Pellet heads!! What's up today?

Haa Poor thing Bob some Voodoo Ranger and smoking Doug Fir pellets keeping the shack warm I feel for you brother !

 

So,here is my little rant,lol.While up at sister and BIL's,their old St croix is still chugging along,which is good,he swears north idaho pellets are dirtier and more ash than purcells??But,later tells me he thinks he is loosing the combustion blower,because it dose not burn well at hi settings.About 6 years ago I went up,in the summer,showed him how to properly disassemble and clean the whole stove(and replace a few parts).I asked him when was the last time he pulled the combustion blower,and cleaned the impeller?"Last time I did it" he said.I had showed him how to do an easy clean on the impeller,with a toilet brush,from the flue connection,he has never done it,or pulled it out for cleaning,only vacuuming the unit out.(facepalm).It is amazing this stove still preforms so well,after all these years,being burned hard and long,in a poorly insulated cabin.(stove is 197).Anyway,gonna buy them some stove parts and ship them to them,for christmas.One big problem,it is an early prescott,and they do not make proper parts for it,anymore,sometimes they need a bit of a modification.St Croix has changed a bit,so I have an email request into them,we shall see what happens.Then we got into a friendly argument about whether I bought my Integra first,or they bought their unit first,lol,nobody won,we are old,and our memories are failing!LOL OK,time to let cat in and feed the beast so it does not kill me in my sleep.

 

I get to give advice on geezer naps, been taking them for many a year, I've been a geezer for decades.

 

Spent the morning shoveling, sliding, and cussing outside - moved lots 'o white stuff to prepare for the next storm rolling in Monday evening / Tuesday.

Got the '96 Camry unburied again, one of the old spares I put on it keeps going flat .. I have to put another rim/tire on it b4 it gets towed out this week. Or else deal with a giant rut in the driveway when it's towed. Moving white stuff is enough ... I don't want to deal w/ moving dirt this time of year.

Took trash to the dump, and stopped at the town sand pile to grab 6 pellet bags worth of sand. Unburied & cleaned off the utility trailer, deposited those bags of sand on it, and covered it all up w/ a tarp.

Remoted into Dad's computer in the afternoon, jailbreaked his old Outlook .pst file, and helped him restore 3+ years worth of email that didn't make it over to the new laptop he picked up last week. Switched his music player back over to Windows Media Player that he likes, got his music moved over & the media libraries rebuilt. Now he can listen to Jimmy Buffet, and read those old emails. He was missing both.

Upgraded one of the dev. workstations here to an SSD drive, to setup as a Virtual Machine platform. ... Virtual Servers, talking to each other, virtually. I.need.Beer.

Upgraded the Lenovo T61 testing laptop w/ another SSD drive, to use w/ the Toyota Techstream diagnostic software & cable I picked up last month on eBay. Gonna be searching for another (used) Toyota, so being able to pull any DTC codes, etc. will be a big help, when needed.

That's enough for today, I'm bushed. Have a fun Monday all.

 

Several folks on here have 20, 30, 40+ years on me. Hence my apprenticeship.

 

Sometimes you just gotta decide if it is all worth it because it probably won't get any better than it is now if nothing changes. If it is, cool, stay in Hellvard. If not, then I would jump while the jumping is good.

 

I have a copy of VM/370 somewhere on the 6TB backup drive. It is close to the copy of TOS/360.

 

Why not just wait until it's about to be towed, then inflate it......or does it go flat VERY quickly?

 

Within a minute now Pete. It's opened up, now that it's been deflated/inflated a few times. It's a sidewall cut right at the edge of the tread line, and I'm not equipped to repair that: even if I was, I don't want to put the tow operator in any kind of harm's way while loading/transporting/unloading at the yard.

Good news is the Salvage Yard owner has always been up-front and fair in all dealings w/ me, I'll see if I can 'retrieve' the good tire/rim, once the vehicle makes it to the yard safely.

 

Got ya....and it shouldn't be attempted to be repaired if in the sidewall at all.

 

Nice. I think my Dad still has the full set of VM/370 manuals he had on the shelf at home, when I was growing up.

While I was getting the laptop squared away, he was reminiscing about one particularly challenging sysres upgrade, where he was 'camped out' there for days.. As part of a conversion to Amdahl hardware, one of the engineers forgot to move a line terminator on a newly installed disk pack array, was giving the communications controller "indigestion". I think he's still a little angry w/ that Amdahl engineer, after all these years.

No secret that modern (x64) protected-mode operation has long had it's roots in VM/370 architecture: the more things change - the more they remain insane.

 

Ok, folks...

Three position swithh on the heatilator PS50 (cb 1200 motors etc...)
New motor low draft 1.75 amp.
It is making a buzzing sound on medium.
I hooked the ground wire to the stove body, i don't think that is an issue.

Doesn't buzz on low or high.

any ideas?

I dunno, maybe i just didn't notice it before.
Lot harder to hear with the room blower on.

Oddly, my wife was here while i was out for a while, and we joke she has a field around here that causes electrical things to not work or malfunction.

She said teh fire went out when the tstat was up and it had been running.
she tunned down and then up, but it didn't light.
Looks like the pot was overful and it has ignighted and is running now.

But i swear, it is weird how things "break" when she is alon with them or touches them.

I did actually notice at first, after having the original lame motor in for a while, that the better motor isn't as quiet.
i think it may just be how it sounds.
sorry for the vagueness. I'm uploading a video to youtube now...
Well, the audio is useless.
Unless i am gravely mistaken, hooking the ground to the stove body is fine.
Outside of that, i think it is just the sound it already made, and i was just keyed into it with it "not working"
running fine now.
I am shy to have it on medium, but i'll have tio get over thart when i get back home again.

 

If the pot was overfull, usually indicates a dirty stove and/or poor airflow. Last time the stove & exhaust had a full cleaning was.....???

 

I cleaned the flue very recently, and the motors were just swapped out, so that passage is also verified clear.
The air flow is good with the 1.75 amp motor.
Lively flame, etc...

It is running fine now.
My main concern is that the ground wire from teh combustion motor to the stove body is fine (i'm sure that's right. right?)
And that the motor noise is the same thing i noticed when i refitted a 1.75 amp motor.


Seriously, it is a factor of my wife's disruption field that is "broke" when i was away for an hour.
I'll clean behind the baffles soon, but i know that isn't it.
As i said lively flame. Pot stays clean as it burns (as it is doing now.)

 

Usually, the motor frame itself is the ground to the stove. Did the new motor come with a ground wire, or did the stove have one to the motor to begin with?

 

^^ ground wire from stove plug socket -> to the stove frame is secure?
ground leg in stove electrical cord is ok? ground @ the wall outlet is verified good?

 

Ground at wall is verified. The wire to stove fram is from comb motor. secured with bolt & washer.

But i did have the last one hooked to the motor frame. for some reason i wondered if that was right. gonna unplug now and hook it up that way.

Motor came with the ground wire, but it was pretty long. Maybe that made me wonder about hooking it to the stove frame instead.

I'll take a pic

 

OK. Red circle is where ground wire is now, Yellow arrows point to nuts where i would hook it to the motor frame. (one of those. The nearer one was out of frame, thus the second arrow
I did have it there before, iirc
Same green wire seen coming out of the bottom of the motor itself.
Flat connector with hole. Not the clips like the power wires.

 

That matches the stoves here StEarl - ground from power socket grounded directly to stove body,

comb. motor has a (short) ground wire from motor to the motor frame bracket, which in-turn, is grounded through bolts attaching comb blower housing to stove body.