Tinker Tools: Generator Repair (and a new skill, to boot!)

Almost 3 years ago now, I bought a Homelite generator from another missionary.  Just a small 110v, 500W unit that would make a nice backup for power outages or working in the country.  It's extremely compact and easy to take along.  It even has a 12v output for charging car batteries!  Of course, at the time, we were planning on living in the jungle, so it would have been extra handy. 

This photo and the next one were taken April 23, 2013 -- the last time I worked on it! :oops:

However, the first time I tried it out, it started leaking gasoline all over the place.  Naturally, I pulled it apart, assuming it was a bad fuel line and easily fixable.  Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. :(

Turns out, the fuel tank had broken at some point and someone tried to fix it.  The main outlet at the base of the tank was evidently a plastic nipple that had broken off.  It had been replaced with a metal nipple that was just threaded through the thin tank wall.  It wasn't holding fuel and neither was a joint halfway up the tank where the fuel gauge used to be.

I honestly didn't know what to do with it.  I tried a couple of different epoxies here, but the gasoline ate right through them.

My attempts to fix it with epoxy were completely futile

While we were in the US a couple months later, I ordered a replacement tank from Sears, but their customer service being what it is the past few years, I received an email once a week for 6 months saying it was back-ordered, even though the website said "In Stock."  :bangsheadonwall:

Ultimately, I didn't have the time to fuss with it, so it has just been taking up space among my tools for 2 years.

Now that the kitchen is done, I was feeling my freedom a bit yesterday and decided to tear into it.  I had done some reading on plastic welding and I knew (from "buying" one online) that the tank is made of ABS.  I have plenty of scraps of ABS pipe around.  So I tried it out.

The basic principles of plastic welding are similar to steel welding: two pieces of similar material heated and melted together using another piece of the same material as filler.

Because it is a relatively small project, I used a candle and my old 40-watt soldering iron to do the job.  The candle is for general heating and the soldering iron is for mixing it all together.

I cut bits off of the pipe (left) that were easier to work with.  Yes, that's a custom handle on the soldering iron.  The original one was plastic and melted. :P

Heat the filler over the candle until it is melting and on fire

Stuff it into the joint and use the soldering iron to mix it into the other two pieces (which should also be hot/warm)

I originally tried to just build up the plastic around the nipple the way I did with the epoxy, but it just kept leaking and I couldn't control the size of the hole in the tank very well.  So I cut a piece of pipe, drilled a hole in it, and threaded the nipple all the way into it.  Then I filled in around the threads that stuck through the backside. Then, when it was ready, I welded it onto the tank as a single unit.  I don't have photos of that process because it was late last night and I was trying to get it done.

Here's how it looks, all finished:

Here you can see the two patches - one just left of center, where the gauge was, and the other just below center, where the hose comes out

Not pretty, but apparently effective.  The teflon is from a roll left behind by the guys that changed the natural gas in our kitchen, so I'm hoping it is the petroleum-resistant type ;)

I left it sit all night with gas in the tank and was very disappointed this morning to find it seeping. :(  I pulled it apart again and low and behold, all my joints were dry and the hose was leaking from the other end!  After a new bit of hose, it's dry as can be!

Although I don't have so much need for it now that we're living "in town," we still do have an occasional outage, and it will be nice to be able to run lights or the few other things I have in 110v: Dremel, coffee grinder, battery chargers for cameras and cordless drills, laptop and internet. . . ;)

Ready to go!

Project: Baby Wheelbarrow

Before I tell about this project, I have a confession to make.  It's something I'm not proud of and is an area I want to actively improve in:

I grind my welds.

I know it doesn't sound like a big deal, but  the fact is that I know people that strike an arc and leave beautiful little rivulets of newly-formed metal in their wake.  I'm a fair hand with a MIG welder, but when I stick weld, it looks more like what my chickens leave all over their roost.  Most of the problem is just inexperience, but it doesn't help that I have terribly unsteady hands.  I've noticed that my technique is 100% better when I'm working with the back half of the stick.

So I grind them.  I'm sorry.

Now then, about the project.  Almost a year ago, Kaylee noticed a tiny little wheelbarrow hanging out near the house of our friends Willy and Eli, just a stone's throw away, here on campus.  It looked rusty and beat up and the wheel was broken.  She thought it would be fun for the girls to use, since they were making a little cash (from me) by picking up fallen mangoes, and encouraged me to talk to them about it.

As it was, after I cut off the broken wheel and axle

I asked Willy about it and he said that he had found it out and about and had grabbed it to fix up for the kids.  He said that I could take it.  Well, with the busyness of the school year and the other projects that I've had to do, combined with the quality of my welding, I kept putting it off until this week.  It's mango season again and it would be the last opportunity for Lydia to use it, because it is so small!

I found a new wheel in the hardware market a couple weeks ago and finally got to work on it this week. 

It's actually in better shape than I originally thought.  As I gave it the wire wheel treatment, I realized 2 things:  that it actually had very little rust (just funky paint) and that it was obviously made locally.

The biggest problem is that I wanted it to sit level, so I decided to cut the struts off the front and weld the axle directly to the frame.  However, the frame is a very thin-walled pipe and the axle is a piece of 5/8" bolt. Not an easy job!

My awesome welding station.  The key is to not drop molten steel into your boots. ;)

See, I told ya.  I grind my welds.

I made a terrible mess of the first side and ended up patching up quite a bit of the pipe that I burned out.  I learned my lesson, though, and the other side went lickety-split!

I painted it green and black and turned it over to the 4-year old: