Author: admin

Triton TR 140

by admin

The product is marketed as an “indistructable” sand-filter for use in swimming pools and comes with a 10 year warrany. Supposedly the manufacturer has a 40 year track record of designing and improving these “top quality” things..



Based on my limited personal experience I’d confirm that the product will indeed reach the 10 year lifespan but I am still very disappointed by what I deem to be a very poorly designed product – if not to use the term “planned obsolescence”. The common failure point of this product supposedly cannot be repaired (according to my pool repair shop) and when broken, a replacement will set you back around 1’500€ – i.e. you are supposed to buy a new one:

The weak point of the design (which all the products of this manufacturer that I came across seem to share) is the “screw in” plastic lid – in particular the threads that are cut into the brittle fibreglass material: It comes as no surprise (except maybe to a manufacturer with 40 years experience with this kind of thing) that over time the pressurization/depressurization cycles will cause those threads to wear out and at some point they will just no longer be able to hold down the lid under pressure.

At that point you will wake up some morning and find that your pool is suddenly completely dry – and if you are unlucky your pump may also have died as a collateral damage due to having been run without water.

I am probably not the typical “consumer” but I find it inacceptable if this kind of expensive product is deemed to be a “wearing part” that needs to be completely replaced every 10 years. Especially if everything except the garbage fibreglass threads is still perfectly fine. I think it should be noted that when you look at “pressure vessels” that are used in other context you will find that this kind of “lid design” doesn’t seem to be used anywhere else. I wonder why that might be the case… I meanwhile found that there are other pool filter manufacturers that seem to be using designs that to me look much better/durable. Specifically designs where the lid is clamped down on the neck of the filter. I don’t know if those products come with other problems of their own but I’d definitely stay away from the Triton garbage.

So much for why you should not ever buy this kind of garbage product!


But since my “pool repair shop” had also told me that he had heard about people that had succeded by tinkering to workaround the problem, I decided to give it a try myself. The below is my “proof of concept” but it still remains to be seen if it will actually pass the test of time (I am a bit worried that the plastic lid might eventually shatter).

The idea of my hack is to have some additional support for the plastic lid to push it down from the top (supporting what remains of the original “fibreglass thread design”). To that end I drilled six 6mm holes into the top of the fireglass container and glued respective M6 screws in place with epoxy. (I am using A4 stainless steel screws and washers from a boating supply store).

On the inside of the container I covered the washers/screw-heads with several layers of fibreglass/epoxy – trying to maintain the tightness of the container.

In order to still being able to “screw on” the plastic lid, I had to cut off the original handles of the original tool and replace them with handles that are able to clear the screws that now stick up from my sand filter:

As a means to hold down the lid I went for a sturdy steel plate. (I guess it helps if you have somebody with a water-jet or laser cutter at hand in order to produce that.)

And after some epoxy painting here is the finished product (I had designed the plate with extra holes that I could use as a template/guide to drill into the fibreglass container):

AL-KO Motorsense BC 4535 II Premium – Bewertung

by admin

Ich hatte mir diese Motorsense vor mehr als 5 Jahren – dazumals für ca. 190€ – gekauft. Inzwischen scheint der Neu-Preis auf unter 140€ gefallen zu sein und es handelt sich offensichtlich um kein high-end Produkt. Bei der Qualität muss man darum wohl mit gewissen Abstrichen rechnen.

D.h. man sollte nach meiner Erfahrung damit rechnen, dass das 46€ Hauptrohr sowie die 29€ Antriebswelle regelmässig ersetzt werden müssen. Andere “Verschleissteile” sind der 30€ Starter, die 3x 14€ Kugellager, 19€ (Schrott-)Griffhalterung, etc

AL-KO’s Werbe-Sprüche wie “Metall-Tankschutz für hohe Sicherheit & Lebensdauer” klingen rückblickend absolut zynisch (dieses Teil war eines der Ersten das sich durch die Vibrationen komplett selbst zerstört hatte – und ich musste rundum neue Schraubenhalterungen anschweissen um dem überteuerten 17€ Ersatzteil zu entgehen).

P1080653

Als positive Punkte lässt sich festhalten, dass man zu dem Gerät immerhin Ersatzteile bekommt und obwohl immer mal wieder etwas kaputt geht, lässt sich das Gerät im Prinzip selbst reparieren. Der Motor/Vergaser scheint ebenfalls recht robust zu sein und ich hatte hier bisher noch keinerlei Probleme.

Leider aber sind die Ersatzteilpreise jenseits von Gut und Böse, d.h. sie liegen mehr als das Zehnfache über dem entsprechenden Preis des neuen Gerätes (allein bei den im Ersatzteil-Shop angebotenen Teilen landet man bei über 1’700€!).

Komplett verarscht fühlt man sich dann, wenn man etwa das Ersatzteil für die gebrochene “Glocke Fliehkraftkupplung” erhält:
P1080651

Links im Bild das entsprechende gebrochene original Teil (mit der ausgebrochenen Aufnahme für die Antriebswelle), rechts daneben das bereits montierte 18€ Ersatzteil: Man fragt sich unwillkürlich wozu wohl die strukturschwächenden Schlitze rechts und links im original Teil dienen sollten. Für einen Laien wie mich sieht das jedenfalls verdächtig nach einer Sollbruchstelle aus. Es wäre interessant zu erfahren, ob das einfach ein Design-Fehler früher Modelle war, der inzwischen verbessert wurde – oder ob neue Geräte noch immer mit dem geschwächten Teil ausgeliefert werden.

Leider neutralisieren AL-KOs Ersatzteilpreise alle meine Sympathie-Punkte die ich diesem Gerät sonst gerne zusprechen würde. Schade!

Kärcher’s excessive maintenance costs

by admin

Some years ago I had bought a “Kärcher K 4.650 Jubilee” high-pressure cleaner (I don’t remember the exact price but it must have cost something in the 300€ range):
Kärcher

Funtionality wise the device did a decent job but the big disappointment hit hard when some signs of (normal) wearout kicked in and the time for repairs had arrived (there are many videos on Youtube useful for do-it-yourself repair):

At first the machine started to leak water (Interestingly the leak had nothing to do with the high-pressure stuff but originated from the o-ring seals of the motor cooling enclosure). Then some other day the pressure collaped. Upon disassembly of the device this problem was also quickly located: The spring used for one of the three pistons of the pump had broken into three fragments.

No big deal, one might be tempted to think.. Shouldn’t be difficult/expensive to replace one little steel spring (maybe 5cm in length)? Wrong! Firstly Kärcher does NOT sell you this spring separately and then you have no idea about Kärcher’s “spare parts” pricing (e.g. see https://www.buy-spares.ie/pressure-washer/k4650-1180-6080/catalogue.pl?path=401194,68311&model_ref=8499257): The CHEAPEST part you’ll find goes for more than 3€ and that will get you ONE smallest size o-ring or screw. So the spring that I needed to repair my device costs 20€ (without shipping) and comes with an extra replacement piston that I don’t need.

Given the fact that one of the 3 piston springs had already broken due to the wear, I would normally be ordering 3 replacements and to replace all of them – rather than wait some weeks for the next one to break.. but then that’s already 60€. Replace the 3 wornout piston rubber seals as well – another 15€.  Add another 15€ for the respective three oil seals.. you haven’t even started to renew the various o-rings that might need changing after some years of use.. and none of the really expensive components have failed yet – but it’s 90€ in replacement wearing material already! A steep investment considering the fact that you’ll get a similar NEW cleaner for about 100-150€ in the hardware store and there is a big risk that more of the used Kärcher’s stuff – that you haven’t touched yet – will breakdown next.

Kärcher’s “spare parts” are so riddiculously expensive that the device would probably cost you 10x the price of the new machine if you were to build it from spare parts.  Technically the Kärcher could be easily repaired – but Kärcher’s “spare parts” pricing makes it an economically absurd possibility and thereby a throw-away product:

My neighbours never repair their Kärcher when it fails – but get a new one instead… I will certainly NOT make the same mistake again and whatever pressure cleaners I may be buying in the future it won’t be a Kärcher – never again!

update (January 2021): The next parts have failed on my K 4.650: Yet another one of the 3 “pistons springs” has broken (one that I had not replaced last time since I had not wanted to waste 60€ to replace all 3 “piston/spring sets” in advance) and this time the cylinder head has cracked (it seems the “cheap” PP66  material used by Kärcher just does not sustain the high pressure and has to be considered “consumable material”).

Kärcher still does not seem to sell certain spare parts (e.g. “cylinder head” for this model) directly to retail customers (see german online store) and in some countries it does not seem to sell any spare parts to retail customers at all (see Kärcher’s bad joke french “online store” – to which the german store will still forward you if you are trying to buy spare parts from France). Depending on where you live it may be practical to use 3rd party stores like “Kärcher Store Schreiber” for bulk orders as a workaround (they seem to provide more reasonably priced spare parts as compared to the 3rd party store mentioned in the above text).

Also it seems that some of the spare parts are actually interchangeable between different pressure washer models, i.e. the above mentioned piston springs are not listed as an individual spare part for the K 4.650 (at least not in the product documentation that I found on Kärcher’s website).. but instead of buying the suggested excessively expensive “piston set” for 20€ it is actually possible to just buy a 2€ piston spring listed for a *different* pressure washer model (if you are feeling lucky that the respective part is indeed interchangeable – which it may or may not be) and/or if you are willing to waste extra money on postage for having to potentially order in a foreign country. Sadly Kärcher seems to go out of its way to make life difficult for those retail customers that just need specific spare parts at reasonable prices.

insurance gangsters – Erfahrungen mit Allianz

by admin

I made the mistake to sign an insurance contact for my house with Allianz some years ago.

Last year burglars broke into my garage and I finally got the opportunity to see how Allianz goes about settling an insurance claim:

More than 5 month later they still have not reimboursed the total amount that they owe me and the 5 month have been one long stretch of complete incompetence (or clownish attempts to cheat me – take your pick). They repeatedly “forgot” to include stolen items in their calculation. The “expert” they sent just lied to me. They tried to incorrectly apply limits which (according to their contract) are exclusively destined for stolen items also to damage to premises or buildings. When confronted with their mistakes they consistently first ignored respective complaints for weeks before giving in only after prolonged hassle. The “service” from their client representative has been the worst that I have ever experienced: Simple questions where not answered for months: First the priority apparently was to go on vacation –  but when reminded one month later instead of answering the question I just got a defiant reaction.

I am very happy that I terminated the renewal of my Allianz contract just in time. But unfortunately whoever thinks that this might have been the end of the story is sorely mistaken: Eventhough I sent the notice of cancellation by registered mail and well within the designated deadline, eventhough I wrote them an additional email to specifically ask for confirmation that they had received my “notice of cancellation” (which I already knew they had received due to the post office’s confirmation), they acted as before – they just ignored me and instead just kept sending invoices for the cancelled contract.  Thinking that the problem might just be an isolated case of some incompetent agency, I turned to Allianz’s central “complaints” department – with no avail: Their attempts of intimidation have since just gotten more agressive.

I finally turned to an independent consumerism organization – where I got confirmation that my “notice of cancellation” had been perfect. It remains to be seen if Allianz will acknowledge that they are wrong once they get the letter from the consumerism organization..

Update October 2017: In their letter to Allianz the independent consumerism organization had confirmed that my cancellation of my Allianz assurance policy renewal had been perfectly conforming to the law and that Allianz had no base whatsoever for any claims against me (Allianz on the other hand still owed me part of my indemnity claim that Allianz refused to yet settle on the pretext that it was offset against their imaginary next year’s premium statement against me).
But Allianz did not give shit about what the consumerism organization said (they probably had known it all along that they were at fault) – instead they just stepped up their dirty game of bluff and intimidation: Every 6-8 weeks or so I now kept receiving new Allianz admonition letters. At first they tried to scare me by ever increasing demand amounts (i.e. “pay now or it will get even more expensive later”). Later they must have realized that this scam did not work and they had one of their bailiffs try the same bluff with “more officially looking” threatening letters. This dragged on for almost a year, but I just followed the advice of the consumerism organization and put those letters in the trash as soon as I got them. And then, almost a year later, it happend.. just as the consumerism organization had predicted: the threatening letters just stopped and I’ve never heard from the Allianz racketeers again (it’s been a year now). Those Allianz tramps sure went through an awful lot of trouble just to dodge the remainder of my indemnity claim – which they havn’t payed to this day.

shit

Conclusion: Being robbed by a burglar isn’t much of a surprise.. but you should expect the same from your Allianz insurance! If ever you think about enrolling with these racketeers, take my advice “JUST DON’T” (you’ll have much more fun if you just flush your money down the toilet)!

Green Pan Bratpfanne ø 28cm

by admin

The below pan was sold by Migros (Switzerland) in 2015 using the label “latest/improved ceramic coating”.

Unfortunately the marketing claims are a gross deception and the non-stick properties of the pan degrade in a matter of 2-3 months: Eventhough there is no visible difference on the coating, whatever is fried in this pan now (even using plenty of oil) will invariably stick to the coating and turn into charcoal faster than anything I have ever witnessed with any other type of pan (simple steel pans work much better than this).

greenpan

Remark: I am well aware of the care that has to be taken of any respectively coated pan (e.g. I am only using soft plastic/wooden tools, soft non-abrasive sponges, etc) so I am definitely not abusing the coating. By comparison the non-stick properties of a PFOA free Teflon based pan which I had bought half a year earlier are still in pretty good shape.

This pan is a complete letdown and it is a shame that it is sold as “non-stick coated”..

ebay – accessory to fraud

by admin

On a large platform like Ebay a certain number of fraudsters is probably unavoidable. Ebay claims that it tries best as it can to protect its honest users and even provides some kind of insurance (but only) if payments are made via its 100% subsidiary PayPal.

ebay

The question is: How does Ebay really react once a specific fraudster is identified? In my experience ebay actually seems to side with the fraudster:

At one time I had bought two items from some belgian seller named MaxxTools (a shop registered to some Jelle Palmans).  Allegedly the products were 1) a “brand new” cordless tacker and 2) a specific brand/high quality drill bit. Neither information was true: The sent tacker was a previously owned one, with a broken charger and a dead battery pack and  the “drill bit” was not the advertised high quality brand but a cheap low end product. It was pretty obvious that this seller had no intention of doing honest business.

In this case the cross-border postage to send the garbage back to the seller was actually quite expensive.. (But Ebay forces you to throw more good money after the bad one before you can qualify for their PayPal reimbursement. And if you payed via PayPal that’s the only road offered by Ebay if you have to “create a case”! Thereby Ebay forces you to surrender the little leverage you might still have had left against the fraudster.. without pressure from ebay the fraudster now has no reason to pay for the damages.. thanks to Ebay you can no longer tell him “I’ll return you the obviously fraudulent merchandise but you pay the postage!”)

One might argue that it could have been worse and as a first time victim at least one got the PayPal reimbursement – so being stuck with the return postage is just the risk of using Ebay.

However Ebay did not terminate the fraudulent seller – who still happily continued to conduct his mischief on Ebay many month later. So probably I wasn’t the first victim of that seller and probably not the last one either.. and Ebay just kept on standing by to let it happen. *That* makes Ebay an accomplice and consequently they should take full responsibility for the damages.. which they refuse – hiding behind the insurance rules of “independent” PayPal.. as if their responsability had anything to do with some insurance I might or might not have.

 

PS: I had had a similar case before.. where some private seller had claimed to sell a specific type of product (citing the specific product ID) only to then deliver some similar but cheaper low-end product. Again Ebay obstructed any chance to recover the lost return postage..

This is what I call a foul business practice!

Fiskars PowerGear Amboss-Getriebeastschere (112480)

by admin

 

These Fiskars 80cm loppers will set you back about 50 Euros. The ads claim that it cuts branches up to 55mm.

fiskars

 

What the ads don’t say is that you’ll need to buy a new replacement blade every two weeks because the original blade will invariably break at the location indicated by the red arrow. The price of the replacement blade is hefty: For the price of two replacemant blades Fiskars will sell you the brand new loppers.

However if you just weld the broken blade you are in for a surprise: The welded blade no longer breaks but suddenly works just fine. Obviously the original blade is designed with a weak spot and given the price of the spare part, this does not seem to be a coincidence..

Bosch AXT 25 TC

by admin

update 1-11-2022: “Surprisingly” there seem to be extremely favorable reviews of this shredder on youtube. Interestingly some of those reviews claim “to not having been sponsored by the manufacturer” and therefore imply “objectivity” – while providing direct online shop links to sellers of this product and admitting that they might receive affiliate kickbacks for sales made in those shops.
One might be tempted to think that eventhough the financial incentives of the authors of those videos obviously go into a certain direction, the exclusively positive comments below those videos actually reaffirm the review result, right? Not so quick! I just learned that censorship on youtube cannot not be underestimated. To add some balance I had just left a link to my less than positive review (see below) on one of those pages (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1y410OOy_E0 ), only to find that after a few minutes my comment had already been removed. You might want to keep that in mind when you watch fanboy “product reviews” on youtube.

————————————————————

The “Bosch AXT 25 TC” shredder supposedly is “extremely fast” and deals with branch diameters up to 45mm. So much for the advertising claims.

axt

Here the flaws that I encountered during my first year of using this toy:

  • Maybe the tool is “extremely fast” if compared to a sloth. In fact it takes ages to process branches through the small input opening.. it is anything but fast.
  • The tool is of such poor build quality that it actually started self-destructing the metal casing of the “turbine” (see photo above: a large metal section has actually broken off – this happened while shredding normal branches well within the specified range!)
  • The “child-proof lock” of the tool malfunctioned after a couple of weeks and the whole shredder had to be sent in to repair the electronics. Luckily this was still on warranty. Next time this happends Bosch will likely sell me the tiny replacement circuit board for 80 Euros apiece. (At least this incident gave me the “opportunity” to have a look at the steep prices Bosch asks for the various spare parts.)
  • It took not long for both of the wheels to fall off. Each is normally held in place by a cheap plastic bolt – which breaks in no time..
  • In any case the wheels are pretty useless in most circumstances: The wheelbase is much to narrow and the center of gravity much to high so that the shredder will invariably tilt over whenever you try to move it – even on flat terrain.

At the time I had bought the shredder for around 500 Euros. It isn’t worth the money, not at all.

 

Update 2018: So it happend again.. the previous day it had still functioned.. next day the Bosch shredder was “dead”. When trying to repair it myself this time, the root cause was quickly found: One of the “child-proof switches” (which checks if the feed hopper is actually screwed on) was barely recognizable as a switch – it had completely disintegrated/melted. As soon as I shorted the repective wire and cleaned the PCB (see below) the shredder worked again. Since I had already opened the device I decided to keep going to also sharpen the dull blades. Here the additional findings about this piece of junk that Bosch calls a shredder:

  • It is a major pain in the ass to disassemble this piece of junk. One problem is the removal of the plastic cover (to access the motor, etc): There is one pin in an almost inaccessible position under the cover and it must be removed before the screw that blocks the cover can be removed. The plastic cover must be bent considerable before the pin can even be reached. Alternatively the similar pin located on the “red knob” side can be pushed out to then pull off that knob – the ticky bit is to find a nail with a suitable diameter to do the pushing. Another example of Bosch’s “serviceing unfriendly” design are the 6 torx screws that hold the respective black cover from the underside of the device: Apparently for no good reason has Bosch added narrow tubular collars around those screws which means that you’ll not be able to reach those with your exchangeble bit-holder based screw driver. Reassembly is even more fun 🙁
  • The lack of proper dust/dirt protection for the printed circuit board (PCB) of the shredder seems grossly negligent: When I opened the compartment there was a thick/moist layer of dust covering the complete circuit board. No surprise to me if those electronics malfunction. (Bosch seems to have used some kind of lacquer to add protection for some components on the PCB – but this looks like a hack to fix the underlying dust/dirt issue.)
  • The solder joints attaching the wheel shaft to the chassis were actually *all* broken (not rusted but just broken). I would not manage to create such a lousy quality solder joint even if I tried very hard.
  • The blade-turbine can only be accessed (e.g. for replacement or maintenance) when the motor-unit is first completely removed from the device. It seems that Bosch does not mean for this shredder to be serviced with ease!
  • Of the four screws holding the blade-turbine, one had already broken off  – with only the  stump still visible in the screw hole (see photo below). But when I removed the remaining three screws it became apparent that all but one were already broken somewhere in the middle and were barely holding on with what little remained of the screws. Update 2-11-2022: A friend (who is a professional mechanic) had kindly removed the broken off screw parts from the holes eventually (without a suitable drill press repairing this kind of problem likely exceeds the capabilities of most users) and provided me with four high-quality replacement screws – but these screws also started to again break a few month later. To me this suggests that the respective 4 screw design chosen by Bosch is just not adapted the forces provided by the motor/gearbox.

bosch

In my opinion the build quality of this badly designed, self-destructing piece of junk is a shame and Bosch did everything to ensure that broken stuff cannot be easily/cheaply repaired.

update 1-11-2022: below some tips that may or may not be useful to other users of this garbage product.

A repeated source of malfunctions were defects of the various “safety switches” used in my device: The device uses redundant mechanical and Reed (magnetic) switches to make sure that the motor “cannot” be accidentally started while any components that prevent direct access to the cutting turbine are not properly installed (i.e. leaf collection box, feed hopper). Obviously the cutter turbine may potentially cause very serious injuries and you don’t want have any limbs near it while it is turning (you wouldn’t want to put your hand into your kitchen blender while it is running either – in spite of there not being a “is the lid on” safety switch in most of those devices). Depending on who might have access to the device (children, etc) you might still want to leave the shredder’s safety switches intact!

That being said I think there are other ways to handle the device safely without those safety switches (provided you can restrict access for unautorized users and you don’t intend to sell the device to unsuspecting new owners eventually), e.g. I always *unplug* the device before moving it or before performing any manipulations anywhere near the cutter turbine. When I see that the respective original mechanical switches just melt/disintegrate or that Reed switches fail due to the counter-magnet falling out (etc), and if I consider the ludicrous spare part prices asked by Bosch, and if I then take the “servicing unfriendly” design into account (that makes any repair just a pain in the ass),  I see more benefit in removing unnessary failure points that provice little added value to me. Example: Reed switches are designed to provide little resistence (I measured ~0.7 Ohm) while in the “happy” configuration, which means that in order to disable them completely from my experience it is good enough to just short the respective connector. With those sensor wires out of the way this has the added benefit of making the next disassembly/assembly a bit easier. (The two mechanical “safety switches” are wired in series to the two outer pins on the connector that connects to the mains power. These switches can be similarly disabled by just shorting the respective wires.)

P1100204

In case you ever need to change the motor capacitor: The capacitor is screwed in, i.e. you turn it counterclockwise to remove it. The component used in my shredder was a: KAI LU, CBB60 SH, 45uF +-5%  50/60HZ, 450V ~  C, 25/70/21  P0 (see photo below). Those things sell around 7-15€ Amazon/AliExpress and there is probably no good reason to pay the inflated “original Bosch” spare part prices.

P1100205

My device recently started to show erratic behavoir, i.e. it would suddenly no longer turn on (after having run for the previous hour) – just blinking the green led instead. After some month in the garage it would again work just to fall into the same pattern after some use. I measured the capacitor and found that my original part had degraded to a point where it only had 35uF (instead of 45uF). Unfortunately replacement with a new 45uF capacitor did not help. I suspect that it is a problem with the main control PCB – which probably self destructed  (once again) – see respective similar issue that had occured to my device during the warrany period. Unfortunately respective schematics for this main board are nowhere to be found and depending on what is broken it might be difficult to fix (e.g. Bosch does not seem to provide the firmware used on the PIC16 micro processor either – i.e. you’d have to make a firmware backup from your respective device while it still works).

Since I had already disabled all the “child safely” features, the control electronics provided very little added value to me anyway. I therefore decided to also get rid of this error prone failure point on my device and just replace it with a simple but robust mechanical switch. A respective “Rotary Cam Selector Switch”  (3 positions, 3 phase 12 terminals) allows to turn on/off the motor while also selecting the direction.

P1100227

And “hurray” now my garbage Bosch shredder works again. The hack comes with a tradeoff though: The motor is no longer turned off / reversed automatically when something blocks the cutter turbine, i.e. the respective intervention has to be performed manually and reasonably quickly.

In case you want to try this hack yourself here some information that might be useful (USE AT YOUR OWN RISK! THIS INVOLVES HIGH VOLTAGE COMPONENTS THAT MAY POTENTIALLY CAUSE SEVERE INJURY AND/OR DEATH. WHEN IN DOUBT THEN DON’T!):

Precautions:
1) Always unplug the device before tinkering with the electrical parts!
2) The main motor capacitor may still contain a significant/dangerous charge even after the device has been unplugged: Do not touch any electrical components before you have also verified that the motor capacitor is COMPLETELY empty! (You might use a well isolated electrician’s screwdriver to directly short the two terminals of the capacitor. Make sure that your body is NOT involved in any way in the shorting of the cap! THIS IS DANGEROUS!)

The motor contains two independent coils: the main coil (blue/yellow wires; corresponding to U1/U2 in the below diagram) and a starter coil (red/white wires; corresponding to Z1/Z2). In case Bosch has changed the coloring of the wires you should verify the resistance of the respective coils: the resistance of the starter coil should be about twice the resistance of the main coil.

Wiring is pretty straight forward and respective background information can be found here: https://www.elosal.de/ratgeber/drehrichtung/index.php . This is what the respective circuits must look like in order to make the motor rotate in one or the other direction.
einphklemme_1038

Einhell BG-RT 1340 M

by admin

After 4 or 5 sessions this rotary hoe stopped turning…

einhell

when inspecting the internals the problem was quickly located: the steel worm wheel had chewed through the brass gear that is meant to transfer the rotation of the motor to the spinning blades..

Obviously the brass gear is not adapted to the forces at work – which should not come as a surprise to whoever engineered that thing.

According to Einhell’s web shop in France the replacement brass gear (“Worm and wheel” ref#343103001010) sells for the steep price of 47.99 € (which is about half the price of the new “Einhell BG-RT 1340 M”). A fine example of an overpriced (extremely quickly) wearing part.

This “tool” is junk and the spare part rip-off pricing that goes with it sucks.

Einhell RT-CD 10,8 Li

by admin

Rechargable LiPo batteries do not take kindly to not being used for an extended period of time. Supposing that you did not use a respective power tool for some months, chances are that your LiPo batteries will be dead by the time you next want to use the tool (not that this is advertised by the various power tool manufacturers).

The rechargable battery pack of this Einhell screw driller uses three LiPo batteries (type: 18650/high-rate discharge; which normally cost about 4$ apiece – incl. shipping). After an idle half a year in the garage the respective battery pack is probably discharged and dead – and whatever add-on electronics Einhell may have added to the battery pack do not help in any way to prevent this.. however Einhell’s proprietary battery casing will prevent you from easily replacing the dead batteries (unless you have some slodering skills). Instead you are meant to buy the proprietary Einhell replacement battery pack.

akku

 

Until recently the new drill (including a box and one battery pack) sold for around 100 Euro. The replacement battery pack was to be had for a hefty 50 Euro! Meanwhile (Feb 2015) the prices have dropped and the new drill costs between 50-75 Euro – and the replacement battery goes for 35 Euro…

There is a striking similarity to the rip-off games played by some printer manufacturers with the pricing of their replacement ink cartridges 🙁

PS: 7 years later my above homemade battery-pack still works fine – which suggests that Einhell must indeed have used some cheap garbage LiPo cells originally.. however now the “keyless chuck” has failed on my device and trying to repair it has just provided me with some additional insights that reinforce my decision to stear clear of Einhell products. A broken chuck (e.g. teeth that no longer retract properly) here is almost impossible to remove: First the respective teeth block the exit for the screw that needs to be removed from the center of the chuck. But even when that screw has finally been removed (by hammering the teeth out of the way) it is then near impossible to unscrew the chuck since nothing is preventing the gears/motor to just turn which ever way you are turning the chuck (removal of the chuck is a precondition for any disassembly of the device!). The “keyless chuck” then is a complete piece of garbage designed to NOT be repairable (but at least it uses standard 3/8” threads so that Einhell’s overpriced garbage part can be replaced with some 3rd party chuck that is actually serviceable).