Amazing 30 Year Old Aquarium Filter Repairs

One of the most amazing electrical-mechanical devices that I have ever owned is my Eheim 2213 canister filter. This is a water filter that I have used to help maintain water quality in my 55 gallon freshwater aquarium. This filter has been running continuously since I installed this aquarium probably around 1994 or 1995, close to 30 years ago. Every few months I cleaned out the media, but otherwise, it just runs and runs. About 10 years ago, I replaced the hoses that had gotten hard, but other than periodic cleaning, it has received no additional maintenance. A few years ago the pump started getting a bit noisy, but it kept running until a few days ago when it stopped. Inspection revealed that the impeller shaft and impeller were just plain worn out. A quick search on the internet revealed that replacement parts were still available with next-day delivery, so I ordered new parts.

The parts arrived the next day and I replaced the impeller and shaft. Turning it back on, it picked up again just where it left off. I am enormously impressed with this filter and the ability to get repair parts with one-day delivery.

I also have used an Optima A-807 air pump for a similar amount of time that has had its diaphragm replaced once. That has also been a pretty impressive run.

The only thing I can think of that that comes close in reliability is an Amana refrigerator that I replaced after 22 years of service. That refrigerator was replaced because of a remodeling of my kitchen that made that refrigerator unsuitable for the new layout, not because it failed.

I have a few other devices that are older and still work, but none of those are continuously operated and all of them have had multiple faults over the years.

Worst Bicycle Brake Design That I Have Ever Seen

The surestop brake system is a crazy design for a bicycle brake. What it does is use the friction of a a brake pad rubbing on the rim of the rear wheel to pull a cable to activate a cable to pull a V-brake cable in order to activate the front brake. There is only one brake lever, which activates the rear brake, which then automatically activates the front brake. According to the manufacturer there are three benefits to this system:

  • Single lever operation operates both front and rear brakes.
  • The way force is transferred from rear wheel to front wheel will prevent the rider from locking up the front wheel. The rider will not flip over the front handlebars by over application of the front brake. This was apparently the motivation of the original inventor of this system.
  • Compared to a single rear coaster brake, both wheels are used for braking.

So why is this concept is a bad idea when compared to having separate activated front and rear V-brakes. I will ignore the comparison to a single coaster brake, since the cost of this system is essentially the same as conventional V-brakes. A dual braking system should be superior to any single coaster brake system.

  • First and foremost – there is no redundancy in a SureStop braking system. If your rear brake fails or falls out of adjustment, you will have absolutely no brakes at all. Unlike the SureStop system, conventional front and rear V-brakes are completely independent, so if one or the other fails, you still have the other brake system to rely upon.
  • Having several extra elements between the brake level and the front brake pads, the SureStop system requires the system to be extremely finely adjusted in order for it to work properly. Normal V-brakes have a much greater range of adjustability that will still result in adequate braking. Thus, the SureStop system will degrade faster with wear and tear and be more difficult to maintian than a conventional system.
  • Having the mechanical system automatically apply the front brake prevents a competent rider from modulating front and rear brakes independently if traction between front and rear wheels differs. Automatic front brake operation cannot possibly outperform a rider that has learned proper control of independent front and rear brakes.

The SureStop system is designed to help prevent a rider from over application of the front brake and from flipping over the handlebar. Regardless, in my mind, a conventional V-brake system provides a vastly more reliable and safer solution to the problem of braking a bicycle. The most important factor being the redundancy built into a conventional system. Though I’m sure that some people have used carefully maintained SureStop brakes and haven’t had any extraordinary problems with them, I would avoid this braking solution.

Read my Building a Railroad Essay

I have just put up a new essay titled Building a Railroad onto my Stories Page. The download is free.

This is an extensively illustrated essay that contains part of a diary kept by John Morgan, assistant engineer for the U.S. Military Railroad at City point during the siege of Petersburg.  The period covered is February 5th to March 6th, 1865, when the City Point and Army Line Railroad was expanded to support the new positions of the Army of the Potomac after the Battles of Hatcher’s Run.  I have added much commentary about the U.S. Military Railroad and the events that occurred at this time.

Moving Humphreys Station on the City Point and Army Line Railroad

One of the things that I looked at when I visited the National Archives a few years ago, was a journal that had daily entries. These entries loosely described what the engineering and construction corps of the USMRR was up to on each day of the Petersburg champaign. I’m not exactly sure who was responsible for making the entries, but there is handwriting from several different people in the journal. Typical entries reported on the weather, what the various construction gangs were up to, significant military and political events and so on. Like most diaries, the content isn’t that exciting, but there are a few gems in there. Here is one of more interesting entries that I encountered.

Moving Humphrey's Station
Moving Humphrey’s Station

Here is it transcribed.

Thursday March 2d, 1865

Mr McAlpine, Prin. Asst. Engr went to the front this morning to select a location for the terminus of the Hatcher Run Branch as Genl Humphreys, the Commander of the 2nd A.C. has emphatically declared the R.R. a nuisance and must have the station removed out of sight of his quarters, as the noise from the cars and locomotives disturb his nerves.

We ought to have Generals who have better “nerves” and who could sleep wherever circumstances placed them.

As it is the road has to be extended beyond Genl. Humphreys Headquarters into the Campground of the 5th A. C. who have no nerve & of course can put up with the noise & disturbance caused by running the road.

There was not much work done today, as the rain has poured down in torrents all day.  The James River is quite high & prospects for a still greater freshet.

Nothing New

There are several remarkable things about this entry.

First of all is the comment about the need for “Generals who have better nerves.” I worked for almost 40 years in various tech jobs for companies big and small. Though it is pretty routine for an individual to complain about a managers decisions, it is extremely rare for anyone to put it down in writing. Usually, that becomes what is known in industry as a career limiting move or a “CLM.” I can only guess that the entry was written either by a civilian employee or someone else that didn’t intend on making the army a career.

The second thing that struck me is how a general might demand that the railroad move it’s terminus so all the activity didn’t disturb his nerves. This caused me to spend some time investigating general A.A. Humphreys to see just what kind of person he was.

What I found was a most interesting man. A graduate of the West Point class of 1831, A.A. Humphreys became a highly respected civil engineer. Before the Civil War, he led the survey that was to plot the route for the first transcontinental railroad. He also started work on a detailed analysis of the Mississippi River that was intended to help the engineers improve navigation. That analysis was published shortly after the war.

Though highly respected, he was apparently very set in his ways and it appears he had few close friends. That he navigated the changes in command of the Army of Potomac with little controversy, is probably a reflection of his independent nature. It appears he had a reasonably good relationship with General Meade, who asked him to be chief of staff of the Army of Potomac after Meade took command. At first Humphreys refused the offer, preferring to remain a division commander. Later on, he was asked again to take the position and accepted. Also, General Abbot, who commanded the siege Artillery at Petersburg worked with Humphreys on the Mississippi River project before and after the war. I wonder if it was Humphreys who recommended that Abbot be put in charge of the siege artillery in front of Petersburg. It is somewhat interesting that with all his knowledge of the Mississippi River, that Humphreys was never sent to assist in the fight on that front.

That an engineer of his esteem would make the USMRR move it’s station because of how it disturbed his nerves is very surprising to me and I believe very reflective of his difficult nature. However, there is the possibility that the engineer Humphreys just didn’t like the location chosen for the station for other reasons than “nerves” and had the USMRR move it to what he considered a better spot.

The American Philosophical Society, which was and is one of America’s leading intellectual societies had a lecture by Hampton L. Carson about Humphreys shortly after his death. This paper described Humphreys as follows.

The life of Andrew Atkinson Humphreys was one of reflection and action, of incident and character. A man of science, a brilliant soldier, an accomplished scholar, a polished gentleman, the lineal descendant of distinguished men, and the inheritor of their talents and virtues, he displayed in every walk of life the highest qualities, and combined the most opposite characteristics. Born to command, he easily attained the front rank in every species of labor which he undertook, yet his modesty was as great, as it was rare. His intercourse with men was graced by a charm of manner, a simplicity of diction, purity of sentiment, a gentle resistlessness of will that armed him with a power which few could oppose with success ; or if, misled by these, they had dared to stir the half-hidden fire of his nature, they would have found him as terrible as Saul. … …he was in public and in private, a man to be feared, to be trusted, to be admired, to be loved ; a man with whom no one could trifle, and whom no one would care to offend.

This picture of him, seems to portray a pretty intense person.

A. A. Humphreys
A. A. Humphreys

I think this difficult nature also explains how long it took him to attain corps command in the Civil War. However difficult he was, he seemed to know how to defer to superiors, as it seems he was never fired from a job. What do you think about A.A. Humphreys?

Sometimes Intuition is Right

When I constructed some prototype winter huts for my City Point Model Railroad, I made the assumption that the soldiers used their shelter halves for sides and roofs of the shelters. I cut some paper to the scale size for a shelter half. Like the soldiers would have done, I used these for the roofs and ends of my models. One thing I found is that the shelter halves couldn’t completely cover the ends, so my huts ended up looking like this.

Model Civil War Winter Huts

I was looking though some original Civil War images for my City Point Model Railroad and noticed that at least one original hut had the same problem.

Winter Quarters
Winter Quarters

Note how the hut on the right has a shelter half that doesn’t completely cover the end, just like on my model. Looking at this image more closely, it does appear that many of the more enterprising soldiers found enough construction materials to solve this issue. I need many more huts for my layout and will have to build a number of the improved versions.

Vintage Apple II plus Troubleshooting Lessons

I have spent a considerable amount of time over the last couple of months restoring a very flakey Apple II plus motherboard to something approaching reliable operation. I expect that over the next few weeks, some final testing and debugging will resolve any possible remaining issues and I will be able to declare that the system is working completely reliably.

At the start of this effort, this particular motherboard occasionally worked properly, but never would stay working for long. In the past I had worked with other early rev Apple II motherboards that had similar intermittent issues and assumed that a lot of this intermittent behavior was due to connector issues, as reseating chips usually improved or at least changed behavior.

In the past those flakey boards have ended up on my spares pile, but I was determined to get this one working properly. Though I did encounter flaky sockets, I found many chips that had bad outputs, which made me wonder how the computer worked at all. Once I started finding and replacing these bad chips, the stability of the computer improved dramatically.

I have posted a youtube video that shows how I debugged one particular bad chip.