One year old
Today was Mr P’s first birthday. One year old.
Over the past few months, he’s transformed from a little blob to a person.
He’s such a happy boy, he waves at people who pass by, with a quiet ‘ha-wa’. He loves pushing his toy car around, and playing peekaboo on the couch (he hides in the cushion).
His favourite food is kimchi pancakes, followed closely by sticky sushi rice, and then mums sweet potato cakes. Also, yoghurt, prawn crackers, and anything else we are eating.
He enjoys outings with me, we go to lunch together, and try new food. He’s very popular with wait staff, he’s even gotten free food because he’s so cute.
We’ll go to the park and he’ll find seeds and leaves on the ground and give them to me. He likes climbing up the slide and then slowly slipping backward down them on his belly. His favourite is the swing, he loves it.
His favourite colour is red. He loves red cans of soft drink and often takes them out of the recycling.
His favourite toy is a small Akai piano. I bought a second set of rechargable batteries so they never run out.
He plays with our dog, B, and gives her toys she shouldn’t have, giggling to himself. He climbs on his A frame, but most of all he loves climbing the stairs.
His best day naps are in the car with dad. So, I’ve done 20,000km since he arrived, and I work from home!
He loves the happy birthday song, and ‘Here comes P’ sung to the tune of ‘Here comes Santa Claus’ while being bounced up and down, as well as ‘The Duke of York’ sung by Nanny. His sleep song is ‘Waltzing Matilda’.
His favourite bath toy is the lid from the soap bottle. He likes to snap it shut over and over.
He’s turned our lives upside down, and we’ve developed new ways of living.
Its been a very challenging, very rewarding 365 days.
Some days feel like they will never end, and sometimes I feel like I cant possibly get up tomorrow and do it all again.
But I do, and there’s sparks of joy in the most unexpected places that make it worth it.
I feel that Mr P and I have developed a strong bond over the past few months, and I’m so proud of him.
Being a Dad has been the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I feel like I spent years preparing for it, but I’ve still expanded my capabilities far more in the last 12 months.
My wonderful wife T has been amazing, she has such determination and strength of mind and body, I am very fortunate to be on this journey with her, I don’t think I could do it with anyone else.
I’m not a natural Dad, I’ve never been around kids until I had my son. T has encouraged me to Dad in a way that feels right to me, and I’m getting into my stride now.
I’m very grateful to have such a wonderful family.
Happy birthday my little green sheep. I love you very much.
Replacing the alternator on BMW Z4 E89
I was enjoying a drive near Esk when I had this warning pop up:
Charging fault: Battery no longer being charged. Switch off electrical devices that are not required!
along with this one:
Transmission position P possibly not available. Operate parking brake when car stationary.
I’d recently connected a CTEK bluetooth battery monitor, so I checked the app and it showed 12.2volts, which is nearly flat for a 12v battery.
At first I wasn’t too worried because I figured the battery itself was the problem. It was in the car when I bought it and who knows how long it sat idle at the dealer.
I started making my way home and realised the car wouldn’t let me turn on the aircon. Then I checked the voltage again and it was at 12volts.
Seems the alternator was the issue, which meant I only had the charge left in the battery to get me home. It was about a hour and a half drive.
I decided to try to make it. I figured if I damaged the battery it would be cheaper to replace it than get a tow truck.
It was a stressful drive. I would stop and check the voltage from time to time and it was constantly dropping.
It reached 11v when I was about 15 minutes from home. I thought the engine would surely stall if it dropped lower, but soon after I was pulling into my garage with 10.6v showing on the battery. Amazing!
I immediately put the battery on charge but it was no use - it was damaged and wouldn’t hold a charge anymore. At least it got me home.
I wanted to completely rule out the battery as the problem so I bought a replacement Century 70Ah AGM (DIN65LH).
I had a Century 270Ah deep cycle in my campervan and it was very reliable, so I was happy with the brand, and it was on a good discount at the time too.
Installation is really easy - access is in the boot. I coded the battery change using bimmerlink and went for a rainy drive to see if the error went away, but sadly it did not.
The Z4 looks special to me in the rain. For many years my desktop wallpaper was this promotional picture:
One day I’d like to recreate this picture!
Replacing the alternator on a BMW Z4 E89 N54 2009
Anyway, back home and onto the internet to find a new alternator. I find with the Z4 that most parts sites don’t list many items for it. Instead I search under BMW 335i since it has the same engine.
I thought that a Jaylec 65-1778 would fit, and called AutoCave who very helpfully confirmed the fitment and arranged so I could collect it from the warehouse at Caboolture.
Mr P Inspecting the goods
The reason I decided to take on this job myself is this YouTube video, which shows how you can replace the alternator easily by just cutting a small piece of plastic. I suggest you watch this video.
On the Z4 it’s actually even easier as the charge pipe is routed differently, and there’s more access to the engine thanks to the giant front end.
I’m an amateur at this - the most I’ve done until this point is replace a VANOS solenoid. I was keen to learn more but as you’ll soon see it went a bit wrong.
Getting the old alternator out
If your car is automatic or DCT, put the front up on ramps or jacks, as you’ll need to get underneath to loosen the AT cooler from the fan.
Disconnect your battery before proceeding any further!
Start by removing the plastic air piping and airbox. There’s some screws, some piping with clips, and some screw clamps. You don’t have to dismantle the airbox/filter but I did because I have no idea what I’m doing.
Once the airbox is out, you can see the alternator better. Next you’ll need to get access to the front of the engine by removing the cooling fan and loosening some piping.
Remove the bracing above the radiator. There’s three screws on either side.
Remove three screws from each side
Remove the screws securing the insulation under the front of the car, and remove the screw attaching the AT cooler to the fan.
At the top of the fan, there’s another screw to remove on the top left. Lastly disconnect the power cable. Then you can slide the fan up and out. There’s two plastic clips that hold it in place on either side.
Next you’ll need to loosen the piping that crosses in front of the engine. There’s two bolts with grommets for insulation.
Now you can move the serpentine belt tensioner to loosen the belt off the alternator.
Make a drawing of how the belt is routed so you can refer to it if it slips off.
Turn the tensioner clockwise. It will flex and you can slip the belt off.
Disconnect this pipe with the twist lock fitting.
Now you have access to remove the four bolts that secure the alternator.
This is where things went a bit wrong for me. My lower right hand side bolt sheared at the threads, leaving the hole partially filled. I’ll talk more about what I did to fix that later on, but for now will carry on with the instructions.
With the alternator loose, you’ll find you can’t remove it due to the plastic airbox mount.
The answer is to use a Dremel to cut away a small wedge to make space. Put a rag underneath to catch the plastic shavings.
This is a very zoomed-in picture. Its quite a small cut.
Once done you can disconnect the two alternator cables, and remove it!
Here’s a short video that shows the maneuver: https://youtube.com/shorts/2Xd0vpKWfgA?feature=share
Now reverse the process to reinstall.
This job took me about four hours and I was figuring stuff out as I went along, excluding the time spent fixing the broken bolt …
The bastard bolt
How to remove a sheared bolt?
Well I tried about everything.
The challenge was the very tight space. Most tools were either too short, or too long, such that the guide hole for the bolt got in the way.
Easy-outs wouldn’t reach, so I tried using a right angle adapter, but it would just slip.
I tried drilling a hole and hammering in a torx bit, however it didn’t grip either.
I tried welding on a nut, but each time it would just shear off. After five attempts I gave up.
I could drill the bolt out, but had no way to re thread it. The tapping tools wouldn’t reach.
I kept googling and learned about tap-serts which are a self tapping insert. You drive them in with a bolt. Problem is they require a much larger hole. The M8 bolt hole would have to be drilled out to 11.5mm, which is a lot of material to lose.
I found an alternative called Seal-Lock which is much thinner - only 9.5mm.
I drilled out the hole after watching this great video on drilling metal.
Then the insert went in, I gave it a gentle tap with a hammer to get it seated, and it screwed in place nicely.
I was so relieved to have finally gotten rid of it!
Replacement alternator back in, finally.
The rest of the reassembly went great and now my Z4 is happy again!
It was just in time to go Drag Racing in my BMW Z4 E89!
Set up us the blog
For more than a decade, I’ve used Dropbox as a kind of personal knowledgebase. I’d save simple text files into folders along with supporting files like images or PDFs.
It’s a simple system, but despite a few attempts to replace it with something ‘better’ - nothing has taken. I always go back to using Dropbox because its just so easy.
The closest I’ve come is Obsidian. I’ve been using it on and off for about a year. My early mistake was to try too hard with linking to create a browser style experience.
Now I’ve moved back to using Obsidian purely as an editor, with the files all stored in Dropbox in a simple folder tree.
Secondary to this, I want to write more online, but I’ve found a few barriers:
- Managing website hosting and platform updates sucks. I already do enough IT at work.
- Managing media sucks. I just want to drop a picture or file in and not worry about it.
- Managing formatting sucks. My nature means I get bogged down making things ‘look right’.
- I self-impose pressure for perfection in writing a blog post. It’s not like posting on facebook or twitter.
- Writing from a mobile device is not practical with Wordpress.
I wanted a super simple interface for blogging, and I’m aware of Quartz and some other options, but syncing with Github was yet another system to manage.
I tried using Obsidian Publish, but it has a 5GB total vault limit, which I will exceed very quickly.
I found Blot and it seems to do everything I want. I can edit files in Obsidian directly in my Dropbox folder, and they get published within seconds. The site is actually updating live as I write this. There’s a 1TB site limit which will be plenty, and because it’s in dropbox, everything is versioned and saved automagically.
I haven’t yet figured out how to use tags, but since there’s nothing here yet, that can wait for a bit.
So, here we go. I’ll port across posts from my old site eventually too, but in the time it usually takes me to sign into wordpress and get started, I’ve already written my first post.