2009 Honda CR-V Heat Shield Rattle Fix

So, recently our 2009 Honda CR-V with 85k+ miles started making some metallic rattling noise during the drive as well as while idle. During a drive the rattle happens somewhere around 1500 RPM, and it started to get more apparent and louder even when idle.

This was a very easy thing to find, and took just few seconds to peek under the vehicle from the passenger side (of a left hand drive car). The metallic cover which wraps around the catalytic converter was making the rattle. This is a common issue with Hondas where the cover which is made of 2 halves rust off at the bolts and start rattling when they go loose.

Notice the rust at the right bolt and how the shield has come loose 

A proper fix would be to replace the covers. But a low cost DIY solution is to just hold them in place to get rid of the unnecessary rattle (at least until all bolt holes rust off some day).

What you need are;

• 2 6 inch metal hose clamps (from a hardware store).
• A flat screwdriver which fits the bolt on the hose clamp.
• (optionally) a jack and jack stands if you need to lift the car to easily reach underneath and be more comfortable during the job.

Once you have the 2 hose clamps, simply disjoint them, put them around the heat shield at the front and back and tighten up until there is no play at the shield. After you have tightened it up sufficiently, you are done!

It takes just under $5.00 and 10-20 mins of your time to attach!

DIY Dog Crate + End Table

One thing led to another, and now we have a dog – Arthur. The good little guy finds the apartment too big to stay alone when we are not around, and it is a recommended practice to have a dog crate so that the dog has a confined space of its own.  The options to buy were hopeless, and the cheapest ones were just made of metal wire. They look horrible inside the house and it looks like a prison cell. There are nicer wooden ones, but they cost few hundreds of dollars. So, I put my DIY hat on, and thought of building one for our new buddy!

Design decisions:

• Should be wooden and solid                        
• Should serve more than the purpose of keeping the dog in and double as an end table
• Should not be an eye sore in the house
• Should be large enough for the dog to go in turn around and come back
• Should have proper ventilation
• Should take maximum use of existing dimensions for raw material
• Should not cost fortunes!

Material:

• 1 sheet of 4ft x 8ft, ½ inch thick Plywood
• 3 lengths of 1.5 inch x 1.5 inch x 8ft lumber
• Small pack of ¾ inch wood screws
• Small pack of 1.5 inch wood screws
• 8 90 degree metal framing angles
• ½ qt latex based wood primer
• 1 qt wood paint
• 2 Brass hinges – 270 degree
• 1 lock
• 1.5” brush and 6” roller

Design:

The cuts for the plywood and how the 1.5"x1.5" bars are used for the frame are shown below.

Steps:

So, here is how I got on with it.

All big cuts of wood were done at the store itself. Home Depot cuts everything for free, and Lowes would make up to 3 cuts for free and charge a small amount for each cut. I got my lumber from Home Depot and the plywood and lengths of wood were cut to my exact measurements. It helps a lot to get clean 90 degree cuts and most importantly it is so easy to transport.

The frame was done using the 1.5”x1.5” bars. I could have used two more bars on the top, but I did not want to buy more lumber, and anyway the plywood was going to give it the required support at the end. I used 90 degree angles with the ¾ inch screws to make sure I get all angles right and to have a solid fit. The angles for the vertical bars would have been a better fit if they were fixed on the outside, but I did it from the inside to make sure the plywood sticks on to a flat frame without any obstacles.

Once the frame was done, the floor board was put in place. I had to cut off a 1” strip as I was laying on the inside as shown in the design, and also four cuts were made on the 4 corners to give way to the four vertical bars of the frame.

Then the plywood pieces for the side (2’x3’) and rear were attached (2’x2’). All wood panels were sanded to make sure there are no rough edges left out.

After this, 2 coats of wood primer was painted inside and outside. It was important to do this at once coz the primer tends to warp the plywood a bit when applied only on one side. The painting task was taken on by my lovely wife and she did the primer and paint at the end.

Once this dried, I put on the roof part of the crate which we wanted to double as the top surface of an end table. According to the design and limitations of the size of pieces, I wanted about 1” length added to the roof. I used a piece from what I cut off from the floor board and stuck it on the 2 ft end of the panel using some wood glue. Since we wanted a wooden finish, a couple of coats of wood stain was used on both sides of the 2’x3’ plywood. Once it dried up after few hours, it was screwed in on the top, leaving the right amount of space on the front to flush fit just right when the door is closed.

Next primer was applied on the door panel. The hinges were attached to the panel in the 270 degree fully open position, and then the unit was attached to the rest of the crate in a way that when the door fully opens, it overlaps with the side.

Now the basic structure was done. Now it was time to cut the vents. I didn’t like the traditional strip based design. So I wanted to drill large holes in a pattern, and I also wanted the pattern to remain when I opened the door as well.  After a little thought, we settled on a 3x3 hole grid for the door and overlapping sides, and another 9 holes around – 6 on the sides and 3 at the back. A 2.5 inch hole saw bit was used to drill the holes, which ended up very nicely. Point to note when drilling holes in plywood is that if you go only on one side, there is the risk of chipping on the other side. Therefore it is best you start drilling on one side, and half way down switch sides and drill the other half from the other side. You can easily do this because the guide bit drills the center hole, and you just need to come on the other side along that. It was wise to attach the door and then drill it, so that the overlaps for the holes on the door and sides happen very precisely.

Once the holes were cut, all the rough edges were sanded. This is a lot easier if you had a rotary grinding bit. I didn’t have it, and resorted to using sand paper with my hands. I don’t think I sanded enough anyway.

After all soothing was done, paint was applied – with a brush for the nooks and crannies and inside the holes, and with a roller on all other flat parts.

Mission accomplished!

From day 1 Arthur loved the crate, and all ended well. The whole project cost around 80 bucks for the raw material, paint etc with a couple of coupons added, and I had invested in most tools already.

Next Steps:

• Planning to use some of the disks I got when cutting holes and use them as legs so that the door opens and closes easily, plus it will be good to ventilate the underside of the crate.
• Patch up the paint in few places where it has not got applied properly.
• Some areas look a little too rough to my liking. I will sand them down a bit more and paint once I get a proper sander.
• Maybe I will add 4 castor wheels to give it some mobility - maybe.
• Add bluetooth... Nah! I am kidding! :)

[Video] - DIY GoPro Mount Construction, Mounting and Testing

Keeping the promise from the last post, here is a video containing the construction, mounting and a small real world usage sample. Yet to do some high speed testing on a highway.

Enjoy!

Credits:
Videography : Janani Amarasekara (My Wife) with the Nexus 4
Soundtrack : Harmful or Fatal by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a CC Attribution 3.0.
http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100210.

DIY GoPro Hero 3 Car Mount

The GoPro camera is one of the most amazing action cameras around, and for the craze of it I got myself a GoPro Hero3 Black Edition. Now, having the camera is just a part of the story. To get the best out of it, a multitude of accessories are needed to attach it to different things.

GoPro and accessory manufacturers know this, and that is exactly why all those accessories go for a relatively steep price. So, in order to save some bucks, and mostly for the fun of it, I thought of creating some useful mounts for this. My good friend Sampath and I had a chat about this and thought of doing a car mount and a steady cam mount. While being a driving fanatic myself, my first goal was to get the car mount done.

So, here goes how I did it – which is definitely not the only way of doing it.

Main design decisions:

• Most practical attachment for the car - The obvious option is to get a suction cup mount, which helps attach it to any relatively flat and smooth surface – which a car has plenty of! This gives me the flexibility to attach to multiple parts of the car with a lot of ease.
• Strong grip to the car - The most important fact is to have a proper grip to the surface to avoid the entire apparatus coming off during a drive and destroying the camera and everything else. Therefore, I picked one of the heavy duty industrial suction cup mounts used in to grab glasses – with a load rating of 200 lbs! (I picked the double suction grip. A double swivel grip would be better to support curved surfaces too, and a high rated single cup mount also would have worked as well)
• Attaching the camera to the mount – While attaching the camera rigidly to the mount, it is also important to get 3-dimentional flexibility. The 3-point mount already available with the GoPro already solves part of this. Additionally, I got the tripod mount for the GoPro, and decided to use an adjustable screw to attach the tripod mount plus 3-point mount. Using a butterfly nut allows me to quickly do any rotational adjustments.

Stuff I used:

• 1 industrial suction cup grip [REF]
• GoPro tripod mount [REF]
• 1 ¼" 20 threads per inch screw of 2.5” length
• 1 matching butterfly nut
• 1 metal washer
• 2 rubber washers

Steps (Piece of cake!):

• Decide on the best place to attach the mount on the suction cup grip and drill a ¼” hole
• Screw in the butterfly nut in the reverse direction (this is to use the nut as an adjuster plus fastner in one go)
• Send in the metal washer and a rubber washer (metal washer allows for the easy tightening of the nut, and the rubber washer grips well to the mount without damaging it)
• Run the screw through the hole in a direction opposite to the faces of the suction cups
• On the opposite end of the screw, send in a rubber washer (This helps good grip between the suction cup grip body and the screw mount)
• Screw in the GoPro tripod mount tightly to the end of the screw.
• Tighten the butterfly nut until it strongly fastens the tripod mount to the suction grip body.
• Now simply attach the 3 point mount and GoPro camera to the GoPro tripod mount.
• Voila! You are ready to roll!

 



Note:

• When you attach the suction cup mount to the car, choose the flattest surface possible to ensure good suction grip
• Make sure the surface is clean and shiny to ensure the suction cups remain airtight
• As a failsafe, always run a cord from the mount to some part of the car to cling on to the camera in case the mount comes off during a fast drive. 
• DISCLAIMER : This approach is to be followed at your own risk, and I am not to be held liable for any damage caused during your DIY project, if you decide to follow this approach.  

Out in the field:

Here are some images of the mount being attached to the car. 

Future improvements possible:

• Using a double swivel cup grip or a single cup optionally
• Modifying the double cup grip I used to give a little bit of play for the suction cups to support slightly curved surfaces.

This was done well under $20.00, and I am sure some folks can do this even cheaper as I had to buy almost everything for this. Even this cost is way under the cost of off the shelf accessories, and works just fine.


I will be uploading a video on the steps of assembling this mount, as well as some footage of practical usage in few days. Looking forward to making the steady cam mount…! Stay tuned!

UPDATE : The video promised above is available in the post at http://aravindad.blogspot.com/2013/09/video-diy-gopro-mount-construction.html

Going LED!!!

This weekend was a rather industrious one for me since I was in a mood to fix stuff at home. It started off with fixing a damaged component of the car which would have cost over 15k LKR if went for a replacement. After this, I was eager to fix something else. Then I remembered that the fluorescent light based emergency lamps at home were giving trouble all the time, without serving the purpose. Their light was so dull and the emergency lamp was gradually becoming a decoration.

Then I thought, “hey, why not replace the dull tube with LEDs?!” Without a second thought, I got to work and formulated a quick and dirty plan. The lamp already has a chargeable 6V 4.5 Ah battery. So, my job is going to be really easy if I connect the LEDs properly without drawing out too much current from the battery and also without letting a high current flow through the LEDs which would bust them off instantly.

So, it was shopping time! Well, there’s nothing to exaggerate here. I simply bought 40 white LEDs, some circuit wire, soldering lead and a switch.

The light panel was the crucial element of the project. So, I took a thick cardboard and marked where the bulbs would go. My plan was to have two arrays of LEDs 20 on each array. 6V across two series LEDs seemed fine. Therefore, the entire light panel became a set of parallel connected two series LED units.

In this entire endeavor, I had an assistant who was very eager to help – my little sister :) . Since she also wanted to help, she was given the task of testing all LEDs to see whether they were working and she also helped to hold things in place while I soldered.

Once the light panel was made, I had to open up the lamp and make the connections to the power source. Since I had a rep to maintain, I needed to have something up and running before I left back to Colombo. So, my plan was to have the basic functionality up and running. Without any fancy stuff, I gave a direct connection to the battery and attached a new switch on the side of the lamp since the original switch was acting more like an insulator :P

And Voila!!! There’s my simply DIY project to make the emergency lamp LED powered!

This is not yet complete. I am yet to make the surface of the panel reflective and also need to run some tests to see if I can improve the power utilization. Let that be phase 2.

I know, this is not rocket science, but it was fun to get my hands on something ‘non-binary’ after a long time :)

Here are some snaps of the intermediate stages.