I’m a fan of using kapton/kapten tape when going tubeless, but my only roll at home was 50mm and the i40 rims are 40mm and WTB recommends going 5mm wider. I wanted to set my son’s tires up this week while it was still warm out and didn’t want to wait for cheap bastard kapton eBay tape to arrive, so I procured Whisky Parts Co. tape locally thanks Now Bikes & Fitness.

I pulled off the Krampus’ front wheel and removed the tire and factory tube, an Innova 29″ x 2.5″ – 3″ with a presta valve weighing in at 14.2 ounces:

I wanted to buy some solid strip rim tape, but WTB has been out of stock for weeks, so I’m stripping width off the existing rim strip and taping over that. There will be no more than 1.2 ounces of tape per wheel:

and 0.3 ounces/wheel for a Stans No Tubes presta valve:

Here’s the rim strip while reducing its width:

Which saved another 0.2 ounces:

Here’s the rim taped up, one pass and overlapped at the valve:

Next, place the tire back on the rim and manually pushed one side of the tire into its seated position. The loose side of the tire was left hanging downward with the wheel laid over a 5-gallon pail. Fire up your compressor (mine is set to 120 psi to get a nice burst of air) and used 3/16-inch diameter polyethylene tubing to connect the compressor to the presta valve with its insert removed. After the blast of air, two snaps/pops, the tire is fully seated!

At this point, a large amount of air stills leaks out around the rim and tire beads. Pull off the polyethylene tubing from the presta valve body and fill with sealant: I used 3 ounces of leftover homemade sealant from about a month ago, it was still in liquid form. Blow up the tire a couple times to make sure the tire is still seated and to spray the sealant around. Reinsert the valve core and continue a few blasts with the air compressor until you think you can keep it inflated long enough to start riding it. I found that riding the tire around is when the tire really starts to hold air, but if you can’t do it safely, just spin it or bounce it next to the air compressor. Here’s how one side of the tire looks after sealant has been leaking for an hour.

At this point I left it for the night and will reinflate in the morning. I also might need to give it more sealant, as you can see nearly all of it seems to have blown out and there’s more on the garage floor and some spray on my trusty Beetle.

with the blew the rim up without using a tube.
The material After two passes of tape and pressing out all the creases after each pass that I could, I tossed tubes back in and blew the tires up for 30 minutes. After that I poured in my homemade sealant (3 parts windshield washer fluid and 1 part molder builder) and reinflated to 35 psi. It went flat again several times, but each time I added air it would hold for longer. The tires may have taken extra inflating because I was possibly too latex-skimpy on the sealant – others recommend 3 parts windshield washer fluid to 1.5 parts mold builder.

Liam left for Levi’s, riding the now-tubeless Krampus and was blown away how light they felt. I tried it myself while trying to get the sealant spread around the inside of the tires, wheelies felt much easier than they use to, but I may have just been giddy to have air staying inside of them.

My lovely bride’s 2010 Mazda 3 Grand Touring edition was in the shop last week getting a control arm repaired by the trusty team at Park Service. They noticed the headlight levelizer rod was broken and the only way to replace it is to order the entire headlight sensor assembly from Mazda for about $400.

I asked Park Service to focus on the control arm and to leave the broken levelizer rod on the seat of the car for me to look at. After getting it home, I found the headlight levelizer rod is composed of a few parts, including the THK S3-1 aluminum rod/link and bolts that can pivot with seals stamped THK F6BLV. I thought about using Blue Demon equivalent welding material to fix the part, shown below, but one of the pivot points also had a torn rubber seal that probably allowed salt to get in and corrode the joint – not worth fixing. Having the intact part allowed me to measure the bolt spacing with my digital calipers, about 57 mm.

I hit the web and found similar parts made by Cusco comprised of adjustable THK parts. Based on Cusco’s chart, below, it appears our Mazda needs the “super short” model, part number 00B 628 C, thanks TH Motorsports.

** Update 4-10-2020 **
Part arrived from TH Motorsports via UPS Ground. I was rotating the tires today so I through the part on. Really easy to get on, especially when you’re rotating the tires. Headlights seem to be leveling again – woohoo!

My daughter loves her Ice Cream Truck, but tires no longer rides. Her brother rode it for a year and a half before growing out of it and rode it with tubes, but I knew tubeless was an option. When I switched to tubeless on Big Dummy 2.0 and rode back from Forest Lake after a terrible sidewall slash sealed by sealant, I knew it was time to try it on her ICT.

Back in 2012, the ICT came stock with Rolling Darryl rims and Nate tires. While both are officially clinchers, many have tried and succeeded going tubeless. I wanted to put my own spin on it, using off-brand tape and homemade sealant.

For the tape, I bought 2-inch wide by 36 yards of kapten tape, which is a kapton knock off and maybe what Fratelli tape is. From sealant advice of others , I used one part Mold Builder mixed with 3 parts water. While that worked just fine for me, I plan to swap the water for blue windshield washer fluid next time.

For each successful tubeless build, I removed a tube (11.4 ounces) and added kapten tape (1.3 ounces), a presta valve (0.1 ounces), and sealant (2 ounces) for a savings of 8 ounces per tire.

My first attempt with the front wheel failed miserably. I only used two passes of kapten tape and sealant leaked through the tape seams and bubbled out spoke holes in the rim.

My second attempt with the front wheel is still holding up. Once again, I left the Surly PVC rim tape (60mm) on the rim and covered it with a tight layer of kapten tape down the middle and then a wrap on each side; 3 passes of tape around the rim tape, each pass starting before and ending after the weld joint. I poked a hole with a round file and cleaned the hole out. I then blew the tire up with a tube to 30 psi and let it sit a couple hours to fully seat the tire. After that I loosened the bead on one side of the tire, gently removed the tube, inserted the tubeless presta valve, rotated the tire label to the valve, and filled with 2 ounces of sealant. I then placed the loose portion of the tire back in the rim and laid the loose side facing the ground while sitting on top of a 5 gallon pail. Gravity was my friend for inflating the tire with the air compressor.?

Both tires inflated without a hitch. The front tire seems to have a slow leak between the rim and tire bead that I’ve been able to fix most of, but can’t quite find the last part. I fix it by inflating the tire and pushing on the sidewall of the tire until sealant hisses out. I may need to dunk the tire in a tub to figure out where the last couple leaks are, but it holds pressure for about 6 hours before going flat. The rear tire has been holding pressure throughout the night.

I’m pumped with the kapten tape and cheap sealant approach and inspired to next toss it in my son’s Krampus with 27tpi Knards. I perused this guy’s approach and will probably combine it with mine. More later.

Since May, our Apple TV 4K running tvOS 13.4.6 (as of this morning) was having problems continuing to function as our HomeKit hub; others have reported issues with past versions of iOS. It seemed to work fine though earlier version of tvOS and seemed to start exhibiting HomeKit connectivity issues back in May 2020 when I upgraded from an SMC 100Base-T ethernet switch to a Cisco WS-C2960S-24TS-S gigabit switch. After upgrading switches, my family and I noticed using Home app outside of our home’s wifi was no longer working with HomeKit or it would take two attempts to get it to do something. With the Cisco managed switch, I was able to see half a million “Total Receive Errors”:

I stumbled upon Richard_W‘s post and tried two things to fix the situation:

1. Upgraded to beta of tvOS 14 and rebooted.

(the problem persisted, only now a red warning bubble appeared in front of Settings->HomeKit)

2. Reset the Apple TV 4K (Settings->System->Reset) and set it up from scratch.

After completing Step 2, I reconnected the Apple TV 4K to iCloud and HomeKit. After 30 minutes with the Apple TV 4K sleeping, so far it seems to have resumed its Home Hub duties without spamming the Cisco switch with error messages while it sleeps – woohoo!

For the record, since completing the reset, the Apple TV 4K’s “Total Receive Errors” are holding steady at 495,436. I’ll continue to post updates here if the problem returns.

We noticed the right side door of our KitchenAid KSCS25FJSS01 wasn’t closing as well as it use to, it seemed the door would always get stuck open whenever someone pushed it shut.

I reviewed the KitchenAid parts guide and it shows 2182179 (Door Closer, Upper Cam) for the refrigerator door and 2208137 (Hinge & Cam Assy) for the cabinet, each on the lower/bottom side of the door hinge. Our freezer door works fine, so I didn’t bother with parts for that.

Part 2208137 seems to be expensive, not in-stock, and includes the metal bracket, which isn’t worn and fully intact on our fridge, so I figured there must be a cheaper way.

Instead, I decided to roll the dice on part number 4318165, which doesn’t appear in the KitchenAid parts list. This part is a set of plastic cams where most of the hinge-wear occurs. Watching this video shows the cams are easy enough to replace.

After the door cam kit arrived, I took the door off of our fridge and found the existing door cams are riveted to the steel bracket! My trusty Dremel and cut-off blade ripped through the rivet and existing door cam and I used an 8mm screw and nut to replace the rivet.

After getting the door back on, the fridge door is fixed. Better yet, the door cam kit comes with two sets of cams and since our freezer door cams don’t require replacement at this time, I’ve got an extra set of cams I can use on our heavy door after it wears out again. Note, next time the replacement will be much easier now that the rivet is history.

** Update 9-20-2020 **
The door was starting to slip again and I thought the cam bolt had loosened and it might need some thread-lock, but I was wrong. When I pulled the door off and inspected everything, the cam bolts were still snug, but I realized from last month I had been unable to get the hexagonal cam shaft out of the refrigerator, because the hexagonal shaft broke off inside. Because the old hexagonal shaft remained, I was unable to insert a new cam with the the hexagonal shaft in the lower right corner of the refrigerator door and instead used another bottom cam flipped upside down to replace the lower corner upper cam. Since the new upper cam wasn’t connected to the hexagonal shaft, it would pivot and shift when opening the refrigerator door.

Quick fix. Pulled the door back off and used a No. 5 screw extractor (9/16 – 3/4 inches, M14-M18) to removed the old hexagonal cam shaft. After the screw extractor was fully seated, I was able to rock the drill (off) in a circular motion while pulling away from the refrigerator door and out the old hexagonal shaft popped.

With the old hexagonal cam shaft fully removed, a new upper cam with hexagonal shaft could inserted – woohoo! After putting the door back on and tightening up the bolts, the door is working better than ever. I also noticed that the upper cam’s hexagonal shaft seems to help boost the door up a millimeter or two, so its now perfectly flush with the freezer door to the left – hell, yes! For anyone reading this or operating a refrigerator as old as ours, I strongly recommend you do the repair – very satisfying and a cheap fi

I still haven’t bothered with the freezer door’s cams. The kit comes with cams for both doors, so I’ll save the extra cams for when we wear out the main door cams again, the cams are the same, but its obvious the main door carries much more weight.

Liam’s black iPhone 7 has suffered a broken screen a couple times this year, so we’ve had the pleasure of trying a few different replacement screens that we installed ourselves. For his first replacement, we tried this one sold by Miardo:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07ZQWYT1Y

The initial shipment of this screen was so bad we sent it back to Amazon and requested a replacement – the screen was ridiculously, as Liam says, “laggy” in response to any touches. The replacement to the replacement improved on the lag in touches and being an improvement over the first shipment, Liam decided to keep it. It lasted 6 months before he got flipped by a buddy and the phone shot from his pocket on to sidewalk, requiring us to look for another screen replacement.

For the next screen replacement, we decided to shake things up and try a different listing on Amazon. This time we tried bought from the seller Koofix and picked up this model:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07XWYM6LS

Good news is, the tap responsive is wonderful and Liam loves it! He says the touch responsiveness is back to feeling like an OEM screen, so I’d consider this a win.

And hopefully this one also lasts longer than the last one.

I found that Alf’s standalone DeDRM app is not supported with Catalina, so my previous advice no longer works. For Catalina users, the solution is to use his latest guide that more or less involves:

1. Download and install Calibre.
2. Download Alf’s current DeDRM (choose the .zip option) and save the .zip somewhere you won’t delete it.
3. Open Calibre and install the DeDRM plugin using these instructions:

Open Calibre’s Preferences dialog. In the bottom row of icons under “Advanced”, click on the “Plugins” button. Next, click on the button, “Load plugin from file”. Navigate to the unzipped DeDRM_tools folder, find the file “DeDRM_plugin.zip”. Click to select the file and select “Open”. Click “Yes” in the “Are you sure?” dialog box. Click the “OK” button in the “Success” dialog box.

4. The plugin automatically works whenever you use Calibre to directly import a book with DRM.

At the time of these instructions, the current version is DeDRM 6.8.0.

I’m stubbornly keeping macOS Server on my Mac mini running High Sierra, as I love it’s GUI for controlling server components. I understand macOS Server wasn’t a profit leader for Apple, but it was such an elegant solution for some of us! Darn it, my mini will probably get hacked for its server components being out of date before someone pries my fingers off macOS Server.

Anyway, today I noticed I was suddenly having conflicts trying to launch Homebridge on port 8080 after installing a security patch on High Sierra. It appears the security patch messes with macOS Server’s web server settings. Fortunately, mighty Wayne Dixon encountered this issue on Mojave and published a fix. Thanks, Wayne! I changed mine from 8080 to 8081.

For now I’m back in business and reading Wayne’s solution might have tempted me to try Mojave if this mini was compatible and it won’t be unless I also try DOSDude1’s app to load Mojave… Hmmm, I’ll think about it…

Also, I briefly thought someone had hacked my server for their own use of port 8080, but this advice quickly helped me track down what it was with these commands:

sudo lsof -i :80 # checks port 8080

Then I saw something similar to:

COMMAND PID USER FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME acwebseca 312 root 36u IPv4 0x34ae935da20560c1 0t0 TCP 192.168.1.3:50585->104.25.53.12:http (ESTABLISHED)

Which showed a service using the PID and we probe that further:

ps -ef 312

To see:

UID PID PPID C STIME TTY TIME CMD 0 312 58 0 9:32PM ?? 0:02.70 /opt/cisco/anyconnect/bin/acwebsecagent -console

Mine showed an Apache2 folder that I led me to Wayne’s fix above.

While moving components over to my new Blacktacular frame, I noticed that I was using the wrong tensioner bolt and inadequate spacers for for my chainline. My Military Green Big Dummy has the new chainring set up, which unfortunately I goofed and left the old 8253 tensioner bolt in place and not enough spacers to reach a 58mm chainline. With the Blacktacular frame, I’m getting it right.

Fortunately, I already had the spacers and the 8255 tensioner bolt in my bag of Rohloff parts, so I installed them. With the corrected 58mm chainline in place, I also noticed the tensioner jockey wheels were trashed after only a year of use, but operating them at a 54mm chainline certainly didn’t help. I’ve faithfully purchased Rohloff jockey wheels, but its always bugged me that they are expensive, plastic, and take a while to get here in the U.S.

Time for a jockey wheel replacement and here’s my latest workaround. I purchased these 10t jockey wheels on eBay. The wheels are aluminum and have removable dust covers, which is key. I removed the dust covers and drilled through them with a 1/4-inch drill bit. Take care to drill slowly and keep the drill bit straight and center. After you fully penetrate the dust cover, you’ll need to ream the whole out by running the drill bit at angles, which I did in a circular motion. Reaming the dust cover with the 1/4-inch bit will make them large enough to slide over the tensioner’s axle and you’ll only need to do this for the upper pulley. I’m sure Rohloff has a good reason for using different size tensioner axles and the lower axles narrower diameter allows it to work with stock 10t jockey wheels.

After replacing the dust covers on the 10t jockey wheel and installing both on tensioner, its back in business and works great. Not to mention it looks good. After drilling out one set of dust covers, I’ll be able to move these dust covers to my next set of jockey wheels when I wear these ones out, which could be as soon as next year?

Minnesota winters are fun; however, the chemicals used by public utilities to fight road ice makes conditions harsh for bicycles. Back in February, the back of my Big Dummy frame rusted and broke off, this was after I applied boiled linseed oil to the inside of the frame twice; once in 2011 and once in 2016.

Surly was kind enough to offer me a crash discount on a new frame. I lusted for the Big Fat Dummy, but I’m still loving my Rohloff rear hub and having recently picked up a second Rohloff, I struggled with leaving my 135mm Speedhubs and having to get new ones with the 190/197mm spacing – that would have cost me several thousand dollars.

I was sad to pull my Military Green frame with swooping top bar out of service, but thanks to Freewheel, it was easy to move my components over to a new Blacktacular frame. Before building it up, I applied boiled linseed oil and while doing it, I noticed why my last Military Green frame failed where it did. The curved bars that rusted through, just behind the rear wheel dropouts, are only 16mm in diameter and getting boiled linseed oil to go back there is difficult. To anyone riding winters with their Dummy, I strongly encourage you to spin the frame in all directions and plug the weep holes to make sure you’re getting a good coating on the curved bars behind the rear dropouts. I’ll keep you posted how long this frame lasts 🙂