superhawk996

One of the environmental negatives people talk about with the Prius is discarding the traction battery when it goes to shit. I've been babying this one along for quite a while by replacing modules as they fail. The skinny grey things are called modules, a six cell NiMh battery pack, and there's 28 of them in series to make a nominal 202V. In the photo they've been rearranged so I could easily put them in parallel for experimental conditioning. The typical failure is one cell in the module goes bad and that's enough to piss the car off and it becomes super shitty. After several rounds of module whack-a-mole I decided I was giving up and was about to go buy a new battery, but then I decided to give it one last shot. New modules aren't available other than buying a whole battery so every time one takes a shit I buy a used one on ebay and just stick it in. The 'proper' way is to balance all the modules when one is replaced but that takes special equipment or a fuck load of time with minimally specialized equipment. Ideally the modules would all be cycled a few times, charge and drain at least three times. With what I have available that would take about a month of vigilant work to keep from killing them so I've decided to just hold them all in parallel with a mild charge to possibly balance them. In theory holding them at a fairly high voltage for a long time will let the weaker cells get a better charge and even out to the stronger ones. In normal use they're constantly charging and discharging and are never fully charged or discharged to make them last longer. When one cell gets weak it gets less charge making it weaker and eventually it's just fucked forcing a module replacement or some kind of reconditioning to possibly resurrect it. When the first one went bad I looked into buying a new factory battery and they were close to $3k. There's a bunch of cheaper options from new aftermarket modules to professionally reconditioned old modules. I re-checked prices a couple days ago and found I can get a new OE battery for $1560, that's what really had me close to pulling the trigger. This is going to be my last effort with this battery. If it works I'll be getting a proper NiMh charger so I can recondition them as maintenance and hopefully keep them alive. The charger is an old NiCad RC car charger. It's designed to charge for 15 minutes at a time and extended charging makes it overheat, that's what the little fan propped up by the light blue thing is for. Because it has no smarts I'm monitoring the voltage, if it starts dropping it's an indication to stop charging. I'm also checking the module temperatures every 13 minutes before resetting the charger's timer back to 15. The only convenient thing I had around to connect all the modules was some thin stainless rods which aren't great conductors so I rigged a few jumper wires to balance out the current/voltage to the modules, it's quite the mess of wires but it's working. Worst case scen Here's the most recent dead module, you can make out the division of the 6 cells. During charging/discharging they can swell up which is why I have them clamped in the battery case. You can see two black rods and there's two more on the bottom. They're internally threaded and there's bolts at both ends to squeeze the whole pack and keep them from bulging. Despite the bolts being pretty big (10mm) if the batteries are stressed hard enough their expansion force can snap the bolts.

I'm never bored, always have 57 projects on the list, but I'd love to see this resurrected and on my Bird. I've never done any upholstery and my only glass experience was helping Carlos with a small project. I *should* have the ability but I'd be starting from 0 experience.

It was part of a bundle with a bike that had problems I specifically asked about and was mislead about also. He's a long standing member I've not seen post in a long time, he was quite sick at the time, and I choose to believe he had no bad intentions and maybe just nearsighted. I won't out him....unless he posts something for sale without photos.

With a little glass skill and some patience it probably wouldn't be too hard to fix. When it showed up I was disappointed in the condition and put it in a corner of the garage, out of sight out of mind. Dammit, photos won't load. I guess I didn't make my .org payment this month. I'll try again later.

If you post the equivalent men's size, assuming there is, it might get more attention.

If his seat has the receptacle and he's just missing the backrest it should be fairly simple to make one, assuming the post is a generic bar stock size. I have a damaged smuggler I kinda overpaid for, it's more damaged than what was described. I have no idea how to price it, and still have dreams of fixing it so I haven't really thought of a price, but if he wants a fiberglass and upholstery repair project I can post a pic and maybe he can talk me out of it.

F-you for making me spend big bucks on a knife! I've always battled over buying a good knife and just dealt with using cheapos. Your ad popped up at a time where I was really starting to think about getting something good. A bit of research told me not to buy it, that research lead me to the Benchmade 940 series. Slim and light which is what I really want, and most use the same S30V steel as your Spiderco. Then one stood out, the 940-1; S90V blade and carbon fiber handle...and $300ish. So I hit ebay and got a used one for just under $200. The edge was in pretty good shape, after a little touch up on a ceramic sharpener it's pretty bitchen. It's probably no sharper than I get my cheapo, but I'm guessing the sharpness will last more than the 5 seconds the other does. I swear that thing seems to dull itself just sitting in my pocket. I doubt I've ever spent more than $50 on a knife, probably more like $30. I bought it right after looking at yours but didn't want to poop on your ad with any negativity towards yours.

I'd never heard of the GSXR400, trippy.

If one wanted to really go crazy he could heat the engine externally to help the oil flow faster and carry away more sediment, but I'm guessing that running it will stir stuff up and get more of that out. After sitting a few years there's got to be a layer of stuff on the pan. I don't think any chosen method will be bad and whichever is the best method will only be a little better than the worst. I experimented with my previous IDI diesel which blackened the oil quickly. Draining it hot, leaving it to drain overnight, and pouring a little fresh oil in to flush the bottom of the pan made a difference in the color of the new oil. It was a fun experiment and proved that it made a difference, but since it would be black by the end of the first day of driving I only did it when it was convenient to let it sit overnight. If it were my bike and I really wanted to be extreme it's probably what I'd do.

You don't really get more oil out, it just comes out faster. Being freshly stirred up and flowing faster means less chance of sediment staying behind. A bike that's been sitting a long time has more oil at the bottom of the block ready to drain, but there could be a fair bit of sediment that stays behind.

Happening again this evening.

I assume you meant key on engine off. If you started the bike as you state then 0 will be the idle speed. Regardless the method, I'd verify the factory tach reading with another one.

The flipside is get it to start quickly so that the oil flows faster and starts splashing the pistons. This is more important with flat tappet motors with a new cam & lifters, but even with more modern stuff there's a fair bit of debate between the two. I would do the crank thing if the plugs were out, otherwise just go for the start. It might take a few seconds of cranking anyway to purge old gas from the injectors. I feel that cranking with no spark and the spark plugs in place is probably the worst option, but that's just an opinion and none of the options are likely to do any real harm.

I'll bet that as long as the tank isn't crusty it fires up with way less drama than you seem to be expecting. Chances are that it needs nothing but a good power source, battery or jumper, and it'll fire without doing anything else.

WD40 might be worse than doing nothing to the cylinders. If you feel the need to lube use motor oil. Or maybe fogging oil since it's easy and made for that. Many are proponents of pre-lubing cylinders, I don't think I've ever bothered. With the angle of the cylinders you'll need to get the oil to the top of the pistons, gravity top, at the intake valve side, otherwise you'll only be lubing the lower parts of the cylinders. What I would do: Dump the gas, if there's no crusty stuff just splash some fresh gas around to rinse it out, add gas and turn the power on. If the pump runs, cycle the key a couple times to purge the old stuff from the lines and try to start it. I expect a few seconds of cranking before it fires. I don't live in the tropics, but I've started stuff that sat way longer than that (up to around 20 years) with nothing more than fresh gas. Many suggest new oil & filter before starting. My opinion is that's just going to add more delay to making oil pressure and do more harm than good. If you decide to pre-lube the cylinders, while the plugs are out crank it for a while to circulate oil without any engine load. If you choose to do this go ahead and do an oil change if you'd like.

With 20 forward gears I expect at least 3 reverse. Maybe they ran out of ink.

Thank you! I saw it right after he posted it and was tempted, I hoped someone else would fix that for me.

My guess would be to install it with the engine running at a known RPM so you can install the needle in the right position. I did that on a car tach. It's possible that you pushed it too far in and it's dragging/sticking or maybe pushing on the shaft damaged it. I assume it's a stepper motor, I don't know exactly how they work, but you could google it if you want. I don't know that knowing how it works will help much.

I changed the clutch oil on one of my bikes so it can be a thing. Well, Harley calls it 'primary drive oil', but it's mostly for the clutch so it could be referred to as clutch oil. In a playful argument with a Harley guy, before I owned one, he said Harley's system is smarter because it uses 3 separate oils for the engine, transmission, and clutch so they can each be tailored to do one job and they don't contaminate each other. Yea, but all 3 are the same kind of oil so it's still compromise oil, and my bike filters all of them unlike yours which only filters the engine oil. Now, grab us a couple beers and lets discuss your bike's ingenious self-draining oil system, mine do lack that advanced feature.

I assume you mean the clutch fluid, as in the brake fluid for the clutch hydraulics?

Good thing you have the red key so you can program copies to keep the bags running.

Curious, what's the story behind your name?

I always start with recent repairs and modified stuff. I had one just a couple hours ago, Jeep LJ tailgate that wouldn't open. They incorrectly installed a flag pole receiver to the hinges and very effectively bolted the tailgate shut. He was sure it couldn't be that, 'till we removed it.

My first thought was the check connector, the "loom fix" as fizzy stated. The problem is most prevalent on '99 and '00 models, but also happens to newer ones. Aftermarket lights and dead lights won't cause a fault code. As for the dual MAP question, if it has one in the tail it's most likely a barometric pressure sensor.