, likely even our grandchildren, to give to our financial institutions so they can waste it?

After being unemployed for 6 months, I recently cashed in an IRA from 2001. I had deposited $5000, and a year ago it was up to $9800. When it dropped down to $8000 I told them to put it into something that will not loose any more money. When it reached $4400 I cashed it in. I not only lost all of the interest I lost some of the principal.

The US government will eventually collapse unless they stop all of this nonsense!

What is the solution? Reduce taxes! Instead of complicated methods of 'redistributing the wealth', just cut taxes on the poor.

Emergency Laptop Repairs

We are 4 days from leaving for Africa and a Dell C400 laptop had its cooling fan quit. What do I do when there is not enough time to order a new cooling fan? Cobble the repair, so here is how it is done. First I replaced the fan with a normal cooling fan, it is glued into place. I cut the top edge of the fan back a little bit to allow more air to escape towards the CPU cooling heat sink.


The next problem is that the old fan ran on 5 volts and the new one runs on 12 volts. So I had to tap into 12 volts somewhere and here is where I did that.

Cheap printer Cartridges

About a year ago I bought some generic ink cartridges on EBay. They leaked and were replaced with a second set of generic cartridges. Unfortunately they did the same thing. It was so bad that the blue turned red from the leaking ink! Note that the only clean one is the Real Epson cartridge. The moral of the story is to use the genuine ink cartridges.

Frozen Pipes

I returned from Florida to find out that the heat was off and that the pipes were frozen and had burst. Some of the valves and fittings were burst as well.


So I moved the sink out of the way and cut a hole in the floor to find the breaks in the pipes. Three of the pipes were broken as well as some fittings.

I removed all of the copper pipes, then started in the basement and ran all new 1/2 inch CPVC pipes. OOPS! I had to open it all back up and put in a new drain to the sink..

Then we replaced the drain to the tub as well. this required cutting a slot into the wall. You can see the water damage in the discolored wall paper.


The new drain pipe runs all the way down to the basement. We covered it with new 3/8 inch sheet rock so it all looks great now.

Yellowstone Rumblings and Earthquakes

I thought I would update this post by showing a map of the US and the locations of all of the earthquakes that have happened in just the last week. It is getting crazy. They are now predicting a volcano in Alaska as well as Yellowstone. What about southern California??

Rumblings, that's how I would describe it. In the news just a few days ago there was a report on the rumblings at Yellowstone. They quieted down on Jan 2 but rose up again on Jan 9 then quieted down again. The picture below is from Big Hole Peak Montana where there are rumblings going on now. As you can see after a few hours it quieted down too. What is going on here? I found similar results for January 2 and December 29 th.




If we hop over to Whitefish Montana there is something going on there too. This is more like an earthquake or more like a swarm of them, smaller ones at that. This has been coming and going for a few days now.



What do I think about it? I do not have a clue. Someone speculated that it could be caused by waves of magma moving. There is no evidence as to what it is. I read someplace that it could just be miners blasting, at least the collection of smaller earthquakes could be that. Who knows but there is something unusual happening.

Here is a link so you can check them out for yourself.
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/helicorders.php

New Can crusher / Washer Launcher

I am working on what will be the biggest washer launcher or can crusher that I have ever made. If you have not seen the old washer launcher or can crusher videos on YouTube you have to see what happens when 800 volts DC is applied to a flat coil under an aluminum washer. The washer flies over 30 feet straight up. If a soda can gets in the way it can get flattened. If you place a soda can on top of the washer it ends up about 1/2 inch shorter just from the g forces.

As I was going though some of my old pictures I could see the history of my invention. First I built what was called a 'thumper' on the Internet. To make a 'thumper' essentially you take the flash from a camera and add a coil in series with the flash tube. This 'thumper' design is available on the Internet just google for a 'magnetic thumper' or 'magnetic thumpy'. Below is a picture of my version of that device.

Next I replaced the flash tube with a big SCR. I had a pile of those big SCR's that were left over from making a time machine, but they were accidentally sold at the Rochester Ham Fest in around 2005. You can see them in the background of the picture. I also started adding more capacitors. Notice the home made aluminum washer sitting on the coil. That was from before I discovered that hard drive platters make great aluminum washers. As you can tell I was already sending aluminum washers into flight. In those early days the washer flew just a few inches.

Soon I took the washer launcher to the next level. First I used 4 big capacitors and then later I stepped up to 8 of those big capacitors. I fried the old SCR and then replaced it with an ED431825 that can handle 1.8 KV (1800 Volts) and 250 amps continuous and 6.5 KA peak (6500 Amps). This design started out with one MOT (Microwave Oven Transformer) then for a while it had two MOT's.

At some point I added the flat Coil shown below. It was wound a few turns at a time then those turns were glued down and the next few turns were added. A rotating stick held the wire down while the glue was drying. The glue was of a flexible kind. At some point the wood was shattered into pieces, so it was replaced with Plexiglas. That was a bad idea. The Plexiglas shattered on the first test launch.

I am upgrading the 8 capacitor 800 volt model to now operate with up to 1600 volts. All of the capacitors had to be turned 90 degrees so that they can be connected in series instead of parallel. Here is the preliminary schematic, it is missing the 10 amp fuse, and that is a 1 meg resistor to the voltmeter that is located on the front panel.

There were two problems with the first test run of the new design. The 10 amp fuse blew because it now draws more current than that. I replaced it with a 15 amp fuse. The next problem is that the meter pegs. I was using a digital volt meter as well and it was not supposed to exceed 600 volts but it survived at 1200 volts. As far as the can crushing goes it did not crush it much more than the 800 volt model had crushed it.

Before testing it a second time I changed the resistor to the meter to 2.5 meg. The meter now reads 2.5 KV full scale. I also shortened the wire to the coil to 1/2 of the original length. The next test was at 1.6 KV and it resulted in the flattest soda can yet. The video is being
uploaded to YouTube.

LED Sign

A few years ago a relative, Ernie I think, gave me a sign that someone was throwing out. It was large and had a car repair place advertisement. Well I removed the guts, got it working, reprogrammed it and put it in my own cabinet. The problem now is that it is too big to fit in the window.



As I was testing it out our cat Bling or as I call him stinky, decided to attack the sign. He normally attacks my laptop computer screen climbing on the keyboard as he does it.

I had to rearrange the guts to make the sign smaller. I moved the logic board to be behind the sign board. The transformer did not fit so I put that on the back side. The brown board has a 555 and a 4017 that resets the sign after 20 seconds so the car advertisement does not come up like it used to.

Home Made Dual Screen Monitor Base

Recently I had an EBay deal that I just could not refuse. They were selling 17 inch LCD monitors for $44 each without the stand. With shipping they were about $60 each and they arrived not working. It turns out that the unnamed shipping company shook them so bad as to unsolder capacitors in the power supply. So after some minor repairs they worked. the next problem was what to use for a stand. They do not make dual stands that I know of and most stands cost more than I paid for the monitors.

Here is the solution. First a 1 by 6 connects the two monitors together. Drill 4 holes at each end of the 1 by 6 that line up with the mounting holes in the back of the monitors. Then I used some 2 by 3's about 1 foot long to a 2 by 6 base that is 2 foot long. The tops of the 2 by 3's were notched so that they are under as well as behind the 1 by 6 that connects the 2 monitors. I used a high quality 2 by 6 for the base since it can be seen. That one board cost me $8, the rest of the boards were all off the scrap pile.

Expanding foam and science experiments.

The Red Green show makes a big thing about 'the handyman's secret weapon - duct tape'. Well now there is a runner up. The number two secret weapon of the handyman is.....expanding foam!

Usually there is two ways expanding foam works. It either comes out really fast and runs out before you get all of the holes filled or it comes out really slow and keeps on coming forever. You fill every hole in every house on the block and it just keeps on coming. Well recently I went to fill holes in my brothers basement and I had a third thing happen. I could not get it to start so I pushed on the nozzle so hard that it broke off. Fred said I should hit it hard and see what happens, so I hit it on a rock and it started working. The problem is that it would not stop either. So I tired to use it anyway but without the nozzle it was hard to get the foam into the holes. The results are pictured below I think more went on the ground than on the foundation. This sounds like good material for another Red green show spoof like the one I already have on YouTube under bobdavis321.

We all have a favorite science experiment we like to perform. It is called leave a cup of something sitting around and see what happens. There are three possible solutions. One is It gets consumed by the cat. Two is It gets spilled on the floor. The third is the most fun - Something grows on it. Now the best material for this kind of science experiment is coffee. We all know that the nuclear resonance of coffee is slightly elevated by the caffeine so things grow in it in hyper mode. The results can be just amazing as seen in the picture below!

Another science experiment is called the bread drawer. Yesterday I cleaned it out and found some really nice looking green bread. I am sure the added color makes the flavor interesting as well.

VE170 Monitor Repair with LED's

I have noticed that many people find my blog when looking for monitor repair ideas. So here is another one of my ideas for monitor repair. I have in the past fixed laptops by retrofitting them with LED's. The problem with this monitor is that the power supply for the vacuum tube back lighting dies.

The first step is to totally disassemble the monitor into little pieces, then carefully remove the gold colored trays that hold the vacuum tubes. Then carefully remove the tubes themselves without breaking them, like that can be done.



The LED's are spaced at about 1/2 inches apart by using the edge of a cardboard box as can be seen below. This was the test setup using a 9 volt battery, the LED's are spaced every three holes from each other. The LED's are wired in sets of 3 with a 12 ohm 1 watt resistor in series with all of the sets of three LED's. A 10 ohm to 15 ohm resistor would work just as well.



This is a schematic drawing of how it is all wired up. It shows 24 LED's but actually there needs to be 27 LED's in a 17 inch monitor.


This is what the LED's look like in the tray. They have to be angled at a 45 degree angle towards the back of the screen in order to fit and it is a very tight fit. I tried to use a flat front LED so it could aim directly up at the screen but did not see any increase in brightness.



This is what it looks like with the bottom tray full of LED's. There are a total of 27 LED's in the bottom light tray in this photo. There needs to be about 27 LED's in each of the trays. The dark areas are where the resistors are located. I no longer put any resistors in the tray for that reason.



As you might be able to guess the labor far exceeds the value of the fixed monitor. Also you can see in the photo above that unless you space the LED's so they are almost touching each other then there will be blank spaces between them. The ideal solution would be surface mount LED's on a circuit board to provide continuous lighting.

The picture below shows what it looks like compared to a laptop. As you can see it is not as bright and the picture has a purple color to it. Even thought the color looks white to the eye it is somewhat blue by comparison.


The LED's used were 3mm 16,000 MCD bright white LED's found on EBay. There are brighter LED's available that might work even better. I tried using the flat top LED's and they fit better because they are shorter and light the screen more evenly. Also the resistors can be external, wire all of the LED's up in parallel sets of 3 each, then use a 10 to 20 ohm resistor externally between it and the 12 volt power supply.

The current economic and political problems

One of my favorite scriptures is Isaiah 9:6 & 7 For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end.

That and Daniel chapter 2 carry a very clear message. The Kingdom of God has been growing for 2,000 years, and it will never stop growing. Around the world revival is taking place as people lay down their lives for the Gospel. If you are part of His kingdom you have NOTHING to fear! I personally have watched my retirement accounts dwindle. My bank accounts earn .85% interest. My money would be better off in my mattress then in the bank or stocks. But it would be even better off being used for the kingdom of God. I believe that the kingdom of God is going to rise up and take over. Not by force, but by being the only thing that does not collapse. Jesus' disciples expected that to happen and they were disappointed that they were only part of the initial 'stone' that was thrown to take down the kingdoms of this world. We are part of the mountain, but it will soon cover the whole earth.

Daniel2:31 "You looked, O king, and there before you stood a large statue—an enormous, dazzling statue, awesome in appearance. 32 The head of the statue was made of pure gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, 33 its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of baked clay. 34 While you were watching, a rock was cut out, but not by human hands. It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them. 35 Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were broken to pieces at the same time and became like chaff on a threshing floor in the summer. The wind swept them away without leaving a trace. But the rock that struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth."

Daniel 2:44 "In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever. 45 This is the meaning of the vision of the rock cut out of a mountain, but not by human hands—a rock that broke the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver and the gold to pieces."

So get ready! The revival in Florida showed that we are desperate for revival and we will accept it from almost anyone. There is real revival coming, the Kingdom of God is going to rise up like never before. I think we will soon see miracles like never before, like they were in the days that Jesus walked on this earth. God is raising up lots of people, not just one or two, but 12 or even 70 great evangelists, prophets, healers, etc. I am excited about what is happening and what God is doing!