This was an old project done a couple of years ago, but still worth demonstrating it to show how hardware and software can work in a nice fashion, cars these days use a lot of technologies, a controller is the heart of it. The Arduino UNO board is about 11 bucks now, and the LCD is about $14. They can build some nice project around the house, like a water leak detector. Back in the old days, we would be thrilled to make an AM/FM Radio, that might well pave the path for today. Hope kids these days would have the same heart and soul.
This car had some 156000 miles on it, could see some oil stain around valve cover and engine block area.
Removed the spark plugs, the connected rubber tube, and the PCV valve, unscrewed 5 bolts which hold down the cover, since it had never been opened, so it was hard to come off, used a flat screw driver to carefully pry along the seam until it loosened up, took it off. Then used the tabs to pull out the gasket
Used a very thin and small flat screw driver to shim in tube seal and the valve cover, pried it off the tube, then used a pair of pliers to pull it out, repeated for all four seals. Wiped clean the walls of tubes for new ones to be put in.
Used a big enough socket to hammer new seals into places, then replaced items back in order, when tightening up those 5 bolts, it took a little time to fit, just be patient.
Always get parts from dealer, this way you save a lot of trouble down the road.
Removed the spark plugs, the connected rubber tube, and the PCV valve, unscrewed 5 bolts which hold down the cover, since it had never been opened, so it was hard to come off, used a flat screw driver to carefully pry along the seam until it loosened up, took it off. Then used the tabs to pull out the gasket
Used a very thin and small flat screw driver to shim in tube seal and the valve cover, pried it off the tube, then used a pair of pliers to pull it out, repeated for all four seals. Wiped clean the walls of tubes for new ones to be put in.
Used a big enough socket to hammer new seals into places, then replaced items back in order, when tightening up those 5 bolts, it took a little time to fit, just be patient.
Always get parts from dealer, this way you save a lot of trouble down the road.
I have been thinking of this for a long time since day one I bought this for my wife as a birthday present, it had a timid 8Gb hard drive, always broke down because of the full disk and extremely slow.
I finally shelled out $72.91 for a 128Gb KingSpec SSD, be careful that it would fit into the mini and have the right type of connector (ZIF in this case), Amazon shipped this item to me during the snow storm, so it arrived just one day late.
I made a bootable Clonezilla flash, used it to clone the hard disk to another flash.
I finally had sometime to work on it, first got all the necessary tools ready, took out the battery, remove the 2 screws under that battery which held the keyboard, then push the center top part of the keyboard up, put in a small wedge to hold bend, carefully ply the Tab and Backspace of the keyboard to release it from the tabs, that would expose the keyboard ribbon cable, flipped up the black tab and took off the cable. Did the same for the white small cable and the SSD ZIF cable, remove the 2 SSD holder screws, took out the 8Gb Sandisk SSD and set it aside.
The 1.8" KingSpec SSD is big enough for the entire bay, so needed to remove the internal USB, unplugged the USB connector, used a plastic pryer to carefully ply off the glued down internal USB. The KingSpec SSD did not come with a ZIF ribbon cable, so needed to reuse the old one, it was hard to fit the cable in the new SSD, tried both ends of the cable, the end marked as "mb" was easier to insert, but still tight, in this process, be very careful that the bare contacts face the contacts in the connector.
The new SSD did not have any mounts, so made some washers to tighten down the new SSD, then use electric tape to further tie down.
I booted up the mini with Clonezilla flash, restored the image to the new SSD.
now, the partition was still 8 Gb. So, I made another bootable flash with GParted, first attempt to resize it failed with chkdsk, indicated file system was corrupted, booted into windows XP to run chkdsk /f, then rebooted into XP to finish off disk check. Reran GParted, this time it passed resizing successfully, and SSD got to its full potential.
At this point, job done.
I finally shelled out $72.91 for a 128Gb KingSpec SSD, be careful that it would fit into the mini and have the right type of connector (ZIF in this case), Amazon shipped this item to me during the snow storm, so it arrived just one day late.
I made a bootable Clonezilla flash, used it to clone the hard disk to another flash.
I finally had sometime to work on it, first got all the necessary tools ready, took out the battery, remove the 2 screws under that battery which held the keyboard, then push the center top part of the keyboard up, put in a small wedge to hold bend, carefully ply the Tab and Backspace of the keyboard to release it from the tabs, that would expose the keyboard ribbon cable, flipped up the black tab and took off the cable. Did the same for the white small cable and the SSD ZIF cable, remove the 2 SSD holder screws, took out the 8Gb Sandisk SSD and set it aside.
The 1.8" KingSpec SSD is big enough for the entire bay, so needed to remove the internal USB, unplugged the USB connector, used a plastic pryer to carefully ply off the glued down internal USB. The KingSpec SSD did not come with a ZIF ribbon cable, so needed to reuse the old one, it was hard to fit the cable in the new SSD, tried both ends of the cable, the end marked as "mb" was easier to insert, but still tight, in this process, be very careful that the bare contacts face the contacts in the connector.
The new SSD did not have any mounts, so made some washers to tighten down the new SSD, then use electric tape to further tie down.
I booted up the mini with Clonezilla flash, restored the image to the new SSD.
now, the partition was still 8 Gb. So, I made another bootable flash with GParted, first attempt to resize it failed with chkdsk, indicated file system was corrupted, booted into windows XP to run chkdsk /f, then rebooted into XP to finish off disk check. Reran GParted, this time it passed resizing successfully, and SSD got to its full potential.
At this point, job done.
16/01: House hunting for JD
It has been a while to look for a house for JD, we look at a slab year 2000 built single family home, as expected, some small cracks around outside perimeter and inside the garage.
The house overall is kept in good shape, in excellent school district, and priced at high end according RealList.
JD liked the pink room :)
The house overall is kept in good shape, in excellent school district, and priced at high end according RealList.
JD liked the pink room :)
I would like to use this platform to demonstrate the work I have done, my interests. Hope this is beneficial to you if you bump into this site.
I studied environmental and resource science in college, then I was fascinated by Geographic Information Systems and computer science and engineering. I got my MA in Geography and MS in Computer Science from UGA.
My dreams were to check out houses, I have realized this dream, and I am a licensed real estate broker and a proud member of National Association of Realtors, I can use my extensive geospacial, economic, legal and engineering knowledge to help people with their largest investment in life time which is also coined "American dream".
My second dream is to have a garage to do car repairs, I had a very good classmate in graduate school, he was from Russia, he was a fighter jet pilot before, so he was very good at mechanics, he helped me a lot with my car. Cars have evolved a lot, simple tools won't be able to tackle some complicated repair jobs anymore, I hope to use my technology/engineering knowledge to help people with their cars, but I cannot check off this one yet, it involves much more money to acquire commercial real estate, equipment for garage and man power. However, I will post some simple jobs I have done, and you can share your experience, if you happen to own the same make, that would be awesome!
I studied environmental and resource science in college, then I was fascinated by Geographic Information Systems and computer science and engineering. I got my MA in Geography and MS in Computer Science from UGA.
My dreams were to check out houses, I have realized this dream, and I am a licensed real estate broker and a proud member of National Association of Realtors, I can use my extensive geospacial, economic, legal and engineering knowledge to help people with their largest investment in life time which is also coined "American dream".
My second dream is to have a garage to do car repairs, I had a very good classmate in graduate school, he was from Russia, he was a fighter jet pilot before, so he was very good at mechanics, he helped me a lot with my car. Cars have evolved a lot, simple tools won't be able to tackle some complicated repair jobs anymore, I hope to use my technology/engineering knowledge to help people with their cars, but I cannot check off this one yet, it involves much more money to acquire commercial real estate, equipment for garage and man power. However, I will post some simple jobs I have done, and you can share your experience, if you happen to own the same make, that would be awesome!
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