Rebuild, Don't Replace

Kenmore Oven Baking Element

2019-03-12T22:38:00.000-04:00

Today, I'm going to walk through replacing an oven heating element that probably should have never gone bad in the first place. I've never heard of one of these failing before, and Sears says it replaces about 1,000 of this part per year, but this one failed spectacularly with a bright flare that lasted probably 30 seconds and left the element in three useless pieces. I suspect that someone cleaned it at some point with an abrasive pad or compound that damaged the surface of the element and caused it to eventually break under the stress of normal use. Fortunately, this abused piece of hardware was easy to replace.

This project requires only one tool: a 1/4" socket and driver (this counts as one since a socket isn't much use alone). You could use a ratchet or adjustable wrench in a pinch, but the driver is really a superior tool for this since the screws aren't very tight and anything that swings out to the side for leverage would just get in the way. A single-piece 1/4" nut driver is an option and may be a reasonable investment if you plan on working on a lot of ovens, but I find it more space efficient to keep a set of sockets and a socket driver instead. If you don't have SAE tools handy, a 6.5mm socket should work.

One of my favorite tools: a 1/4" socket driver.

The first step was to find the model number of the oven so I could get the right part. Manufacturers put the information plates in different places, but they're pretty predictable. They're usually on front faces inside a door or drawer so that they're not visible with everything closed, but they're easy to access. In my case, the plate was inside the bottom storage drawer. There are several retailers for these parts online. Just search for your model number and "parts" and plenty of options should appear. Make sure you order the baking element and not the broiler.

Model plate location

Kenmore model 911.93512010

The part listing. Part #WB44T10010

Side note: This range has a broil setting, which means there's a second heating element in the top that's normally used for browning the tops of dishes that are otherwise already cooked. We were able to use the broiler for the Texas toast we were planning to cook when the lower element failed. This model doesn't have temperature control on the broil setting, so we were really eyeballing the temperature and just baked the food on the lower rack so it would heat more evenly.

When the part comes in, it's time to get to work. First, pull the oven out from the wall and unplug it. You'll pretty much need full access to the back of this thing, so pull it all the way out. The terminals for the heating element are covered by an access panel down the back of the range. This model has five screws.

Access panel screws

Heating element terminals

The element is connected electrically by a couple of spade terminals. There's no latch or trick, they just slide together like a plug in an outlet. Remove the two screws inside the oven and remove the broken element. It's a good idea to clean the bottom of the oven while the element is out. I didn't, but I should have.

Heating element screws

The company I ordered my element from packed the terminals in polystyrene, which is pretty standard practice, but it tends to leave some of the foam on the terminals. Make sure you get all of the packing material off of the burner and terminals, for obvious reasons.

Installation is the reverse of removal. Stick the terminals through the holes in the insulation and install the screws. Finger tighten only. Ovens are generally made of fairly thin sheet metal that can't handle much torque, and that's especially true with this model. Slide the connectors back onto the spade terminals on the back, then reinstall the access panel. On this model, the access panel slots behind a pair of tabs on the left. Reinstall the five screws on the access panel. It may be beneficial to install all of the screws loosely at first so that you can shift the access panel around to get the holes to align, then tighten them down. This one had a bare screw on the bottom and the rest were painted black. I'm not sure that it matters, but best to put things back the way they were originally installed.

Before you put the oven back in its hole, take a minute and clean. When was the last time you cleaned under your oven? Never, right? Nobody moves an oven unless they have to. I did take my own advice on this step. Some dust had also collected under the back of mine, so I vacuumed that out as well. Once it's all clean, plug the oven in and slide it back into place.

Finally, turn the oven on and test the new burner. Let it get red hot for a few minutes and then turn it off. Open the oven door and let it air out. The light film of release agent on the new heating element burns off and has a bit of a smell. It's probably harmless, but best to keep it away from your food just the same.

Fixed!

Headlamp Replacement - '99 Malibu and '95 Saturn SL

2012-06-18T22:46:00.001-04:00

It's a simple fact of life that, if you own a car long enough and drive it year-round, you will end up with a pair of hazy headlamps, and if your mechanic is any good (and cares about your life and his license), he'll tell you that you have to replace or restore them before you can pass inspection.

Saturn SL2

I find the latter option to be a waste of money. I tried a headlight restoration kit on my Saturn about two years ago, and it seemed to work well at first. After about an hour of sanding, scrubbing, and polishing my headlights, I was able to present my favorite shop with something they could allow me to keep driving. The lenses looked almost brand-new. There was a faint line where the original glossy finish (which is next to impossible to remove on purpose) ended, but the lenses were plenty clear to pass state inspection. A year later, I had to do the same thing again because the finish from the polishing kit had worn off, and a couple of months after that, the haze was back. This was all done with a kit that came well-recommended. I had had enough of it, and I was not interested in trying a bunch of different polishing kits.
The hunt was on for a pair of affordable headlamps. Parts stores wanted at least $80 apiece for new ones, so I was going to have to hunt elsewhere. eBay has some available for $35, but I needed to make a trip to the junkyard anyway, so I thought I would try there before I bought anything online. Most of the cars in the yard had the same hazy headlamp issue, but one former owner had bothered to replace them within the last few years with a nice fresh pair. I snagged them for about $20 apiece plus tax.
Removing and installing headlamps in a Saturn S-series is one of the simplest things you can do to a car. They're held in with three bolts with 10mm heads: two right on top where you would expect them, and one down below, also easy to access. The procedure takes about eight seconds. Simply remove the bolts, twist the bulbs out, and reverse the procedure for the new lamps. If you like, you can unclip the bulbs instead and use the ones from your new set (if equipped). The signal bulb has the connector twist into the housing, then the bulb clips into the connector. Either way, you'll now have a few spares, which might come in handy if a police officer tries to write you a ticket for a burned-out bulb before you notice it.

Comparison shot before the swap.

The socket is on the lower mounting bolt. Top mounting bolts are also visible here.

Aiming these headlamps can be a bit trickier than installation. On my car, both the old set and the new were aimed low and cross-eyed. Ideally, the left headlamp should be aimed straight ahead and down slightly (to avoid blinding oncoming traffic), and the right should be aimed dead forward. The vertical adjustment is intuitive. There is a torx head at the top-center of the headlamp. Tighten it (turn right) to raise, loosen to lower the aim. The horizontal adjustment is a littler trickier. Toward the outer edge, behind the headlamp, there is a plastic adjustment wheel that looks like a gear. In my case, this was a very stubborn piece to move. Stick a flat-tipped screwdriver on the appropriate end and tap it with a hammer to make the adjustment. The way it works is, the adjustment wheel is stationary on the light, and it turns a screw that connects it to the mounting bracket. Since it's on the outside edge, screwing it into the bracket pulls the outside of the lamp in and moves the adjustment outward. Thus, tapping on the outside of either adjustment wheel will move the light to the driver side, and tapping on the inside will move it to passenger. Adjust accordingly.

Chevrolet Malibu

I thought that replacing the headlamps on my Saturn was as simple as it could get. I was wrong. The headlamps on this 1999 Malibu that I acquired can be changed without using any tools. The two plastic clips on the back of each headlamp pop up to release the lamp from the mount. This can all be done with bare fingers. There may be a rubber flap bolted to the frame rail, that somewhat obscures the clips. It can still be done without tools, but you might find it easier to remove it. As with the Saturn, the bolts have 10mm heads.
The price was also more attractive on the Malibu lamps. A cheap pair made in China can be had off of RockAuto.com for $25.89 plus shipping. Fitment is slightly off, but the rubber gaskets around the lamp still seal with the body. The light pattern is indistinguishable from stock, and, of course, output is much better with clear lenses. I have not adjusted these yet, as the car is not driveable, but I will update later with proper instructions.

Here, you can see the two plastic mounting clips. One is at the top of the picture.
The other is a little difficult to make out, a little below the middle.

Here, you can see the mounting points to which the plastic clips attach.

HP Pavilion Power Supply

2012-01-26T01:38:00.001-05:00

My grandmother called me the other day with a computer problem. She's fairly computer-savvy for a grandma, so when she has a problem, it's usually something that's actually wrong with the computer. This time, it was hardware. The computer wouldn't turn on. I told her over the phone that it was probably the power supply but could also be the motherboard, and I went to check it out that evening.

The piece of equipment I used to test her computer was an especially useful piece that I picked up at the Circuit City going-out-of-business corporate selloff a few years ago. Their headquarters was here in Richmond, so I made multiple trips to raid their offices when they were liquidating all of their assets. I had stuffed a backpack full of cables and sundries, including this power supply tester, and gotten it for next to nothing. If memory serves, I paid the going rate for the Swiss Army bag ($20-25) and an extra $5 for all of the stuff in it. I had no idea what the thing was worth, but it looks like you can get one pretty cheap as well ($9 shipped on Overstock).

It is worth noting that a specialty power supply tester is helpful but not entirely necessary. The standard ATX pinout is available all over the web, which means you can test everything with a multimeter. If you should decide to go that route (or need to in a pinch), here is one from smpspowersupply.com, copied for your convenience.

That process is long and tedious, though. The ATX power supply tester was done in a matter a second or two, with no ambiguity and no need to re-check. The +5V LED didn't light up, and that meant that the +5V line on the power supply was dead. Just to be sure, since I had never used this junk-sale tester before, I checked the tester on a known working power supply, and all of the lights did indeed work. We were off to Best Buy to get the required hardware.

As usual, it would be cheaper to buy the same power supply online. There's a lot to be said for downtime, though, as well as the return process with a brick-and-mortar store vs. online. I did not have a working ATX power supply (the rig used to test the tester was an old Gateway, which didn't fit the form factor), so we spent the extra $25 to have the new power supply within an hour rather than a week.

This is the power supply we ended up getting. The salesman upsold us from the house brand, and I let him because, as I mentioned in the Heatsink Fan post, I've heard good things from people I trust about Thermaltake, so I was easily sold.

The above two images show the slight difference between the standard and aftermarket PSU. The Thermaltake unit (black) is standard ATX, while the HP unit is slightly shorter and made specifically to fit in HP's proprietary cases. I was relieved to find that the new PSU did in fact fit, as I had been through this nightmare years ago with a Pavillion with a nonstandard PSU form factor and thus had to replace the entire case. The one minor fitment issue is shown in the second photo. A clip built into the case to secondarily secure the PSU is no longer helpful, so the new supply is held in only by the four screws that are standard for ATX.

Manufacturers do weird things sometimes. In this case, a computer with only SATA drives and ports was built with a power supply for IDE drives. This was likely done to use up old power supplies, and it poses no problems for the new supply, which natively supports both SATA and IDE. Now I have some spare adapters for future projects.

Before I put the computer back together, I wanted to do a little cleaning up. This computer is about three years old, so there was a decent amount of dust build-up on the processor heatsink. Unlike my fileserver, this processor socket (Pentium dual-core of some sort) has what I feel is a proper heatsink mount. The heatsink attaches to the motherboard with a clamp, and the fan is held to the heatsink with four screws. This makes it easy to remove the fan for cleaning without disturbing the thermal connection between the processor and the heatsink.

Dusty heatsink. With everything unplugged, I just cleaned it out with a vacuum (no attachment). There's not really anything tricky to this, so I won't elaborate. This is just a good, simple step to take whenever you open up your computer to ensure processor longevity.

I hooked everything up, then turned on the power supply. Aftermarket power supplies usually have a separate power switch that the stock units don't have, and this one is no exception. It sounds like a dumb thing to mention, but sometimes intelligent people will neglect the simple details. Make sure the power switch is turned to 'on' (the international symbol is a line, to resemble a 1) after hooking everything up, before booting up. The operation was a success, and now Grandma can resume sending me videos of dancing dogs.

Heatsink Fan

2012-01-24T18:39:00.001-05:00

Last May, I decided to build a file server for my house. I got a free P4 HT processor and video card from a coworker, and I bought a motherboard, RAM, heatsink, thermal compound, and hard drive for it off of Newegg. I used an old case, power supply, disk drive monitor, keyboard, and mouse that I had lying around, and I hooked it up to my stereo for audio so it could also serve as a jukebox for the house. I loaded Ubuntu Linux on it, so there's no software cost other than the cost of the CD-ROM that I used to create the installation disk. All told, the thing cost me around $180. Not bad for a 2TB network drive that's also a fully functional spare computer.

Clearly, I was pretty frugal with parts. I got the cheapest heatsink for my application, and not the most expensive RAM (though I did max out the board). The hard drive I wanted was on sale for $75, which was one of the motivators for doing the project when I did. Here is the Newegg product image for the heatsink we're dealing with.

I was happy with my purchase overall, until the rig started making unwanted noise. I was busy with school, so I didn't really have time to diagnose and troubleshoot. Today, I finally got around to fixing it. The culprit was the fan that came with the heatsink. The "long life" bearing had gone bad, and the cooling fan only worked intermittently. When it did work, it made a horrible rattling sound.

I needed a quick solution. I didn't want to wait for shipping. I had time today, and that's when I wanted to fix it. I visited Radio Shack to see if they had any solutions. The stock fan was 90mm, but the mounting holes were spaced the same as a standard 80mm fan, which they had in stock. The one brand they carried in that size was Thermaltake, and the price was $11. I had heard good things about their products, so I was sold.

The Thermaltake fan had just one problem: it was a case fan. For some applications, that's not a problem. In my case (LGA 775), however, there was a fitment issue. Case fans have mounting holes on both sides, which normally allows them to be mounted in a variety of ways. The same fan can be used for either intake or exhaust in any given position. The way this bad boy mounts, the rear mounting tabs get in the way, so I had to go after them with a hacksaw. Here is the result.

As noted in the comments, I mounted the fan upside-down. This is not optimal,
but it still works well enough for my lightly-overclocked application.
Learn from my mistake. Measure twice, cut once.

As you can see, I just cut the corners off of the outward-facing side. I used the screws off old fan, which were a little tricky to get out of the old fan. They were retained by a sort of locking collar. Wire snips would have been ideal for removing them, but they had gone missing, so I instead used a pair of needle-nose pliers to twist and break the collars off. Everything went together without a problem. I'm pretty sure the collars were on the screws just as a weak deterrent to keep consumers from doing exactly what I did. Here is a blurry close-up of three of the broken collars (one to be found later in an inconvenient way, no doubt), to give you an idea of what I was working with.

The new fan works like a dream. The blue LEDs work well as a night light so I can find my way to the lamp. The smaller fan turns at a slightly lower speed than the original (2000 RPM vs. 2400), so it's quieter, but it blows well enough that I can still overclock the processor because the heatsink is huge and doesn't need much airflow. I pronounce this operation a success, and I recommend it for anyone in a similar pinch.

Rebuilding a NOOK with a Broken Screen

2011-11-23T16:07:00.002-05:00

The Set-up

My roommate's Barnes and Noble NOOK had a broken screen. We suspect her kid siblings stepped on it at some point. I reminded her I had fixed my nook before, and she agreed to let me have a go at hers.

The hard part was finding the screen, but with just the right search terms, I found a seller on eBay that had a bunch of them. The seller is bcd-parts, and product page is here: eink screens for n1e, kindle 2,etc.

Disassembling the NOOK

As with every e-reader I've seen, the nook is mostly held together with clips. The back cover is made to pop off without any tools, and the battery comes out with the removal of one screw.

Removing the Face Plate

From there, we remove the face plate, which is held on by clips and sticky tape. The clips are a little more tricky than on the back cover. In the picture above, I'm pulling the faceplate away from the chassis with my thumbnail. There is a clip that has to be pulled like that in the same place on both sides. The rest just pop off with a little prying from a thumbnail or screwdriver.

Removing the Back Plate

Now we have some screws to remove. All of the torx screws on the back have to be removed. The size is T5. If you're going to make a habit of working on electronics and Saturns like I do, you might want to get a full set of torx drivers. There are 10 of these screws, which I've highlighted in the image to the left.

The one on the bottom-left is tamper-evident. It might be possible to peel the layer off and replace it later, but I didn't bother trying since this nook is out of warranty anyway. Note that the battery should also be removed at this point.

Once you get all of the screws out, it's time to snap the back off. As with the rest of the device so far, there are clips around the edge holding the back plate to the chassis. For some reason, Barnes and Noble really wanted this piece held on tight.

Removing the Motherboard

Now you should be looking at something like this. Since all the screws have already been removed, the motherboard is held in only by a few clips and the ribbons connecting it to all of the other electronic bits.

The headers all have latches that need to be folded up before they will release the cables. There is one each connecting the motherboard to:

Left navigation buttons
Right navigation buttons
Screen
LCD screen
LCD touch panel
Power button

There is also a connector for the speaker, but that doesn't have to be disconnected. The catch on each header is brown and flips up to open. This can be done with either a screwdriver or a thumbnail.

On the 3G nook, the 3G adapter may also have to be removed. The antenna connectors come off pretty easily (use pliers if necessary), and I think there are some obvious screws holding it in as well. It's been too long since I last had my own nook open to remember.

Once you have the ribbons disconnected from the headers, it's time to start popping the motherboard out, as you should be used to by now. Note that the body of the ribbon for the screen is stuck to the motherboard and will have to be peeled apart. If you are replacing another piece like the LCD screen, however, you could fold back the motherboard without that step. Don't try to force anything. If it feels like it's not coming, figure out what's catching before continuing.

Removing the Screen

Now that you've got the motherboard out, you should have a full view of the back of the screen. It is held into the chassis by tension in a metal frame. Gently pry the screen out of this frame. If you go slowly, you will find that you don't have to use much force. Again, for this portion, I've found that a thumbnail is the best tool, but a screwdriver may also be helpful.

Reassembling the NOOK

Assembly is the reverse of installation. That's sufficient information, right? I wouldn't do that to you folks. To reverse the steps, here's the order:

Install the new screen and clip it into the metal frame.
Clip the motherboard into place, making sure all of the connector ribbons are clear.
Slide each ribbon into its header and clip it into place. I have found that it's sometimes difficult to get a new screen to clip in properly. You just have to wiggle it and play with it until it goes in absolutely straight. The white line on the ribbon should be nearly flush with the header. I would say less than 1mm apart. Remember to stick the ribbon to the adhesive on the motherboard so it doesn't rattle.
For 3G nooks, reinstall the 3G adapter and connect the antenna.
Clip the back plate into place and install all of the torx screws. Go around the edge of the plate and make sure the clips connect to the chassis.
Clip the front plate on in the same manner, being sure to slide those funky side clips in the right way.
Install the battery (don't forget the screw).
Install the back cover.
Inspect to make sure you got all the edge clips on tight. Separated clips will be pretty obvious.
Boot it up!

Troubleshooting

If your nook has been broken for a while, odds are you haven't had it charging and the battery is beyond dead. When this happens, plug it into the wall charger and wait. The charging light should come on and stay on within a few minutes (max 15). If it doesn't, or it only flashes, something is wrong hardware-wise. One or two flashes usually means something is disconnected or not connected properly. Take it back apart and double-check the connections, especially with the screen. If the light doesn't come on at all, it's possible that you have a bad motherboard.

If the charging light comes on and stays on, but the nook doesn't start up, let it charge for a while. After a couple of hours, if it still won't start, perform the following procedure. Remove the nook from the charger. Remove the back cover and the battery. Hold the power button for 60 seconds to drain any residual power left in the system. Re-install the battery. Plug the charger back in and let it charge fully. This may take up to 4 hours. At some point in the charging process, the charging light should come on, and the screen will probably come on. If the charging light comes on, but the screen stays in whatever state you got it in, press and hold the power button for 20 seconds. The charging light should turn off while you are holding the button. Then, press the power button again to restart your nook.

Load it up!

Finally, you'll want to celebrate this victory by loading some new stuff onto your newly refurbished nook. Download some new books from B&N, and be sure to check out some screensaver and wallpaper images at ereaderbackgrounds.com.

Replacing a Snapped Bolt

2011-08-17T13:40:00.001-04:00

If you use and work on machines enough, it will eventually happen to you. Metal bolts fatigue and eventually break. This is a common occurrence when working on old exhaust parts, but sometimes it happens unexpectedly. I was mowing the grass today, and the mower blade retaining bolt suddenly broke. It was immediately obvious that the blade was no longer attached to the shaft because the engine was suddenly turning freely. If I had kept moving, it would have become even more obvious because it was no longer cutting grass. I turned off the mower and closed the fuel line valve, and I tipped it up to investigate. The blade and spacer were lying on the ground together. After digging around for a minute through the half-mown grass, I found the head of the blade bolt as well.

The procedure for replacing a broken bolt is straightforward in principle, but it can be a little tricky in practice. First, extract the part of the bolt that is lodged in the shaft (or whatever it's lodged in). Next, find a suitable replacement. Finally, reassemble whatever it is that the bolt held together.

The first step is the tricky part. There's almost never enough of a broken bolt left protruding so that you can turn it with the usual tools. My preferred method in this case is to drill a hole in the center of the bolt, then drill out to both sides and extract it with a flat screwdriver. This method worked well for me in this case.

When drilling metal, it's important to have the right drill bit. There are two major types suitable for drilling through steel: cobalt and titanium. In my experience, the cobalt bits tend to work much better. This may be because I bought a set of cheap titanium coated bits from an auto parts store, but I buy individual DeWalt brand cobalt bits. Both are made of high-speed steel (HSS), but cobalt bits are so named because the steel used to make the bits has a higher cobalt content, whereas the titanium bits have a titanium coating over regular HSS. This means that the cobalt bits can be sharpened, and they are more resistant to high temperatures as there is no coating to wear off.

Regardless of your drill bit choice, there is a proper method for drilling metal to get proper penetration without overheating the bit. The trick is to 'pulse' the drill, applying constant pressure. If you do it right, you will probably get a few long, twisted strings of metal out of the material you're drilling.

Chances are your bolt didn't snap off cleanly and there's some odd slope to the surface that's left behind. Start off in the middle of the bolt, and drill perpendicular to the surface to start out. Once you have an indentation that will keep the bit from 'walking', straighten out and drill straight into the bolt. Once you have a good primary hole, drill at a steep angle to one side, then the other. You want to make sure you use a bit that's small enough to keep all of this action away from the very edges. Here's how mine turned out.

It doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be long enough to fit the blade of your screwdriver and narrow enough that the screwdriver has something to catch on and turn the bolt.

This is a fairly new lawnmower, so the bolt came right out with a screwdriver.

My original plan was to measure the bolt and pick one up at a hardware store, but once I got the whole thing out, I saw the flaw in that plan. Troy-Bilt apparently likes to use weird, double-threaded, proprietary bolts.

Note how the thread closer to the head has a wider spacing than the thread toward the tip. Odds are you won't find that bolt at your ordinary hardware store. So, it looks like I'm done cutting the grass for the day. I had to order a new bolt online. The first site I went to wanted approximately one arm and one leg for shipping, so I tried another. The first site I came across with my part and cheap shipping was repairclinic.com, so I ordered from them. Shipping was still considerably more than the cost of the part itself, but it's at least a fair price, keeping the total under $10.

Repairclinic also guarantees same-day shipping on in-stock merchandise, so it should be on its way later today and arrive early next week, and then I can finish mowing my grass.

Rear Window Defroster

2011-08-10T14:47:00.000-04:00

I'm not quite sure how this happens, but when I bought my car, some pieces of the rear defroster grid were missing. As a result, only about half of the rear window would defrost, limiting rear visibility. In Virginia, it's legal to have your rear-center view obstructed, so long as you can see out of both side mirrors, but I prefer to be able to see as much as possible.

I set out to find a suitable kit. You can pay a lot of money for these things if you want to, but Advance Auto Parts had a reasonably-priced kit for $12.49 online. I think it was actually a dollar or so more in the store. A similar deal is available on Amazon. All I really ended up needing was the conductive paint and the applicator.

Permatex Complete Rear Window Defogger Repair Kit

The kit comes with everything you need to get your defogger working if you have a broken grid or detached tabs. My tabs were fine, so I only needed part of the kit.

Instructions are pretty simple and straightforward. Clean the glass with the included alcohol pad, stick the template to the glass in the appropriate place, and brush on the conductive paint.

I started using the kit by the instructions included, and it ended up looking horrible. The included template is too wide and not long enough, so it makes a wider-than-necessary mark on the glass and has to be moved multiple times. After realizing this, I decided to make my own.

The tools I used: a strip of masking tape, a smooth cutting board, and a sharp knife. Not pictured: a good straight-edge (steel ruler). It might be better to use a box cutter with a fresh blade than a pocket knife, but this worked fine for me.

I just eyeballed the width. I had the template from the kit (upper left) for a scale reference. It worked out well. Masking tape is cheap enough that you can make multiple attempts if you need to. If it hadn't worked out right the first time, I would have measured and done it the precise way.

My custom template on the glass. It took a few attempts to get it aligned properly. Sedans make for an awkward angle for this project. Just be patient and you'll get it.

This picture shows one of the lines I made with my custom masking tape template. You can see how it bled under a little bit. I scraped the excess off with a knife.

The entire project area. You can see in the top half how wide the original template is compared to the grid lines.

Overall, the results were good. I haven't had an opportunity to use it yet, so I can't be sure if it works. Testing with an ohmmeter doesn't help. There are practically 0 ohms between lines on the grid, so there's no real chance of finding a break on one line. The best I could do was to stick a probe at a few points on each repair to ensure that current would at least flow from those points to one side or the other. That testing failed to find any problems, so I'll assume the fix was successful until proven otherwise and report back when I know for sure. There's still some cleaning up to do after using the standard template, but at least it should afford me some rearward visibility.

Cleaning Car Windows

2011-08-07T11:16:00.001-04:00

If you're like me, you probably don't clean glass very often. Clean glass in your car can save your life, though, so break out the glass cleaner and paper towels and let's do some wiping.

The camera sees it worse than my eyes did. No camera tricks here. It was set to automatic the whole time. This window was apparently so hazy that it made my camera think it was dusk at 10 AM. The glass definitely needed cleaning, but it certainly wasn't the worst I'd seen.

First, spray your window down with window cleaner. Go ahead and wet the whole surface, but don't soak it. More than a light spray is just going to make a mess on surrounding surfaces. It doesn't matter what kind of cleaner you use unless you have tinted windows. They'll all streak if you don't use them well, and none of them will streak if you do. If you have tint, be sure to use an ammonia-free window cleaner, unless you want your windows to turn purple.

I tried to take more pictures in here, but apparently my camera went on strike. Wipe the window down once with a paper towel. Be sure to wipe everything that you want clean. If you're trying to do a really thorough job, you may want to roll the window down to get the top half-inch or so. You want the window cleaner to have a chance to work on every square millimeter of the glass. This wipe will also remove most of the cleaner. This is a good thing. If your windows are filthy like mine, your paper towel will come out looking like this:

Finally, grab a clean rag or paper towel and make another pass. You want to remove everything, so don't hesitate to rub vigorously. The streaks from the window cleaner should disappear as you wipe. It will probably take a few passes to get a section of the window clean. Once all the streaks are gone, it's clean.

Other tips:

I wrote this after I had already done the windshield, which is the most important and most difficult piece of glass in any vehicle. You'll probably want to treat the windshield as two separate pieces of glass, and sit in the passenger's seat to clean that side. Otherwise, you'll bump your mirror a lot and end up cursing your lack of strategy. If you have an E-ZPass, remove it to clean around it, but leave the Velcro pads on.

The outside of the glass is just as important as the inside, but it usually gets cleaned pretty well by rain. I frequently give it a good wipe with a gas station squeegee if it starts to get too dirty (due to lack of rain, usually). I'm also a proponent of Rain-X, which is a product you apply to the outside glass on your car to make rain slide off. As a result, I typically only use my wipers when I'm not on the highway. Some like it, some don't. You can get it at Walmart or just about any auto parts store.

If you smoke, try to avoid doing it in your car. In addition to making your car more difficult to sell when the time comes, cigarette smoke causes a film to build up on any surface it touches, including your nice, clean glass. I clean my glass once every couple of years. If you smoke and maintain clean auto glass, you'll probably find yourself cleaning it once a month.

To maintain clean glass, avoid touching it. No matter how clean you are, you're still greasy and dirty compared to clean glass. If you drive around with children or pets in your car, they're probably going to touch it and make you clean it more often anyway. Of course, smudges on back windows are more tolerable than the front ones.

Good luck, and enjoy your clean windows.