Been a good week for deals...
$100 Gaming laptop:
It's about 5 years old. It was supposed to have 16GB of RAM and an SSD, plus the battery was supposed to be bad. None of which was actually true; I wasn't complaining though.
Stole 8GB stick of ram out of the free laptop handed to me a couple of weeks ago (replaced it with a $10 4GB stick). Stole the 2.5" SSD out of my PC, now it has what it says it was supposed to, plus a working battery, and it technically I didn't put any money directly in to it.
It's a nice little rig, and can play games from a few years back at full speed, should I ever feel the need.
I've since bought accessories. $5 bluetooth mouse, $10 laptop convertible bag/backpack, $10 lap desk with built in speakers.
Not much of a deal, but I replaced the 2.5" SSD with this:
Thought the old SSD was fast enough. This thing is nuts - 6x faster!
Bought this this morning:
$250, DOA. 2018 model.
Screen that turns it on was broken, damaged by water ingress. Pretty much whole otherwise. Had battery, key and charger, so wasn't stolen. I ran the serial number to double check.
Not willing to screw around or wait for parts, I re-wired it to my spare 350w controller. It used proprietary plugs everywhere, so rather than a quick and easy job, I spent a couple of hours figuring out and splicing in all the wires:
Barely fit in to the frame, with the larger controller and a couple of extra/larger plugs. If it comes out again, I will eliminate the extra plugs.
Before reassembling, I washed it:
These small images completely obscure all the wear and paint chips on it. It looks decently well used...enough that I won't feel the need to protect it from every little thing.
Within 4 hours of buying it, I had it cleaned, repaired and did the basic maintenance on it and it was ready to ride. And, of course, it started raining.
The
real reason behind it, behind spending more $$ on an ebike than I would otherwise, is this:
It fits in the "trunk" of my insight! (With room to spare for my electric scooter)
Not deals, but otherwise this week, I've been working on my other wheeled rides/projects.
Fixed up my motorcycle one morning earlier this week and went for the first ride in a couple of years:
Bought an armoured motorcycle jacket for $30. Unfortunately, the washing machine ate some of the lining, and I need to sew it back up.
Also got the urge to get on with my 3000w ebike build...tired of not being able to decide how the frame should look, I decided to pull out a crappy old ebike frame that I was pretty sure I could stuff the motor/wheel in to. A little stretching of the rear of the frame and it went in:
So I can get on with other parts of the project. I scavenged a 7-speed freewheel and a disc brake for it. Got the freewheel & derailleur working. Found a bracket for a disc brake that I'm going to modify to fit the frame. Swapped the forks and front wheel for one off another bike that had disc brakes, and swapped the skinny tire off of it for one of the fat ones that came on the ebike...so it doesn't look too ridiculous with that fat tire on the back. Had to cut the rear v-brake mounts off the frame to clear the tire.
Lots of little things to do, but I can get on with electronics and battery building. Will get back to the motorcycle frame at a later date...I want easy(er) results first.
So, yeah...been a good week between deals, projects and being able to ride again.
