Replacing run capacitor in AC

Warning!

AC unit contains circuits with up to 240V! Switch off power to the unit and use multimeter to confirm that the power is off before opening the cover.

Symptom

Our air conditioning unit suddenly stopped working and started tripping breakers. While house fan would come on, condenser fan outside would not spin and breaker would trip immediately when thermostat would call for cool air.  After doing some research online one of the possible causes was suggested to be a run capacitor. Since we use AC very little and it worked for an hour or so before tripping the breakers, I figured that capacitor would be most likely source. The fan motor of the unit was spinning freely indicating that it is not seized. The contactor wold click when thermostat called for cold.

After making sure that breakers are off and there is no power to the unit, I opened cover of the electrical compartment. You can't mistake it for anything else as it has multiple warning labels printed on it. On my unit it is secured with 2 screws.
It is apparent that capacitor is busted as you can see that it is bulged upward in the picture below. For people who don't know, the capacitor is the large cylinder with the wires on top.

The Fix

Replacement capacitor can be ordered online for under $30 in most cases. If you want exact replacement it would be closer to $30. If you are OK using capacitor with the same characteristics but do not care about the exact size, it would cost less.

I picked capacitor from the TEMCo Industrial Power Supply. They are very reasonably priced on ebay - under $10 for dual run capacitor. They ship very fast and reply fast to your emails. Their capacitors have better characteristics than the original but they are much smaller in diameter - almost 1.5cm smaller. To secure the new capacitor I went to Home Depot and got some plumbers strips - galvanized metal strips with holes at a regular intervals. I picked a strip that has roughly the same thickness as the original bracket. Using pliers and drill, new bracket was made from the strip. It holds the new capacitor just as secure as the original bracket held the old capacitor. It took maybe 30 minutes to make the new bracket.

The new capacitor is connected by following markings on the old one. The markings are the same on the old and the new. One just needs to disconnect a wire and move it to the same terminal on the new capacitor.

After connecting and securing the new capacitor AC was powered up and it started without a hitch.
If you are still not sure if you want to do this yourself, there are tons of videos on youtube, which show the whole procedure from start to finish. If you are prudent and have some basic tools this repair is very easy and inexpensive. You will save 100s of dollars vs calling AC contractor to do the same thing.

Changing the coolant in my 2009 Sonata

The owner manual specifies that the coolant change as DIY item so I decided to give it a try. The dealer quoted $154 for a coolant flush. I am not sure what is included in that but the Capitol Hyundai in San Jose is not to be trusted. They told me that my coolant is discolored and must be replaced. I actually replaced coolant at 30K and the color of the old coolant was indistinguishable from the brand new coolant that I put in this time.
The gallon of concentrated coolant from a dealer cost $22 and the rest is labor. So I figured that I can do the labor and learn something in the process. The coolant change is very easy but it is time consuming operation.

What you will need

You will need some new coolant, one gallon container of concentrated coolant which you can buy from a dealer or auto parts store. Make sure that you get the coolant that is correct for your car.
You will need 3 gallons of distilled water which your can get at any grocery store. Make sure you get distilled water and not purified drinking water or any other kind of drinking water. You want a water without any dissolved salts.
You will also need a pan to drain the old coolant in to. The capacity of the cooling system is around 6 liters so make sure that your pan can hold more than 6 liters of liquid.
You will need an empty containers to put your used coolant in to. I used empty plastic juice bottles and also the empty bottles from the distilled water. You will need about 3 gallon bottles.
You will need a funnel and you can invest in to spill free funnel that mounts on the radiator. I managed without it but it seems like a useful tool.
You may optionally use a drip pan. I used a large metal pan which I use for changing the oil. Newspapers can be also used to catch any spills.

The process

The process is described in the Hyundai owners manual and is pretty simple.

Remove the front part of the stone guard by loosening 4 or 5 bolts. The plastic stone guard looks like it is one large piece that extends well under the car. In fact the front part is separate and it is held by a few bolts just behind the bumper. Each bolt is recessed so you will need a socket and a ratchet to remove it.

Put a drip pan under the left side of the radiator and put a collection pan on top. Make sure your engine is cold. Turn your heater on. I am not actually sure how to do this as I have automatic climate control. I turned temperature all the way up but I am not sure if it did anything.

Open the radiator cap and then open the drain plug on the bottom left side of the radiator. The drain plug can be opened by hand, you should not need any tools. Do not remove the drain plug completely until you drain some of the liquid, to prevent liquid spilling on the floor.

The coolant will drain in to your drain pan. I collected a little over one gallon of the coolant although the manual indicated that there should be 6 liters of it. I think some of the coolant was stuck in the heater and I do not know how to open it. Unbolt coolant reservoir and simply lift it above the radiator level. The coolant will drain from the reservoir in to the radiator and from there in to your drain pan.

Close your drain plug and refill the radiator with distilled water. Refill very slowly giving the air time to escape. Burp your system as described in the owners manual. After filling with water, close your radiator and run the engine for about 20 minutes until fan starts and coolant starts to circulate. While engine is running empty your drain pan in to prepared containers and close tightly. The coolant is poisonous so make sure your containers have tight lids.

After running engine for a while turn it off and let it cool. It took about 1.5 hours for me. After the engine cools, drain the water from the radiator just like you did with coolant. The water will come out green since it diluted whatever coolant remained in the system. Place this water in to container for recycling, do not pour it on the ground!

Dilute your concentrated coolant with distilled water in proportion specified on the coolant bottle. I used 50/50 since it was recommended for my climate. Do not mix all coolant with water at once, do it in parts. Mix coolant with water and pour it in to the radiator. Make sure to pour very slowly, letting the air escape. The radiator overflows easy if you try to add the coolant too fast. After you finish with the first part of the mixture, mix another part. Repeat the whole process until the radiator does not take anymore coolant mixture. Make sure to squeeze hoses to let the trapped air escape.

Close the radiator and start the engine. Periodically loosen the radiator lid and watch for air bubbles escaping in to the coolant reservoir. After air stops escaping, open the radiator lid and check if you need to add more coolant. Add remaining coolant mixture in to the reservoir and you are done. Don't forget to replace the plastic stone guard.

Recycle collected coolant and water at a recycling center, do not pour it on the ground or in to the drain. Coolant is poison which should be recycled.

It took me about 4 hours total to do this. Most of the time I was waiting for the engine to cool so actual work time is about 2 hours. I am sure that with some experience one can do this much faster.

Cloning failing disk step by step

Having to deal with computers all the time I thought that swapping failing disk would be a breeze. Fortunately I did not have to do this many times and therefore I had not much experience doing this. This is the process I used and I hope it helps someone to save some time and to avoid my mistakes.

Diagnosing disk failure

If your computer behaves erratically  and some programs freeze for a long time, you may be experiencing a failing disk. To diagnose disk failure one can use Windows Event Viewer logs in combination with free tools that support S.M.A.R.T. diagnostic display. My tool of choice is Defraggler, but you can use any tool that works for you. Wikipedia has a page comparing various tools.

Open Event Viewer/Windows Logs/System and filter log for Critical and Error messages. Then look for messages from the atapi driver indicating timeouts, errors or other abnormalities. Open Defraggler and look in the Health tab for any values in red. You can also use your disk manufacturer diagnostic tools to determine if your drive is failing. After determining that your disk is failing do not delay replacing it. Your disk may completely fail without warning and you will loose all your data.

Step 1: chkdsk - check your disk

This is very important step and I strongly advice you not to skip it. Your cloning or imaging process may fail if you skip checking your disk. This step takes a lot of time so it is preferable to do it overnight or when your are not using your machine for a long time. During this step Windows chkdsk program will ensure that all sectors on your disk are readable and relocate the ones that aren't. You need to supply options to perform surface scan operation so your chkdsk command would look like this:

chkdsk c: /F /R /B

You can also execute  this operation from a disk properties dialog box. Go to the Tools tab and press "Check now" button. Do not forget to select scan for bad sectors check box. You may be asked to check your disk on the next reboot so select "yes" and reboot your machine. This will usually take several hours, given the size of a modern disk. After this operation completes, reboot your machine and repeat the operation. This time chkdsk should not find any bad sectors even if they were found the first time. If second pass of chkdsk finds new bad sectors, repeat scan until no more bad sectors are found during chkdsk pass. Your disk is now ready to be imaged. The computer can be used now as usual but do not delay replacing your disk!

Step 2: purchase a new disk

Purchase a new disk from whatever your favorite place is. Make sure that your disk is not smaller than the one you replacing, especially if your current disk is nearly full. If you are replacing disk in your laptop, make sure that the height of the disk will fit in to your laptop. Generally 7mm drive can replace 9mm drive but not the other way around. Pretty much any manufacturer supplies some sort of disk imaging software o clone your drive. Acronis True Image seems to be a popular choice. For my imaging needs I used Acronis software and you can use any software that can clone a drive or create image of a drive. Wikipedia has a good list of disk cloning software and comparison page.

Prepare a bootable media with your imaging software. Acronis allows you to create bootable CDROM or DVDROM. You can also create a bootable USB Flash drive.

Step 3: make an image

Boot from your CDROM or equivalent image containing your imaging software. Connect external USB HDD to your PC that you are going to image. The USB HDD should have enough room to contain compressed image of your failing disk. You can estimate this by taking amount of used space on the disk and multiplying it by 0.75. Compression usually works better than that, unless most of the content of your hard drive consists of videos. Follow steps in your software to select the source disk - your failing hard drive and the destination disk - your external USB drive. Before starting imaging process add following two files to be excluded from imaging:

$BadClus:Bad
$BadClus

These two files contain all of the bad clusters that were found during step 1. You want to exclude these files for two reasons - a) they have no usable content and b) they are not readable so they will make your imaging process fail.
Start your imaging process. It should take about 15 minutes for every 100MB of data but could be more or less depending on your disk speed. After completion of this step you will have image file that you can copy on to your replacement disk. If your old disk fails after this point you are safe since you have all your data backed up. I recommend to perform this step as soon as you discover that your disk is failing and do not wait for your replacement disk to arrive.

Step 4: write an image to your new disk

After receiving your new disk, install it in to your desktop or laptop. Boot from your bootable media that contains your imaging software and connect external USB drive containing image that you created in the previous step. Perform recovery process, restoring your image on to your new drive. Recovery process will take approximately the same amount of time as creation of the image file. After imaging process is completed you can remove your bootable media and boot from your new drive which should be possible if your original disk was bootable. Your recovery process is now completed and your can delete your disk image if you like. I would keep it for a few days just in case.

Final Notes

You can combine steps 3 and 4 in one step if you like, although I would advice against this. If you have a USB bay, you can plug your new drive in to it and directly image from your failing drive. This saves you one step but exposes you to possibility of a failure. Since steps one and three can be performed immediately after you find out that your disk is failing, your image will keep you safe if your disk is to fail while you are waiting for your replacement drive to arrive. I would rather invest $60 in to external USB drive that you can later use as backup, than $30 in to a USB bay which will be useless after you copy your disk. Of course if you have a desktop, you can simply plug new disk in to available SATA connector without the need for a USB bay. Still external USB drive is a good thing to have for your backups, which you should do anyway.

Hyundai Sonata hard downshifting

This is my first real problem with my 2009 Sonata. I really have not had any issues since the time I bought it.
After replacing my failing battery with a new battery from a dealer, who by the way assured me in full compatibility of the battery, one of the terminals on the new battery was disconnecting. The symptom was that after each engine start all of my electronics would reset. Once I opened the hood and jiggled battery terminal the problem became apparent. The terminal design on Sonata is pretty bad, preventing tightening of the terminal clamp around the post. After some research I found battery post shims at Autozone for $0.99 a pair. If I knew about this simple fix, I would have saved a lot of money by purchasing a battery from Autozone instead of Hyundai Dealer. The battery is at least $40 less and dealer does not take core back like auto shops do. After adding shim and fixing the terminal problem, I run in to another problem.

When transmission was cold it would downshift very hard from 4th to 3rd gear. The feeling was like someone rear-ended my car. Initially I thought the issue was with anti-lock breaks but after a visit to a dealer I realized that it was my transmission. Dealer did not fix the issue the first time so the second visit was needed. At the end all they had to do is to erase adaptation tables in the transmission control computer. I suspect that the bad battery connection caused transmission computer to reset frequently and to corrupt these adaptation tables.

Between visits to the dealer I could characterize the issue pretty well and find some work around. Various posts online report the same problem but sometimes they report that downshifting from 3rd to 2nd gear is hard. For newer models of Sonata transmission fluid temperature sensor seems to be the problem. However for 2009 Sonata transmission computer is the problem, and in particular corrupt adaptation tables.

To work around this issue one should switch to manual shifting for the first 10 or so minutes of driving, while transmission is cold. It is sufficient to downshift from 4th to 3rd gear manually when slowing down. The rest of the shifting had no issues. This way you can prevent any damage to your transmission until you have a chance to take it to the repair shop.

How to print large posters on a regular printer

We had a school project which required a large size print. After looking online for a solution I run across http://www.blockposters.com/. While convenient, it adds logo to the free posters or you have to pay for the one without the logo. Another problem with the site is that you can not control final output size with any accuracy. We ended up using the free site and pasting some notes over the logo but I wanted to find a free and accurate method of doing this.

After some experiments and reading various online posts I found a method that uses only free tools and works very well.

Tools you need

You will need following tools:

Paint.net - http://www.getpaint.net/index.html

You can also use any other image editing software such as Gimp or Paint Shop Pro or even Photoshop. As long as you can specify canvas size and produce image of desired size any software will work.

You will also need PDF printer and PDF reader. My personal favorite is Foxit Reader - http://www.foxitsoftware.com/Secure_PDF_Reader/PDF-create.php

It comes with free PDF printing driver which works reasonably well. You can use any other PDF creation software that has printer driver and allows to create custom paper sizes.

How to do it

Open your image in Paint.net and resize canvas to desired size. For example if you want to print 11x14 poster board you would have to re-size your canvas  to be 11x14. Don't forget to account for resolution at which you want to print. Resize your image to match your canvas and get ready to print.

Next you will need to create custom page size that matches your desired output. Open Devices and Printers applet, right click on Foxit Reader PDF Printer and select Printing Preferences. In the dialog that will appear select Layout tab and click on Custom Page Size button. Add your desired page size using the dialog.

Next step is to print your image using Foxit Reader PDF Printer and just created custom page size. As a result you will obtain a PDF file that contains your image in the large format.

Open this PDF file in the Foxit Reader and select File/Print menu. This will open Print dialog. Select Tile Large Pages button and chose page overlap and cut marks if desired. You will need to experiment with black ink and plain paper to get the result you want.

After all configuration is finished you can print your poster.