What Have You Fettled Today?

[Solocle]

My microwave oven popped last week - it stopped working and there was a characteristic smell of burned out electronic components. I was toying with the idea of trying to fix it, but after a quick look inside I decided that I wouldn't bother. I can live without the joy of that kind of thing these days...!

I've had about 15 years use out of the oven so I don't feel too bad about recycling it now and treating myself to a new one.

One thing I did notice when I looked inside though... there was a sensor of some sort on the end of a long cable. It was just dangling there doing nothing. I found a little mounting point into which it should have been inserted. My diagnosis is that many years of temperature cycling eventually caused the sensor to pop out, which meant that it was no longer doing its job properly. I reckon that led to overheating and failure. There had been a couple of unexpected shutdowns in the past few months, which I had attributed to dust blocking ventilation slots. Maybe they were precursors of this terminal failure.



PS Any suggestions for a replacement microwave oven? The main requirement is to be able to do good baked potatoes. My old combi-microwave could get them to about 95% of the quality of a slow conventional oven bake in sub-20 minutes. Probably 900-1,000 W microwave, with about a 1,000 W grill. Turntable big enough for a large dinner plate. Ideally, an inverter type microwave. Preferably no more than £150. My last one was much too complicated for my needs. Simpler is better.

The guts of microwaves are pretty scary.

 

[DCBassman]

The guts of microwaves are pretty scary.
View attachment 674213

It's basically a bit of a radar transmitter.

 

[buzz22]

It's been a while since I had a proper road ride so tonight I cleaned and inspected one of my 1996 Giant CFR's in preparation for heading out tomorrow.

With the old lugged carbon frames I make sure there's no signs of discolouration near any of the joins between the carbon tubes and the aluminium lugs- everything was in order so a quick wipe over and it was good to go.

This one is original except for the stem and new bar tape, the Shimano RSX triple crankset gives it a good range of gears for the hills I'll encounter.

 

[DCBassman]

Giant CFR

A giant Giant DFR, in fact! Nice.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Fitted new disc pads front and back. Front also required a mini bleed. Now introduced split pins from wheel side. That’ll make bending it back, when I next replace pads, a bit easier.

 

[DCLane]

A bit more work on the DBS Winner:

- The derailleurs went into the ultrasonic parts washer and are looking cleaner, so they're back on.
- The fork's had some grease although like the crankset it's a one-piece unit with an oil port. Oil still to go in both.
- Wheels had a first clean prior to a metal polish.
- Full frame clean with degreaser. It's looking all clean, if chipped and a bit rusty.

The re-build begins tomorrow as I need the space for my Thompson Capella build ...

 

[fossyant]

Fitted 'new' (ebay slightly used) rotors on my new superstar MTB wheels, and front tyre fitted. The tyres do look wider on the 35mm rims, rather than the old 25mm rims ! Other good news is the rotor position is exactly in the same place, so no adjusting the calipers !

I'll do the rear tomorrow, in the daylight, as I'm swapping over the SRAM cassette. My old wheels will have the cheap Microshift cassette, as these will be spares.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

The guts of microwaves are pretty scary.
View attachment 674213

Did you manage to fix it?

 

[Solocle]

Did you manage to fix it?

No, I was raiding it for the scary high voltage transformer.

2 years later and I mustered the guts to (briefly) turn the thing on. I made sure I was several metres away.

 

[ColinJ]

I got bored of looking at lists of microwave ovens so I decided to buy one of THESE Toshiba microwave/grill ovens. It is pretty cheap and simple but it should be able to cook a decent jacket potato, which is the main thing that I want a microwave oven for. It will be delivered by tomorrow evening so I will test it on a couple of spuds and see how it manages.

One feature I like is that the turntable will continue to turn after use until it is back in its original orientation. If you put a mug of tea/coffee in to warm it up, it will finish heating with the handle facing you at the same angle that you put it in. I always hated the way that the turntable on my old oven stopped at random orientations.

 

[Andy in Germany]

With Beautiful Daughters bike complete, attention has moved to one for Middle Son. I finally got hold of a donated wreck that had some potential, and started work yesterday. It was a bit tatty:

But after some work and a few new parts it's looking a lot better aleady:

I'm scouring the stores for used high end parts. Also, I didn't have any matching tyres and this will be a transport/commuting/touring bike so I've ordered some Marathon plus tourers.

 

[TK421]

Swapped out a rather worn FSA chainring for a new shimano one.

As you can see it's seen better days.

And the new one

 

[HLaB]

If it counts as fettling, I tightened the rear brake hanger bolt on the commuter.

 

[Andy in Germany]

I tightened the seat bolt on my son's bike.

 

[DCLane]

Cleaned the Raleigh SP Race after this morning's club ride.

Started painting the chips on the Thompson Capella and it was quickly evident whilst the light blue-green is a close-ish match, and touch-ups are only under the front fork, that was fine. However the deep blue metallic over most of the rest of the frame was nowhere near and that's needed in more visible areas. I've hopefully sourced a closer match, which should arrive this week by post.

I'm finishing the day by metal-polishing the DBS Winner whilst waiting for new brake hoods and Huret gear cables to arrive; forks, crank, wheels and other bits. It'll keep me occupied for a while