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Showing posts from October, 2020

Refrigerator Start Relay

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About 13 years ago, I picked up a Magic Chef MCWC50DBT 50-bottle wine cellar from Home Depot ($249). It’s worked more or less reliably ever since (June of 2018, I did have to put in a new main control board (and, as a result, swap the incandescent lighting module with an LED replacement ), but a couple of days ago I started hearing a distinct “click” I’d never heard before, and as I monitored it day to day, I saw the temperature slowly rising. A little bit of Google-fu lead me to check the start relay (mounted to the side of the compressor): Sure enough, continuity was intermittent and occasionally when I shook it, I heard a light rattle inside. I found a replacement part (LG Electronics 6748C0004D 6748C-0004D Refrigerator Start Relay P6R8MD) on eBay (after verifying with the seller that it would work; the part number visible on the listing wasn’t an exact match for the piece I’d removed), and a couple of days later, installed it. Works perfectly. Everything fired right up and withi

Aviation Oil

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I’m no expert, but I’ve found a few pieces of information useful along the way. Collected here. (Anyone who knows me knows I’m a huge fan of Mike Busch when it comes to the care and feeding of aviation engines.) Consumption and When to Change Mike Busch’s  Checking the Dipstick  (November 15, 2016; archive.org link ) provides two excellent visual aids: A chart showing the acceleration of oil consumption over time in service (“the viscosity of the oil decreases as the oil deteriorates”). What “good” vs. “due to be changed” oil looks like. I know folks who change their oil religiously at 25 hours, and when I’ve submitted samples to Blackstone for analysis, they state their “universal averages are taken after ~30 hours of oil use.” But as Mike Busch notes: If your oil remains relatively light-colored and translucent after 25 hours in service, you can be reasonably confident that your cylinders and rings are in fine condition and that your oil can prudently remain in service for 40 or 50