Pet hates ?

Now now, Michael - that's no way to talk about that nice Mr Lieberman .... :-)

Arfa

But, but, he likes to DESTROY things!!! ;-)

AF is the spanner size - across flats - and those fit UNF and UNC. Which are basically American Fine and Course. Slightly confusing as a 1/2 AF spanner fits a 5/16ths thread. All the above cars would have used UNF and UNC.

Some post WW2 cars were basically pre WW2 designs - or used major components from them, and may still have had BSF or BSW threads in use. Nuffield products sometimes used a peculiar metric thread with BSW heads just to confuse things.

In message , Arfa Daily writes

still.

I'm not Dutch but I do spend several weeks there every year and watch some Dutch TV almost every day.

BBC1 and BBC2 are available on cable, but without teletext, apart from subtitles, so many viewers are exposed to British attitudes and humour. I imagine that that will continue after the digital switchover.

There are also a lot of UK programmes and films on their own channels. Most keep the original soundtrack and are subtitled (not always accurately). Documentaries such as David Attenborough's tend to have Dutch speech when the presenter is off camera.

Dad's Army was very popular there, to my surprise as I thought it was too British. Several other programmes have been made in Dutch versions, but not always successfully. The Dutch version of East Enders flopped, and their versions of Only Fools and Horses and The Kumars at No. 42 were simply dire. Their QI, HIGNFY and Who Do You Think You Are? have turned out well.

In return for our sending them excellent programmes, they then sent us The Generation Game and Big Brother.

Apart from having a basically different sense of humour, the Germans are not exposed to British humour to the same extent because their foreign programmes are almost always dubbed. I can't comment on how they correspond to the original soundtracks as I have never watched any British comedy on German TV, apart from the Monty Python German special years ago.

Don't know about the French, but who cares about them anyway?

Aha ! Now I come to think of it, I knew somewhere in the dim recesses of my tired old brain that "AF" stood for "Across the Flats". Never really considered how that allied to the actual thread size. Thank you for enlightening me !

Arfa

Not come across those on UK cars. Where you need a smaller head than standard, normally allen, torx or even one with curved sides which is an exact fit to the next size down bi-hex socket. Basically to make the head round or as near as possible to give maximum strength.

A wrench in the UK usually means an adjustable spanner of some sort, so only used by amateurs. ;-)

On 1/21/2011 5:43 PM Arfa Daily spake thus:

OK, Arf, a small lesson in regional US dialects, free of charge:

Nobody here in "Cal-ee-fonia", as our recently departed Governator/Gropenator called it, calls them "interstates", even though they are, in fact, interstate highways. Some folks back east may call them that, though I'm not sure (I've heard them referred to as "turnpikes" in some places). One wonders whether some LA residents even know what an "interstate" is ...

In any case, just in case you actually visit Caleefonia sometime in the near future, you should also be aware of an important difference in usage between SoCal (basically El-Lay and environs) and NoCal (San Francisco and thereabouts). Down there, they don't use *any* noun for a road (highway, interstate, etc.), but they do use articles with the road number, as in "the 405", "the 101", etc.

But beware: up here in the Beige Area, where we like to think we're so much superior to our SoCal cousins, we never use the article, saying instead "take 80 to get to Berkeley" or "take 101 to 280 to 17 to get down to Santa Cruz". (One can easily spot newcomers to San Francisco who refer to "the 80" or "the 101". That's just SO wrong!)

California is strange..

It's only January and we have the winner for The Understatement Of 2011.

Thank you for that enlightening dissertation ! However, as you say, it's not actually *wrong* to call them Interstates - for that is what they are, as evidenced by their designation "I" xxx - just 'not quite right' in your neck of the woods. It's been a while since I was last in California, but I'm sure I recall the I5 being referred to as 'The Interstate' by the guys in the factory that I used to visit. Maybe in 20 years, or whatever it is now, the usage of the term has changed. I could be wrong, but I thought that the big road running just to the west of the Las Vegas strip was referred to locally as 'The Interstate' or 'The Freeway', likewise the I75 and I95 in Florida, although I have seen this term 'turnpike' over the that side of the country. Perhaps Michael can enlighten us on the usage of the words over there in 'gator country ... ?

Arfa

The midwest and southeast do call them either Interstate or abbreviate it to 'I'. This is a good thing, since they run a thousand miles or more. In fact, I lived about 15 miles from I-75 in Ohio. It's about the same distance from me, in Florida. I can't recall anyone not using this terminology in the 20+ years I've lived here, or the 30 + years I lived in Ohio. The only place I've been with no Interstate Highway was in Alaska. Everywhere else, they used the same terminology.

Why do you think it's called 'The land of Fruits & Nuts'?

The 'turnpike' is a toll road.

I was trying to have some restraint and hold back.

Yeah.. One time I was going to paint something. The can of spray paint said to only use it in 50% or less humidity. I laughed when I read that and thought there must be less than 20 days a year that would have low enough humidity to paint this thing..

That's when you dig out the heat lamps to dry the surface, before you paint. :)

Screws are fine. I can live with having too many screws because half of them are usually stripped out and the remainder hold things together. What bugs me are snap together clamshell cases, such as LCD monitors and TV's, where you have to remove a mess of screws *AND* pry the case apart. While snap together plastic is probably easier to assemble because it doesn't require much fixturing to position the robotic screwdriver, it does suggest that the case was never intended to be opened or the unit repaired.

I recently repaired a Yamaha P70 electric piano. I didn't count, but I'll guess about 60 large "sheet metal" type screws holding it together. I don't use an electric screwdriver, but this is one time that I wish I owned one. Even with switching hands, my hands ached after I as done. The problem with such "sheet metal" screws is that they offer high frictional resistance on every turn, while more conventional screw threads, only offer high resistance when tight (or smeared with thread lock).

My guess is the large number of screws was to prevent mechanical resonances in the plastic case or to keep them from falling out from vibrations. Still, metal thread inserts, screw threads, and steel nut plates, would have been much easier to handle.

On the silicon grease front, I agree with most of the comments. Thin works much better than globs of silicon grease. One should remember that the purpose of silicon grease is NOT to bridge gaps. It's to fill in the surface roughness, groves, and crevasses. Most of the heat transfer is metal to metal contact, not through the silicon grease.

In a past life, I used to design marine radios. The problem was that the power xsistor packages of the day (1970's) were generally thermal disasters. Either there was insufficient contact area to obtain sufficiently low thermal resistance, or they were not flat. I solved the first by building pyramid like structures of copper washers to act as a heat spreader. I solved the latter by polishing the mounting base of the power transistors on fine emery cloth. I hated to polish away the gold plating, but that's what it took to get the heat out. I made numerous tests and measurements trying to determine the optimum amount of silicon grease, and eventually concluded that ultra thin is best. Instructions were to smear a tiny amount onto the area, and then wipe ALL of it off with a plastic scraper. What remained was silicon grease in the remaining surface roughness, which was all that was necessary.

I recently repaired an IFR-1500 service monitor. The power supply section was intermittent. The 0.062 aluminum power supply case, was butted up against the large aluminum heat sink that covered the entire rear panel. In between was a huge amount of silicon grease. The sandwich was held together by two large 10-24 screws, which probably explains the silicon grease overdose. Two screws is not going to bend the aluminum case so that it lays flat. So they tried to fill in the lack of flatness with silicon grease. That doesn't work.

It took me considerable effort and alcohol to clean up the mess, but I still managed to get it all over everything on the bench. After the repair (large copper wires on torroids were not soldered properly), I reassembled it with only a little silicon grease around the two large screws, and left the rest to it's own devices. Works fine with no obvious overheating (checked with an IR thermometer and thermocouple probe). My guess is all that silicon grease did nothing useful.

Not much of a change here. Most of my work is fixing computers, networks, and printers. That part of the business has decreased substantially. However, I've always done 2-way radio, audio, electronic music, cell phones, home theater, monitors, power tools, test equipment, HP calculators, kids toys, and whatever the customers need fixing. The only recent change is that I'm doing less computers and more of the other stuff. However, I don't think it has much to do with the global economic situation. The preference of the American consumer for cheap junk, usually made in China, has displaced most of the higher reliability, but also higher priced, better quality products. After discovering that the cheap junk replacement is no better than the original cheap junk device that had failed, they start looking to me to help them keep the cheap junk alive. It's possible, but since they'll often pay more than the device is worth just so that they don't have to deal with the vendor, I can make money on such repairs. Often, nothing more than a thorough cleaning is all that's required. I also fix bicycles, chain saws, and optics, but since I don't really know what I'm doing, I avoid major challenges. If I had concentrated solely on computer repair, I would have been in serious financial trouble, but by offering my services to fix almost anything (i.e. diversification), a drop in one area, won't wipe out the business.

Oh, there is one area that I won't do any more. I'm no longer able to the construction work necessary to run CAT5 all over a building. I contract that out to younger and more suicidal kids, who are usually grateful for the work and money.

We'ed only be confused in Canada. We have to deal with both UK and US humour....

John ;-#)#