Valves

Amongst all sorts of other machinery, engines have them too and they use them to breathe through. The B18D in my Volvo has valves too of course, a humble eight of ‘em to be precise, and they need adjusting every once and a while. And with every once and a while I actually mean sometime between every five and ten thousand kilometers, depending on in how little time you covered that distance or, in other words, how kind you were to the engine during those kilometers.

The more aggressive you drive, the faster those valves need readjusting. And if you drive very nicely they’ll last a bit longer. Easy.

What’s also easy with these older engines is checking and adjusting their clearances, especially after having watched dad do it the first time. With the Volvo one can have this job done in roughly one hour, give or take, and that makes it a nice and even fun task to do. The best part I guess is that when you’re done, the engine runs smooth as silk again and fur us technical folks that’s our little victory right there.

So what did you all do on the first Christmas day? ;-)

 

Out of control

Remote control

–noun
1. control of the operation or performance of an apparatus from a distance, as the control of a guided missile by radio signals.
2. Also called remote. a device used to control the operation of an apparatus or machine, as a television set, from a distance.

Forget that guided missile stuff, all I wanted to do was regain control over my Kenwood receiver. I’ve had that box for a number of years now and it really does everything I need, and does it well. I can hook up all the other stuff to it easily, it has crystal clear sound through either Dolby Digital or DTS processors and has been the heart of my home cinema ever since I got it.

Problem was, however, that the remote started to fail on me and with a receiver that has as much functions as mine you really need that remote to set and control everything the way you want to. Most of the time you just need select the apparatus you want to listen to and choose a volume setting but ever so often I’m changing little things to see if it sounds better. Plus I’m lazy. :-)

Mainly because of all that fiddling around that I do my first thought was that the batteries had simply gone empty and replaced them with a spare set I had lying around. That didn’t work too well so I figured that the set had been on the shelve so long that they too were probably empty. Unfortunately for me, even the brand new set of batteries didn’t bring my remote back to life. Or, actually, not entirely.

You see, the problem I had (and, as you will find out when the story progresses, still have) is that it seems that the receiver only processes the given commands for around fifteen seconds and then not for at least fifteen to twenty minutes. After that you can alter the volume a step or two and then nothing again for a period of time.

The only conclusion I could then think of was that the remote itself had gone bad. And even though I’ve had that receiver for years now, this still surprised me. I take very good care of my remotes, they never drop or get thrown around, so it shouldn’t have had much to cope with during its time with me. Even the remotes of much older apparatus still work fine so why this one failed, I had no idea.

Anyway, I first tried one of those simple universal remotes but either that one just didn’t speak Kenwood or was only setup for default amplifiers; it didn’t work at all.

So last week I decided that it was time for a good solution and I purchased one of those multi device remote controls which can even learn from the old remote, should that still work. The Philips SRU8015/10 was my weapon of choice because of the nothing but good reviews it got and simply looked sexy as h*ll. :-)

Happy as a kid with a new toy which, despite my alarming age I still am sometimes, I first set up the TV downstairs: flawless. The remote simply asked me to point it at the TV, press a button and release it when the TV reacted. Easy as pie, I had it done in less than 5 minutes, and that’s including setting up all icons for the TV stations (a very cool feature by the way).

Next was the TV upstairs and the DvD player. The principle was the same: point it at the device, hold a button and let go when something happened. After that default setup you can choose to give buttons different functions, depending on your personal taste and habit and those too were very simple to program.

Finally I set down for the Kenwood. Since that’s a much more complicated device than say a TV or DvD player I got myself a fresh cup of coffee and got down to business. The initial part went perfect, just like it did with the other devices, but when I was ready to customize the button arrangements my receiver wasn’t reacting to the new remote anymore. At all. Basically it did the very same thing the original remote did: a few functions for a short while and then nothing at all.

My fear is now that I may have bought a shiny new device but haven’t solved the actual problem. The way it seems now is that the IR receiver inside the Kenwood, or some attached piece of electronics is somehow malfunctioning. So I’ve emailed Kenwood and asked them if they know of similar cases with my receiver and if anything can be done to solve it. So far no response but they’re probably having a holiday week or something.

To be continued.

 

Need air

Man, what a night. I just came home after having to work my way through another adventure with the Volvo.

Olof and I worked late on our telephone server software and after we were done I walked over to the Volvo, simply planning on going straight home. Unfortunately that wasn’t going to happen.

However, as soon as I put the car in motion and slowly left our street it felt like slowing down, as if I left the handbrake on. It wasn’t, which was to be expected since I never use it in the first place. But it had been a cold and wet day so I figured that possibly one of my brakes had jammed a bit and just needed to loosen up. So I gave it a few hundred meters to return to normal operation.

Well, it didn’t so I pulled over on the nearest spot I could and walked round to see what the problem was. Upon arriving at my right rear wheel the problem was easy to spot: air. Or rather: the lack of it inside my tire. Great, there goes a perfectly good chance to lie on the couch at home.

For a second I thought it would only set me back fifteen to twenty minutes but when I opened the trunk and wanted to get the jack and wrench out I noticed that, not unlike the air in my tire, they weren’t there. Needless to say that messed with the earlier mentioned time table ‘just a bit’.

So I locked up the Volvo and head back to work on foot to get one of the company cars. After a twenty minute walk I was inside it driving passed the sad sight of my Volvo all alone beside the road and was heading for dad’s place to pick up a good jack and wrench.

Another twenty minutes later I had all I needed and was driving back to my Volvo to replace the flat tire. Now that I had the proper equipment that took a mere ten minutes after which I returned the car to work and walked back to my Volvo. As you may have guessed that took around twenty minutes again and then I could finally carry out my initial plan: go home.

I sincerely hope that you all had a better night than I did …

 

Happy birthday to me

Okay, it’s a bit cheesy I know, but I really do wish me a good one and many returns. :-)

I had a fun day. Mom and Hans and Karlijn and Stefan with the nieces were here this morning. To have them over would have been a nice birthday gift by itself. :-) Distance and time tables prevent them from coming over very often so that makes having a birthday party a good plan.

Eva gave me a nice drawing and she together with Sofie had a few DvD’s for uncle Biek. Stevie then presented the 3rd best racing movie ever to me: Rendezvous. So with Le Mans and Grand Prix already on the shelve, I now seem to have that top three collection complete. Thanks bro. :-)

And tonight I had Bas over and dad came with Margot. Bas gave me the third movie I was missing from the Bourne thrilogy so that’s complete now too and from dad and Margot I got a feeler gauge, with which I can check the valve clearance when doing maintenance to my Volvo, and I got an original owners manual for my car too. And even though I obviously know most of it already, it’s still one marvelous piece of reading.

Have a nice weekend all, I know I will. :-)

 

GM

I went over to ISN today, to try and solve some email problems they had, and on my way over there I saw a Cadillac and a old Chevy Corvette so naturally that really made my day. :-) I see way too little of those marvels over here on our streets.

At the same time, though, it made me wonder how many new ones or new models we’ll see in the future with GM having such a tough time now. It’s hard to imagine a giant like that tumbling. Hopefully they make it through.