Uses for Old UPSes

The VP of my department found the same thing with the battery in his BMW. He decided that the zillion dollar original was BS so I sent him to my favorite battery distributor for an Optima and helped him retrofit the hold down.

Pete C.

I do not even bother looking for honest car mechanics anymore. I gave up. I do everything I can do on my truck, myself. If that takes buying tools, usually I buy tools as it turns out to be cheaper anyway.

Furthermore, I even do not deal with car mechanics when they try to sell their used stuff (my hobby is to resell used equipment on ebay).

As soon as I learn that the seller is a car mechanic, I say something polite and hang up. That's not out of bitterness or some such, this policy does not make me lose money. I just know that I would come in, he would be unreasonable in his asking prices and likely even impolite, and try to screw me in every way he can.

i

With each new vehicle I have owned, I have ordered the factory service manual(s) at the same time I ordered the vehicle. I can't understand people who whine about a $100 manual set when they just spent $30,000 or more on the vehicle. I've read every one of those manuals cover to cover several times and you learn quite a bit.

Pete C.

battery were

replace a

I dunno. I took apart a 8 kVa UPS recently and it was about 600 lbs, without batteries.

I see. Usually, I think, 3 phase DC rectifiers derive advantage of 3 phase phase shift.

That's true.

i

Too bad all you've met are the bad ones. There are a few good ones left - but most of US have gotten out.(which leaves only the bad ones for you to deal with). I got out, largely, because the CUSTOMERS are unpolite, demanding,dishonest, cheap, and generally impossible to satisfy - even when you do something for nothing. They book their car for 3 hours of work and don't show up, after you have made room in your busy schedule to get them in NOW - and that is only because it is IMPOSSIBLE to do it yesterday. Then they want you to diagnose the problem over the phone and guarantee the price - AND be cheaper than the other 10 or 12 mechanics they have done the same thing to. If you can't get the parts PRONTO, they cry and complain - and you can NOT have every possible part available - the dealers don't either. Then they lie about what has happened to the car, because they want it to be someone elses fault and problem, not their own. You fix the car and they leave and stop payment on the check or dispute the charge on their credit card. Not only that, they bad-mouth you to everyone who will listen when at the bar, a party, or wherever, whenever the subject of auto repair or car problems comes up - which is ANY time. Then 3 months later, after you have fixed, say the brakes, they come back with the wiper motor not working - and - you guessed it - its YOUR fault!!!!

It just wasn't fun any more after 25 years - and its gotten a whole lot worse in the last 15 or more years.

Not entirely true, the few lucky people who have been able to find honest, reliable mechanics do tend to speak highly of them.

Remember that the people bringing in the cars in the last 15 years or so as you have noted, are the parents (or now their children) from the generation that has deluded themselves into the belief that mechanical trades (dirty jobs) are somehow devoid of education and skill and have actively discouraged their children from having any interest in such things.

This delusion of the PYVs (plastic yuppie vermin) is furthered by the increasing complexity of cars and the thought that the grease monkeys couldn't possibly understand anything about computers so they must just be swapping parts until things magically start working.

It's only going to get worse too...

Pete C.

They keep swapping parts because it makes them money.

A true story. A couple of years ago, a lightning struck a big tree in our yard:

That also knocked out our central A/C.

So, I went in with a multimeter and tried tracing just where does not signal go etc. I learned that the control board was sending proper signal to the motor drive board, etc.

Then we called an A/C guy. He calls me at work and says stuff like "the main board is probably knocked out and needs replacement", lets replace this and that etc.

I asked him just what basis do you have for saying so. (because I knew that it was bullshit). He mumbled some nonsense. I decided not to hire him, although I paid his visit fee. I did not feel like hiring someone who is either incompetent or a crook. I called another A/C company and explained them my findings etc.

He replaced the motor drive board, it was covered by warranty (but labor was not), and everything works fine to date. Some other things failed since, such as quick disconnect terminals fell apart on the main contactor, but the control system is fine.

The moral of the story, they want replacing parts because it makes $$ for them.

i

Forgot to say, the guy who serviced our AC (the second one) is actually quite honest, at least I did not notice anything bad about him. His company is called Krope and Sons.

i

Only those who have the sense to know the value of finding and keeping a good mechanic (or any other tradesman/proffessional) There are fewer of THEM out there than there are honest reliable mechanics.

And I got out of the mechanics trade and into the computer service world - - -.

That's what I decided 17 years ago. And I was right.

Now everybody's kid wants to be a computer tech instead of a mechanic

- and for the same reason kids wanted to be mechanics 40 years ago. 40 years ago the "gearheads" wanted to be mechanics to fool around with their first love - the CAR. Now the "computer nerds" want to be able to play with THEIR first love

- the Computer / Game console/ Whatever. And they will work for almost nothing just to be able to do it. and their method of repair??? "swapping parts until things magically start working"

Time for a THIRD career?? (4th if you include teaching)

Seven or eight years ago the gas gauge quit on my dad's jeep. He took it to the dealer. The changed the sending unit. Then they changed the gauge. They had it over a week and still hadn't fixed it, so he paid them over $400 to get it back. I took a look at it and found the problem in 15 seconds. The lug on the ground wire to the sending unit had snapped, and the wire was hanging down, in plain sight. A new lug took a few minutes to install and it worked fine, till he traded it in on a new car a few years later.

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Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

Its like the days when there were real TV shops. The techs knew what they were doing, and went to every available factory school to keep up with the new designs. Most people thought you just shoved tubes in till the set worked, and that it was criminal to even want to make minimum wage. They were rude, ignorant, and price shopped for the cheapest service calls. Well, guess what? The cheapest service calls were the fly by night operators who worked out of the trunk of their car, or in one case, a dirty old hippie in a VW van that reeked of marijuana some. It was rare to find a good customer who understood that it took time to repair something, and some parts took time to find.

We had a "Customer" take us to small claims court because we charged for an estimate. He claimed that his mechanic didn't charge for an estimate, so we had no right to, either. He and the judge had big smiles on their faces as they told my boss he was wrong. My boss plopped a RCA CTC38 series chassis on the Judge's bench and said, Well, in that case would you mind telling me what's wrong with this set? The judge started yelling that he had no idea what was wrong so my boss asked, If you can't tell by looking, how can we? We have to find the problem, replace the part and make sure there are no other problems before we can give you an accurate estimate. He won the case.

I started computer repair on the old Commodore 64. A scope and good soldering skills were a must. I built a test bed with ZIF sockets to test the different chips so I could verify that they were bad, and to test new chips when they arrived for wherever I could buy them. Now, I'm old and disabled so I repair PCs as a hobby. I collect dead and half stripped computers and build working systems from the parts. They are given to the local "Vets helping Vets" program so they can be given to disabled Veterans who can not afford to buy a computer. It gives me something to do for a few hours a day, but I really miss building TV stations and telemetry equipment for the aerospace industry.

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Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

I think you mean they are the "children (or now parents)"- this type of mental dyslexia is disturbing to the meticulous reader.

I like that- PYV- good acronym- or "awesome" as the PYV say.

The moral of the story is that you are PYV. All the electronic boards are LRUs in the mechanical trades and there is no way that repair could be cost effective any other way, parts are way below labor costs. In the case of a lightning strike where one board has failed, it is good practice to yank *all* of them and be done with it. You are getting

*new* boards at reasonable markup, you pay a single labor charge, and there is no possibility of less than a durable fix or additional damage being done due to faulty drive. I can see the HVAC tech breaking out the oxy-acetylene torch to solder components...too funny.

No, I meant it in the order it was in. The PYV parents came first 15 or so years ago, followed later by the children of the PYVs once they were old enough to have cars needing repairing.

It's quick, descriptive and accurate.

Pete C.

I had a mid-90's Chevy S-10 with antilock brakes. One day, the brakes made a funny sound and the service light came on. I noticed that the brakes were not behaving properly.

I took the truck in for "Mr. Goodwrench" to take a look. They told me that I would need a new antilock computer and the cost was something on the order of $1000. I told them to forget it.

I limped the truck home and later, curiosity got the better of me. I jacked up the truck so that the front wheels could spin, and then I went hunting for wheel rotation sensors. Connecting my scope, I could see a nice, clean sine wave coming off the front right wheel. The waveform from the front left wheel, however, had a a very irregular shape that was much lower in amplitude.

I purchased a new rotation sensor for $75 bucks, pulled the wheel and brake disk, and installed it. Everything worked like a champ after that.

It appeared that the old sensor had been struck by rock, and the core of the sense coil had probably been fractured. I was left to w> "Pete C." wrote:

Shrug...I spent $65 to have my truck run though the computer diagnostics. They couldnt find the problem, suggested some high dollar repairs..shotgun approach.

I replaced the badly worn distro cap and the rotor. Ran fine after than.

Im starting to think that there are more button pushers than actual tradesmen in auto mechanics.

Gunner

"Pax Americana is a philosophy. Hardly an empire. Making sure other people play nice and dont kill each other (and us) off in job lots is hardly empire building, particularly when you give them self determination under "play nice" rules.

Think of it as having your older brother knock the shit out of you for torturing the cat." Gunner

A code reader is an absolute must for more or less anyone who knows how to hold a wrench. There are cheap ones at harbor Freight, or more expensive ones. I have a nicer $129 model (Equus II) and it paid for itself many times over.

Once my wife's car developed some sort of a fault light. Since I had this code reader, I determined that the problem was with the fuel tank and after googling, it turned out that her fuel tank cap was not fully screwed in. Properly tightening it took care of the problem. Had I not owned it, it would be a whole evening ruined, at least $50-100 paid to a car mechanic (that's assuming an honest car mechanic who would not ask for unnecessary repairs), etc.

i

That is why for the few things on my truck that I don't have the facilities to do myself and can't justify buying new tools, when I take it to the dealer for service I give them a specific set of instructions on what to do and clear warning that they are *not* to attempt any diagnosis or deviate from the exact work order I give them.

Pete C.

An honest mechanic would first tell you to tighten the fuel cap before they look at it and charge nothing for the advice. This is a *very* common proglem; BTDT. Here, most of the bigger auto parts stores will read out the computer as a free service. They won't reset the codes, but will tell you what the computer "thinks".

OTOH, my '93 Eagle Vision had an intermittent in the flywheel sensor (no RPMs -> no ignition/fuel) that didn't show up on the computer until it failed with the computer attached. The shop drove the thing for a week before the failure occured.

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  Keith