I realize tonight no matter how old u are KILLLIAN'S red is God damn good!
JROD

Drilling holes through plexiglass.

Tomorrow is my birhtday so I am going to explain something simple that I did not know how to do until of course I did it the wrong way the first time. I was making a placard for a rare baseball card and wanted to put a plexiglass face over it with wood in the back. Needed 4 holes drilled in each corner to mount to placard, just drill holes right!! NO. I tried the obvious of course and when bit gets through it would shatter. Then went with the drilling in reverse trick and that was okay. But if you drill in reverse and also C-clamp a backer board on the exit side it will look professional.
JROD

Replace recoil rope on a pull start gas engine.

This is my first real post. Do not know if it will pan out but going to ramble anyway. Had a family friend stop by with a recoil from an old K-series Kohler. The rope had broke and he did not know how to fix it. This is how I do it.
The wheel that the rope (pull cord) raps into has a coiled spring behind it. If the spring is still all intact behind it do not take it apart-thats a whole differant ball game and we can cover that sometime if anyone is interested?
Reload the spring by turning counter clockwise 6-8 rotations (99% go counter clockwise). This is the mechanism to retract the rope once we put a new one on. You have to be the judge depending on how long your old rope was. The idea is to have a little pull to rope when it is all the way retracted so it does not dangle there. Only use the amount of rope that you had before. Figure a way to lock the recoil in place once loaded. A small screwdriver poked in somewhere works well. Remove what is left old rope. Tape a piece of small wire on the end of new rope and feed it through the hole in the shroud. Work it in until you can manage the wire through the hole in recoil, tie it off with good square not and drip a little hot melt on to keep it from unravelling.
Now I must tell you my first couple times doing these recoils, weird stuff happens and if it can happen it usually does-once, than we know not too do it again, hopefully.
Before recoiling rope back in, be sure to have your rubber handle tied on the opposing end of rope. If you do not -well you see where that end of the rope will end up. We will hot melt that also but lets be sure the rope length is correct first. Allow rope to recoil holding everything and letting it retract gently. try it out and reinstall on your engine.
Any more pointers that I missed I would appreciate.
JROD

My blogger intent!!

I am starting a blog to share information and answer questions of odd stuff that can be fixed ourselves, whether it be tightening a screw or replacing a wheel bearing in our cars. Use this blog to share any fix it tips with all of us.