General Tech What did you work on Today?

That dog grew a lot of fur.

I made me a tig rod holder holder tonight while supervising @YJ_Auzzy dick off on his buggy.

Not too exciting but replaced the power steering pump in my XJ. Its always nice when the problem is easy to spot.

I've had two post on RME recently around the fuel cell in my buggy. It recently cracked and started leaking fuel so I ditched the aluminum one and got a steel one with a plastic bladder from RCI. If you crack one of their aluminum ones they will sell you the style I got for a really good price. Anyway, the day it cracked I siphoned all of the fuel out and got ready to take my old one out and change the mount for the new one.

I had to take out my rear seats and the rear floor to access everything. Pretty simple to do and had it all out in about an hour and a half (in this picture the rear floor is still in)

Once I had it out I grabbed my cut off wheel and went to town cutting up the old mount, sliding it forward and welding it in it's new home. Also had to modify the fuel cell top because it contacted the two tubes on the back. I did remove the walbro pick ups in my old tank and move them to my new tank, that was probably the hardest part of this whole thing. I can barely get a hand through where the filler neck goes, my arms were all scraped up from that (no pictures of this part). Last Carl ( @I Lean ) totally helped me out and cut out new mounts from the ghetto templates I took him.

Once I had the finished product back from Carl I went to town drilling new holes, cutting the extra length off I had him leave on the mounts to the right length and welding the bottom of the mounts to the plates I had.

I am super happy with the finished product. I just have to paint it and do the final install now. It was way easier than I had anticipated this project being. All in all a fun little project and really glad I didn't blow myself up or catch my garage/house on fire. Working with a used fuel cell really sketched me out.

I wanted to get some Fall cleanup done next to my shop, and store my Kayaks for winter off my trailer.

Originally I thought they would fit standing under the eve of the shop, but I soon found they were too long, so I had to come up with plan b.

I made a trip to Home Depot and started pricing out my options. I soon decided that 1" PVC should be strong enough, so I grabbed some pipe, tee's, and elbows and headed home to give it a go.

The day was getting away from me, so I decided to mow the lawn with the light I had left, and then finished my storage rack after dark.

It took all bloody day, but it's done and I'm fairly pleased with the end result. Now I can grab my favorite one for a quick trip to the lake without having to move all of the others.

I made it a little narrower at the bottom so it isn't quite as close to the trailer wheels. This rack wont survive being struck while backing in.

Had a leak in my ARB. Line rubbed so I fixed it and was a perfect time to install my new diff cover. Little beefier then th stock one.

I welded together this Hel-Hook so I can stop hanging my helmet on the regulator.

After trying to recover my neighbors broken down car and a tire went through my deck decided to do this with my dad in town. It is pressure treated wood. Should I also seal it with linseed oil or a deck sealer of sorts?

kmboren said:

After trying to recover my neighbors broken down car and a tire went through my deck decided to do this with my dad in town. It is pressure treated wood. Should I also seal it with linseed oil or a deck sealer of sorts?

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I would. I use linseed oil on mine. Don't apply it in your driveway though.

I Lean said:

I would. I use linseed oil on mine. Don't apply it in your driveway though.

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Another vote for linseed oil here. Good advice on the driveway application

What if you have a gravel driveway with a weed infestation?

I use premium high dollar used oil on mine. looks and works great and is free. I tape a rag to the end of broom handle and mop it on ever other year. Im going to use atf this next time as i think it will penetrate deeper into the wood.

I've got about 35 CAT6 drops for internet at the new house and I spent a few hours last night patching them into a couple panels. I've never done this before so I'm not sure how I should have oriented the cables but it seems to have worked fine. I've got a couple left I need to trace out then I'll move on to tracing and terminating the RG6.

Yay, hardwired ethernet! man I despise WiFi

Thats how I did my home 20 years ago. Each room has 4 home runs to the utility room. Why 4 you are thinking? Because I figured I could put a phone in two separate places in a room and if I put a phone in a location that I should also be able to plug in to the internet as well. At one point I did have four phone lines in my home, one for home, one for my business, one for fax and one for my alarm. By having Cat5 for my phone line I could have 4 phone lines but now I have no phone lines, I actually got ride of my last line 6 months ago.

I have my network punched down on one CAT5 block you have and my phone lines punched down on another. I also have a shelf in there that holds my router, 24 port gigabit switch and a APC battery backup that they are all plugged into. I also have a wireless access point in the basement and one upstairs for any of the handhelds. I run a server in my home but anymore it doesn't get used much other than storage for photos and older music files. We now use Spotify and Dropbox so I really don't know how much longer I will keep my server on-line. I used to have clients log into a server but I have since changed the way all that happens. I even got ride of my static IP addresses. Technology is changing daily, its crazy.

I think yours looks great. As you tone them out, make sure you label them so you can find them quickly if you don't plug them all into a switch at once. I love not having to use wireless for the TV and Hopper. I have mixed feelings about putting in Alexa or any type of system that can listen to whats going on inside my house unless someone can convince me that you can shut it off from snooping, truly shut it off from snooping.

I was told this storage room wasn't going to be drywalled and when I put in the wires I labeled them higher up which are now hidden in the wall. I did the quick and dirty labeling again with blue tape but have a label maker from work I'll be switching them out with. I've got 2 drops to each room and the space that I'm calling my "hobby" room has four. I bought a dumb switch (HP 1810, 24 port) off ebay for $30 and won't be connecting all the drops from the get go.

I have Utopia scheduled to install on the 14th and we're going to start with a 250 meg connection. Thats what we had at the previous house and it was nice. I have the option to go up to a gig for an extra $15 a month but I think 250 will be enough. I stumbled on a write up Monday about the Ubiquiti Edgerouter X being paired with an AP AC Lite and dove down that rabbit hole before ordering the setup. Basically the edgerouter is a high quality hardware router that sits between the modem and your computer. Most consumer routers today also serve wifi but this one does not. You connect one or more access points (APs) to the edgerouter throughout the house to get the wifi coverage you need. I swapped out my parents router to mine when we moved into their house in the spring so rather than take it with me and make them buy a new one I'll just leave it and set up the new house with this new fancy hardware. I bought just one AP for now but have ceiling boxes for one on the second floor and another in the basement, I expect that coverage will be fine on the main floor but we'll see how it goes. Despite being high quality hardware its very affordable. The edgerouter was $52 and the AP Lite was $83 both off amazon which is pretty comparable to a consumer level all in one combo. The software side of the edgerouter is the fancy side which can be configured a ton of different ways which might be fun down the road.

I've got room in my rack for future expansion. I wired the house for in ceiling speakers in most rooms thinking that I'd use the monoprice whole home audio controllers. Each controller can handle 6 zones and I have 12 total. Those have wall control panels that home run with cat6. I also ran security sensor wires to all exterior doors and the windows that open on the main floor and basement. My plan was to buy a konnected.io board that converts the wired sensor data to wireless and feeds it to a smart home controller like my SmartThings hub. The konnected.io board is typically used to convert older security system sensors into "smart" systems but I saw the value of not needing to replace batteries in the individual sensors and went that route.

We have a fair amount of smart speakers in the house already and for my birthday I got an LG smartscreen. We are team google so we have google homes and google home minis. My 3 year old makes me laugh when he starts asking what different animals sound like. It seems like he always adds "what to people sound like" which google doesn't have a response for. It seems like we are always streaming music though and these make that simple and easy. There are buttons to turn off the mic on each of them if thats your thing, then you'd just push whatever to them from your phone which is what I do anyway. We like them but understand that they aren't for everyone.

YROC FAB. said:

I use premium high dollar used oil on mine. looks and works great and is free. I tape a rag to the end of broom handle and mop it on ever other year. Im going to use atf this next time as i think it will penetrate deeper into the wood.

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Filthy. LOL.
I can't imagine how gross that is to lay on when you strap your rig down.

Today I replaced the front brake lines and installed a new battery.

I officially started to earn my man card today.

You know how your constantly thinking: “ if I had a welder, I could fix that so easy”? Well I bought a welder a couple weeks ago and today I was able to finally put it to use.

I was repacking the exhaust on my daughters 50 when I realized the silencer had cracked inside.