Greg In The Desert

When I moved into this house several years ago, I had to buy new kitchen appliances. I allowed the salesman at Ballios to talk me into Frigidaire appliances. A mistake I now regret as one of the more problematic appliances has been the refrigerator. Among it’s many problems, a few months ago the ice maker would not stop making ice once the bin was full and a few weeks ago it failed to make ice at all.

The ice maker is a pretty common and simple in design. It consists of metal ice tray, a rotating arm to push ice out, an arm to sense when the ice bin is full and the various gears and motors to run these items.

I went online and read various resources on how to troubleshoot the ice maker. I needed to remove the front panel of the ice maker and I should be able to turn the main gear with a screwdriver. I wasn’t able to do that in fact it was nearly impossible to turn the gear at all using a wrench and pliers. It became clear that the main motor that runs the whole assembly had become seized or failed in some way and it would be easier to replace the whole ice maker than mess with the motor.

Based on various readings on the world wide web, I purchased a Frigidaire 5303918277 icemaker from Amazon for about $50.00, which was the cheapest I could find it. I don’t think it’s an OEM product and it doesn’t look exactly the same, but functionally it’s the same.

I was very concerned that replacing this thing was going to be a big ordeal. As it turned out, it was almost a plug and play install. The old ice maker had two bolds holding it in and a wiring harness. The water supply isn’t attached to the ice maker, its sort of a funnel that pours water into the ice maker (makes sense otherwise the water supply would probably freeze). The most difficult part was removing the screws. Since I couldn’t see them I had to use two hands, one to feel around for the screw and guide the socket and the other to operate the socket. I bolted the new ice maker in, leveled it and attached the wiring harness. I was making ice again within 30 minutes.

Sometimes doing your own repairs on cars saves money but its also good to consider how much your time is worth. I recently helped a friend to do repairs on their 1997 Saturn SC2 Coupe and the car was not drivable for almost two weeks because the window couldn’t be rolled up. A simple problem turned into long down time for the vehicle.

The powered passengers side window was having problems rolling up. The first thing I did, and in hindsight was the wrong thing, was to roll the window all the way down. Previously when it wouldn’t roll up my friend would push it up with their hands. Apparently rolling it all the way down locks the window into place and it wouldn’t roll up even with manual force.

It was a Thursday afternnon and New Mexico’s warm weather was turning to cold, wind and rain. Not the ideal weather for having a car with a window that wont roll up. I have never dealt with a window regulator, that’s what they call the scissor like mechanism that moves the window up and down on a power window. That didn’t stop me from removing the door panels to take a look. Somehow I thought that I could remove the panel, do something, and the window would now magiclly work. What that something was wasn’t clear to me at the time.

Saturns are a different kind of car, they have a plastic outer door panel and the outside panel must be removed with about 10 metric torx screws. Before the door panel can come off the door handle needs to be removed. Instead of being held in with a screw it has a plastic pin that holds it in. Easy enough, you pull the head of the pin out and it door handle comes off.

Except when the plastic pin head breaks off half way. I ended up drilling out the pin. If your intereated in how this works, I recomemnd viewing a video on YouTube by richpin06a entilted “Rear Outer Door Panel Removal Saturn S-series“. It looks so easy in the video.

Before I took the door off, I looked at removing the switch first. I couldn’t figure out how to remove it from the center console and taking it apart appeared to be a complicated mess. Taking the door apart looked easier and that’s why I started there. Mistake number two.

Once I had the door off and the glass out of the door I could check the electrical connection to the regulator motor. There are two wires when depending on the direction of the window one wire or the other gets 12 volts with the other wire going to ground. I checked the power to the motor in both directiosn and I was getting 12 volts on both wires. I determined the motor was defective.

We called around and no one had a motor in stock. I thought it would be a good idea just to replace the whole regulator since I had to pull it off anyways to replace the motor. Nobody had the the regulator either except the dealer. Saturn of Albuquerque is now part of Galles Chevrolet so we called them and ordered it. They said the part would be in town in two days.

In two days we called Galles Chevrolet and they had no record of an order being placed. They placed another order along with payment and said it would be in town in two days. Two more days passed, we called and again no record of an order being placed. I can’t imagine why General Motors is on the edge of bankruptcy.

That night we determined that Galles was getting its part from Saturn of Santa Fe. We decieded to go to Santa Fe the next day and get the part ourself. We we called Saturn of Santa Fe the next day they didn’t have the part. Where the fuck was Galles getting their estimates? Apparently from up their ass.

We are in something like a week and a half of the car setting in a garage because the window wont roll up. We ordered the part from Autozone. After another few days of waiting the part arrived. It was the correct part for this car but the plastic housing had to be modified for it to fit. The motor was installed, glass put in. I tried to roll up the window with the new regulator motor and the window would still not roll up.

I thought that maybe the realay for the window was bad, perhaps it tested fine without a load but was failing when amperage was applied. I replaced the relay but it didn’t improve the situation.

Somehow, out of desperation while sitting in the drivers set reviewing all the troubleshooting steps I figured out that hte center console didn’t have to be taked apart adn the window switch came out with enough force.

I took the switch out took it apart to find the plastic worn and black soot on the inside. I cleaned up the switch and reinstalled it and the widnow now rolled up. When checking the power to the motor I should have verified voltage using the ground through the wire, I used chassis ground. It makes perfect sense… now.

I ended up breaking the drivers side switch when I took it apart so a new one needed orderd. Both windows were rolled up so the car was at least drivable until a new switch could be acquired. Total cost was about $250 and it took about 2 weeks to get the car drivable again. Next time I will roll the window up and start at the switch.

Last fall, I threatened that I would have the master bathroom completed by the end of the winter. Here it is spring and I did almost nothing to the bathroom. I have a variety of excuses that I wont go into now, however I did finally make some actual progress on it this weekend.

Before I can do anything I need to install the pocket door. Before I install the pocket door I need to relocate the wiring that exists on the wall where the door goes.

The wiring consists of power in, a wire to the lights controlled by a switch and a power out to a outlet. The good news is the wiring was easy to move to the next wall, it was loose in the attic and there was plenty of room to move it. I thought I would leave the outlet unpowered for now, until I figured out how I was going to rewire everything, apparently the wire to the outlet is also hooked up to the living room.

Now I have a problem that I need to wire that outlet back up, so i have Romex running along the other side of the bathroom along up to the switch. It looks pretty messy and dangerous in the pictures, I know. Trust me it’s safe and temporary.

I need to decide how to wire up a exhaust fan, will it go near the light switch or near the toilet? I also need to figure out if I’m going to use a fancy digital shower control. If so It will use the power from the outlet then I can wire it up properly.

Finally I can install the pocket door. I have the studs marked to cut down, but I’m waiting for some friends to come by and verify my measurements before I screw it all up. I will save the pocket door install for another post.

A friend IM’ed me and asked if I heard about the bad gas. I said not really but I smelled and and had it all day long. That’s not what they were talking about.

Inoue said the general managers at both Peerless Tyre and Costco told him that a Giant Industries tanker from a pipeline terminal in Moriarty on Tuesday delivered diesel to unleaded gasoline pumps at 10 stations in Albuquerque, Santa Fe and possibly points in between.

The screw up was actually by Western Refining Inc. The companies that gave out the bad gas are paying for repairs. I’m sure glad I didn’t buy gas today.

The Mayor of Albuquerque wants free WiFi for everyone in the city.

a two-tiered wireless Internet signal covering the entire city that will support not just the basics of Web surfing, e-mail and the like, but phone service and video. Those two tiers are a free, 1 megabit signal for anyone and a premium service at 3 Mb for a “reasonable” cost.

Of course Comcast and Qwest don’t like it. I say screw ‘em. Qwest especially doesn’t seem interested in offering extra services and Comcast would probably force everyone to pay $10/month for cable before you can use it. It’s the technical issues and money that will keep this from happening.

One wireless provider estimates it would cost $25 million and would require a access point on every building in the city, I think that’s overblown. They cite the problems that Rio Rancho has had completing it’s network. I thought Rio Rancho had completed it’s network.

I hope they try it anyways. I could use some free wifi when I have to drive into Albuquerque

I love the Geico Cavemen commercials. Maybe it’s because I can relate to them, they get no respect. In a bizzare twist of events, ABC is going to make a reality TV style show around them.

“Cavemen” will revolve around three pre-historic men who must battle prejudice as they attempt to live as normal thirtysomethings in modern Atlanta.

It could be really good, hopefully they don’t screw it up.

I’ve been using Commissio Junction for over a year now to serve ads. For those that think I may be getting rich off them, think again. I made a total of $5.26 from their banner adds. In order for them to give me money, someone has to buy something from the link, clicking isn’t good enough.

I have to say that CJ has some pretty nice features. Specifically their “smartzones”, which allows you to set up rotating ads and set a weight to each one to control how often they appear. Their website is very professionally designed and they have an excellent reporting system.

This week when I logged in I got the following message:

Our records indicate that your account has been deactivated.

Whaaaaa? I checked my email and didn’t see anything from them that said they would be deactivating my account. Searching their site, the only way I could find to get support was to log on. No emails except one, to pr@cj.com. So I used that email to find out what happened. That was sent to their support system and I received a email:

Yes, you were deactivated due to our dormancy policy. If there are no transactions over a 6 month period and your balance is zero, we deactivate the account.

Well my balance wasn’t zero, it had $5.26 (which I don’t think I will ever see) but I didn’t have any transactions in 6 months even though I served tens of thousands of ads. Apparently it’s policy to deactivate an account without warning (see here and here) and no system in place that lets you protest it, since there is no support email address available (the email that was sent to me came from their support system that has a no-reply email address).

I guess they are going to keep my money, even though I served thousands of ads for their customers. So to Commission Junction I say screw you.