A $350 jigsaw puzzle

This is going to be fairly short since I didn’t do any project work at the shop this week. I did start a small painting project. My wife bought a couple of metal toddler bed frames at a garage sale (where else?), and my job is to paint them pink. Right now I’m just working on sanding the old paint so the new paint will grip.

Anyway, I thought I’d get around to sharing about the mega deal my wife and I scored a few weeks ago. What would you pay for a 1997 SeaDoo GTS with trailer? $1000? $1500? Would you believe $350? You would be hard pressed to find just the trailer for that price! Of course, there is a catch, and you can see what that is in the photos below.

 

Yep, that’s right. Low low price of $350, but some assembly may be required! I’m not too concerned about this aspect. I had to take apart much of our other GTS last summer to replace the starter. What I don’t know is will I be able to find any parts that I will need during the re-assembly. I know that there is a bad bearing on the crankshaft, that’s why the seller tore it up. He just didn’t know how to keep going, ran out of patience, whatever. His loss will be my gain. Even if, for some reason, I am unable to make it run, it is the exact same model as our other GTS (same colors even) and will be great for providing spare parts. And I get a trailer out of the deal. I do not have one for the other GTS, and it is a pain transferring it from its stand onto my flatbed utility trailer in order to get it in the water.

Nothing else to report, except to say congratulations to my brother on his wedding this past weekend.

Wet test, supply runs, and bonus brazing

Big weekend at the shop. The drive motor of the centrifuge was wired up with a cord and a remote switch so it could be operated in its final position. I’ll tell ya, the switch really looks like overkill because I decided to employ an outlet box and switch from what I like to call my “Western Electric Surplus” supply. My grandfather worked there for 30 years as an installer, and he acquired quite a few items over the course of that run. (Let’s put it this way, it has been 26 years since he died, and I have never had to buy zip ties unless I’ve been in need and caught away from home without any on me. He had a LOT of stuff!) This box is the kind you would find on walls in older concrete wall basements. 1/8th to 3/16ths inch thick aluminum, and possibly just short of bulletproof. A little bit of armored conduit so I could mount the thing on the front of the stand and I was all set to go. Drains were also installed on the washer tub to drain the oil. So I guess it was finally time for a test run with some oil. Having learned my lesson from my Babington burner testing, this was NOT going to be videotaped.:) Turns out that was a wise move. Adding the oil into the spinning drum pointed out just how badly the metal ring at the top of the pot was held on. It leaked terribly. Not only that, but the plexiglass I glued into the round hole on the one end of the tub did not stay firmly attached. 

More research was needed to find a better binding agent. Time to head to the Mecca of home improvement junkies, the local home center. In my case it’s Home Depot, but I would go to Lowe’s too if they had one in Houghton Lake. Probably not gonna happen considering two other home centers in the area bit the dust in the last ten years. Anyway, the point I was trying to make before my train of thought was totally derailed is that I don’t particularly like having to go to that particular Home Depot. Why? Let me show you.

A 26 mile round trip is waiting for me every time I need to get anything at the local HD.  26 miles of moderately curvy roads with a max speed limit of 45mph.  That’s what happens when you have a 20k acre lake between you and the main retail establishments in the area. I do have a local hardware store about a 5 minute drive from the shop, but their selection and hours are limited.  I find it much more convenient to try and anticipate my needs while I am still in Midland during the week and go to the HD or Lowe’s there. That way I’m not eating into my limited shop time or driving all that way for one or two items like I did this weekend.

I settled on trying the quick setting version of JB Weld. All I can say is WOW! I had stayed away from JB because its advertising made me suspect that it was way overhyped. I’ll have to hold out final judgement until I can do another test run, but that stuff really seems to have formed a tight bond.

Normally, I would have had to wrap it up now. But my wife was downstate with our daughter and a change of plans meant that she wouldn’t be home until late the next day. So I was able to get in some bonus shop time! And I was determined to put it to good use.  Last week I told you about the cracked well pump I got at a garage sale. Sunday I decided to give repairing it a try. Here’s the results.

This is my first attempt at brazing since Jr High shop class, and considering that I think I did OK. Again, I’ll have to wait until I’m able to re-assemble the pump and test it before I call it a success. But the broken pieces seem to be on there really tight.

No shop time coming up this weekend. I’m going to my brother’s wedding (no one should have to face that kind of torture alone:) ). Next week it might be a good time to tell you all about my next mechanical project.  Till then, bye bye.

The lord of the mayflies and garage sale wars

Greetings! And welcome to June. As I suspected last week, very little got done on the main project over the holiday weekend. But there are still things to talk about. The irrigation pump I was using to move oil up to my rafter barrel needed detoxifying as it was needed elsewhere. Keep in mind that this pump will never be used for drinking water, so my standard for clean here is 'can I see an oil sheen on the water coming out?' A couple of fills with Simple Green and water and some Lysol and water left in overnight seemed to do the trick. With the Simple Green, I also ran the pump with the inlet and outlets closed to get some good agitation going.

The night time work sessions in the pole barn turned out to be quite buggy, and I don’t mean equipment problems. I had the doors wide open because we actually had warm weather. I was under attack from two fronts. Behind the pole barn is state swamp land which seems to supply roughly half the mosquitoes on the planet. The front is roughly 400’ away from Houghton Lake, and this was the weekend that the mayflies chose to rise up from the lake to find mates. By the end of the night, there were swarms of them around every light in the shop and plenty of them covering the floor and other surfaces. In addition, there were plenty of large moths and other night time insects all flitting around and generally making it look like the set of some horror movie. So nobody can say that I don’t suffer for my craft!:)

As most people are aware, Memorial Day weekend is a huge time for garage sales, especially in my area. On Friday I wasn’t even looking to stop at any, but on my way back from town I saw one that had potential. I ended up scoring big time! For a grand total of $15 I got a new captain’s chair for my boat, a box of galvanized pipe fittings, a box of brass pipe fittings, a box of 3” PVC DWV fittings, and a box of miscellaneous electrical items that included outlets, floodlight fixtures, and a motion sensor for an outdoor floodlight. Any one of those boxes had items that would have totaled close to $100 if purchased retail, and I got three.  On Saturday, my wife, child and I all went out together to do the garage sale thing. It was also a very successful day. I scored a utility sink (with faucet) for the laundry room for $12, a well pump and galvanized fittings for $20, and an old style well pump tank for $20. (Old style does not have a pressurized air chamber inside) The pump is going to need some welding to repair a crack, but this was a great find because now my lawn watering pump will not have to do double duty anymore. The tank is not necessary for pumping oil, but I will be modifying it to increase air storage for my air compressor.

As I said earlier, I did not get a lot done on the current project. Partly due to time constraints, but also partly due to some indecisiveness on how to proceed. I could not keep myself focused on either getting the centrifuge set up just enough to see it work, or going forward with setting it up as it needs to be when completed. The two objectives have some overlap, but they are not the same. Eventually, time constraints made me choose work on the permanent setup.  Much of the temporary work would have had to have been replaced or altered so I might as well be patient and do the work once.

That’s about it. Next week I’ll either have some video of a working centrifuge, or the story of a bigger deal I snagged last week.