The ghetto mod thread

[momaka]

The ghetto mod thread - laptop rubber feed repair comparison

Alright folks, as I said, I'd take a few more shots of that laptop to show the original vs. fixed rubber foot. So here is that:


The Sacon FZ bung is ever so slightly taller than the original rubber foot... but not by much, and the laptop doesn't seem to wobble. So as long as no one turns the laptop around to look at it, they probably won't know the difference. That said, this is a "junker" Sony VAIO laptop with Centrino 1.7 GHz and 512 MB of RAM, so not like I will be selling it to anyone. If I can get the few non-working keys on the KB fixed (namely, Backspace, Enter, and Delete - all of which are hard to go without) or just replace the KB and increase the RAM a bit to 1 GB, it might do OK as a general purpose Windows XP laptop for me to use. FWIW, it's fairly light and I like its design.

It doesn't looks too bad, but the "ghetto" mount does kind of block the top of the speedo (of course right between 60 and 80 mph, about the most common highway speeds) and tach a little from the riding position

Perfect!
Now you have a valid excuse when a cop pulls you over for speeding (or driving too slow?) Either way, most people always travel around 70 MPH on the highways (at least around here), so +/- 10 MPH should be within the realm of acceptable.

the speedo on the bike reads a little high as is pretty much standard for BMW

I guess that's BMW's built-in "feature" perhaps to make motorcycle riders drive slower, huh?

[dmill89]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

Holy crap, 92 Euro just for that mount?!?!
For that price, I'd keep that "ghetto" -fabricated mount and just roll along with it. (And I put ghetto in quotes, because that looks really good. Can't even tell it's not a factory part, at least from the pictures. )

It doesn't looks too bad, but the "ghetto" mount does kind of block the top of the speedo (of course right between 60 and 80 mph, about the most common highway speeds) and tach a little from the riding position (not too big of a deal since the GPS shows speed which is more accurate anyhow, the speedo on the bike reads a little high as is pretty much standard for BMW). I already ordered the "official" mount and it already shipped so returning it at this point (once it shows up) would require paying return shipping that would be nearly 1/3 of the purchase price, otherwise I may have skipped it if I thought of (or rather stumbled across I found an article for a similar mount made from a cut-up weed-eater, I didn't have a junk weed eater to cut up, but I figured I could do something similar with copper pipe) the "ghetto" solution earlier.


How the "ghetto" mount looks from the eye-level of the rider:

[momaka]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

^
Now that is absolutely a class act and an insult to the maker of the crap cap (a good thing)!! This one has gotta be one of the year's 10-best!

Thanks guys!

Yeah, it's sad when a cap maker's caps are more useful as other things than caps. In the case of Sacon FZ, even this rubber bung is a bit crap. The original laptop feet are fairly soft (can easily sink a little when pressed with something sharp, like a nail) and grip really well. The FZ bung grips just OK, but the rubber isn't anywhere near as soft and has a little "plastic-y" feel to it. That's actually what allowed me to sand it down (to size) very easily with just regular sandpaper. Good rubber is hard to sand with just sand paper!

(Well, technically I guess it is not ghetto since it looks perfect too!)

Heh... well, if you do see the original laptop foot, you CAN tell there is a difference. (I'll see if I can snap a pic tomorrow, if hopefully it isn't too cloudy and dark like today.) In terms of function, though, it works just the way it should.

Unfortunately, the other two junker laptops I have don't have round feet like that, but rather rectangular ones... though I don't see why I can't use more cap bungs even for those.

I ordered a GPS mount for my motorcycle, but it is shipping from Belgium and thus will show up "eventually", so I came up with a temporary solution until it arrives with a piece of 3/4" copper pipe and some spray paint.
...
Final product after a coat of black spray paint (the included Garmin mount with the u-bolt mounted RAM ball is attached to the pipe):
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1621117790

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1621117790

Holy crap, 92 Euro just for that mount?!?!
For that price, I'd keep that "ghetto" -fabricated mount and just roll along with it. (And I put ghetto in quotes, because that looks really good. Can't even tell it's not a factory part, at least from the pictures. )

3d printing does not count,
it's fabrication - not modification.

Yeah, but it still isn't factory original or a direct factory replacement part... so I don't see why not post those anyways.

[eccerr0r]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

But if it's replacing a missing/broken piece...

Oh, and what's even more fun is when you're trying to replace an aesthetic piece that's outward facing...and you get this layer lined, usually wrong color item (who ever has just the right color filament on hand?) replacing a fairly visible piece that should have been simply replaced...

[stj]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

3d printing does not count,
it's fabrication - not modification.

[eccerr0r]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

BTW, do 3d-printed solutions of any sort count as ghetto, or are they too modern to be so?

[dmill89]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

I ordered a GPS mount for my motorcycle, but it is shipping from Belgium and thus will show up "eventually", so I came up with a temporary solution until it arrives with a piece of 3/4" copper pipe and some spray paint.



First I mashed the ends flat with a vise:


Then drilled some holes with a Harbor-Freight drill press:


Test Fitting (it bolts up to 2 existing screws for the "dash" trim):


Final product after a coat of black spray paint (the included Garmin mount with the u-bolt mounted RAM ball is attached to the pipe):

[eccerr0r]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

LOL, Great idea, I have a laptop with a missing foot as well that has been bugging me, hoping that I could find the foot one day. Now this tells me I need to go through my jar with all the bad caps I still haven't thrown out yet...

[televizora]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

So, yet another Dell 760 with faulty PSU. Caps plus broken fan fins. I don't understand how the fins of this fan can be broken. And because it was 10mm thick and I couldn't find 12mm thick fan around and the metal was bent to accommodate 12mm fan, I used a hammer to flatten it, so I can install 15mm thick 60mm wide fan.
After this the PSU started to turn on on it's own. I found out that somehow between the ground and PS/ON wires - Black and green the heat shrink of the capacitor I installed got scratched during the installation, because the place for it is between the wires and too small. So, it was shorting green to black via the aluminium canister of the cap.
This was ghetto mod.

[Per Hansson]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

Best post in this thread so far momaka!
(Well, technically I guess it is not ghetto since it looks perfect too!)

[Topcat]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

^
Now that is absolutely a class act and an insult to the maker of the crap cap (a good thing)!! This one has gotta be one of the year's 10-best!

[momaka]

The ghetto mod thread - laptop rubber feed repair

Since this thread has been awakened, here is something I did recently (actually, yesterday.)
.
.
.
I've been piecing together / playing around with a few junker laptops this week. One of them was missing a rubber foot on the bottom, which made the laptop very wobbly on a hard, flat surface (and kind of annoying even, when typing on it.)

So, I had an idea!

Let's take a busted Sacon FZ apart:


Do you see where this is going?
A few drops of contact cement later, and this was the result:


^ Yes, that's the rubber bung from the busted cap. Fortunately for me, that vented Sacon FZ cap was so dry in there, that I didn't really need to clean the rubber bung with anything too harsh or "exotic" (e.g. acetone, toluene, and etc.) Nope, just sanded it down a bit (it was about 0.8-1 mm too wide for the plastic hole on the laptop's body), wiped both surfaces with IPA, put contact cement on both, and glued it all together. Simple as that!

The best part is, now the laptop doesn't wobble anymore at all. It's like that rubber bung was meant to be there.

Also, it's a good (re)use for busted/vented caps. I've actually though of using the rubber bungs of capacitors as rubber feet for a long time... but just never found a convenient time to try it. Well, now I have.

[momaka]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

You know, other than the fact it probably doesn't cool as well, and the fact it's wasting 3 PCI slots... might need a double take.

Ah well, if you're not using the PCI/PCI-E 1x slots, then it's not really a waste.
Fan looks like it's from a cheapo PSU, though... and if so, I'm guessing it's rated for 0.14-0.16 Amps. Thus, it's probably not the most powerful or efficient thing in the world, and probably the reason for the high temps too. Though on that note... I can't quite figure out what AMD/ATI HD series this card is. It has a 6-pin PCI-E power conn, so it has to be HD x770 series or higher (so maybe 6770 or 7770?) Doesn't look like an AMD/ATI OEM either. If it's an HD6850/7850, then that stock cooler would be at least partially responsible for the high temps too, as it looks a bit inadequate (for the 120W TDP of those cards.)

[eccerr0r]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

You know, other than the fact it probably doesn't cool as well, and the fact it's wasting 3 PCI slots... might need a double take.

[momaka]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

Ask and ye shall receive!

WOW. Thank you! I honestly didn't expect this kind of quick response (and smiley update/addition.) This has got to be the only forum I've seen things like that. Really cool, though! (And hopefully I'll try to refrain from harassing newbies when they ask a question in a new thread and don't provide pictures. )

[Topcat]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

Bwah. Where's the "this thread is worthless without pictures" smiley when you need it?
I guess I will use this instead:

Ask and ye shall receive!

[momaka]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

Dammit. Shattered my GPU's fan when cleaning it today. Don't stop the moving train.

Ended up using zip ties to attach a standard 80mm fan to the shroud. I suspect I still needed to use the shroud (it's one of those dual slot Radeons). The zip tie's ratcheting head wouldn't go through the fan screws or the thin slots I was abusing on the shroud so I didn't need to stick the end into the ratchet head, nor was it long enough anyway.

Sorry no pictures ... yet...

Bwah. Where's the "this thread is worthless without pictures" smiley when you need it?
I guess I will use this instead:

question is whether I can find a half height 12mm thick replacement 80mm fan with screw holes 90mm diagonally apart, instead of the typical 100mm diagonal 25mm thick fan that's currently ghetto-attached for now...

Probably eBay... though the replacement GPU fans are a bit over-priced IMO.
If height is not an issue, I don't see why not keep the 25 mm -thick replacement fan. I guess the only reason to replace it if it's a higher airflow and lower pressure fan... which most 25 mm thick fans are. If the fins on the heatsink are really close together, then you should find a thin 80 mm fan, as those typically generate higher pressure (due to more "narrow" fin pitch)... or perhaps just use a 70 mm fan??

If noise is not a concern, a 70 mm fan from a socket 754 / 939 / AM2 heatsink screaming on 9-12V should cool things pretty well.

GPU is at 60°C ...

Not good, especially for ATI/AMD cards.

[eccerr0r]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

Dammit. Shattered my GPU's fan when cleaning it today. Don't stop the moving train.

Ended up using zip ties to attach a standard 80mm fan to the shroud. I suspect I still needed to use the shroud (it's one of those dual slot Radeons). The zip tie's ratcheting head wouldn't go through the fan screws or the thin slots I was abusing on the shroud so I didn't need to stick the end into the ratchet head, nor was it long enough anyway.

Sorry no pictures ... yet... question is whether I can find a half height 12mm thick replacement 80mm fan with screw holes 90mm diagonally apart, instead of the typical 100mm diagonal 25mm thick fan that's currently ghetto-attached for now...

GPU is at 60°C ...

[lti]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

Interesting. I wonder what would cause that.

This is the same DVD recorder that I was messing with about 10 years ago, and I dug it back out to use as a DVD player a couple years ago when I was trying to get a StarTech SVID2USB2 working in Linux. This problem appeared last summer when I was setting up my laptop (also using this DVD recorder as a test video source). It looks like something screwed with the gamma curve. If I fix it, it will be worthy of the "pointless repairs" thread.

[momaka]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

I picked up a dead Super Mario Kart SNES cartridge on eBay for next to nothing just before Easter.
...
My ghetto fix, after checking every single chip pin with a multimeter to make sure they weren't damaged, involved scraping some of the varnish from the PCB to get at the broken trace, using a lead pencil to paint over the broken trace and to make some edge connector pins, and finally some silver foil, explained later.
...
By pure coincidence, I still had some Easter eggs lying around that I hadn't eaten - two minutes later I had made a tiny pin out of a foil Easter egg wrapper, folded it with the print on the inside, and simply taped it over the lead pencil trace I had made. I put the cartridge back together without the screws, and flicked the switch on the Super Nintendo expecting the same all nothing but a black screen, only to be greeted with the Nintendo logo, the coin jingle, and finally the Super Mario Kart theme!

Nice ghetto fix there and really cool to see one of these brought back to life!

The only down side is that the foil is very flimsy and probably won't last brushing against the cartridge slot contacts more than a few times, but for a five minute ghetto mod it's pretty good for now.

Also, I think you may eventually get Galvanic corrosion due to dissimilarity of properties between Aluminum and Gold (gold plating.) But indeed for a quick go/no-go test, this was a brilliant fix.

While patching the trace with the pencil worked (I have done this with several cartridges and even an NES console before), making pins out of carbon did absolutely nothing, there was probably too much of a "step" between the pin and the bare circuit board so it was still open circuit.

Graphite, drawn on a thin layer like that, will have a pretty high impedance over the length of the entire trace, so even if it did make contact, there's still a chance it may not be able to carry enough signal current between the cartridge and the board for the two to communicate. So that's probably why it didn't work. Otherwise, imagine if you could just draw traces with a pencil - you could create prototype circuits board right on paper! Actually, I think someone already tried such an invention and it did work - but obviously still only for low-power signal stuff.

Here's how I "fixed" the IR receiver on a crappy off-brand DVD recorder. Replacing the receiver got the remote working, but then I measured a ridiculous pull-up current from the part that it connected to (almost 50mA - probably a blown input). The original receiver worked with a more sane pull-up, so I wired up this buffer.

Cool point-to-point wiring job. The small SMD resistors on the leads of the transistors is a nice touch too.

I was going to try passing video from a VCR through it, but both composite and S-Video outputs suddenly started clipping dark colors to black. I need to figure that out now.

Interesting. I wonder what would cause that.