Side projects

[MostMint]

I don't have any big car projects on the horizon, but I am still taking care of mechanical things around here. I thought I'd share them.

Pressure washers:

In January my neighbor texts me to tell me he just put 5 gas powered pressure washers on the curb. He got himself a new hot water pressure washer. The 5 he had picked up off the curb as opportunity presented. He said the red one was working last fall.

I grabbed two of them, figuring if I needed parts I could maybe make one good one.

In April I finally had a chance to try them. Both of them fired up with ether but only the grey one would run. It ran badly but I did get a little work out of it that day.

Cleaning up an oil spill in the trunk of the Charger.

I started work on the red one. Took off the carb, tried to clean it and found the needle to be stuck solid in the seat. I tried to remove it but in the process broke the plastic float. I'd heard GMJohnny gets cheap Chinese carbs off ebay and sure enough for $18 I got one. The parts to fix would have been way more than that. With the new carb in place it started right up. The last engine fix was a return spring on the choke system. The old one was rusted and literally falling apart in my hand. I'm just glad it was there so I knew to add something. I found a spring in my spring parts bin I was able to make work.

The neighbor had said the red one had a cracked frame. Took me a while to figure out it was the base plate that had cracked. Well I used this opportunity to practice welding. I fabbed up a couple small plates and welded them in. I had considered welding across the crack but was not able to get both sides to line up well.

After that I scraped off the loose rust on the base plate and painted it black. I also fabricated a hook to put on the handle to help manage the hose. Unfortunately the tags the identify these are in pretty bad shape. I started wiping the dirt off this one and it took the ink with it. Best I can tell this one is 2014 vintage as it had 14/04/07 on the tag.


The grey one turned out to be an easier fix. The way it was backfiring on occasion and stalling out when releasing the trigger I figured it could be carb or ignition. I took the carb off and found the inside to be nice and clean. The o-ring that seals the carb to the block had dried out RTV on it. Since I didn't have the same size o-ring around, I just cleaned the dried out RTV off the current one, put a little grease on the tube and slid it back on. The thing ran perfectly after that. Starts on one pull if you use the primer button.

It had a slight oil leak out the valve cover. I pulled the cover and the gasket looked real nice. I did a bit of adjusting on the stamped steel valve cover and put it back on. Next time I use it I will find out if that problem is fixed.

I also used my new plastic pop riveter to re-attach the plastic piece to the handle which has holes to store the spray tips and a place to hold the wand and hose. This one is from 2013. I don't have the model # for this one either as part of the tag is missing but I know the engine is an 09P7

I only have two working spray tips so I'll order more of those so they each have a set.

I had borrowed BP's pressure washer in the past to clean my concrete, now I've got my own and apparently a second one to loan out. Used pressure washers don't fetch a lot of $ so I'll probably hang on to both of them.

[MostMint]

central vac:

My house was built in 1989, and it came with a Hoover central vac with a manufacture date of June 1987. The entire unit was built by Hoover, and it's a stainless steel case. It has a twin motor system in it. One motor died in 2020, so I bypassed it. I was unable to locate replacement motors (Hoover only made them 5-6 years, no one is making replacements). I ordered an Asetek Lamb motor but it had a big exhaust port that would not fit inside the housing, so we just ran with one motor until last Monday.

The second motor went down with a nasty grinding sound, like chicken bones in a sink garbage disposal. I considered buying a new unit - Home Depot had one for like $600, but I thought I should check out what I already had to see if it would work. Doing my research on the Lamb motor - turns out its a pretty good unit with replacement parts readily available, and it outperforms the twin motor setup in just about every way.

I took the vac from it's mount and brought it to the garage for surgery. I hooked up my shop vac as a temporary substitute, and as it turns out that worked really well- only issue being you have to go to the garage to turn it on and off. I figured plan B would be to adapt one of these to turn on and off with the bell wire switch like the regular vac.

To make this work I'd have to fit the new motor in the housing, secure it, and plug up the hole from the other vacuum motor unit.

With both of the old motors out, the new one with its big exhaust port fit inside the casing pretty well. Even though the new motor was bigger than the old motor, the mounting screws were in a large enough diameter circle, that the new motor would fit inside the circle. The new motor had three tabs that are equidistant around the circumference of the unit. This was pretty good, except the three mounting points on the old unit were not equidistant, two of them were closer to each other. Luckily I was able to use one of the mounting locations from the second motor, though I had to fabricate a bracket instead of using the third mounting tab. I had to fabricate some spacers for the other two attach points, to allow the bolts to tighten down without putting too much stress on the tabs. The bolts need to be snug enough to seal the unit against the mounting plate to avoid leaks reducing suction.

To plug up the hole, I debated making a plate and bolting it down and having the cover welded in but I chose the JB Weld route since that seemed easiest. I had some leftover stainless metal so I made the cover from that.

Finally, the new motor is taller than the old ones, and it has a fan on top to circulate air on the motor internals. To accommodate this I made a small hole in the top plate of the current housing.

The thing works perfectly again. Time will tell if my garage bench engineering holds up.