Bilbee Controls Rocks!

Barbara,the head of Bilbee Controls Inc. caught wind that Weatherly Elementary PTA's corn popper needed attention, and sent me over $200 of thermostats today free-of-charge just to make sure the popper is included in all fund-raising efforts.

Thanks Barbara!


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One A/C Down, One To Go

Well, the repair I made on my home's air conditioner lasted until the day after I patted myself on the back about making it. I had not appreciated how bad the condition of the post on the compressor actually was.



The next day I compared notes with a really sharp engineer at the office, and we both decided a metal ring with a set-screw on the side of it squishing a new flat connector against the nappy area would be the best bet for a permanent repair. The problem was that I was going to have to design & build it, and a quicker solution was preferred.

Luckily, I mentioned the problem to my buddy Kenny, who has a background in HVAC, before pulling out my drafting tools. While he agreed with the solution's premise, he advised me to not reinvent the wheel - Just ask ask for a Compressor Terminal Repair Kit at the HVAC parts store.



Excellent product - I do think whatever I might have designed/built would not have been as nice. This latest repair has been in place for about a month, and is going strong. It's great to have friends like Kenny.



No update on the Suburban A/C repair. Unless either the price of gas or refrigerant R-134a drops appreciably, it looks like my Silverado will be on point for Airstream duty.


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Even MORE A/C Woe

Our family was fortunate enough to have both sets of the Boyz' grandparents plus Kim's brother over today for Sunday lunch to celebrate our oldest boy being confirmed into the Methodist church. The low-key meal of grilled burgers with all the fixings & fellowship was enjoyed by all.

Later, after all the relatives left, I noticed the house's air conditioner had quit running in spite of the thermostat asking for more cool. After a brief checkout, the unit's outside circuit breaker was found to be tripped. Not good - when this happened two or three seasons ago, the compressor was found to have shorted internally.

The breaker was reset only to immediately pop out again. Dead short; just like last time. Not good - Kim was briefed at this point & advised to locate enough money to cover a new unit should it become necessary.

After dis-assembly, the situation looked grim. The wires connecting the compressor to the unit were quick-fried to a crispy crunch. But after a closer look, it appeared one of the wires had been making a poor electrical connection for a while.

Since there was nothing to lose, the wires were cut back to good wire, and new connectors were crimped on & installed on cleaned-up compressor terminals.

Success! A serious financial bullet was dodged.

More Suburban A/C Woes

Last August, when I decided to take over servicing my ’84 Suburban’s air conditioner, I wondered how long my first A/C repair would last. Had Alex Trebek been involved, he might have asked, “What is six months?”

No regrets though. During my repair’s tenure, the A/C blew so cold that heat had to be mixed in for the first time during several of our subsequent camping trips. 2011’s Airstreaming season ended on a high note.

The Mighty Suburban was rotated into service last week to get me to work. On the way home, the weather was warm enough for air conditioning. When no cold air came out of the ducts, I really was just not surprised - The Suburban’s A/C has not worked for the first use of the season for the last three years. Lack of refrigerant was the reason every single time. The last shop repeatedly blamed the leak on a loose high-side conversion fitting installed by them during the R12 to R134a changeover. As a consequence, I was never charged for refilling the system with refrigerant. But part of the reason for taking charge of A/C work was to eliminate “like clockwork” visits to repair shops.

After hooking gauges up a few days ago, readings indicated “no surprise” number two – extremely low refrigerant level. It was time to identify/permanently repair the leak location since I am on the hook now for the $70 worth of refrigerant needed to cool our primary tow vehicle’s interior.

As an aid in diagnosing future problems, the A/C’s system was refilled during the August work with refrigerant oil containing a dye visible under ultra-violet light. The premise was that since oil & refrigerant flow through the system somewhat together, any leak in the system would allow both oil & refrigerant out. UV light would expose the leak path via the leaked oil.

$15 for the UV leak detection kit was a more than reasonable price to me to pay simply because a perceived side benefit was “wowing” my 12-year-old with the concept of UV light, a scientific phenomenon that would have stymied me in the 6th grade. Sadly, no joy for me – he immediately filled me in on what kind of light had been shined on his arm before I could even start a spiel, and described some of its potential uses. Today’s schools are doing a great job.

“No surprise” number three was the UV light being a bust at IDing a leak path. The most questionable component was the compressor shaft seal, and it is obscured by the clutch. But no glowing trails from all the easy-to-get-to areas confirmed that a satisfactory job had been done installing all the new stuff during my first foray into A/C work. Even the conversion fitting consistently blamed by the last shop multiple times passed inspection.

The first compressor Danny installed for me many years ago came from the best rebuilder available at the time, and lasted for a more than a reasonable amount of time. Sadly, when it needed to be replaced, unknown to me Danny had switched to a vendor who supplied no-name-brand compressors. Several of these compressors had to be installed before finding one that would last more than a trip or two.

Had I not had to tool-up for A/C service, this last compressor might have been replaced last August. But between the compressor’s solid gauge readings, and the effort’s initial tool-up costs, compressor replacement was deferred.

Fortunately, a friend had a refrigerant sniffer he was willing to loan me to confirm the leak’s location. For good measure, the entire system was sniffed with the effort culminating at the compressor. As expected, the sniffer went off-scale high every time the probe was placed anywhere near the shaft seal.

It would seem cut & dry at this point to replace the compressor & refill the system with refrigerant – I have all the tools necessary. But parts alone could get as high as $460, and with gas prices only expected to rise above an already high cost, we have had discussions on what to tow with this season.

While everyone loves the Suburban, my Silverado is more than capable of towing the Airstream, and it gets considerably higher gas mileage.

I’ve still got a few weeks before something has to be done. Maybe gas prices will go down before then. I can always hope!


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A Salty Tale of Many Poppers

Back when I was a kid, eating popcorn at home meant purchasing un-popped popcorn in plastic bags at the store, and popping it in a regular ole pan with oil on the stove-top. The neat thing was that back then, a packet of tasty butter-salt was included with each bag.


The packet’s directions advised mixing a half teaspoon of it with the oil before popping. I never understood the bother because the seasoning just stayed on the bottom of the pan. It would have been nice for it to coat the popped corn because doing so would have eliminated the effort of emptying half the popped corn into the serving bowl & salting it before emptying the remainder & applying more buttery seasoning. But I guess life was supposed to be tough back then.

Even though microwave popcorn is all the rage nowadays, I still prefer stove-top popcorn even though those buttery seasoning packets haven’t been around for years. I had not realized the packets’ contribution was missed until just recently.

Last year, I had a lot of fun troubleshooting a commercial corn popper, and while doing so concluded the secret to getting the buttery seasoning to coat the corn instead of settling to the bottom of the pan was to have a stirring bar keep everything mixed up during the popping process.


The repair effort inspired me to give buttery seasoning another shot. The hurdle now was to find some. The Pops-Rite brand appears to be a thing of the past, and no other brands of easily-available, supermarket popcorn include any seasonings. Oddly, while one store had a shelf with shakers of “alternate” popcorn seasonings (cheddar, cinnamon, etc.) the buttery seasoning of my youth was not to be found.

One Internet vendor had what I was looking for $2.69 plus $12 shipping. Considering the cost was for a 32 ounce carton of seasoning (roughly 21 packets worth), the price was not bad in spite of being a lot of seasoning. I was all set to order it, though, when someone recommended checking out Sam’s Club. Sure enough – Sam’s had a two-carton box (almost 47 packets worth) for $3.85.


In an unexpected bonus, the Mighty Pop brand Sam’s sold was what had been used while troubleshooting the commercial machine – It had a track record of good flavor.

The next hurdle up was locating a pan with a stirring bar. My first thought was to modify a pan & lid to use a stainless steel welding rod as a stirring bar. New pots & pans were looked at because I did not want to modify any of our existing cookware. Unfortunately, the current rage in new cookware is glass lids on everything, and the thought of drilling a hole in a glass lid (and using a glass lid with a hole drilled in it) made me uneasy.

One online company sells a new, six-quart corn popping pan complete with stirring bar, but user reviews were not very good, and I didn’t think the two gear transmission used to couple the stirring bar to the hand-crank on it looked like it would last very long.

While perusing eBay for options, I ran across a really old, electric, table-top popper with a lid-mounted hand-crank. I’d say it dates from the thirties or forties. The seller plugged it in briefly after being asked to, and posted that, while the FDR-era artifact did get warm, no effort was made to actually pop any corn.

For hoot value alone, I entered a maximum bid of $5. Although the closing moments of the auction were tense, my bid prevailed with quarters to spare. After adding an additional $10 shipping charge it was mine.


Little time was wasted after its arrival in popping a batch of corn with Mighty Pop seasoning mixed in the oil. The results were very good, and probably would have been excellent had I been wearing gloves: In order to crank the stirring rod, I had to hold on to one of the handles. When popping started, hot oil shot through the vent holes around the popper’s body and onto my hand. Reflexively, I kept letting go of the handle & stop cranking for a second or two.

If the rubber feet were not so dried out, there would probably be no need to hang on to the handle. Although the feet could be replaced for safer operation, while waiting to receive the popper, further research revealed that Target now sells a modern-day, bigger, motorized version of the same thing. Even though the unit was currently on sale, there had been no plans to buy the popper until the time came to clean the eBay popper – Due to the way it was constructed, dirty surfaces could only be wiped, and not rinsed. Between that, the antique’s relatively small cooking volume, and a desire to not wear gloves while cooking, I sprung for the Westbend popper.

Sweet – this modern day appliance even has a provision on top to allow real butter to drip on the popping kernels.


Its 1000 watt, Teflon-coated, mechanically agitated cooking surface produced tasty popcorn indistinguishable from that available at the movie theater.


As much as I enjoyed playing with my WW2-era cooking tool, it’s going in Kim’s next yard sale.


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Little to Lose At 39¢ a Pound

One of the bonuses included with the purchase of our house 17 years ago was most of a Brinkmann smoker. With the subsequent purchase of a new charcoal pan, Kim & I enjoyed several years of slow-smoked brisket, pork butt, and whole chicken. After the Boyz were born, though, we found that grilled burgers & hotdogs had more overall appeal. As a result, the smoker’s use diminished considerably.

The Boyz are now older, and Daniel in particular has appeared to enjoy some of the meat I have cooked over low, indirect heat on both the charcoal, and gas grills. The other weekend, Kroger had ten-pound bags of leg quarters on sale for the ridiculously low price of 39¢ a pound. Between that and a break from the rainy weather which has occupied every weekend of 2012, the time seemed right to experiment again with the smoker.

For this effort, the chimney starter was filled halfway with charcoal, and topped with big chunks of hickory.


When smoking meats, I lean more towards dry rubs than marinades. For this particular meal, the leg-quarters were rubbed down with olive oil before being sprinkled with a homemade variation of Emeril’s Essence, followed by a light dusting of a granulated & confectioner sugar mixture. Most dry rub recipes call for brown sugar but I’ve had trouble with it clumping & not distributing well over the meat. White sugar goes on more uniformly, and is not distinguishable to my bourgeois palate.

The poultry was then arranged on the smoker’s top rack after being allowed to sit at room temperature [gasp!] for several hours.


One of this smoker’s selling points is the “moist heat” which comes from a four-quart pan of water suspended above the coals. Although the pan was, lo these many years, always dutifully kept full of hot water I never thought that, other than throttling the heat a little, it did much, if anything, for the effort. Knowing when to wrap the meat in aluminum foil always had a bigger effect on how moist & tender the effort was going to be.

Out of a combination of general curiosity, a smaller fire than usual, small pieces of meat, and the outside temperature being in the 50’s, no water pan was used for the first time ever with great results.


There are no plans to throw away the water pan, though. While pleased with the way this meal turned out, I’ll wager the big hunks of meat that require longer cooking times need a barrier against the direct heat.

But all bets are off should I find beef or pork at 39¢ a pound.


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The Peril of Fresh-sliced Pineapple

Kim & The Boyz are all big fans of the canned pineapple available at the grocery store. Note just any variety, though – everyone’s preference is chunks packaged in natural juices.

So it was no surprise when Kim came home from a Pampered Chef party one day with a pineapple slicer. The allure was obvious - our household could now enjoy fresh-sliced pineapple whenever we wanted it. And, the tool’s ‘hoot factor’ appealed to both Number 1 son, and me.

The new slicer looked like a bigger version of our routinely-used apple slicer, and other than probably needing a little more force during slicing, no problems were anticipated in slicing the whole pineapple Kim brought home the other day.


Apples can be easily octagonalized with their slicer atop the counter. The pineapple could not. Fortunately, Daniel was willing, able, and flexible enough to handle the task once we decided it needed to be lowered for leverage.


Unfortunately, my vintage chopping block was not able to handle the strain.


In what was no surprise, failure occurred at a glue joint. Purchased new in ’86, I’m impressed the block lasted 26 years before having trouble with fresh fruit. It’s not a loss, though - I get great joy in working with wood, and own lotsa neat tools to work with the medium. The Shop’s jointer did quick work of creating new glue edges.


My first thought for glue-up was polyurethane-based Gorilla glue. I even had a new bottle waiting to be opened. But Elmer’s now offers a waterproof glue I’ve been waiting to try out.


Elmer’s Wood Glue Max appears to have some teeth – The next pineapple sliced with no problem.



My Old Hickory knife had no issues with the finish work even though it’s older than the chopping block (but not as old as the one my friend Dave uses).

Euell Gibbons once advised us, “Ever eat a pine tree? Many parts are edible.” Hmm, I wonder if my cooking gear is up to the carving challenge…



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