It seems appropriate that in spite of the tarp, we have a photo of workers cleaning the P off of the Kennedy Center.
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Zimmie
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Dan Kaminsky once said I know how computers work.
It’s more than a little weird that Apple decided to demonstrate their new LLM-centric features with a demo application centered around origami, a hobby rather famously being wrecked by LLMs generating impossible models and garbage directions.
These headaches with too little clearance around or above fasteners make me think I should try some Astro-style sockets. They have the traditional square drive for use with existing socket wrenches, but also a hex head around the square drive to let you drive them with open/box-end wrenches. Sort of bolt size adapters.
1/4” square drive with 11mm outside hex
3/8” square drive with 17mm outside hex
1/2” square drive with 22mm outside hex
Since the attachment point can be inside the wrench, the whole system can be much thinner than traditional socket wrenches allow.
The main complaint on the Element was clunking in the rear. Clunking from a suspension is like an earthquake, but the mechanism is a little inverted. Two surfaces which should ordinarily slide smoothly instead snag and build up tension until they abruptly skip over each other. In most suspensions, only a few things can cause that sort of snagging. The most common is ball joints, but it can also be movement through a bushing.
The sway bar end links on the Element have two ball joints each, and the bar itself rotates and potentially slides a little through two bushings on the rear subframe. Took a look and confirmed: torn boots on the end links allowing grease out and water in. Did the coilovers too, because one shock was visibly blown. Oil all over.
Did a lot of suspension work on a friend’s Honda Element. Such a cool car. Replaced the rear coilovers and rear sway bar links. Was going to replace the control arms too, but the inner bolts have very limited clearance around them. None of my sockets quite fit, and I didn’t have the right combination wrenches.
Oh well! Suitable combination wrench set is on the way. I’ll do them next time, along with the outer tie rod ends. Maybe front struts.
Opened today with a workout. My cardio machine offers little games, which are mostly a way to make interval workouts more interesting. In the particular game I ran today, you collect points by being in the correct performance “lane”. I normally get all of them, but this time I missed one early on by over-exerting.
At the end, it told me I was in ~4500th place out of everybody who has done it today, and that this is a new personal record for the workout. Hmm.
Had to solder about 220 through-hole joints today (headers onto some microcontrollers). I do this pretty infrequently, so it takes 20-30 joints to get back in the groove. Once I did, though, everything else came out looking like a machine did it. Good wetting of the pads, and clean exponential curves to the pins. I’ve missed physical electronic work like this. Once I have a house, maybe I’ll get a hot air pencil.
Got the low-profile Allen wrenches and a taller jack, and replaced the snub mount bushing this morning. When the mount finally came off, 20 years of accumulated road dirt fell out and blew directly into my face. Always wear your eye protection!
I guess my next tool is technically going to be a set of low-profile Allen wrenches. The car’s an Audi C6/4F, and it also needs a new bushing for the snub mount (connects the front of the engine/transmission package to the front of the frame). The OEM bushing is some kind of foam like the shock bump stops which totally disintegrates by 30k miles. Metal-on-metal makes for rough shifting.
There’s very little clearance above the bolts on the engine side of the mount, and my socket bit set won’t fit.