Bring out the big guns…

“American planes will always be superior as long as there are wonderful men like you in the cockpit. And German parts.” — Lt. Commander Block

The KE Jetronic and I go back quite some time. My first Merc (w201) had this injection system as well as the same engine (M102 but with less displacement) as the pornstyler. May it rest in peace…

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It didn’t run too bad but I never REALLY figured it out why it wasn’t running perfect. Then I had to part with the car quite unexpected. It still fired up and ran fine but I think it probably wouldn’t have passed the German road safety inspection anymore, they are not too keen about cabriolet conversions…

Concerning the Injection System, it’s payback time… After some consideration I bought “A quality product made in America”.

zeitronix1“Quality Exceeds Expectations / Made in USA” says another label. Well my expectations are moderate, converting the signal of a oxygen sensor to human readable numbers is no witchcraft at all. Let’s see them exceeded…zeitronix2

Inside is some circuitry probably made in china and a Bosch LSU Wideband Oxygen Sensor (made in Germany). I just want a ready-made circuit before I build my own so I can ensure that mine is working fine… And I want the pornstyler to run fine before I start building my own circuit.

Disclaimer: I didn’t mean to offend anybody from or fond of the US. I just enjoy to tease you guys 🙂 If I had thought the device would be crap I wouldn’t have bought it.

After installing it I would say my expectations are met. You wire up it just like the manual says (Plus, Minus and Emulator output for narrowband sensor), plug it in and it runs just fine. By coincidence Olli wired up an “Innovate” (same thing, different producer) at the same time and the experience was more unpleasant. The colour of the cables do not match the colours mentioned in the manual and you have to do some “free to air” (?) calibration to get it working which need an extra switch and a LED which are (i think) not in the box… Well done Zeitronix! How about Linux Software for the thing? That really would exceed my expectations…

One step after the other…

Not much to blog about over here. Over the holidays I had some really good fun with old and new friends. The weather sucks big time, it’s snowing. At Easter holidays…

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The last time I remember snow at Eastern was a couple of years ago. I went rock climbing with friends in the french alps (haute alps, elevation 1000m +). Even there it was pretty uncommon.

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An oldschool champagne colored beemer (BMW). Something’s wrong with this picture… I nearly laughed my ass off…

The ToDo List is still long but I’m getting there. The pornstyler has a new cardan joint and distributor. The wideband lambda is working fine and I finally understand the injection system and the (hopefully) final spare part is ordered and will arrive next week. The pickup part of the travel vehicle is in really good shape, I’m still not sure about the cabin. We’ll see. Today I want to prepare the station wagon for sale (rip out stereo system, fix idling problem). And maybe install the reversing camera on the travel vehicle. But that would be two steps…

Scary stuff in the workshop #1

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Disclaimer: It’s not as bad as it looks, the springs are not under tension.

Still: Don’t do such stuff. Even if it’s save you will look stupid. People will make fun of you and/or tell you not to to it. This is especially fun in a shared workshop. Back to the point: Putting spanners only on one side of the spring (which is under tension) is guaranteed to make funny bouncy spring make funny bouncy stuff in the workshop an maybe hurt/kill somebody. Not funny.

The save way to go is to use proper spanners, compress the spring, remove it and then decompress it. And we also have decent spanners in the shop you don’t have to use the cheapos… If you have to support something which is under pressure please do it right. Use something which has a proper stand (three or more legs) so it won’t jump away easily if somebody kicks it unintentionally. Also use a layer of wood to distribute the load.

In this case I would have used the workshop pushcart (you can see the wheels in the back of the photo) and put it under the differential or some proper three legged stands…

I am a number again… 915 to be exact…

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Today I really hate it here. A sign on the “get a number” machine says something like “longer waiting may be expected due to technical difficulties”. Hmm, I’m Number 937, 824 is served right now. Last time there were 32 people in front of me, now it’s 113. Last time it took about 40 minutes to get served. Fuuuuck… After a couple of minutes a nice guy gave me number 915 because he got a lower one from somebody giving up.. 85 to go. With the given rate of the last visit this would mean close to two hours of waiting.That will be half an hour AFTER the office closes. This could get interesting… The previous owner of the travel vehicle is already nagging that I wanted to get this done by Tuesday (which I could’t because the license plates hadn’t arrived yet.). From tomorrow to Monday is Easter holiday and I have to work at Tuesday. It has to be done today or I’m in trouble. Seems like I have to sit it out… Another two hours down the drain…

 

I hate you, smartphone!

Something snapped today in my head. My Smartphone did not really factory reset itself, it just lost the sd-partition and fucked up some file permissions. By deleting an empty partition and restoring some permissions via clockworkmod I could access most of my data (at least the improtant stuff). The phone (HTC Desire btw.) never really worked well after it was hit by a heavy metal object with pointy ends. I replaced the cracked digitizer but messed up on gluing it in probably so dust is building up between the lcd and the digitizer. Sometimes it’s not ringing and it really got me upset by various bugs. I don’t know if it’s the cyanogen mod, the hardware or whatever. Since I carry it in my jeans pocket and don’t like extra shells it looks really torn up because sometimes it has to share the pocket with extra change, keys, bottle caps, …

I love to have the power of the interwebs at my disposal at any time. Especially combined with a gps and a compass. You are somehow unstoppable in an unknown town. But I hate it that the battery always runs low or is empty and that these things are not rugged at all. Also the screen size is to small to actually enjoy the thing and the size of the device is almost too large to put it in your pocket.

If you want to retain a proper condition to sell it after a year or so you have to handle it like a raw egg. From my point of view phones are more like tools, so they get an unintentional beating from time to time and I touch them with without washing my greasy hands before… Also the price of a decent smartphone actually would buy you a decent pad…

So I made a decision: I will buy a proper phone and a pad/tablet. Hmmm. iPad? Nope, I hate apple. Galaxy Pad? Nope, old processor, no hdmi. Nexus? Nope, no sd-card. Acer A700? Well, not too bad. But expensive and no gorilla glass. Asus Transformer Infitity? Well. It is expensive. But it’s supported by cyanogen mod, has hdmi, a sd-slot, gorilla glass and (drumroll) a keyboard. Now we are talking! Since my trusty T61 is also pretty used up I need a new notebook as well. I thought I’d go for a subnotebook but maybe the pad is the better choice… Ok, it runs android instead of ubuntu which means I can’t use it for software development. But when I do software development I need a decent resolution and screen size anyway so I could go for a bulky notebook. Hmm. Sounds worth a try… Uh. One moment. There is something vital missing.. IT HAS NO 3G! Are you fucking kidding me? 600+ smackers for a mobile device and no mobile internet? Alright, what else can I buy. Hmmm. The TF300TG Transformer has 3G. It’s 200€ less. Only an ordinary 1280×800 display. Asus, I really like your stuff, especially mainboards. But you just lost 200€ by not selling your top end pad with mobile internet in germany. I would have bought it. Really!

Anyways, lets order the cheap one…