Couldn't leave well enough alone

In the interests of keeping this all honest I'll tell you about a little blunder (or two, or three...).

Today I had some cycles and decided to install the capacitor I ordered on Day 1. That was easy enough. I used a soldering iron to remove the old capacitor and crimped some female blade connectors onto the wires and plugged it in. Easy as pie.

Then I decided to mess with the relay...

Long story short I cracked the little ceramic head the pushes the points open and watched it fall apart. Oops! Hmmm. I decided to use a piece of a ballpoint pen as a replacement for the old ceramic piece. Same length and basic size, very hard plastic. I filled it with epoxy, let it dry, drilled a small hole in it and glued it into place.



It works great! You may also note my mods to the relay. On the left hand side of the image you can see where I bent the lever so that it doesn't strike the bracket any more. I also bent the other ends so that they connect more fully with the magnet. Why? Because I wanted to :-) The working theory being that the relay should be firmly open or closed at all times. Who knows, I may have just defeated an intentional design decision by the open frame relay people but I'll find out soon enough.

I've also been struggling with the motor, I pressed the new bearings on, went to put it back in the motor and realized I had left the retaining ring off. Press it apart, add the ring, press it back together, and then realize that I had created a major burr on the arbor (?). WTF? The thing was flawless 20 minutes ago.



Anyway, I'll need to disassemble it again and file that burr off so the arbor spacer with fit into place. All this to test the motor so I can pull it apart again....

Haste makes waste, so true... but less all of this, initial feel of the rotor in the new bearings is awesome. I put it together (without the fan) and fired it up. Bam! Nice and powerful! Not perfect or even OK, though. More about that on Day 6.

This motor design is really something else. I don't know who they had working for them but they were artists. This thing is all about subtlety and flexibility. The fact that a ham handed guy like me can mess with this thing 49 years later and get it working so smoothly is really a testament to their efforts.