L. Neil Smith, of The Libertarian Enterprise, wrote a scathing wrapup of the election and a thank you to our excellent Libertarian candidate, Michael Badnarik:
In hindsight, this election yielded exactly the results one would have expected from 120 million products of the public school system. Half of the voters wanted Daddy to protect them from the nasty bad A-rabs. The other half of the voters wanted Mommy to protect them from Daddy. [read more]
It’s easy to say you love to drink beer, but talk is cheap. Do you love beer enough to steal it from the dead?
If they were good enough for John the Baptist, they’re good enough for me!
Hey, fellow appliance techs, you think we have it bad here? Just be glad you’re not an appliance tech in China.
Topics: post-election wrap-up both nationally and in New Hampshire; who are the Libertarians; government programs never accomplish what they intend; educate yourself about Liberty. (13 minutes)
Your Hosts: Samurai Appliance Repair Man and Mrs. Samurai
Download the MP3 file of this show here (right-click and select save to download the file).
Topics: Live election day report in New London, NH; phoney election choices; rigged elections; is anyone really pro-Bush or pro-Kerry? 11 minutes.
Your hosts: Samurai Appliance Repair Man and Mrs. Samurai.
Download the MP3 file of this show here (right-click and select save to download the file).
In case you missed it, here’s a list of the Samurai’s pearls of wisdom posted at this website during October 2004.
Appliance Wisdom
Appliance Repair Revelation: Fisher & Paykel DC Drive Washing Machine
Mailbag: Maytag Dryer Belt Replacement Tip
Toll-Free Appliance Repair Hotline Update
Appliance Repair Revelation: Fisher & Paykel DD602 Dishdrawer: F1 code
Mailbag: Whirlpool Duet Dryer Stuck in Control Lock Mode
Mailbag: Dryer Blows Circuit Breaker on Heated-Dry Cycle Only
How to Search The Appliantology Group
Mailbag: Dishwasher Drain Air Gaps
The Samurai’s Martial Art of Appliance Repair
Appliantology Repair Forum Moved
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness…
War on Terrorism…Libertarian Style
Hillstomping Update, Franconia Ridge 10/26/2004
Most People are Libertarians…And Don’t Even Know It!
If You’re a Dumbass, Please Don’t Vote!
Who’s Gonna Run Your Life: “Them” or YOU?
Pro-Life Movement: Not Just for Religious Nuts Anymore!
Orwellian Leftist Term of the Day: Social Justice, Man
New Hampster’s Election Rat Race
Election 2004: Tweedledumb vs. Tweedledumber
Timing is everything and we timed this one right. After struggling up the Falling Waters Trail to the summit of Little Haystack on the Franconia Ridge, our eyeballs were treated to a feast of dramatic mountain vistas, White Mountain style. Here, see for yourself.
Sam on Little Haystack Mountain
After summitting Little Haystack, we headed north on the ridge to the summit of Mt. Lincoln.
Stephen is Blown Away by the Views!
We Bad!
Looking into the Pemigewassett Wilderness from the Franconia Ridge
Our original plan was to the hike the “T” (Little Haystack, north to Mt. Lincoln, doubleback to Little Haystack, then continue south to Mt. Liberty, doubleback to Little Haystack and head back down.) But we spent so much time lollygagging and feasting on eye-candy that we ran out of time and headed back down after Mt. Lincoln. We got back to the van just as the sun was setting. Sunset comes early up here in pre-winter Yankeeland, even earlier in the mountains.
Misty View toward Cannon Mountain
Take a hike!
These washers have been out for a few years and I’m starting to see more of them in the field. They are extremely reliable machines. Although they’re designed for residential use, I’ve seen them used in commercial applications, sustaining daily, continuous use for several years. This is a top loading machine, vertical axis, and uses an agitator like most top-loaders. These pictures are all from a model GWL08, which has been out for several years. The current model is GWL11.
The most common problem I’ve seen with these washers is a failed pump. The pump is a separate electric pump, is very easy to change by laying the washer down on it’s front panel, and is reasonably priced (about $50). Changing the pump is about a 10-minute job, and that includes time to manually bail a tub full of water.
Although it’s a top-loader and looks very similar to any other top-loading washing machine you’ve seen, it has some significant design differences.
This machine uses a DC drive motor and performs spin and agitate by directly controlling the motor–no transmission! This has three big advantages over conventional top-loaders: 1) increased energy efficiency since you don’t have efficiency losses through a transmission, 2) better reliability since there’s no transmission to fail, and 3) no belts to fail since the agitator is connected directly to the motor shaft.
The control panel lifts off by removing two phillips screws on the back of the control panel. The panel then flips over. The picture below shows what it looks like with the control panel removed.
Control Compartment with Touchpad Lifted Off and Power/Pressure Module Removed (note the water inlet valves on the left-hand side)
Not shown above are Power Control and Pressure Sensing Module, which plugs into the water inlet valve nipple, and the tech sheet, which you’ll find folded up to the left of the water inlet valve. The tech sheet gives detailed instructions for entering diagnostic mode and interpreting the binary diagnostic code generated by the LED display on the control panel touch pad.
The Power Control and Pressure Sensing Module has been removed in the picture above. It’s shown below:
Power Control and Pressure Sensing Module
Another difference with this machine is that it has no discreet pressure switch. Tub fill level is sensed by the Power Control and Pressure Sensing Module, above. This module has two fuses inside, on the control board. When one of them blows, it’s usually an indication that one of the high voltage components, pump or diverter valve, have gone bad. Surprisingly, and contrary to our experience with the abysmal Maytag Neptune Machine Control Board, this control board is amazingly robust. The board on this particular washer happened to be bad but that’s the first one I’ve seen.
The air tube from the tub pressure dome connects to a nipple on the upper right-hand side of the module. The module has a female port that connects with the water inlet valve nipple making a water-tight connection. Water is run into a heat sink tube inside the control board module to keep it cool. It’s the only water-cooled control board I’ve ever seen in the appliance world!
This last picture shows the Touchpad Module that accepts and interprets keypad input.
Touch Pad Module–Located on the Backside of the Touchpad
I haven’t seen any failures of this module. I have however, seen the touchpad itself fail but, in almost every case, it’s from the user pushing too hard on the keypad buttons. But, it’s a very inexpensive and easy part to replace.
Nice machine, as you’d expect from Fisher & Paykel–reliable, first-rate engineering, and easy to troubleshoot and repair.
Topics: upcoming election, dumbasses stay home, democracy as the tyranny of the majority, individual liberty. Length: 5 minutes.
Your hosts: Samurai Appliance Repair Man and Mrs. Samurai.
Download the MP3 file of this show here (right-click and select save to download the file).
Not exactly a conservative? Not precisely a liberal? Not quite sure at all? What do those labels mean, anyway? Most people have the nagging feeling that this left-right, liberal-conservative pap that Big Media smears us with every day is far too narrow a view. The fact is that these labels are not only meaningless, but they exclude millions of people.
Relax–the Samurai has just what you need to figure it all out: The World’s Smallest Political Quiz. Quick, easy, painless and, most of all, revealing–you just might learn something about yourself!
Sinsa:
One thing you might mention in your incredibly helpful guide to the Maytag
Dryer belt is that the evil geniuses at Maytag made a grove in the drum very close
to where the belt is supposed to run. If(make that when) the belt falls into
that groove while replacing the belt or idler wheel, when you put it back on it
will seem as though you have not properly looped it around the motor and idler
wheel, even when you have. It will seem as if the belt is (has somehow become)
too long, and drags against the alignment slot, until you rotate the drum
enough to get the belt out of the groove and up on the drum, where it belongs. I
respectfully suggest you might add this tidbit to your otherwise excellent
instructions.Now, my belt is back on. The dryer is running smoothly without banshee squeel.
Spouse is happy. Back to my quest for free beer!_______________________________
The above message was sent when you were offline, via your LivePerson site.Message sent from IP: 12.77.173.243
Good comment–consider it added.
Remember, also, that on Maytag dryers, the smooth side of the belt goes against the drum.
I don’t understand all these bleeting appeals to get out and vote. Could someone please answer this question for me: if people are ignorant about the pressing issues of the day, the principles of individual liberty upon which this nation was founded, or the basic structure and function of our government, then why in the hell do we want these boobs casting votes that affect all of us?
Oh wait, I can hear the whining and caterwauling now, “Hey, Samurai, you’re too cynical about people!” Ok, how ’bout some numbers? Warning: the following contains factual information, including statistics, and a TV-talking head is NOT supplied to inject this information directly into that void between your ears. You have to actually read it…just like you would a ballot.
GOOD NEWS, BAD NEWS, UNBELIEVABLE NEWS
by James W. HarrisNew Study: Shocking Voter Ignorance
A new study by the libertarian Cato Institute indicates that a shockingly large
number of U.S. voters are almost totally ignorant about the issues and
candidates they vote on.“Overall, close to one-third of Americans can be categorized as ‘know-nothings’
almost completely ignorant of relevant political information,” writes Ilya
Somin, a law professor at George Mason University, in “When Ignorance Isn’t Bliss:
How Political Ignorance Threatens Democracy.”“Most of the time,” Somin notes,” only bare majorities know which party has
control of the Senate, some 70 percent cannot name either of their state’s
senators and the vast majority cannot name any congressional candidate in their
district at the height of a campaign.”Overall, voters tend to be “abysmally ignorant of even very basic political
information… the sheer depth of most individual voters’ ignorance is shocking to
observers not familiar with the research.”A few examples from many in the report:
- The Patriot Act? What’s that? Three-fourths of Americans say they know little
or nothing about it. 58 percent say they’ve heard “nothing” or “not much” about
it.- Seventy percent don’t know about the $500 billion new drug benefit added this
year to Medicare, which Somin describes as “probably the most significant
domestic legislation passed during the Bush administration.”- A majority cannot make even a rough estimate of how many Americans soldiers
have been killed in Iraq.- 61 percent believe that there has been a net loss of U.S. jobs in 2004.
- Over 60 per cent don’t know that, during President Bush’s term, there has
been an explosion in domestic spending (about 25 percent above previous levels)
that has enormously increased the national debt.- Last year, 58 percent of Americans could not name a single federal Cabinet
department.And such voter ignorance is, alas, nothing new:
- In 1964, at the height of Cold War tensions, only 38 percent of the public
knew that the Soviet Union was not a member of NATO.- In 1994, after Republicans took control of Congress under the
highly-publicized leadership of Rep. Newt Gingrich, 57 percent of Americans said they’d never
heard of Gingrich, despite the avalanche of press coverage.- In 1996, 67 percent couldn’t name thei
r congressman, and only 26 percent knew
that senators serve six-year terms.- In the 2002 elections, only 3
2 percent of voters knew that the Republican
Party controlled the House.In 1816, Thomas Jefferson wrote: “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free,
in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”Looking at the grave threats to liberty now facing America, one can only
conclude Jefferson was right.(Source: Cato Institute study:
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-525es.html)
Due to time constraints, I’ve been unable to return calls on the Toll-Free Appliance Repair Hotline for the past several days. Consequently, so many messages had piled up that there was no way I was going to be able to return them. So I had to delete them and start fresh. Hey, whaddya want for nothin’? R-r-r-r-r-rubbah biscuits?
Anyway, I’m back and available to take hotline calls. If you called the Hotline in the past several days and still need help with your appliance problem, go ahead and call the Toll-Free Appliance Repair Hotline again. Of course, first-time callers are also welcome to call.
Talk to you later.
I had the opportunity to work on a Fisher & Paykel DD602 dishdrawer a couple days ago. By the way, I’m a big fan of Fisher & Paykel equipment–if you ever have the opportunity to work on one, you’ll see why. The engineering is elegant in its simplicity. Well-engineered equipment is actually much easier to work on because they’ve designed serviceability into the product.
Anyway, the problem with this particular dishdrawer was that the top drawer (with an 11 minute wash) was giving an F1 error code after the initial rinse, about five minutes into the cycle. The F1 code indicates an overfill condition. One of the most common causes for an overfill fault is that the dishwasher cannot pump out the dirty water due to a plugged drain hose.
So, I put the dishdrawer into diagnostic mode and tested the fill and pumpout functions–everything was peachy. I ran the top drawer in a normal wash cycle and, sho ’nuff, the drawer faulted out on F1 after the first rinse. Well, Houston, we had a problem and it was time for the Samurai to break open a can of whup-ass on this dishdrawer. First thing I did was pull the front panel off the drawer, like ahso:
Fisher Paykel DD602 dishdrawer with the front panel removed.
With that front panel off, I pulled the wire harness connectors off the main control board (lower right-hand side) to inspect for gookus. None found–my quest continued.
The next step to remove the botton drawer from the unit so I could inspect the flood switch. In order to do this, I had to remove the wire harness cover on the underside of the drawer. This is what the underside of the dishdrawer looks like with the botton cover panel removed:
Fisher Paykel DD602 dishdrawer, looking at the underside of one of the drawers with the wire cover plate removed.
With the bottom cover off, I could unclip the wire harness, fill hose, and drain hose. Then I unclipped the linkage at the back of the drawer and lifted the drawer off the slider arms. All this to expose the flood switch, shown on the left-hand side of the bottom panel in the picture below:.
Fisher Paykel DD602 dishdrawer with the lower drawer removed. The flood switch in mounted on the base, left hand side.
After noting the positions of the wires on the flood switch and removing them, I unclipped the switch housing from the base panel. The switch housing contains one switch for each drawer. The switches are wired normally closed (NC) and each switch has three spade connections, so it’s important to note where the wires went. With the switch housing out, I could ohm out both switches and both checked good. I inspected the contacts and noticed that one of them was oxidized, evidenced by discoloration.
I had a flash-back to my Navy days and heard Petty Officer (AT1) Crowe’s voice in my head, “Here, take this ruby red eraser and clean off them contacts. That’ll restore the current flow for that circuit. Good to go, Sailor.” You gotta understand, Petty Officer Crowe was my technical guru in the Navy; he taught me many of the practical and theoretical troubleshooting skills that I still use today.
So I cleaned the contacts as instructed by Petty Officer Crowe’s mental image in my brain and reassembled the dishdrawer. I ran the top drawer and…no F1 error code! I ran it several more times just to be sure.
Good to go, Sailor.