IronLizard's Workshop

Improvised Plastic Repair

2008-05-09T19:09:00.001-07:00

Nearly everyone's had some important piece of plastic trim or other part break in their car at one time or another. In the past you pretty much had to ignore it or shell out a mad amount of money at the dealer for a new piece (unless your luck enough to find it at a salvage yard in decent shape). Glue either refuses to work for the most part or fails very quickly on abs. These days you can

Faulty ECM or Just an Oily Distributor? (Nissan Sentra/Pulsar)

2008-01-06T05:45:00.001-08:00

Who the hell came up with the idea of a sideways mounted distributor stuck right into the oil gallery of a cylinder head? To be fair, I knew this particular bit was in need of replacement. It already leaked oil onto the transmission bellhousing just below due to a worn distributor shaft, I just wasn't in any particular hurry to get a new one since I rarely drive. What I didn't expect was what

Vista, Virtual Drives and the Blue Screen of Death

2007-12-31T03:48:00.001-08:00

They started sporadically at first, gradually increasing in frequency until my beleaguered machine restarted with every visit to the Vista login screen, with it's pretty Aurora Borealis-like facade and ridiculous login icons. The faulty memory had been replaced. The ATI video drivers had been rolled back, rolled forward and unrolled with great vigor. USB devices had met their doom while being

Automated Form Submission Using axWebBrowser With No Id Tags

2007-11-20T03:22:00.001-08:00

It's fairly simple to manipulate the DOM of a web page in the Internet Explorer ActiveX control when the tags are nicely formatted with Id tags. You can just stuff the element into IHTMLElement and do Document->getElementById("Id"). You can then diddle with the button, field or whatever other HTML element you like to your heart's content. But what about those fields and buttons the page creator

Arachnophobia

2007-09-20T13:58:00.001-07:00

Rolling Your Own Gaskets

2007-08-22T23:27:00.001-07:00

There are times when you can't find a particular gasket locally, or it's just unobtanium. You could always use silicone gasket maker but there are certain applications that are just too much for it to handle. That's if you trust silicone gaskets not to eventually lose chunks and do things like clog your oil pickup screen. I don't and, as a result, avoid the stuff whenever I possibly can. So what

HP Netraid and Modern Linux Kernels

2007-08-18T22:11:00.001-07:00

They just don't play well together. I recently acquired an aging HP Netserver (for free!) and wanted to load up a LAMP server on it for testing. It seemed like a very straightforward proposition until I attempted to put it into practice. Not one modern distribution would would detect the RAID controller. Redhat 7.3 on some old disks would, however, and this gave me a bit of hope. The problem

Seat Belt Non-Cents

2007-06-18T14:37:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure when the penny was dropped into the seat belt of the oldsmobile, but it certainly was a hassle. Tweezers, pliers, nothing seemed to work and no American coins that I know of are magnetic. So I bit the bullet and picked up a 'new' female end. Removing the old belt pretty much requires flattening this y-shaped bend, otherwise turning a wrench to remove the nut is impossible. A pair

How Changing a Battery Cable Lowered My Idle

2007-05-08T19:15:00.001-07:00

One of the more unusual automotive experiences I've had since cutting down on the drinking. O.o To explain a bit: I knew the Pulsar would need bugs worked out of it sooner rather than later, considering most of it is still twenty years old. It's engine compartment is still filthy, the transmission came straight from a scrapyard with a starter still attached, the rubber is fossilized and...

WTF, Tickle?

2007-04-25T07:58:00.001-07:00

Online quiz company Tickle.com is now releasing private data, such as IQ test results, to their members by default. An e-mail received today: Tickle is excited to introduce member profiles. Everyone's profile lists the tests they have taken and makes test scores public so you can see how you compare with other members. Plus, you can give tests star-ratings, comment on tests, and post messages

Quarter Windows, the Cheap B@stard's Way

2007-04-24T17:53:00.001-07:00

While at the local salvage yard, some time ago, I found a nice quarter glass for the Oldsmobile's passenger side. It even came complete with stickers and some grease pencil graffiti. Knowing how rarely I ever find a car of this particular vintage (95) there, I grabbed it and paid only about ten dollars for the glass. Thinking I'd just saved a good bit of money, I wandered over to

I Should Have Been Paying More Attention

2007-04-11T22:11:00.001-07:00

I spent a nice few hours trying to find a nonexistent vacuum leak and dismantling/testing various sensors in a vain attempt to bring this Pulsar's idle down to acceptable levels from a ridiculously high 1200 RPM. As it turns out, the car's brain was disagreeing with me as to what, exactly, the idle should be. Before the rebuild the same thing had been happening and I'd assumed the mechanic who

Nissan Swap Hell

2007-04-07T02:26:00.000-07:00

I've owned two Nissan Pulsars back in the early nineties and they were probably the most fun little cars I've ever driven. Rebuilding the motor in one, on the other hand, leaves a lot to be desired. Especially when you don't have a garage to do it in and the specimen you're dealing with had more problems than a movie star checked in for drug rehab. After two days of fiddling to make it start

I'll be back later

2007-02-16T21:16:00.001-08:00

Regularly scheduled programming will resume when zombie killing addiction is satisfied: Boxhead Warning: This is the biggest time waster I've found yet.

The Axiom GPS

2007-02-12T11:51:00.001-08:00

Fortunately, I was apparently wrong about the Axiom data logging portion of the receiver being AWOL. After viewing it's messages from startup in a terminal program (which, oddly enough, is called Terminal and highly recommended for serial port tinkerers), it happily spat out this message: SiRF Baseline Version: 1.3.1DKIT144 Axiom Variant: k201AX Feels rather silly, as I'd previously only

GPS Wankery

2007-02-10T19:51:00.000-08:00

I picked up an old Axiom GPS module on ebay a couple of weeks ago for about 20$ with the intention of using the built in memory to log locations and spit them out as one large packet via sparkfun's transmitter/receiver pairs. Too bad it doesn't seem to work. Oh, the module itself will output NMEA strings at 4800 and even go into SiRF binary mode with the supplied program (conductor), but the

Holy Crap, It Works. (Somewhat)

2007-01-09T01:02:00.000-08:00

SMPT on the picasa google group has figured out a fix to posting from Picasa that actually works. It involes downloading a particular beta version.

Photos, Blogger and Picasa

2006-12-19T07:39:00.001-08:00

If you've followed along here at all, you'll notice my irritated rant regarding posting photographs and other images on Blogger as of late. It's just broken. I think I may have found a workaround that's somewhat useable, but only if you already store your photos on Flickr or were planning to upload some there already. Using Windows Live Writer (very nice tool, by the way) and a plugin called

A Bug

2006-12-19T07:08:00.003-08:00

I'm not sure what else to say. It's a bug. I wish it were a furry winged angel of death, but no. It's a bug.

And Now I Can Hear My Failing Power Steering Pump

2006-12-14T18:40:00.001-08:00

Yes, it's true. The noise the compressor bearing made completely masked nearly every other sound in the engine compartment by the time I'd gotten around to it. Without further complaining, here's the list of things you'll need to remove your compressor clutch and replace it with a less noisy or worn out version: Clutch Removal and installation tools (2, see previous post for pics) Clutch

Yet Another Kind of Death Rattle

2006-12-09T19:01:00.000-08:00

This time, the a/c compressor started making a whine and rattle. It was, at first, quite difficult to track down until I got on the ground next to the passenger tire and had a good listen. As it turns out, the large bearings holding the compressor clutch and pulley assembly to the compressor shaft are prone to failure. This wouldn't be such a problem if there were a bypass belt available for this

The Missing Label

2006-11-21T21:39:00.000-08:00

And Other Pet Peeves.As you may have noticed, I happen to own an Olds 88 Royale with the vin K engine. Besides the magically melting intake manifold, there are a couple of other little gripes about this car without even resorting to irrepairable oil leaks. Fortunately, there’s workarounds for these too. Why does this have to be the only vehicle I’ve ever owned without a belt routing diagram

Tunecast Mic Toy

2006-06-20T01:05:00.000-07:00

I still didn't have a use for it at the present, so I added a small mic and preamp so my son could have some fun with it. It’s made using a “dead bug” style of circuit building (called such because the various components resemble nothing so much as insects with their legs up in the air) with two soldered strips of copper to plug in behind the battery contacts. It does work, but the range drops

TuneCast part 2 - Sliced and Diced

2006-06-06T21:39:00.000-07:00

Last week, I tore apart the Tunecast and added a lengthy antenna to increase it's range somewhat. This was somewhat dissapointing, but still a great improvement. After injecting it with 5volts from an old PC power supply, it suddenly became a usefull gadget again. The problem was, of course, that this useability was greatly impaired by having to connect it to a ten pound power supply or, at

TuneCast Range Extensions

2006-06-02T20:41:00.000-07:00

After seeing the quick hacks made to the Belkin Tunecast 2 to improve the range by tweaking the antenna from Hack-A-Day, I remembered the forgotten Tunecast (1) stuffed in the armrest of the Oldsmobile. This thing has a maximum range of about eight inches (as measure by my alarm clock/radio) and was incredibly sensitive to everything. I think the biggest problem, however, was the choice of only