Replacing Presage TU31 rear brake pad

Sqeaking noise was heard recently at high speed. It will disappear on braking briefly. Inspection revealed rear pad wear to limit of less than 2mm.

The top 14mm screw of the clamp is removed. The  clamp is flipped open and the cylinder is pressed inward gently. The old pad is removed and the back plate is priced out. New pads are dropped in and the clamp is flipped back. The 14mm screw is put into place. Note there is some grease at the screw tip. I put some blue loctite at the socket end as some corrosion is noted.

Why Protrek water resistance will fail

These are the tiny O-rings in the side buttons.

These are the O-rings on the chasis. They are subject to dirt built up. Once the O-ring aged, lubricant dries up or pressure difference is great and sudden, leaks will happen.

Repairing Tag Heuer watch

This watch has been fixed by shop once and claim the circuit board was changed. It stops working 12 months afterwards.
After changing battery,  it does not work.
 First disassemble to see if any sign of moisture condensation. Then lubricate the very tiny gears. It still does not function at all.

Finally I found one of the component has fracture soldering. After resolder it, it finally works again!

Faulty lipo charger

My loyal lipo charger served me for more than 6 years and it was found that it fails to charge at 2A rate. Symptoms look like some sort of overheating as it fails after few minutes of charging repeatedly. The failure can be reproduced consistently.

Taking apart and no component looks fried. Likely a cheap way to repait is to change those capacitors that are close to the FET and coil that dried up the capacitors. After changing the closest 220uF 25V and 440uF 35V capacitors, it works perfectly as new. Then I change all capacitors prophylatically.

12V Pb Acid Battery power 220V 500W rotary Hammer

Test : 220V @ 2.1A = 450W

12V inverter connect to two Pb-Acid in parallel : 12V @ 30A ~ 360W

Samsung Note1 N7000 2.3.6 Jelly Bean 4.1.2 upgrade

Mine is an European version bought in Hong Kong. Android version 2.3.6 and I do not bother to upgrade it to ICS for the past 10 months. Now the Multi screen and S note function tempted me to upgrade to 4.1.2.

Hear focks have problem of upgrading to 4.1.2 with problems of:
1) freeze in middle of upgrade from 2.3.6 to 4.1.2
2) Polaris no longer available
3) Call recording in rooted ICS not working
4) simlock for unauthorized upgrade of unlocked sim  Note.

The upgrade is pretty straight forward. No reset or wipe done. Just upgrade with a USB cable and newest Kies from samsung HK.
I  try upgrade through Kies/ USB and it detected my old version LA2/ phone LA4 firmware and notify me to upgrade to LM5/LS0/LM5 (TGY) 4.1.2. The whole upgrade takes less than 30 mins and is so smooth that all data and installed apps are not deleted. It even reminds me and automatically migrate all Smemo to Snote after upgrading.

I am happy with :
1) Response is faster than 2.3.6 and
2) Snote is much powerful
3) Muti screen function is perfect
4) Camera focus noticeable faster
5) Splanner looks much better

I like the encryption function most as I like to encrypt all files in the external SD card , in case I lost the phone (which I did before). Dare not try encrypting the phone itself as people complaining user intervention is needed in case a reboot happens unexpectedly , since password is required to boot up the  phone.

The files encrypted in the external SD card cannot be read be card reader (only file name listed in PC).

Battery life is not an issue at all for me.

Replace Mio P350 lithium battery

The stock battery is weak and hard to found  a replacement. So I replaced it with nokia Bl6c1 which has a compatible dimension. You need to resolder the old  battery circuit board to the new battery as the battery temp protection  thermistor value  is different.

Repair GPS Tracker

My GPS/ GSM Tracker gave me wrong coordinate out of a sudden. Reset does not helo and end up open it up to takw a look. Found the GSM antenna contact has some corrosion, as it is used in somewhere with high humidity. Cleaning the contact and it works again.