Tag: troubleshooting

February 4, 2026 – Just Breathe

February 4, 2026 /

Not two stroke fumes but it has been said that a engine is an air pump. The carburetor is equivalent to the lungs in that pump. I thought that getting the leaf blower started was going to be the easiest of my three gasoline powered machines to start. It is only about four years old, I have always ran good gas and I didn’t leave gas in the tank. I figured a shot of ether in the carburetor would get things going in short order. That would not be the case.

As I stated above, I confidently took the air cover off and opened the choke all the way. I sprayed a heavy shot of engine starting fluid and pulled the cord. The machined choked and sputtered and ran for about 20 seconds like it couldn’t quite get going. That would be with the choke on. Then, it immediately died when I opened up the choke on the carburetor.

I tried this again thinking things just hadn’t gotten up to operating temperature. This time I let the machine run two or three minutes under half choke. As soon as I opened the choke again, it died. This should have been my first clue as to what the problem was. However, I didn’t have any parts. It is not like I keep a bunch of small engine parts around anyway but I certainly was not not expecting to have to work on this machine. It has barely ever been used.

From what I could see, the fuel supply line had air gaps in it. I wondered if there was a break or crack in the fuel supply line. The priming bulb was full so in theory, even if the fuel was struggling to load the line, the delivery to the carburetor for running was adequate. I could obtain fuel line locally so I went about changing the feed and discharge lines.

The fuel line itself was hard and brittle. It did not seem to be broken. Nevertheless, while pulling the lines out of the tank, layers of the line sheathed off. In my mind, changing the line doesn’t hurt anything, it optimally shouldn’t be in the condition it was anyway. I crossed my fingers that it was just a line problem even though in my head, I really didn’t think this was going to work.

Guess what? My head was right. I pulled and pulled and I could only get the engine to run as long as there was starter fluid in the carburetor. I tried until I was getting to the point that my arm (neck) was bothering me, which doesn’t take that long. I resigned to having to do a more extensive rebuild. I wasn’t going to get that done while I was at the lake for a day or so I ordered an aftermarket maintenance kit.

It is tricky to plan delivery sometimes. I want to be home when it comes. I also know that we are not within the prime network at the lake. I have yet to try how delivery works, but it seems like I need to add another day to most deliveries. That is to say that I would not be here at the lake for delivery receipt and I may not be home either.

You can see what is included in the picture above. Since my lines were just changed, the carburetor comes with a new primer bulb attached, the air filter seems fine and I am not going to tear the whole thing apart to replace the spark plug, I am just going to swap carburetors. This cost $15 delivered.

Notice in the picture above, the O-ring fell out. I mention that so that you will be careful while doing this. I saw this too, I looked around and I didn’t see it anywhere so I thought my mind was just playing tricks on me and I put everything back together. Then I took the blower off of the bench and there was the O-ring. That cost me five minutes to take everything back apart and put the O-ring back on.

I gassed the blower up and gave it a shot of ether. It started after three pulls. The problem with the blower was something in the carburetor. If were up to me, I would take the old carburetor and rebuild it and then put it on the shelf for the next time I have these problems. What I am finding is that rebuilding small engine carburetors is a dead art. If you can buy an entire machine rebuild for $15, there is no sense in paying $30 for all of the gaskets.

One thing about living at the coast, small engine shops are not dead. We are far, far away from the logging heyday of the 1970s but there is still active logging in second and third generation forest in the Oregon coastal mountains. There is a saw shop only two miles from our lake house. Eventually when we get settled, I will visit and see if I can get a rebuild kit for the original carburetor. I am not going to pay more than $20 but I would be willing to spend more than an aftermarket carburetor just so that I don’t end up throwing the thing away. That being said, every man has a limit.

End Your Programming Routine: It was pouring down rain when I finally got the machine started. That is difficult conditions when trying to blow loose debris off the ground. Wet ground tends to cause sticks and needles to get stuck on the surface but I did what I could. With a giant fir tree in the front yard, I have a feeling that this blower is going to go from rarely used to most used gas tool in the shed.

January 28, 2026 – Gotta Use Your Noggin

January 28, 2026 /

So, the war is on. We were at the lake house last week for our longest stint ever, three days. We were there primarily because we had the house inspection and Radon test. I was willing to come back so that the tester could pick up the Radon module after two days but my wife wanted to stay.

One of the things that the inspector asked was if there were any concerns. I said that the heating is absolutely inadequate. My wife and I actually were discussing about purchasing and replacing one of the wall heaters the previous night. One of the heaters I could put my hand on the metal grate while it was running for as long as I wanted. It was warm, but that was it. The other heater I could hold my hand about an inch from the metal grate for about two seconds before it was too hot.

I was also interested in the electrical panel to see if there was any space if we do want to add a mini split. Maybe we will resize the heaters? I don’t know for sure but I will say that it takes 24 hours before the downstairs living space is comfortable. One of the thoughts we had was to turn on the ceiling fans in reverse. That is supposed to help keep the heat from moving upstairs.

I didn’t have a ladder so I climbed up on one of the few pieces of furniture that we had, a bar stool. I didn’t have enough height to see on top of the fan base but I felt around and I could not find anything. On the list for the next trip was a ladder. Only the cheapest of ceiling fans cannot be reversed. Ask me how I know but these had remotes and different light hues and fan speeds. I found it hard to believe that there was no reverse switch.

On Saturday, we were working on a puzzle and really just killing time until the Radon test was picked up so that we could leave. This was my time to get busy with the ladder. On the first fan, I plopped the ladder down, climbed up and the switch was right in front of me; fan reversed. I was excited that in five minutes I would be back to the puzzle.

I move to the second fan and I don’t see a switch. I checked three different angles on the fan base. Then my wife wanted to see. She said, “here is the hole where it is supposed to be”. I said “what”? I still couldn’t see it. Once I got through the paradigm that the switch wasn’t there, I missed it because I was looking for something raised, not a hole She was underneath the fan and said that it looks different than the other fans. We did some bickering about why I could not see the hole and I reluctantly agreed to take the fan down and see what I could see.

Ceiling fans are job that I don’t like doing. These things are heavy and awkward. More so than this, it really is not my place to be taking down someone else’s fan to see if I could determine what is wrong. But I did it anyway. When I got the fan off the ceiling, I could definitely see the hole. I stuck the flashlight in the hole and I couldn’t see a switch anywhere. I reluctantly agreed that I would take the fan apart further to see if I could determine the problem.

Once I got the upper housing off, I could see that it was installed about 120 degrees from the switch. Hence, the switch was underneath the housing but not visible or accessible. Once I got thing put back together the way they were supposed to be, I begin to wonder how this was possible. This had to have been built incorrectly in the first place.

The escutcheon was painted to the ceiling. It is possible that this was a homeowner installation, but based on the fact that the previous owners only lived in the house three years, there has already been a major remodel and there are some other electrical oddities, I suspect that this is exactly the way it was installed. Before I am too hard on the installer, I can’t say that I would have noticed this problem either. I strongly believe this is how the fan was built as the fan cover is not a typical user installed part.

End Your Programming Routine: Because we had already been at the house for three days with the heat blasting the whole time, it is hard to say if the fans actually helped. It also makes me wonder if I should pull apart the heater that is only kind of working. I will probably do that while we are here this week. I would have never have guessed that something made incorrectly, installed an used but never noticed the problem would be the case.

August 5, 2025 – My Keg is Flat Again?

August 5, 2025 /

When I got my keezer (kegerator), it had one tap and therefore one keg. There is probably room for four kegs of this type inside the refrigerated space. the vessel is called a Cornelius keg, often called a ‘Corny’ keg and used by Pepsi Co. That makes a lot of used ones available in the market for whatever reason.

My strategy if you will is to have one on tap, one in waiting and one used extensively for flushing the lines. I have considered adding more taps but realistically I should not make drinking beer easier. Plus, it is a lot a work to brew and flushing the lines is often not done after use so for now, one is plenty. The point is that I have added two more kegs to the system.

Both of the kegs I have purchased were used. In fact both were also dirty. One had Mountain Dew under pressure in it. I don’t recall the second one other than to say I know it was dirty. But, I imagine that these things are not taken out of service for no reason. As a result, I have taken to having to give them a once, twice and often three times over to figure out what is wrong.

Aside from being dirty, the most common problem is leaking. Even though I have had extensive work in scientific air analysis, the tools I have at my disposal are pretty rudimentary. Most of it involves guessing and checking. The one thing that works pretty well is the soap solution looking for bubbles. The one I am showing in the picture comes from the plumbing section of a home improvement store.

You can make your own solution with dish soap and water. I don’t honestly know what the mixture is and I suppose it probably matters which detergent you use because of the factory concentration. The reason I chose to buy one is that the cap comes with a brush and so you can swab areas of interest. The one we used in the lab was a squeeze bottle with a tube at the nozzle so you could really target small areas but it is $25 a bottle.

I think it is pretty obvious how you know that there is a leak. That being said, how did I know? I opened the tap handle and nothing came out. Normal keg pressures should be around 15psi and there should be enough pressure in the vessel to fill a cup without the source pressure on (again laziness about the proper steps). But if I did things right, you should not hear gas going into the keg when you turn the cylinder valve because everything should be at equilibrium in this closed system.

When it comes to troubleshooting this system, the distribution line likely only needs to be checked once for leak Go to each break in the line and swab the joint under pressure. If it leaks, that joint will need to be tightened (only occasionally loosened depending on the connection type but beyond the scope of this article). Honestly, I only do this if during my initial test, I lose pressure. This is called ruling out the variables.

By far and away the most frequent failure parts are the action parts. These are things like valves and O-rings that seal connections. If no leaks are found around the valve, then try replacing O-rings. These are designed as replaceable parts anyway and it could have gotten damaged during transit or worn from heavy use. If your vessel leaks, then it is almost certainly junk unless you can weld on stainless steel.

I found that on my keg in the picture above was leaking around the main seal O-ring. Even my soap test did not reveal the leak and it would occur over the span of three days or so. I also knew that my O-rings on the valves were OK because the keg leaked whether it was connected to the distribution line or not. Other kegs I have did not leak and so it wasn’t the other end of the connection either.

Generally speaking, these tests should be done under system pressure. This should reduce the risk of contamination from the soap. Cranking up the pressure should make leaks more obvious but it is possible to cause new problems, so be careful. The one thing that I also wanted to add with soap is to make sure product surfaces are cleaned after testing unless you like soapy beer.

End Your Programming Routine: This troubleshooting technique works for beer kegs, water lines, air lines etc. In plumbing, lines are pressurized to prove that they are solidly connected (generally new construction). One final thing, the air molecules are generally smaller than liquid water, so a leak in an air line is much more likely than a water line. So-so connections can still hold water that don’t stand a chance containing gasses for long term.

May 6, 2025 – Kids…

May 6, 2025 /

“I don’t know what happened, it just stopped working”. Huh, I have no idea. I guess that I will take a look and see if I can see anything. Oh, I see there is a bunch of sand in here that does not belong.

In years past, I have replaced a few RAM DIMMs, hard drives, disk drives, and the like. That doesn’t make me and expert in PC repair, it makes me a part swapper that has a little knowledge of what things are inside of the cover. Years ago, the motherboard would sometimes have some diagnostic LEDs as well as speaker beeps. The combination of those two tools would help steer you in the right direction.

I haven’t seen this problem in years but every so often, the motherboard battery would die and the PC would act like a failed hard drive. It seems like those batteries never die today, at least I haven’t dealt with it in my batch of ancient PCs. Once again, the onboard diagnostics were very helpful in resolving quickly.

When my son said that his computer makes a constant crackling noise and doesn’t stay connected to Wi-Fi, my first thought was that he dropped the thing and there was a loose connection. Dropping electronics is a very common occurrence that never happens with kids either.

Where to start with these things? I just turned it on. I noticed that there were a lot of updates that needed to be applied. That got me thinking about drivers. Sometimes not having the right driver installed can even have wildly erratic behavior. I didn’t see any driver updates that needed to be made. That did not make any sense.

First, this PC had not been on my network since before I made all of the upgrades in March. The location of his room was notoriously spotty because I fought with doorbell many times and his room is directly above that. I signed the computer into the network with new credentials and things seemed pretty stable. I think the Wi-Fi stability was just a phantom problem of a weak network signal.

Now to the crackling noise. It sounded like a static-y AM radio station at times. Although my son said it was happening constantly, I only heard it about five times in fifteen minutes for a couple of seconds. He said that it was much improved. I figured I would just let all the updates install and see what happened from there.

Meanwhile, I did some research into the internet. It seems like this problem is not unique. In all of my years as IT manager, I have never heard of it. Despite all of the claims of high dollar sound cards and meticulous checking of connections and power, most of the claims were resolved by disabling sound components in device management. I still think I need to get under the covers of this machine. I was still under the impression that it might have been dropped and has loose speaker connections.

When I took the back cover off, viola. Sand contains conductive material and at the very least, it doesn’t belong inside of a computer case. I took the compressed air to the motherboard and speakers and everywhere I can reach to blow it out. In hindsight, I think a vacuum is probably the best first approach because blowing the sand around risks jamming the particles deeper in the machine. When I turned it on, the crackling was gone.

End Your Programming Routine: When approaching a problem that is new or unusual, the first step is to take a look. Whether it is automobiles or CBs, it is amazing what the human can recognize as ‘not quite right’ even if you do not know how to fix the problem. In this case anybody other than a blind person should be able to recognize that sand doesn’t belong in a computer. In the future, I will be more insistent on making sure that my son performs basic troubleshooting steps before I get involved. This is how we combat a culture of ‘call a guy’ from completely taking over.

March 25, 2025 – You Bast**d

March 25, 2025 /

This project has become way too complicated considering my starting point. I already had the wire on both ends of the wireless bridge. One of them was already terminated and powered. It should have been as simple as pointing the two devices at each other, terminate the other and… go.

After I got the one wire terminated (see last week), it was dead. I rebooted and reset each unit and then they connected. So, I plugged my computer in with ethernet cable and things were great. I was done. Two hours later, the router was flashing red. I rebooted them multiple times and no connection.

I moved the wireless router back into the original position and then I spent an evening wiring up the outside router again to try and bridge the lack of reliable connection of mesh routers between buildings. My operating theory was that the overhead, yard light strings were enough of an obstruction that maybe I would need to raise the wireless bridge on my house to clear all of the things in the way.

My Life Below Zero watching has influenced me quite a bit. I realized that I put off a lot of things because of weather. So I went outside and raised one wireless bridge in the rain. I aimed a laser to make sure that they were pointing to each other. Even though I had to re-wire the basement because I stole all the length of the cable to raise it, all the ladder work was done.

The next day, I finished the wiring. I went outside to check the power indicator lights and the hose clamp that was holding the wireless bridge unit to the mounting fixture was snapped. The wireless bridge was dangling by the ethernet cable. Back out came the extension ladder. I had to go to the store to get more hose clamps because I didn’t have any replacements. But, that was OK because my remaining length of cable was 12 feet too short to finish the run as well.

I had to take the significantly longer trip to Home Depot because my local hardware store does not carry bulk Category 6 cable. When I got back, I quickly ginned up the remaining cable and tested for connection. The two bridge units were talking. But, I had committed to making Ramen that night and I needed the time so I had to stop there. I had nothing left after cooking for three hours.

I know the question that you are asking, has this effort been worth it? As of right now, the units have been up for over a week and they are still not working. I have tried to check all the things on my side and am waiting for a response from customer service for various technical reasons. From the reviews I have read, I am suspecting that they will send replacement units.

The manufacturer claims that these units are paired from the factory. Like all things of ignorance, I used the wrong units for each side and so I had to re-program them. All of the issues that have happened made this project much more difficult than it should have been and are possibly part of the connection problem. I doubt it, but I cannot rule it out.

Based on my knowledge and experience, I possibly mis-judged the complexity of the job. While it is a 50/50 probability that you will put up the wrong units like I did, somebody without my experience would be stuck. I could have just as easily picked the right unit with line of sight. This all presupposes that there is nothing wrong with the units (which I highly suspect).

What I am trying to say is that if your networking and troubleshooting skills are low, it very well might work on the first go. If I would have read the user manual more carefully before I started, I would have tested them on the ground before I started. I would have installed the units in the right order. I probably would have placed them where I originally did but I would have eliminated a lot of the noise that is frustrating me. But if they are not, it could be very difficult to do successfully. In that situation, I would recommend professional installation.

I think that I have eliminated all of the wireless complaining in my house now. Aside from getting this wireless bridge working, there are additional touches to add. Are there dead spots that we frequent outside to place the outdoor unit? Does that take the place of another unit indoors? Each ripple causes another smaller one.

End Your Programming Routine: As you can see, this project is probably never done. The range extender I didn’t talk about could be utilized, I am thinking my shop area. Eventually, my wife is going to want another camera in the driveway area where I have no coverage. And so it keeps going. Hopefully the next ones are not nearly as difficult as the one that is basically done.

April 9, 2024 – Archiving, The Old Fashioned Way

April 9, 2024 /

What happens when your cloud drive starts to fill up? I am not there yet, I have probably only used a quarter of it. But what I didn’t know was that the cloud function synchronizes everything to my hard drive and I don’t have a free terabyte to do so. So, I am going to start archiving some stuff off of the cloud.

Many years ago, I was in charge of the physical act of backing up when I worked at the lab. I would burn data to DVD on a month by month basis. This is an option for things that don’t need immediate recall. I tried my DVD burner and while it could read disks, the write portion failed.

I thought about my options. I moved my mechanical hard-drive from my laptop to my desktop computer. This is a decent option because a mechanical drive failure can be re-built from the One Drive synchronization. Then, I resynched everything to that location. That at least gave me breathing room.

At some point, that is going to run out of room as well. So, I thought about media again. Each podcast I make runs between 1-2 GB with the raw files and these are things that I really don’t access other than to look for episode numbers or certain content. I decided to order another DVD burner. I was just about to start archiving things and then a thought occurred to me, what about Blue Ray?

It turns out that DVD only holds 4.7 GB of data making this project take forever (over 20 disks). The newest quadruple layer Blue Ray burners can do up to 100GB per disk. That is for me, I ordered one of those. I am waiting for it to arrive and then I will start archiving certain items particularly all of the AltF4.co content.

Do I think that there is any perfect solution? Ideally, I would have a backup array of hard-drives that had infinite storage and access at my finger tips. The downside of disks is that they can degrade and technology moves on. I think about the stuff I have on 3.5″ floppy drives that I have never accessed since I moved to a computer without a floppy drive. The good news is I still have a floppy drive in an old computer if I really wanted the files and you can buy a USB floppy drive for $30.

It is definitely a new world. My laptop does not have an optical drive or even an expansion slot. Policies on business owned computers prevent any sort of plugin devices, everything is moved electronically via the network. Disk images have to be ‘mounted’ in a faux drive fashion to emulate physical media. In many ways, a physical device is simpler and easier. I don’t like all that run around to get around having the device.

Other options would be an external hard-drive but those are not infallible either. I might eventually do both, but for now I just want to make sure that I do not have a problem. I am going with BD-R at 25GB per disk.

End Your Programming Routine: In the old, old days the professional way to go was tape back-up. That still may be used, I don’t know. We had Zip and then Jazz drives, then CD, DVD and now Blue Ray. It is not likely that I will really ever need these files again, but I hate to just delete them if I can get them into a easily storable and compact fashion. It is my life’s work after all.

January 12, 2022 – Up Your Complexity and Cost with Electric Bikes

January 12, 2022 /

My son is at the age where he is too young to drive and doesn’t want to walk. He has been an avid bike rider to school since he started middle school, about five years ago. Last semester we rewarded his straight A’s with an electric bike.

Now me… I am old fashioned. I don’t want any additional complexity on a bicycle. That is the point. My son want’s to electrify his 1969 Cougar. Maybe the new generation of car people will find originally restored not appealing or valuable? I think it is a mistake, nevertheless I told him it is his car.

This bike is heavy, it is almost 60 pounds. It is also designed to used with electric assist. That being said, it is very difficult to pedal without the motor working. Last week, it stopped working at least consistently. What I know, which is not much is that replacement parts are difficult to find, bicycle shops are out of sorts with this technology and anything on the drivetrain is proprietary and expensive. This leads to the odds of getting help as low. We are going to have to figure this one out ourselves.

We bought the bike used, so we do not know the origins or the complete history. Apparently, it is only sold on Amazon which makes getting help more difficult. I was able to reach out to the broker, but they are primarily interested in a warranty resolution, which I think we are beyond at this point. Here is what I think I know to date.

  • The charger is working
  • The battery seems to put out the right voltage
  • The switch sometimes works and sometimes does not.

Ultimately, I was hoping to find a bad solder joint or something loose. The switch is mounted to the board on the bottom with the two red wires. I cant see anything obvious from this angle and to get to it, I will need to entirely disassemble the battery. I am pretty sure that the problem is with the switch in that it works intermittently.

Here is my logic. A new battery unit is $250 which would integrate a switch and battery. However, I can cut the wires and bypass the built in switch with a new switch and mitigate the problem for $5. The worst case scenario is that it doesn’t work and I am out $5 plus the time. But, I would lay odds on the problem being the integrated switch. Further, The chances of me getting a replacement switch (or board) that works in the OEM configuration are extremely low. So, I don’t think I want to tear the battery apart for low probability fix.

I am going to give the manufacturer some of these details and we will see if they come through with any technical help. I am not holding my breath.

End Your Programming Routine: There are sometimes problems in life that we are going to have a difficult time handing over to someone else to solve. This happens to be one of them. I suppose I could just buy the new battery unit and solve the problem with money, but then I could just buy a new bike too. Truth be told, the battery could be rebuilt as well by identifying the bad cell and replacing it in the pack. Today I am point out the proper solution is to isolate the problem and then target a specific fix. This will likely be a video coming up.

November 17, 2021 – What Does Two is One Mean?

November 17, 2021 /

There is a saying in preparedness that is turned into of a nursery rhyme. It ultimately starts to get ridiculous but I think I can build a reasonable use case today. It goes like this “Two is one and one is none, three is for me…” Apparently, it is a saying from the Navy Seals.

As promptly as I noticed my desktop working last Saturday, it stopped working again. I was able to post on Monday and I was back to the laptop yesterday. There was an update Monday night that I purposefully ran and then things stopped working. That of course re-ignited my quest to resolve the problem for a number of reasons. The first was that carrying two laptops was heavy. The second is that we are off to to Texas on Friday and I am going to be working several days while there, so that means two laptops again.

The truth is, I could probably get by using my issued computer, but I don’t really want to do that. All of my linking to One Drive and other services I use to make this work would mess with my business configuration. I still suspect that this problem is something to do with WordPress for reasons I will outline below.

So what does two is one, one is none mean in this scenario?

DeviceOSBuild
DesktopWindows 10 Home21H1Not Working
LaptopWindows 10 Home20H2Working
iPhoneIOS14.8.1 Not Working
iPadIOS15.1 Not Working

The reason I am thinking the problem is with WordPress is the apparent ‘random’ behavior of it working. Doing nothing over the course of a week and it works, after not working for two weeks prior. Then running an update and it stops working.

The real reason however is that it works on one device and not three others. Device problems should manifest as working on three out of four devices or working on one operating system and not the other or working with one browser but not another. There are of course other variables that I have also tried

  • WAN connection type
  • Browser
  • Hardware configuration
  • Other installed applications

Looking at my list of variables, I do have some things that I haven’t tried. For instance, I have tried wired and wi-fi but I haven’t tried cellular. Although, for my one device that is working is on wireless. Low and behold, when I switched off of wi-fi to cellular only, I can login to the post editor on my phone.

That potentially rules out operating system. It also narrows down my focus to something to do with the internet. I have already rebooted my equipment, refreshed my DNS setting and cleared my browser cache, but I will keep looking in this area for the answer.

End Your Programming Routine: I am sure the Navy Seals meant that if you didn’t have an extra magazine and the one you have is broken, you are ‘f’-d. In this case, I am trying to convey that without extra devices and connections, I would never be able to troubleshoot, let alone continue to post. Maybe, I would put more urgency if I only had one device but I have tried pretty hard already. I do think I am getting close.

November 9, 2021 – Troubleshooting a Failing Bath Fan

November 9, 2021 /

We have lived in this house over sixteen years. Since the week we first moved in, I thought that a bearing was bad in the fan unit since it made a vibrating sound. I was even going to replace it one time about three or four years ago but the shelving stock was out. I looked for several months thereafter but then forgot about it.

Instead of just being noisy, it started getting to the point of not actually working. You could hear the power applied but the fan wasn’t moving always. Sometimes, flipping the switch a couple of times would get the fan going, sometimes not. I decided that now was the time to finally do this.

I checked the availability at the box store and it was in-stock. My experience over the years has taught me to visually inspect the unit before doing anything. I wanted to make sure that I was replacing the unit as quickly and painlessly as possible. You could say a like for like swap is what I was looking for.

Much to my surprise, the fan was not a 50 CFM unit but a 70 CFM unit even though the bathroom is only 3×5′. So I started looking a little closer at my ordering options because I was not going to be able to go to the store for several days. When I looked on Amazon, I realized that I would not have to tear the entire housing out like I had done with the two others I replaced but I could swap the motor/fan assembly out only saving tons of effort.

Then, I went to the local hardware store and bought a replacement motor/fan unit. When I took the unit apart to replace the motor, I think I identified multiple issues.

If you see how dusty the outside is, you can imagine that there is 30 years of dust caked on the motor and fan. I suspect that the dust on the outside of the motor housing was causing the motor to overheat. I didn’t bother cleaning it and putting it back since I thought there was also a worn bearing causing noise.

My wife really wanted a new fan since the outside bezel was yellowed from age but I convinced her that I could just spray paint the old one and it would look much better. Before I started painting, I stuck the screw back in the housing so it wouldn’t get lost in the process. The screw was not what originally was part of the unit and when I turned on the fan, it was vibrating and making a ruckus while it was not holding the bezel tight. In the end, I decided that the noise I heard all those years was the screw vibrating and not a bad bearing.

When I put it back together, I put several wraps of teflon pipe tape to give some extra dimension to the screw and hopefully act as some padding. The fan is still loud because it is oversized for the room but works like a champ. I cannot say how much less effort the replacement motor is over a whole new unit. However, it is more expensive – imagine that but the cost was worth it.

Over time, these units do suck up dust and it ends up coating the electrical components. The one in the master bath I have cleaned several times because I can see dust on the outside, but never this one. Periodic maintenance would be recommended for long life.

End Your Programming Routine: The lesson that I would like to push today is look and understand the failure. It is highly possible that there was nothing wrong to begin with other than the dust needed clearing. This is at least the fifth fan that I have replaced but I never knew that a replacement unit could slip into the existing housing. So, I suppose $40 was a good investment in education.

November 1, 2021 – What Is Going On?

November 1, 2021 /

This is again another test post. I am going between it seems like it is working on one machine occasionally but I have also gotten it to fail on IOS and a Linux installation as well. So, this is a quick test because my laptop is working again.

My support case left me with the problem being mine. I suppose the only change that I made between last week and today was that I rebooted my router over the weekend. I doubt that is the case, however it seems to be working today on my laptop but not on my desktop.

Since I am writing this on a wireless internet connection, I tried rebooting all of the wired switches in between for my wired computer, no dice. Combined with flushing the DNS was the last suggestion from support that I did over the weekend. I suppose the good news is that it enabled my laptop to begin to work again.

I am stuck here. Support says that it is my problem. The only discernible difference I can see is that my desktop is running Windows 10 21H1 and my laptop is running 20H2. But the other kicker is that the problem is not device and OS agnostic anymore. IOS 14.8 displays the same problem.

End Your Programming Routine: Troubleshooting is sometimes a very difficult process. For now, it seems like my laptop is working, so I guess I will ride that while I keep looking for the solution to the problem.