What did you do to/with your vehicle today?

[nemo]

New headlights earlier this week.

[me and my metro]

It is pay day and new battery day for my Saturn L200. This was a used battery out of a wrecked Saturn I purchased for parts four years ago. The manufacture date on the battery is over five years ago. I will purchase another lead acid battery for this car, sorry no li-on for this car.

[ACEL]

Had to re-adjust and lubricate the rear drum brakes of the Acuramatata because of an annoying "tic, tic...tic" noise when braking and even driving at low speed. The problem is fixed. It was probably that the brakes adjustment was too loose and the shoes were just barely touching the drums. Also, earlier this past spring, I cleaned the brake dust and checked the linings. The brake cleaner seems to have removed the grease from the 6 back plate sliding points for the shoes. Mechanic's laziness! I found a proper way to lubricate these points without disassembling the whole brake assembly. I dislike working on drum brakes!

[California98Civic]

Several hours yesterday and today each studying the ZF power steering system in my daughter's 06 BMW because it has failed. The 06 6MT Accord 6 cylinder was FAR better than this 06 BMW 325i was: the Accord was a more powerful, more reliable, and cheaper car than the 325i. But I am rebuilding the BMW's power steering system, and my daughter is maybe learning I don't know what... I want the car to run perfectly and then I want to sell it!

[ACEL]

For details, please see my modification thread.

Acel

[California98Civic]

Spent a few hours organizing autoparts/tools storage & workspace and then playing with these old peltier tiles. This is three in series. Max power I got was 0.30 volts. Still fun. But it is a shame that you can't produce much power with them. Boiling water in a glass and frozen food produced just 0.3 volts? Yikes.

[Galane]

You want the ones called TEG or Thermo Electric Generator. They're optimized for the Seebeck Effect for generating power from a thermal difference instead of Peltier optimized for generating a thermal difference from power input.

But since TECs get used much more than TEGs, you'll pay more for TEGs.

What I figure could be a good TEG setup for a hybrid, or in place of an alternator (or assist to use a smaller alternator) would be to take a length of square tube to replace a piece of exhaust pipe, mill the outer faces flat then mount a row of TEGs along each face. The outer faces of the TEGs would have long finned aluminum heat sinks across the row. Put a metal box around the assembly with an air inlet tube up to the front of the vehicle.

When the vehicle isn't moving, have a fan blow air through to keep heat from building up too much.

[ACEL]

After reviewing pics from the dust test, comments from more experienced ecomodders and reexmining the dust depots on the Acura, I moved the lower separation edges.

Since there was just as much or almost as much dust before the reparation edges compared to after, I decided to move the lower parts further ahead to the start of the dust deposition.

Next dust test will help validate the change that now makes separation edge V.02.

Regards,

Acel

[California98Civic]

I did not know the difference between TEC and TEG. Thanks Galane. I think I remember an earlier thread in which you dicussed that squarepipe idea. I wondered if a square tube around the standard exhaust pipe would preserve exhaust scavenging better. But I am just daydreaming, and I coulda spent that time better than playing last night.

[California98Civic]

Originally Posted by ACEL

After reviewing pics from the dust test,....

ACEL, you might want to consider pressure measurements in addition to dust deposits. Julian is an advocate and you seem to have his book. Have you thought of it?