Author Archives: Samurai Appliance Repair Man

XM DieFi

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As you know, I’m a big fan of satellite radio and subscribe to both the major services, XM and Sirius. I subscribed to Sirius first and have previously described my travail when my Sirius Orbiter reciever crashed and burned. Then, late last year, I subscribed to XM and bought the XM MyFi setup. Well, now it was XM’s turn to crash and burn.

Since I had Sirius to listen to, this hardware crash wasn’t quite as traumatic (or dramatic) as it was when my Sirius Orbiter crashed– there was no driving to the store at 6am in my underwear and assaulting the olfactory of the clerk with my special vapors.

But still, losing XM was a psychologically damaging experience. I had gotten into a habit of listening to news and talk every evening at bedtime; shows like Phil Hendrie, Rollye James and Coast to Coast AM. Oh, it was a whole cozy ritual: Mrs. Samurai, Bubba, and I would snuggle down into our queen-size bed. Mrs. Samurai would usually read for a while, I’d be laying beside her ‘pooting on my Mac iBook (easily the coolest little compooter I’ve ever used), and Bubba would snuggle in betwixt us, lick himself a little bit, maybe nibble a paw or a rib and we’d all settle in for the night.

I also had my MyFi set up to record the Starstreams show on Ch. 77 (Audio Visions) which aired every day from 4 to 6 pm ET. So I always had five hours of fresh music stored in the MyFi ready to listen to anytime or even take with me. If you haven’t heard of Starstreams, you don’t know what you’re missing! You can also listen to them online via Live365. They play mostly ambient electronica from all your favorite artists such as Sounds from the Ground, Open Canvas, TUU, Bluetech, Omnimotion, Liquid Zen, Zero One and many others too numerous to name.

So, I had this nice assortment of news, talk radio, and music which I had become accustomed to having conveniently and readily available to me through XM radio on the MyFi receiver. Life was beautiful; life was precious.

And then it happened.

The XM MyFi shat the bed. In an instant, my six-month old MyFi melted down into a DieFi and our entire way of life was obliterated. Specifically what happened is that the receiver was no longer able to tune to channels 77 and above– which were the only ones I ever listened to. I could still get all the rock, rap, and other doo-doo music if I wanted to but half the channels available on XM radio were no longer available to me. The weeping, the wailing, the gnashing of teeth and rending of garments. Oh, Death, where is thy sting?

Only by tripling my usual dose of lithium in the subsequent days, from 10,000 mg to 30,000 mg per day, was I able to pull myself together enough to undertake the arduous process of contacting Delphi to get a warranty return number and send it back. Ten days passed in what seemed like ten thousand years.

Then the golden day arrived when the UPS man in the nice brown truck brought me my replacement XM MyFi receiver. I was so ecstatic that I stayed up for five straight days, listening to XM radio the entire time, before collapsing into a heap in front of the toilet, breaking it in half with my head.

When I awoke in the hospital, the first thing I saw was my dear, dear wife… holding my XM MyFi receiver in front of my face. She told me that I had been in a coma for three weeks and that she had set up my XM MyFi docking station in my hospital room where it played constantly on Audio Visions. This is a testament to the sheer power of XM radio– it can pull people out of comas. I later heard from a guy in my group therapy sessions that XM radio brought a dead guy back to life. Healing the sick, raising the dead, could XM radio be the Second Coming…?

Then, it happened again: my replacement MyFi started flaking out on channels 77 and above. A cosmically cruel joke or merely an inherent flaw in the MyFi? I don’t know and don’t care to find out.

I decided I just could not risk another cold turkey deprivation of XM due to shoddy hardware so I ordered a Roady 2 from Amazon for a mere $50, which includes everything you need to set it up on your vehicle. And a mere $30 gets you the home docking and antenna kit. I’ll post a review of the Roady 2 after I’ve had a chance to use it for a while.

Kenmore (Frigidaire) Front Load Washer Tub Bearing Woes

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So, your two to four year old Frigmore (Frigidaire-built but with a Kenmore name stuck on it) front loader is going clang-clang-clang like a trolley when it kicks into hi-speed spin? You’re probably faced with wallowed out tub bearings. Some good discussion for tackling this problem in this thread from the Samurai School of Appliantology. Go get ’em!

Mailbag: What to do with Dryer Cord Ground Wires

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NancyAnn wrote:

I recently moved. My Kenmore dryer has a 3 prong plug, my new house a 4 prong receptable. I replaced the old cord with a new 4 wire cord, But didn’t connect the green ground wire. The dryer came with a green wire attached to the frame. Do I remove or leave it? and connect the green from the 4-wire cord there? Do I attach both green wires to the frame? This dryer did not have the metal strap as shown in your diagrams.

Thanks,

NancyAnn

This is a point of confusion for many grasshoppers and one that I tried to clarify in my seminal epistle on this subject. Nevertheless, I get enough questions about what to do with the ground wire that some further clarification is in order.

A dryer’s internal ground can be done using a bare metal strap at the terminal block or by using a green wire that’s screwed to the dryer’s cabinet– it makes no difference which is used because they each serve the same purpose.

In the old three-wire dryer cord configuration, the neutral and ground were tied together (Figure 1).

At this point, Samurai’s 6th Law of Appliance Repair illumines us, “Neutral is not ground; ground is not neutral,” and we understand the problem with the old three-wire dryer cord configuration is that it violated Samurai’s 6th Law.

The whole point of the new four-wire dryer cord is to separate the ground from the neutral and thus comply with Samurai’s 6th Law of Appliance Repair. This is illustrated in Figure 2 on a dryer equipped with a grounding strap.

So, in light of this inspiring and illuminating tome, can you answer your own question about what to do with the green wires from the dryer and the cord? That’s right: they both get attached to the dryer cabinet. Go get yourself a cardboard cookie.

Laundry Room Bliss

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Hampster wrote:

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you! Yesterday as I sat here relishing in the bliss that was the 1st day of my vacation (screaming toddler & 5 loads of laundry) I became painfully aware of just how loud that dryer had become. I surmised that the problem involved whatever it is that the drum rides on. Thanks to your site I was able to rip that sucka apart this morning and remove the offending (offensive?) bearing and glides. I even know what to call them now. After a short drive to the appliance store and a bit too much money for such small parts the dryer is up and running quietly. I may however need to disassemble the vacuum now after filling it with all the lint that formerly resided in the dryer! The photos were VERY helpful. Thanks again.

Hey, that’s what we’re beer for… er, I mean, here for. Eh heh. Congrats on the repair!

Hillstomping Update: Mt. Madison 07282005

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Had another break in the heat and humidity so I headed off to the Northern Presidential range (“The Prezzies,” in native-speak) of the White Mountains for some mountain-made eye candy. After hiking all summer in 80 and 90 degree heat saturated with humidity, I had almost forgotten how it feels to hike in crisp, cool mountain air. I had gotten so used to getting beaten down by the oppressive heat, feeling it suck out my energy and strength like a vampire, that I was practically running up the Airline Trail to the near-summit of Mt. Adams.

I turned south off the trail about 0.4 miles below the summit of Mt. Adams and bushwhacked around the summit to the Star Lake Trail. I did this because my canine hiking partner, Bubba, seemed to be having a hard time with all the rough granite rip-rap which comprised the trail. Besides, the view from the Star Lake Trail, looking down at Star Lake and Mt. Madison, is one of the prime ocular treats on this hike. Check it out:


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Down at Star Lake, Bubba cooled his haunches and rested in one of the rare patches of grass found above treeline.


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Come on, check out the rest of the pictures from this splendiferous hike.

Man’s Testicles Locked In Padlock for Two Weeks

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BRENTWOOD, N.H. — Emergency workers helped a New Hampshire man out of a difficult situation over the weekend after a friend apparently locked a padlock around his testicles.

According to the Portsmouth Herald, police reported that the 39-year-old man was intoxicated when they arrived at the scene on July 30 at about 3:40 a.m. The man, who was not identified, told them that he had the padlock around his testicles for two weeks.

The man said that a friend put the lock on while he was drunk and passed out. When he woke up, the friend was gone.

“Never in my 13 years have I seen anything like this,” Cpl. H.D. Wood told the Herald.

The man told police that he tried to remove the lock with a hacksaw because the key had broken off in the lock.

He was taken to Exeter Hospital, where a locksmith removed the padlock. He was treated and released, and the hospital said he had no lasting injury.

Police said that they did not know the motive for the incident.

http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/4815844/detail.html

Puts a new meaning on taking away a friend’s keys when he’s drunk.

Hillstomping Update: Franconia Ridge, 07232005

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My family came up from Georgia for a visit and to have my sister’s two sons Baptized at our parish.

I took my brother on a classic hike up the Franconia Ridge in the White Mountains. Being an absolutely beautiful Saturday, lots of other folks had the same idea so the trails were crowded; I was reminded why I set a rule to never hike in the White Mountains on weekends.

We went up the Falling Waters Trail, across the Franconia Ridge to Mt. Lafayette and then down the Old Bridal Path. Bro held his own the entire hike– you’d never guess he was a flatlander. He even knew how to do a summit pose like a true hillstomper, check it out:


Bro of Samurai strikes a summit pose on Mt. Lincoln with Cannon Mountain in the background. (click for larger view)

War Story: Slow Drying Dryer and Frankenkitty

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A dark and ominous thunderhead had just rolled in when the call came in: dryer taking forever to dry clothes. I set down my 40-ounce bomber can of Colt Malt Liquor and sprinted for my trusty Fixite Do service van.

Just as I pulled into the customer’s driveway, the thunderstorm unleashed its fury, dumping rain and hail. I dodged 17 lightning bolts as I ran from my van to the house. The ground exploded everywhere the lightning struck, like a field of land mines. The thunder was so loud that it jarred loose three fillings in my teeth. But nothing could deter me from my mission– there was a broken dryer out there and the Samurai was on the job!

Once inside in the house and at the offending dryer, I proceeded to verify the complaint. The first thing I do in any slow-drying complaint is to eliminate a restricted vent as the source of the problem. So I pulled the vent off the back of the dryer and ran it. Using my calibrated palm, I felt the pressure at the dryer’s exhaust port– it was weak. So I knew I was dealing with an air restriction somewhere inside the dyer. To proceed, I needed to disassemble the dryer.

I removed the front panel of the dryer to inspect the blower chute and found that it was packed with lint!


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I dumped all the lint into a waste basket and set it against the wall, near an electrical outlet. Suddenly, the house was struck by lightning which surged through the outlet and arced out to the lint basket. When I looked over at the basket, I saw that IT WAS ALIVE! AHHHHH!


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