PowerTech CD 7000 CD 8000 Generator - Front Pulley Seal Leaking

So now my PowerTech CD 7000 Generator is leaking oil from the front pulley seal, which is on the side opposite from the generator head.

The motor is a Kubota Diesel D905-E

Could not find any definitive information on what Oil seal to use.

The amazing David at Oddessey Power in San Diego helped me find the right front oil seal!!!

This is the picture of the packaging . . .  $~25.00 . . . whatever I needed it.

So once I took the radiator off and got to the blower fan, I used an impact gun to take off the blower wheel.

When I took off the wheel I could see the front pulley.  It came off so easily in my hand I didn't have time to look to see how it goes back on.  I just assumed it was keyed or something.  No matter something to worry about later.

 The above picture is after I took the seal out with a screwdriver.  It came out really easy.

After looking at the seal seat, I saw some black gunk in the seat.  It was the felt from the front of the seal??  Some how it made it around the crank and was under the seal.

And it was plugging up the oil drain back hole . . . .  

I pulled all of the felt out of the hole.

UPDATE: 8/20/2018

DONT FORGET TO REMOVE THE SLIDING COLLAR AROUND THE SHAFT BEFORE YOU INSTALL THE SEAL - THE NEW SEAL WILL FAIL IMMEDIATELY - ASK ME HOW I KNOW.

I don't have a picture of just the collar, but its the ring around the splined shaft in the above picture.  It just slides and turns freely on the crankshaft.

1.  Install the new seal.

Super easy install.  I used a socket that cleared the crank and fit the seal diameter.

2.  Lube the collar with engine oil -  put some on the seal also if you can.  It won't hurt.

3. Then slide the collar over the shaft and push it through the seal.  The collar pushes the seal inward and seats the seal to the collar.  

UPDATE: Finished.

Now for installing the pulley . . . its not keyed and its not obiously marked. Its definetly counterweighted so I know it goes on only one way.  

Need to look at it again.  One of the above pictures of the end of the crank has a punch mark, the pully MUST be marked.

Hmm the aluminum washer doesn't look factory blue . . . what happens if I pop it off.

Yep.  There is the corresponding mark on the pulley.

Todd

Ford Triton 3V 5.4l Knocking Noise - Diagnosis Process - Failed Cam Phaser

Ford Triton 3V 5.4l Knocking Noise

Failed Cam Phaser

My 2012 Expedition motor seized late last year.  Something broke in the timing chain set . . . never bothered just knew the motor was interfeared.  Ordered a new motor online.  Swapped the engine in myself with the help of my neighbor and Son.  Lots of work, but easily doable on the 2012 Expedition.

But . ..  the engine had a knock that developed as soon as the oil started to warm up???  Weird.

The engine manufacture said it would likely go away . . .  It didn't.

After 500mi it didn't still,  so I started to try to figure out how to diagnose it.

I knew it was either the back cylinder or the 2nd to back cylinder.

It was also knocking at 1/2 engine speed at idle.  aka 250 knocks per minute.  I just used a stopwatch and counted out an interval of about 5 seconds, so I knew that was on the valve train, not on the crank.  Camshafts turn at 1/2 engine RPM.

Still didn't know which cylinder it exactly was OR what the cause was. 

I knew I had to see the valve train with the engine running and try to determine which cylinder had issues.

So I improvised . .. I went to a junk yard(its been about 20yrs) and found a valve cover from an early 3v triton.  Not exactly the same bolt layout, but that wasn't entirely important.

And I got out my demo saw . . .

I choppped of the part of the cover that would expose the camshaft and the valves.

Dont remove the part above the timing chain it will sling oil EVERYWHERE!!!

I could only really see the upper half of the valve train.

If you need to see more of the valve train then make a deeper cut, closer to the lower side of the valve  cover.  It actually doesn't need very much valve cover on the bottom to keep the oil in.

Make sure you keep all of the wire harnesses and goodies OUT of the valve train.  I used zipties to keep them out of the way.

Then I started it up.

Yep that's it running.  Thats the knocking noise it was making.  Slo Mo is cool also.

So nothing looks out of the ordinary, and is sounds like the knocking is coming from the intake valves based on the video . . .  you can't see the exhaust valve cam follower in the picture.

So while it was running . . . Disclaimer . . . . Don't do this unless you realize you can destroy your motor.  Disclaimer . . . 

I used a mechanics stethascope and listened on the cam journals and the upper part of the head(because thats all that was exposed).

I then was able to figure out it was the very back cylinder, and really loud on the head under the intake manifold.

Then I turned the engine off and started to try to see if any of the cam followers or lash adjusters were strange to the touch.  I could not tell a difference between any of them by feel.

Bigger Disclaimer . . .

I started the motor again.

Next, I used a 1/2 wooden dowel and gently pressed on the the last exhaust lash adjuster while the engine was running.  Ahh the sound changed!!!  I then tried it on a couple of the other exhaust valve lash adjusters for a sanity check.  No sound change on the correctly working ones.

Ok need to double check my work  . . . I ordered a lash adjuster from O'rileys.

A new lash adjuster doesn't budge under hand pressure or me leaning on it.

Next step, order a valve compression tool from Amazon.  This one worked for me . . .

Bullitt Autosport Valve Spring Compressor Tool for Ford 4.6 5.4 and 6.8 3V Engines 

by Bullitt Autosport 
Link: http://a.co/d/5k11VsE

I used the spring compressor to remove the cam follower and removed the lash adjuster with a magnet.  I also may have loosened some of the cam bearing caps just a millimeter or so.

I prelubed the lash adjuster and slipped it in.  Put the cam follower back in and fired it up.

NO more knocking.

Cue the Willie Nelson song - On the Road Again.

Todd

PowerTech CD 7000 CD 8000 Generator - Does not generate power

I have a PowerTech CD 7000 Generator on the motorhome and it was running fine, it just wasn't creating power.

I had the manual so I walked through the diagnostics and used an ohm meter on all of the windings.

The exciter winding was not within specs, and I assumed (incorrectly it turns out) that the exciter winding winding was bad AND that I had an electronic,  non-brushless Generator.

I took off the bumper of the motorhome to get a better look at the generator.

After I took off the bumper I could see the front better and I noticed the small square plate on the front.

I removed the plate and found this.

Those look like brushes.  So I removed the 2 leads and removed the 2 screws holding the suspected brushes to the commutator and removed the brushes and found a dirty commutator!!!

Not a great picture, but you get the idea, they look oxidized.

I got out some 600 grit sandpaper and WITH THE ENGINE OFF, very carefully started to remove the oxidation from the commutator.  I also had to manually turn the engine by the flywheel to clean the entire commutator.

This is a picture in the commutator while I was cleaning it.  It doesn't need to be perfect it just needs to generate enough power to excite the primary coils.

Now it works great!

Todd

Samsung Off balance problem . . .

Just replaced the springs and rods on my Samsung top loader.

Fixed it again for ~60.00 . . .

I should really post the stuff I do more often than every 4 years . . .

Glad to see it has helped people .  . . 

Todd

Kenmore Oasis Off Balance Spin Cycle - How to fix

Wow really long time since my last post . . . 2009????

Fixed lots of things just haven't posted . . .  perhaps I'll back-post :)

Our Kenmore Oasis Elite top loading washer has had a completely off-balance spin cycle for about a year now.  Now I admit that we have run probably several thousand loads of laundry through this washer (15-20 loads a week, no kidding) and except for the !@#$#% balance think it has worked really well.

The washer would try to balance itself by refilling the tub with water and agitating again, only to continue to have the same unbalance problem.  After 3 refill and drain cycles it would quit.

It finally got so bad we had to manually attempt to balance the load each time and only place like items together in the washer to make it spin.

I read a few repair sites but I wasn't convinced what the problem was until I opened it up and looked at the suspension and ball joints that carry the weight of the washer.

I popped open the top by pressing in on the latches (about 2" from either side of the washer) and propped open the washer.

Reached down and in-between the wash tub and the side of the tub and grabbed one of the suspension rods and pulled up a couple of inches to look at the cup and ball suspension joint.

Initial inspection they looked fine, but when you got close, you could see uneven wear on the "bearing"

Both the plastic ball AND the steel cup were scuffed and worn.  Essentially the steel cup rusted and the movement of the ball in the cup caused uneven wear on the ball.

This image is after the replacement cup was installed , , ,

Crazy as it sounds,  when all 4 of the corners of the suspension are worn differently it won't balance the washer!!!!

I ordered the wash tub suspension kit from SearsPartsDirect.com  ~69.00 delivered, with regular shipping.  Bonus:  The parts showed up 2 days earlier than scheduled!!

When the parts arrived the only difference between the old and new parts is the replacement insert for the cup that the top suspension ball is riding in.  This eliminated the original rusty cup and replaced it with a plastic insert that should make the ball and joint wear the same.

Its easy to replace the rods (10 min) . . . it takes time to take the top of the washer all of the way off so you don't break the water inlets(10 min to take it on then 10 min to put it back on)

I had to remove all of the water hoses, drain hoses and power cord.
3 screws on the back held on the top control panel. Remove any wires to the control board and set it aside.
I also undid all of the wires going from the lower half of the washer to the top half of the washer.
I also unscrewed the 2 hinges on the back so I could remove and lift the top half of the washer off.

With the washer empty, remove and replace one suspension rod at a time so the wash tub doesn't fall in.

Reach in and grab the rod and lift the rod up and remove the top ball joint by rotating and pulling it off.

Lower the rod and reach in deeper and with your finger or a screwdriver press the lower cup out of the bottom half of the suspension.  It will make sense when you see it.

Then remove the rod from the slot it rides in by moving it perpendicular to the tub.  Try looking at the bottom suspension with a flashlight.  Once you see it you'll understand it.

Now that the rod is out, press in the replacement top cup.

Place the new suspension rod back in the same way you took it out.  NOTE: you'll need to pull up on the rod to snap the lower cup onto the lower mount.

Now do the last 3 . . . took me all of 5 minutes.

Put it back to together.

Show the wife how cool and handy you are!!!

The wife is sleeping with the Maytag Repairman TONIGHT!!!


Update:  The washer balanced perfectly for a couple 100 more loads, then the basket/motor combination stopped being able to sense the clothes in the washer for the spin cycle(new problem).

We ended up going back to sears and ordering a new washer.

Cummins Diesel Fuel Shutoff Solenoid Repair/Cleaning

My Motorhome wasn't starting at seemingly random intervals.  We'd take it on a trip to the beach and it would run fine, but if you stopped anywhere it wouldn't restart.  It reminded me of a vapor lock on a gas motor.  I grabbed the manual and started reading.  On my mechanical injection 8.3l cummins diesel the solenoid is the device that turns the fuel flow on and off.

Check out this You Tube video for it in action:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVQdOi3nBhs

One time when it wouldn't start I checked and the solenoid wasn't in the "Run" position.  I put the key in the ON position, ran back and lifted the solenoid into the run position.  It stayed in the RUN position so we continued on our trip.  After the trip I went to buy the part at NAPA . . $230.00 for the part!!!!  I looked online, $180.00 for the part!!!

Since I knew it was just a solenoid, I decided to take a look at it and put a ohm meter on the pins.  There weren't any shorts, when cold at least so I assumed that it worked correctly electrically.  When I started to move the solenoid pin, I noticed it was "crunchy".  So I took it apart . . . . look what I found inside . . .

Click the pictures for bigger photos . . .

The black gravel and dust stuff was inside the bore of the solenoid and I think it was binding up the piston.  The gravel stuff looked like pumice, but it didn't crush between my fingers.  Perhaps it was a pad at the base of the bore to absorb the impact of the piston in the bottom of the bore, but disintegrated???

I examined the piston and bore and found that the piston was scuffed or surface rusted in an area, but the hard chromed finish was perfect otherwise.

I cleaned up the piston with my Dremel Tool, a polishing bonnet and some compound.  It cleaned up perfectly.  I also used the bonnet inside the bore and polished off the rust and minor pits.

(If you ever need a Dremel Tool serviced, send it to Rob Dremel at the Palm Springs Service Center.  http://www.dremel.com/en-us/customerservice/ServiceAndRepair/Pages/default.aspx)

I blew everything out, the rubber boot looked great, so I reassembled it with a new zip tie.  The bore no longer was "Crunchy".

I reinstalled in in the Motorhome, adjusted the nut to set the fuel flow to full flow when fully engaged.

I've taken a couple of trips and put about 750mi since the rebuild/repair and it seems to work great!!!

Update 2/27/2011 - Still works great, not a problem since.  About 3000 miles on it so far.

Todd

Additional Hard Drives in a Macintosh G5 Tower

This is another along the lines of "did this really work?"

Years ago when the G5 tower came out I had a need for more drives inside the case.

I started looking at the case and determined that 3.5" drives could be installed in the front of the case.

Notice how the fan just clears the HD. Very interesting . . . I think Apple thought of this during the design. Keeps them very cool also.

I am using this old single G5 1.8ghz as a backup server using Retrospect.

However OS X Server with these volumes for Time Machine would be very slick.

They fit perfectly and you can add 4 more drives in the space.

You can remove that fan by pulling on the handle. It just slides out.

You can then use the standard HD screws to mount the drive to the front screen.

You'll need a couple of power splitters to obtain power from the CD drive. I've run 4 drives off of it with out problems, but YMMV.

You'll need a SATA or ATA card and cables to connect the drives.

Put the fan back in and run disk utility to setup the drives.

Chrysler Town & Country Emission Repairs

Finally got my 2 Chrysler mini-vans to smog the other day. Both of the cars had vacuum hoses that were cracked and leaking causing the p0172 code to set(Fuel trim too rich). The hoses that were cracked were on the intake manifold side of the purge canister solenoid(on the passenger side of the car).

On the 1997 the 2 inch hose that connects the 2 hard hoses(just above the fan belt) that connect the purge solenoid(on the radiator hanger) to the engine intake. (I don't have a picture yet . . I'll get one soon.)

The other(on the 2002) was under and behind the throttle body. This one has a 90 degree angle to it that was cracked on the outside edge.

If all else fails follow the vacuum diagram under the hood and check all of the hoses.

San Diego Aptera Event

I forgot all about this.  The SD Aptera event was fantastic.  My wife won one of the raffle rides and was taken around the parking lot.  The car was smooth, stable and quiet.  It going to be revolutionary!!!

 P.S. The San Diego Auto Museum has a great collection of cars on display.  Its a very unique collection of ultra rare cars from the U.S. and Europe.

EGR Solenoid for 1990 Geo Storm

I have a 1990 Geo Storm that needed a new EGR Solenoid.  You can't buy them anywhere new, and the used ones are ~$150.00 or more.

I found a replacement.  You can use a 1994 Chevy/GMC 25/3500 Solenoid.  Works the same.

You'll need to modify the electrical connector on both the solenoid and the harness.  Nothing serious I used a pair of small wire cutters to make the mods.  

The pins on the harness and the solenoid both line up, but because the connectors are physically different you'll need to modify the harness connector and remove a small plastic stub on the solenoid.

You'll notice that if the wiring harness connector didn't have the outside lip??? it would fit inside the solenoid connector.

1.  On the solenoid there is a plastic stub between the two pins.  Remove it.

2.  On the wiring harness connector(mine is the blue euro type connector).   Remove the outside part of the connector (the lip???)  I cut my all the way back.

3.  Connect the harness to the solenoid.

4.  Connect the EGR hoses backup to the ports.  Ignore the port with the filter on it.

Apple Time Machine Backups With OS X Server Sharepont

I'm using Time Machine on my users desktops as a secondary backup to Retrospect and had a problem with users not being able to connect.

I am using a OS X.5.5 Server as the backup location and the share point is setup as a Time Machine Backup destination aka the check box, and the permissions are setup correctly.

I had all of the users running on the system except one that was previously working(The physical computer was swapped out, so the hardware address changed). I kept getting a error that the user was not authorized to use the volume. I deleted the users sparse image to zero success. Started and started the client, setup the sharepoint again. Everything I could think of . . . .

I knew that was garbage so I decided to ssh into the volume on the server and look at the share point with the ls -al command.

Low and behold there are files that are hidden security key files and only visable by using the -al modifier.

The control files are all named .HardwareAddress

The backup destination are all networkname_Hardware addresss.sparseimage

The file names correspond to the individual sparseimage file names(networkname_Hardware addresss.sparseimage). You could also locate the offending file name by the owner of the file if your sharepoint is setup that way.

To make a previous time machine backup work with a new Hardware Address or new File Sharing Name, you'll need to rename the networkname_Hardware addresss.sparseimage file to include the new Hardware address or File Sharing name respectivly.

You'll also need to delete the users .HWaddress file if the client doesn't want to connect

Supermicro H8QM3-2

Couldn't find any information about this motherboard H8QM3-2 or the comparable Tyan S4989 being used in a non SuperMicro case so I decided to post this build.

Background:

I needed a computational server to run fMRI simulations.  The Faculty who spec'd the requirement wanted 8-16 people to be able to VNC into the system and process their data.

We decided upon an Opteron system with the Tyan s4989, but the board wasn't available because it was being revised because of the new Opterons that are going to be released, so we decided to try the SuperMicro version. We chose Opterons because of the dedicated memory access and controller per bank of memory.  The Opteron might be slower than the Intel comparables, but we don't have the 2 cpu limitations nor the ram bandwidth issues.

Components:

SuperMicro H8QM3-2 Motherboard 4.1" CPU mounting 

16 x 2GB sticks of ram

4 X Opteron 8350's

1 3Ware 19650SE 1

6port Sata Card

8 x Seagate 1.5Tb drives in RAID 6 (hope to apply the firmware patch today)

1 Cooler Master S

tacker 810 Case

4 x Dynatron F

558 77mm CPU coolers

Initial Guesses:

From examining the websites regarding the mobo and looking

 at the measurements and the specifications I could tell that the mobo wouldn't fit in a normal case.  Not even close.  I needed a case that could handle up to 16 drives, but not break the bank.  I've have several of the CoolerMaster 810 cases in use as servers now so I was able to measure the inside of the cases to see if they would really fit.  It turns out that the SuperMicro board will fit

 . . . sort of.  

Mounting the Motherboard:

I had to modify the bottom of the motherboard tray.  The board is not straight on the bottom edge.  There is a deviation that supports all of the SATA co

nnectors on the bottom edge.  I cut the lip off of the bottom of the case with a Dremel tool and a cutting wheel.  

Not pretty, but it allows the motherboard to fit and line up with most of the mounting screws in the bottom. The only ones that didn't line up are the ones that look like they must be custom the the board.  They run front to back on the board between CPU 0 & 1 and the memory between CPU 3 & 4, and the one in the top most corner near CPU 4.  Over all not much of a problem.  It seems to work fine.

Power Supply:

The manual says the mobo needs a 1200 watt powersupply minimum.  I have the Coolermaster 850 watt ps that came in  the case.  Seems to work just fine.  The previous motherboard modification makes the SATA connectors slightly intrude upon the power supply, so its mounted slightly off level.  You could mount the PS in front of the onboard SATA connectors if you didn't need them.  I don't, but I just didn't attempt to re-align the PS.  It might even move 1mm or so to make it mount level.  I just wasn't concerned.

I have it hooked up to a Kill-a-watt powermeter(A must need for any sysadmin to determine UPS and current needs) and it pulls 550watts at startup and drops to 350 watts at idle with the CPU's in the Automatic throttling setting.

At full CPU load, the power consumption is 680 watts.  This is without any graphics cards other than the onboard graphics.

CPU's and Heatsinks:

Up until now its been easy mods.  CPU's installed with out problem, but with the choices of Heatsinks limited on Newegg and not wanting to go to Fry's I purchased 4 heatsinks that were designed for 1207F opterons.  I could have bought the ones for the board, but they were passive heatsinks designed to work with their fan shroud.  I didn't want to deal with passives and modding a shroud.  The heatsinks I used have a couple of issues:  

First the fins running perpendicular to the airflow in the case.  Not really a problem per se, but because the memory slots are so close the heatsinks the airflow from the heatsink will be impeded by last RAM slot.  Not a problem yet, but it might be.  

Second, the CPU's 0  & 1 are so close together that the heatsinks actually touch each other.  

Third they heatsinks also are less than a mm from the capacitors next to the slots.  

Fourth the cpu support brackets on the underside are too short for this heatsink.

This was an issue that was solved pretty easily.  Trim the edges off of the heatsinks.  The heatsinks are all copper so its pretty soft.  I took the CPU's to our Campus Research Machine Shop.  They cut the heatsinks on a bandsaw with a fine blade.  The heatsinks were originally a cube like this |_|, but now they look like this \_/ or the U.C.S.D. Library.

This mod solved the first 3 problems.  The fourth was solved by cutting one coil off of the springs that hold down the CPU's to make the screws long enough, but with enough force to keep the CPU down.

Final Assembly and OS Install:

Now the easy part.  Assemble the HD (with the cache bug . . .) and install the OS.  We use Scientific Linux.  Its works great for our needs.  If its good enough for CERN and Fermilab then its good enough for us.  I particularly like that they have a support matrix that tells you how long they are going to support that version of the OS.  Makes it easy to plan.

The OS supported all of the components out of the box.  Not a problem so far. 

Performance:

This thing is FAST.  Its the only server that I have ever seen that can max all cores at 100% for an extended period of time.  So far it has run @ 100% on all 16 cores for 32hrs straight.  16 jobs at a time

It must be because of the Opterons and the dedicated Memory Controllers.

Slashdot Article . . .

http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/13/1958238&art_pos=1

This looks familar . . .

Todd