Subaru and the Plastic AC Idler Pulley

"That's odd, the ac just stopped working.."

This may be something you run into if you own a 2.5L powered Subaru.  For a number of years, Fuji Heavy Industries decided to use a plastic idler pulley for the ac belt.  This will seem all nice and fine for a good while, but the minute is begins to emit the tiniest chirp you'd better be shopping for a replacement part.  I didn't know about this little gem of a part and it's propensity for failing in spectacular fashion, so I just oiled it and let it ride.  Don't do that!

A replacement pulley that is actually made of metal can be purchased at just about any parts store.  If you have a Saab 9-2x Linear though, it won't show that it fits, so just search as if you own a 2004 Forester with the 2.5L.  The pulley from AutoZone is Duralast #231029 for $39, and the belt is Duralast #353K4 for about $9.  

If you put this off long enough and the pulley fails like mine did, you will also need the Dorman #917-124 Idler Pulley Adjuster Bolt Kit for under $30 with shipping.  Order this part from Amazon as soon as you see that it has failed/melted to everything.  Most parts stores won't have it and won't know how to order it.  The plastic melts to the parts in the kit and just generally makes a mess of things.  In my case, the belt ate into other parts after the pulley failed.  I consider myself lucky though, because sometimes this pulley fails and pushes back into the timing belt cover, clips the belt, and ruins the engine.

Connect a Canon 6D to your Macbook Pro

I figured out a fun thing today with the newer workhorse camera.  I'm taking a year long photography course and I need to be able to tether my 6D to the wife's laptop.  I went around a bit on how to do this and finally figured out that if I:

Click on the wifi icon
Click "Create Network"
Name it something.
Hit "Create"


Then, the Macbook will create a little Ad-Hoc network that I can then connect to with my camera.  Well, damn.  That was pretty slick and will allow me to tether without having a wifi router somewhere nearby.

I'm using the clunky, but correctly priced, EOS Utility 3 software from Canon that comes with the camera.  It'll download a little bit funky on the Macbook, so you have to:

Go into the Applications folder
Click on the Canon Utilities folder
Click on the EOS Utilities folder
Click on the EOS Utilities App (for pairing)
Click on the EOS3 App

It'll then start pairing if you're doing it the first time.  After that, just select the network and you should be rolling.  Configure where you want the photos to be stored and whether or not you want to save them to the computer and the camera and the rest kinda sorts itself out.  One obvious thing I noticed is that the preview speed is slow, but can be speeded up a bit by lowering the capture file size.  I usually shoot MRaw, but switched to MJpeg and it worked pretty well.

Ener-G Brownies or The Brown Sugary Goo of Doom.

Tonight I was jonesin' for some chocolate, so I threw together a bowl of brownie mix out of the box.  We have a vegan in the house, so I figured that I'd just use Ener-G to replace the 2 eggs needed for the recipe.  2/3C of oil, the Ener-G egg stuff, and 1/4C of water were called for and the mix looked a little slippery batter, but I threw it in anyway.  Well, after the required time, I looked in to see the oil bubbling on the surface and when they came out, they were the consistency of bubble gum that was left in a hot car too long.

I was a little bent.

I searched the web and quickly came across stories on baby's mama sites about how this happens all the time and I should follow such & such recipe instead.  Screw that.  I'm not quitting.  They were already ruined and couldn't get any worse, so I went into improvised repair mode.

Add a rounded 1/4C AP flour, 1 teaspoon Backing Powder, stir until the ball of what appears to be molasses and sawdust soaks up the flour.  Add 1/4C milk and stir.  (2% is what I had)  It'll start to break down the ball a bit and once that's soaked up, add another 1/4C of milk and stir it in.  By this point, your hand will be pretty damned tired.  Now get the blender out or prep the Kitchen Aid mixer.    Toss this slurry in and hit it with the mixer.  If it's not wet enough to be compliant, add more milk.  Beat the crap out of it with the mixer and add more milk (a splash at a time) until the batter starts to look like cake batter.  It will have lightened up some and most of the chunks of 'prior screwup brownie' will have broken down.

Pour it in a pan and put it in the hotbox.  Mine was 15mins @ 350 for a 13x9.  The original recipe called for 24 minutes, but this stuff was thinner so I cut the time.  The toothpick trick won't work too well because of the prior screwup, so make sure that the top has a good crust before you yank 'em or they'll be gooey on the bottom.

Hope this helps.