My quest for a mini-mill has come to a successful end! About a week ago I got in touch, through the internet, with a gentleman who did not live toofar away from me. He invited me to come over to his workshop. This guy is what I would call a true master modeller. He makes all kinds of models from mostly metal. Eg. steam engines, trains, locomotives, that sort of thing. All from drawings, he machines just about everything himself and as you can imagine he had a very impressive array of various machines in his shop. He is a retired investment banker, who after retirement, wanted to work with his hands. And boy does he! All self taught.
He talked me through various brands and models of mini mills. After talking through my thoughts and requirements he suggested to have a serious look at the Proxxon range. He had several of their little machines. He gave me a couple of addresses and of I went. Long story short; I got myself a Proxxon FF230.
Good as new. I really like it. It is a relative small machine. But it is very well made. Looks and feels really nice. Heavy, tight but smooth action! We had a go at it and did a few different cuts in various materials. It is not very fast, (can not cut too deep, or move to quickly) but that is no problem for me.
Got all the bits and pieces to go with it, regular clamp
Box full of drills and various other bits and clamps
Bolted it onto my worktop and made a similar power lead arrangement as on the grinder. Just a bit of heat shrink for some extra protection.
Next I went to my local machine shop that helped out of machining my bicycle part some months ago. I explained to the owner I had just got myself a mini mill and would he have some offcuts for me to start practicing. So he gave me some metal, aluminium, nylon and delris chunks. All for free, very kind. Good enough to get me started.
So now I am out on the web looking for some tutorials and some "easy to get going" projects. There is tonnes of this stuff out there.
So I have my work “cut out” (pardon the pun) for me. But still, I have some other jobs to be done. We visited some friends of ours last weekend. Everybody knows about my garage. Quite some friends have started collecting rags for me. Got two bags full of them this time:
Earlier this week the Adaptive Cruise Control on the Ford Focus went on the blink. Stopped by at my local Ford dealer. This is a leased car and I have no particular attachment to it, so I’m happy to let somebody else fix it, especially as it is included in the monthly lease fee. They gave me some crap story about how the sensor needs to be replaced and the software updated. I told them, if that is the case, Ford design competence when it comes to IT and software is in even worse shape than I thought. And I know first hand, with deep insight, Ford is absolutely totally out of their depth when it comes to software on their cars.
Told them I could fix this in probably 5 -10 minutes top. Went home, plugged in my OBD scanner.
Actually, the biggest challenge on modern cars these days is to figure out where the Ford idiots hid the OBD port. Luckily the internet knew. Run a full diagnostics, reset the codes.
This ACC radar is hidden behind this stupid grill. Not so easy to get at, but I managed. The problem was just some water ingress on the connector. It was very, very foul wet weather that day.
Really, Ford dealerships and their mechanics the world over are a complete utter useless bunch of incompetent nitwits. Last time I left this car with them, it took them 9 hours ( that is nine hours) to install a new software version on the multimedia system. And it is still not working properly!
So they might make reasonable nice cars, but when it comes to servicing, Ford is still stuck in the hillbilly mechanical tractor era.
Onto the next job today. People who drove behind my Spider had been telling me that the handbrake cable was hanging low. That is an interesting one, because in all those years I have never ever touched the handbrake cable. The way it shows is primarily due to how the outer cable hangs and there is no wear on that. Still it was sagging. One of life’s mysteries I guess. So jacked up the Spider and dived underneath
Not a whole lot I could do without having to take a bunch of stuff apart. Re-set the little bracket on the trailing arm. Let’s see how that does
I got some parts arriving this week for a few jobs:
Oil and oil filter for the Mercedes W123. I am still waiting for the window seal for the W123 to arrive. The plastic bag has 20 pieces of the little clips that hold the seal in place. Mercedes charges Euro 16.50 per clip. I got these aftermarket at Euro 0.57 a piece. I do not mind Mercedes making money, but this is ridiculous!
The little electrical connectors I picked up for a small modification on the Jaguar XJR.
This problem on the Jaguar I only noticed recently. When I removed the chairs, obviously I disconnected the battery. As I have shown before, all my cars are equipped with one of these big main power cut out knobs.
Works a treat, but look closely you will also see that one of the wires of the trickle charger is hooked up to it. Which means if you disconnect, the battery will not charge either! So I had to modify this one wire for it to connect directly to the battery terminal. That’s why I needed the blue electrical connectors. I got boxes full of them, but none of them were big enough.
Easy enough, cut of the old connector, attach the new one. Always try and use a proper crimping tool for these connectors. yes, you can use an ordinary sets of pliers, but no I won’t do as good a job as a very simple and cheap proper one.
All done, I can now disconnect the battery from the car, whilst still keeping the trickle charger going. I know there are more important things in life, in the world, but I still like this job done!
Finally, my wife send me over to the local garden centre to get some stuff. Could not get anything she wanted, but I did find and bought this very cool sign. I keep telling my wife, once you have bought the sign, you have to buy the car too! It’s the rule. But she does not believe me!