Good Morning! 39F @ 3:45AM. Abundant sunshine. High 61F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph.
Two evenings ago the alarm system started to complain about something by beeping very, very loudly at about 10PM. At that point I was able to get it to tell me it was a failed smoke sensor (yes, it talks), but since the sensor is located 15' up a wall, there wasn't much I could do about it at the time except push the reset button and go back to sleep. That kept it happy until 2AM when the same five beeps once again reminded me to fix the smoke sensor, just in case I'd forgotten in my dreams. Oh, and stopping the racket meant another trek across the house to the alarm panel to push the reset button again. At 6AM I got another reminder, but of course since I'd slept so well the night before I didn't mind jumping out of bed to push the reset button yet again, and jump into my work clothes to drag the extension ladder inside to climb the wall. NOT!!! But I did retrieve the smoke detector later in the morning, installing fresh batteries, and clearing the error on the alarm panel. No more beeps, so I started back in on paperwork until the garage warmed up a bit.
With the heads done it was time to figure out if they were the same size with respect to interior volume. I'm trying to build a very smooth engine this time, and one factor is combustion chamber volume, which the experts say should be the same on each side. To measure this one fills the chamber with liquid and measures how much it takes. Since there are two holes for spark plugs, and I had no wish to ruin a pair of them with paint thinner (apparently the liquid of choice), I turned up a pair of plugs from aluminum and installed an o-ring on each to make a seal when they were screwed into the spark plug holes. I even found a scrap piece of clear plexiglass to cover the opening where the piston comes in, and got a hole drilled into the center of it without cracking it into a million pieces. A smear of light grease around the edges provided a good seal to the head, and I was all set to start measuring. I used a big horse syringe to load paint thinner into a graduated cylinder, stopping at precisely 100cc. Emptied the syringe, then pulled out precisely 35cc and loaded it through the hole in the plex into the combustion chamber. Filled the cylinder back up to 100cc and loaded up the cylinder with another 35cc, and now the thinner had trapped a bunch of bubbles under the plexiglass. One more 35cc dose but the bubbles wouldn't clear, so enough thinner was sucked out to drop the liquid away from the 'glass to clear them, and then very carefully and slowly the level was brought back up. The head wasn't exactly level, so the big bubble that formed was located off to the side of the filler hole and I had to tip the head to keep the bubble centered as I pushed the liquid out of the syringe. It was a real test of hand eye coordination, especially as the paint thinner caused the rubber seal in the syringe to swell making it difficult to push the plunger. But eventually I got all the bubbles out and the chamber completely filled to the bottom of the hole. I returned the leftover thinner to the graduated cylinder and found it had taken an additional 13cc to fill the chamber, for a total of 83cc. Not bad for a first try, but the scientific method calls for a statistically significant sample to evaluate experimental error. So all the thinner was sucked back out of the head and everything cleaned and dried with compressed air so the whole process could be repeated. After three tries all came up with 83cc plus or minus half a cc and it was time to move on to the other head. Same result there, and by then my back and shoulders were sore from hunching over the bench, it was getting cold in the garage, and it was time for dinner. Today I'll do a little math to figure out how much difference in compression ratio a half cc makes; then I'll know if my method is precise enough or I have to sharpen my pencil.
Inside a quick pizza and salad was good enough for dinner, but now a new chirping sound could be heard during pauses in the evening news. When it was over I muted the sound and listened and yes, something else was complaining, and it wasn't any of God's creatures. A new electronic devil had come to call. Not nearly as loud as the last one, and only a single chirp that repeated seemingly at random. It led me quite a chase through the hall, into the great room, then into the kitchen, laundry room, and even into the garage. At each place the sound seemed to be coming from somewhere close by, but not quite there. Oh the joys of an open floor plan and lots of hard surfaces perfect for making echos. So after half an hour of fruitless searching, I screened the latest episode of "Somebody's Gotta Do It" making plans at some future point to spend a night in a tree house in Oregon and ride both the zip line and Tarzan swing while I'm there. Tried to get through "60 Minutes" but found myself nodding off during the last segment. The chirps hadn't stopped, but they weren't loud enough to keep me awake and I went to bed.
Which brings us to why I'm updating the Good Morning thread at 3:45AM. At about 10:30PM those five obnoxiously loud beeps rang out again, and sure enough the smoke detector was once again demanding attention. :banghead: No choice but to push the reset button and head back to bed for another four or so hours of sleep before yet another reminder that I'd be back up on the ladder today. But by then I couldn't get back to sleep, so I thought I'd warn you guys to NEVER let anyone talk you into letting a GE Simon alarm system into your life. Having accomplished that, I think I'll try to get some more sleep. But first I'd better go push the reset button again first...
