I was asked to have a look at a ducted house air conditioning system which had been pronounced dead by two different air con repair people - both recommending an entire replacement system at massive cost!

I was expecting the system to be under the house, so was pleasantly surprised to find that the compressor and condenser unit was actually outside like a typical split system!

On inspection, everything seemed to be working, but the compressor was covered in ice, and the condenser wasn’t as hot as I’d expect it to be.

Unfortunately this meant that the problem must be in the evaporator / fan section - which was in the house’s roof.

After finding the manhole and poking my head up in the roof, I found the a/c gear to be pretty close, but the roof was, as usual, full of insulation, dust, and was massively hot!

After removing the lid from the fan box I found that the evaporator had created a large block of ice, and the fan wasn’t spinning - but its motor was very hot.

The motor was partially seized, and probably burned out.

I suspect that either the start capacitor had died and allowed the motor to cook, or the bearings had worn out and seized.

The fan unit looked familiar, and I realised I’d seen some at the local scrap metal shop.

I was able to pick up one that seemed to be in good condition, for $10. After adding a new start capacitor ($17) and repairing the bent mounting brackets it tested out perfectly.

So, the next step was to take the new fan and install it in place of the old one!

It seemed like it should be pretty easy, but with 50+ degree temperatures in the roof I had to do it in 10 minute sections and go outside to pour water on my head in between!

Eventually the new fan was in and working - and the aircon was finally pumping cold air into the house.

It turned out that the new fan actually had a more powerful motor than the old one, so it should actually work a bit better

This trailer had been reversed into a gutter, which shouldn’t really be a problem - but since it uses basic “slipper” trailer springs, which are retained by a bolt at the front and just a guide at the back, they were bent backwards until they dropped out of the guide and jammed the wheels!

Replacing them isn’t too hard, but I found the new springs were not exactly the same length - which meant they needed to be installed on the same axle (not both on the damaged side of the trailer) to keep the wheel alignment straight. A bit of shuffling springs around and it was done!

Today was the Sydney branch of the Australian Electric Vehicle Association’s field day.

I took my new bike (Electrocycle 2!) along, in an unfinished but ridable state.
Hopefully it will be all done and on the road soon

It’s currently a bit slow, because only half the batteries are installed, but it’s still pretty fun to cruise around on.
The other half of the batteries are in this bike for now:

It’s Geoff’s very nice conversion of a Hyosung GT250R, using a Perm132 motor and the same Thundersky lithium batteries as mine.

Since his batteries are in the go kart, we used half of mine in the bike so we could have everything running for the field day.

Takeoff is a bit quicker on my bike thanks to the larger controller and series wound motor - but the top speed was coincidentally pretty much exactly the same!

It’ll be very interesting when both bikes are 100% finished and road registered

At the field day I also got to have a drive of Kearon’s electric formula vee, which was very impressive! Now to talk him into letting me take it to the track

More info at: www.theelectriccarcompany.com.au/

“pod” filters are popular on modified cars - for better air flow into the engine and increased power.

Legally though, for a street car the air filter needs to be enclosed, and it’s good to shield the intake from the hot air in the engine bay.

For this one I made a two piece box with a plate sealing off the filter area from the engine bay, then a flat cover that slides under the edge of the front guard and screws down to the side plate.

One common issue with aftermarket exhaust systems is that they don’t tend to be as flexible as the factory ones (a side effect of larger diameter pipes) so they are more prone to cracking - especially if they hang lower than standard and hit the occasional driveway or speedbump.

This one had cracked most of the way around the separate wastegate pipe, and partly around the main pipe. I gave the cracked area a good clean up, welded it back together, and added a bit of reinforcing on the outside - which will hopefully stop it cracking again for a while

I tend to prefer factory engines, even with relatively high k’s on them, than rebuilt engines - and this is the reason for that!

The car’s owner had the engine rebuilt, but it failed shortly after. It was repaired under warranty but wasn’t cleaned out properly, so metal filings then clogged up oil feeds and damaged other parts - including the turbo.

It’s been a bit of an ongoing saga - and after yet another repair it lasted a short time before making nasty noises from the top end of the engine.

I had a quick look and found two problems.

One was that the oil spray bar on the camshaft (visible through the oil filler hole) was not spraying oil - which usually means it’s clogged up with gunk from the engine.

The other problem, which is a bit of a worry, was that the remotely mounted oil filter had been plumbed in backwards! The filter has an anti drain back valve, so when it’s backwards it will block the oil flow - causing the relief valve in the engine to bypass the filter.

So, an engine likely to be full of metal filings had been running with no oil filtration!

After removing the cam cover, it was obvious that there was some damage to the cams due to the lack of oil - which was the cause of the noise.

It’s a bit saddening to see this happen to a brand new set of cams!

The engine really needs another teardown, inspection, and very thorough cleanup.