BMX Project.

Haven’t posted any of my projects in a long while, I have a few I’ll try to put up soon. Its been about 20years since I rode BMX, my daughter got her first bike so figured I should get a bike to encourage her to ride.

I picked up a old incomplete bike for cheap, its a bit of an oddity, no one seems to know what it is, if any BMX nerd happens to read this, let me know what it is! It has interesting shaped dropouts and the only markings are on the bottom bracket, its stamped “AKA” and has a serial “H8L30496”. Searching the net found a “Mongoose AKA” but those don’t look anything like this?! It has nice welds so don’t think it’s a cheap knock off.

It’s a really light frame, I took it to a specialist BMX shop and the guys thought it was aluminium until I told them it was magnetic (which meant it must be Chromoly.) After pulling it all apart I spent several days sanding it back to bare metal, someone had painted over the original red paint with a weird purple so it took a while.

I then gave it a grey-ish coat of paint.

Before putting it all back together I asked a friend (mike__watt) to draw a couple of his signature heads on it, I was expecting just a couple around the forks etc. After a week or two, I was pretty keen to get it back but was told it would be another couple of weeks, I didn’t really understand why it was taking so long until I saw what he was doing, he really went crazy on it and covered every inch of it, drawing everything so that it fit with the shape of the frame etc, it looks sick. It was hard to photograph, but cranking up the contrast etc made it easier to see the details. It’s quite subtle from a distance, especially after I put a matt clear-coat on it. Im still pretty blown away by what he did with it.

Not sure if I want to ride it now, maybe I should just hang it on the wall..

Aussie Adventures – Northern Territory to Adelaide – September 2022

After plans were cancelled several times we decided to do a road trip from Alice Springs in the NT to Adelaide in South Australia. To make things a bit more convenient we would fly to Alice Springs and pick up a camper van, this way we could go wherever we wanted and stay wherever we wanted. It used to be no speed limit on much of this road but now:

Should be OK I guess in the wobbly Camper

Kings Canyon was the first place we stayed, we did a hike to the Canyon rim, it was a 2hr hike, but it was really hot, the track closed after 11am I guess that was to prevent people getting dehydrated etc, we still got a bit dehydrated regardless. It was really impressive and definitely worth a visit, just don’t attempt it in the middle of summer.

(Click on any of the photos to enlarge)

Then on to Uluru (Ayers Rock) we had booked a powered site at the Resort campground (the resort is really the only place you can stay in the area, hotels or a campsite), it was pretty busy but not too bad. The first night we did a “Field of light” tour, which was an art installation, basically a field full of solar powered lights in hand blown glass bulbs that resembled flowers. It was OK, but too many people and a bit annoying. The lights were cool tho.

We drove to the “rock” the next day and had a good look around the base. Then we parked up at a sunset viewing spot, where we were swiftly joined by many other people. It’s easy to see why the Aboriginal’s hold this place sacred its a strange sight to see this massive rock sitting on its own in the middle of the desert.

Then it was time to hit the road, we took a couple of days to travel down the Stuart Highway, stopping at Anita bush camp and Moonie bush camp, these were just gravel access ways off the highway and away from the road, but without any facilities. Perfect for some peace and quiet. Even though before we left everyone thought it was funny to mention Wolfcreek, we didn’t get kidnapped or anything exciting like that.

Being so far away from civilisation it was a good chance to play around with some night photography, the Milky-way was very bright.

 

About halfway down the highway is Coober Pedy, a somewhat famous Opal mining town. After all the previous “towns” (Petrol Station with a pub and a motor inn attached) where we would get Diesel and quickly leave, it was a nice surprise. Many of the residents live underground due to the heat, we saw some sections for sale that were literally a hole dug in to the earth ready for someone to build in… They had a couple of surprisingly good museums, showing the history of the town and the mining, one of them was an actual mine, with a house joined on, all dug in to the rock below ground. The whole town had a definite Mad Max feel to it.

A couple of panoramic shots from the hill above the town

The last stretch of the drive to Adelaide was nice, but uneventful, the scenery got a lot greener and changed quite distinctively as we got further south. By the time we made it to Adelaide it was raining…

March 2022 – Progress on the 1978 Leyland Mini

Covid Lock-down meant slow progress. It was several months after finishing off the mechanical repairs that we were finally able to take “Rowan” along to a car club to get the inspection completed that was needed to be able to register as a Historical Vehicle (which basically just means cheap registration etc)

We fitted a Aluminium radiator and a few other parts to clean it up.

That’s all complete now and its officially road worthy…

Like any old car things don’t always go exactly as planned, one sunny afternoon we were going for a drive, when there was a bang and next minute the car was running really rough, it appeared that the timing had ‘adjusted’ itself… lucky we weren’t far from home, we managed to limp back, backfiring all the way.

However I had a bit of a mishap when attempting to correct the timing. I ended up shorting something out and then the car was completely dead, no dash lights or anything. After 3 months sitting in the shed, and testing everything I was ready to give up and take it to an auto-electrician. I decided to try one last thing, pulled out the battery and put it on charge, and the removed the ignition module (as that tested as a dead short to earth). After putting it all back in I tried the key one last time and it jumped in to life.

I guessing resetting the ignition and a full charge??? I wish I knew exactly what was wrong but I’d be lying if I said I did. I won’t think about it too long, since it’s working now!

The last thing to do is some work on the interior as the cloth inserts in the seats have seen better days. Or maybe just seat covers if Amy is too lazy to do the recovering…

Wheels! Lockdown July 2021

Amy bought a Leyland Mini a few months back, after I drove it for 1.5 hrs to get it home I worked out that the brake drums were full of grease. We’ve been slowly bringing it back to a respectable state.

New brake drums and pads, new rubber suspension cones, Hi-Lo suspension adjusters, a new aluminium radiator, tune-up and a bunch of other stuff I’ve forgotten. Most of the mechanical stuff is complete now, it even passed a ‘road worthy’ inspection the other week. (Still some electrical work to be done.)

The old vs New Rubber Suspension, I like low cars but this was too much!

Rear Suspension in place.

The wheels were looking pretty tired, so two of them got worked on last weekend:

A bunch of sanding, polishing and painting later they are starting to look a little better:

mmmm Pizza

Pre and post clean-up

Looking forward to seeing them fitted. It’s not going to be a show car but should be half decent by the time its finished, not like old cars are ever finished, but yeah…

2020 Project – Arcade build, part 2

It was a difficult decision planing out the paint and graphics.

For the ‘Defender’ control panel, I designed a vinyl overlay based on the original artwork, a good friend at E.W Lee printing, organised the printing for me. At the same time I got the marquee printed on some ‘Lightbox’ material. I used some T-molding to cap the edges on the panels and cabinet. It was a bit nerve wrecking applying the vinyl but it went on without too much trouble and looked good.  

For the second panel I tried something a bit different, I always wanted to try making some carbon fibre and figured it might look good on the panel.

Started by laying the carbon cloth and applying the first layer of epoxy. I then cut out the holes and trimmed the excess cloth.

Next 4 more coats of epoxy painted on…

Then several hours of wet sanding 

  

Another later of epoxy and final sanding.

Done! I learnt quite a bit about what and what not to do during this experiment.

It seems that most people print the cabinet side art on vinyl and then just stick it on. I wanted a more authentic cabinet, so decided to paint it by making up some stencils. After talking to someone in the US, they sent me the Defender Vector files which was awesome, as it allowed me to modify and resize it all to work with my cabinet (Thanks Will!) Kat at E.W Lee came to the rescue again and printed my designs to some large sheets of vinyl so I could stick the stencils down before painting. Before I started I also black-washed the wood, so it had a worn vintage type look to it.

This was oddly satisfying, picking 10,000 bits of vinyl away

First coat was white undercoat then Red.

Then I needed to lay the next stencil in exactly the right place

Then the yellow coat.

Finally I could peel away the mask and see how it would look.

I still needed 2-3 coats of clear to finish it off.

With all the hardware complete I needed to spend a lot of time on the software required to run the menus.

Here are a few shots of the completed cabinet.

There are a couple of extra USB ports on the front that allow extra joysticks to be plugged in for 3-4 player games.

Unfortunately I don’t get to keep this machine, its a surprise gift for a friends 50th birthday. So we packed it in to the car(s) and snuck in to his office to a final set-up. Check the video for some stop motion action on the delivery. I think he was suitably surprised.

2020 Project – Arcade build, part 1

Started a new project early 2020.

2020 gave me a fair bit of time spent at home on weekends. A good friends birthday was also coming up.

After a few days spent jotting down ideas and drawing up plans, I went down to the the timber yard and bought 2, 2400x1200x18mm sheets of Ply-wood, 5 meters of 25x40mm for battens and a bunch of screws and glue.

There are a couple of common button layouts for arcade machines, after selecting one I made a test control panel out of some scrap wood so I could check the spacing and size (width) to make sure it was comfortable to use etc.

Fitted a few buttons and wired up the test panel ready to test a few games.

The test panel seemed pretty good so I started on the main cabinet. Cutting angles on a large sheets of Ply wasn’t the easiest with a circular saw, I did try a jigsaw but that wasn’t working, as it wasn’t cutting straight enough.

For some reason I decided it would be a good idea to make the cabinet collapsible (like IKEA furniture), it would then be possible to assemble and break it down frequently and easier to transport. It made it a lot more work to construct it as I needed to add metal inserts in the wood for the bolts.

After a few months most of the base woodwork was semi complete and I was able to test fit everything. After quite a few adjustments it was starting to take shape.

One design problem I faced was how to make the control panels swap-able.

The machine needed to be able to play ‘Defender’ but Defender has a very specific control layout and the joystick only moves in 2 directions, so that wouldn’t be much help for the other games. Some people just add all the controls to one panel and call it a day, but apart from looking ugly, it seemed to always be a compromise. I tried to use magnets and a few other options to fasten the panels. In the end I settled on a simple design, that allowed the panels to drop in from the top and sit securely, just using the weight of the panel. I also moved all the admin buttons to a seperate area, so that I would only need one set of those.

The ‘Defender’ panel needed a lot of modification so that the reverse button could sit close enough to the joystick and the controls would fit within the panel constraints. I had to grind the metal plate to clearance it and hacksaw the body of the joystick.

 

General Arcade panel layout

Defender layout

I pulled an older encoder out of a broken keyboard and had Amy help me to map the outputs. This would be used for the admin panel. Wiring up the panels was a pretty big job and took a long time to solder and test all the plugs and connections. 

 

A kitchen can of course double as a workshop area…

I used a computer for the brains of the unit, this was so it would have enough power to emulate the newer arcade machines. A Stereo with some home theatre speakers was installed for the audio. The screen came from a LCD monitor that I pulled apart. There is a subwoofer in the photo, but that isn’t currently connected.

It was pretty functional now, so at this point I needed to spend a couple of months “Testing” games to ensure they were set-up and working correctly.

Next post I’ll show the graphics and finishing touches. 

 

Sony WM-R2 & WM-F65 Walkman – March 2020

Haven’t posted on here for a while, but have still been working away on various projects.

I have repaired a bunch of old cassette/tape decks in the past few years and just finished up a WM-R2 which I think is Sony’s first recording unit in the Walkman range. Its pretty neat with 2x headphone jacks, a Mic in and stereo mics slapped on top This one was waaay more difficult to fix than the other decks I’ve worked on. Most Walkman’s are pretty frustrating to work on due to the size of the parts. This one however not only suffers from deteriorated belts (like most of them) but also cracked plastic gears…

You can see the problem gear below, the larger Black one with the gap in it.

Luckily someone makes new replacement gears for these, so once I got it all apart I could remove the old gear and replace it with the new one which is a different design and hopefully wont fail again:

I also fixed up a WM-F65 a while back which also has a mic input (but no builtin mics)

Messing with my Fisheye lens that I just got and don’t really know how to use yet:

Its alive!

After after making one board in reverse, trashing that, repeating and soldering all the components, the new circuit tested OK.

Now I need to fit it all back in the original case and mount the 4 controls for: tape/delay speed, wet/dry mix, number of repeats and output level

The original plan was to fit everything in to the battery compartment, which may have worked but it was a real tight fit. So I removed the builtin speaker and used that space. The battery door has the input and output jacks mounted on it.

This case was in the worst condition out of the 3 tape decks I bought, so I could paint it, but will more likely leave it as is. This project ended up being a bit of a mission after all my failed attempts.

Overall I’m really happy with it, it sounds really good and if you crank up the levels, it will self oscillate and go a bit crazy. I have about $60 in it. There is a guy that sells equivalent (more likely better!) ones, but they are around $1000 so I think I’ll stick with this.

If you want to see/hear what it does click here: https://youtu.be/jOmzOtsK1wE

The audio is recorded through the camera mic so its not the greatest.

So-Cal Compton Throwdown – 27th October 2018

The last weekend in October was the So-Cal 2018 Throwdown.

Held at Centennial High in Compton C.A. there were loads of quality rides.

The owners and spectators were really friendly, had some amusing conversations ranging from Vanilla Ice hahah (I think I was the only white guy there…) to: would I be able to get their car in “Street Machine” magazine.. Good times.

Click the image for full size.

   

If those photos weren’t enough to put you to sleep, then there is some video here:

 

PCB’s for the Tape Delay project

Since the last circuit failed, Ive made some “proper” boards:

Last time I used this method was about 15years ago… If you photocopy (lazer) the circuit in reverse to some glossy paper, you can use a high temp iron to transfer the pattern to copper laminate board, once its on, soak it in some water and remove the paper

Unfortunately I only have a mini travel iron that wouldn’t output enough heat, so many of the tracks were weak.

Fixed up the traces that didn’t stick, with a sharpie:

Kitchen sink is always a good place for dangerous acids:

After the acid bath:

Clean the toner off and you’re left with some (slightly patchy) copper traces:

Not the greatest soldering, but its on there.