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Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Altoids Can Laser Pointer

I came across a 200mW green laser diode and current driver for $0.01 on eBay and I just had to buy it! Unfortunately it cost me $10 to ship the darn thing. Oh well, I decided to make a laser pointer with it and decided to house the laser in an Altoids can.


I went to radio-shack and got a AAA battery holder to provide 3v for the diode. I also got a low profile push button switch.


I just drilled a couple of holes in the can and used super glue to glue everything in place. The laser pointer works great! It is a little big though. It's nice and bright but it doesn't burn anything. booo.

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Trailer Hitch LED Christmas Wreath

For a Christmas present this year I made my girlfriends dad a Christmas wreath with LEDs that attaches to the trailer hitch of his van. It was fairly simple to do.

Parts from Auto-zone:
  • 12v LEDs (LEDs with built in resistors for 12v applications)
  • trailer hitch Chevy brake light
  • trailer hitch wiring harness adaptor
Other materials:
  • 0.22" acrylic
  • black plastic spray paint
  • fake Christmas wreath
  • random assortment of wire

     Isn't cool looking! Just needs a big red bow!



    Lights off. The LEDs are really bright.



    Cannibalized Chevy trailer hitch brake light, acrylic 'X' bracket epoxied to the Chevy trailer hitch,and the wreath is attached via wires.

    Tuesday, September 29, 2009

    Signature

    Here is my new signature for MatrixOwners.com. I am essentially using blogger as an image host in this post.... Let see how well this works.


    Check it out! I know its not the greatest... A lot better then my old one though!

    Tuesday, September 22, 2009

    Debadging

    So today I got bored and decided to debadge my 2003 Toyota Matrix. To debadge essential any car you only need three things:
    1. dental floss ( fishing line works too)
    2. Bug and tar remover
    3. old credit card
    Essentially all one has to do is to cut through the adhesive holding the badge on by  using dental floss. Sliding it back and forth does the trick.



    Then all it takes is a lot of patience, a old credit card, and bug and tar remover to get all the sticky junk off.



    Finally  after about 2 hours, 4 mosquito bites, and a couple of soar fingers,



    ... the advertisements are gone! Except for that Toyota symbol because that void would look funny if it wasn't there... I'll have to come up with something creative! It was pretty easy to do except for a tiny little spot that I might have to get a clay bar or something else to get it out with. Oh well, I think it looks nice!

    Saturday, September 19, 2009

    Tune up!

    So my car, 2003 Toyota matrix XR, is just shy of 100K miles and I decided to perform some maintenance.


    The first thing I did was to disconnect the negative terminal on the battery.  This protects the equipment will I am taking it apart as well as resents the computer if the negative terminal is off for >20 mins. This alows for the car to basically give its-self a tuneup.


    The next thing I did was clean the mass air flow (MAF) sensor. This sensor determines the flow rate of air going into the engine and allows the computer to maintain a proper air/fuel ration. The MAF collects junk on the sensors which can interfere with this crucial parameter. To clean it, one only has to remove the sensor from the air intake tube (between the air filter and the throttle body) and spray it down with some mass air flow cleaner or electronics cleaner. I picked up a can of CRC Mass Air Flow cleaner at Advanced Auto Parks for ~$7. On the can it says that it can improve gas mileage and gain 4-10 horsepower. I highly doubt such gains could be made by just cleaning the sensor unless your sensor is ridiculously dirty. Mine didn't look to dirty but there was decent build up.


    Here is my cleaned MAF sensor. The amber ball on the side is a temperature sensor and the actual flow sensor down in the plastic tube. Be gentle while cleaning as this part is sensitive and crucial to your car.


    Next I replaced my spark plugs. First I removed the plastic engine cover which revealed the individual ignition coils that sit on-top of the plugs as seen below.


    After removing the ignition coils, its time to replace the plugs. I bought NGK iridium's from Advanced Auto-parts. The lady at the store said that I did not need to gap them as they came pre-gaped. After some surfing on the web at various forums including www.matrixowners.com (which is an awesome resource for my car at least) and the manufacturers website, I came to the conclusion that these plugs needed gaped. After another trip to Advanced I got a gaping tool.

    For my car, the gap needed to be sent to 1.1mm. The new spark plugs came pre-gaped at 1mm. So a little tweaking later the gaps are set correctly. The gaping tool pictured above was pretty useful and cost less then $2. The round hole provides a fairly easy way to make the gap wider. One has to be careful to no damage the electrodes while gaping.
    Next I removed the old plugs and inserted the new plugs. 
     
    As can be seen above, the old plugs do not look to bad and I probably could have gotten away with just cleaning them. At any rate, I replaced the plugs (have no idea how many miles are on them). Since my block has an aluminum head on it, it is crucial important to make sure that the engine is completely cooled. Aluminum becomes fairly ductile at high temperatures making it easy to cross thread the spark-plug holes. After hand tightening the plugs (do not use air tools) I used a tourque wrench to torque the plugs to the factory specs.

    Making sure the torque is correct on the plugs insures that the plugs will seal the cylinder and that unnecessary stress is not induced by over tightening the plugs. For my car, this torque is 18 ft-lbs.

    I was planning on cleaning the PCV valve also however I did not have a deep enough socket to remove the valve from the engine block. I will most likely perform this maintenance at a later date.

    After bolting everything back together and reconnecting the negative terminal on the battery, I started the car. Everything seems normal, the engine runs smoother, and no CEL lights turned on. Maintenance successful!

    Oh, I also checked the oil and it was a little low so I topped it off.

    Saturday, September 12, 2009

    LED Accent Lighting

    Today I built a LED light strip to be placed above the cabinets in by kitchen. I constructed it out of:

    1. Blue piranha High flux LEDs (from www.superbrightleds.com)
    2. 150 ohm 1/4W resistors
    3. Radio Shack 6, 7.5, 9, 12V AC to DC adaptor
    4. Assortment of wire from Radio Shack


    It turned out pretty good I must say. Except for the part were the LEDs are angled in all sorts of directions making an non uniform pattern on the ceiling. Take a look and tell me what you think.

     
    LEDs on top of cabinets. 2 LEDs per cluster, separated by equal amount of wire.

     
    LEDs with room lights on.

     
    LEDs with lights off.
    I completed the build in about 2 hours. Now its time to stop being sidetracked and work on my other projects.