Below you will find pages that utilize the taxonomy term “how to”
Cars
How to Replace an Alternator in a 2003-2007 Honda Accord
If you find that your car won’t start, and after you jump start it the car immediately dies when removed from the jump source (jump box or another car), then you probably need a new alternator. Your alternator isn’t providing enough power to run the car and charge the battery. This guide will follow a 2004 Honda Accord V6. The process will be very similar for most cars, especially other Hondas but the bolt sizes and locations will vary.
Cars
How to Replace Brake Rotors and Pads in a Honda Prelude
If your brakes are squeaking you need new pads. You already knew that of course. But what if your steering wheel shakes during braking?
You need new pads and rotors. Your wheel is shaking because your rotors are warped or otherwise worn.
That’s what’s happening in this ’99 Prelude so I’m installing new PowerStop drilled/slotted rotors and PowerStop carbon-fiber ceramic pads.
To do this job you mostly need basic tools but I recommend a brake pad spreader as well.
Cars
How to Replace a Starter in a Honda Accord V6
Today I’ll be replacing a starter in a 2004 Honda Accord V6 (7th generation 2003–2007). Replacing a starter is largely the same in most cars but I’ll include specific information like bolt sizes and locations for this car. As always, I’ll include affiliate links to the tools I used.
The starter is always attached to the transmission so it’s usually pretty easy to find. In our case it is on the right side of the transmission below and to the left of the the battery.
Cars
Swapping an Engine in a Honda CRX
Today is the day! The engine I’ve been building is going in the autocross CRX! I’ll go through the whole project step by step. To read about the engine build itself check out this post.
Step 1: Have a friend who has a lift.
Step 2 (optional): Paint your ugly block.
Step 3… ok I’m not numbering the steps anymore. Take off the wheels, traction control bar, ball joints…
Drain the forbidden nectar (gear oil).
Cars
How to Install an LED Light Bar
Today’s project is installing this 42" LED light bar by Nilight (for off-road use) on my 2001 Honda CR-V. The mounting of the light will be specific to this light bar and this vehicle but the wiring I demonstrate (which will include a switch in the cabin) will apply to pretty much any kind of auxiliary lighting you want to add to any vehicle.
The light bar comes with these brackets that are intended to be installed directly to the roof of the vehicle.
Cars
How to Convert a Honda B-Series Engine to Coil-on-Plug
In this guide I’ll be upgrading a Honda B20B engine (from a JDM CRV) in a 1991 CRX Si to coil-on-plug. This method will be largely the same if you have a D, H or F series Honda engines.
In the 90s cars used a mechanical distributor to send high voltage current to the spark plugs in the engine. It was nice and it worked but it can be less precise and is harder to tune, which is important in a turbocharged setup.
Cars
How to Fix an O2 Sensor Check Engine Light
So the check engine light came on in your car? Don’t ignore it!
This calls for an OBD scanner. You can read the codes yourself with this tool or you can stop by an auto parts store and use theirs (for free in most cases).
This car is a 1999 Honda Prelude so the on-board diagnostics port is by the passenger’s feet. In your car it may be near the driver’s feet instead.
Cars
How to Replace a Transmission Mount
While rooting out the “clunking” sound my 2004 Accord has been making I noticed a very worn looking transmission mount. We can see it is torn in at least 2 places.
These mounts are cheap but very important. So let’s replace it. To access it I’ll need to remove this air intake.
Before I unbolt the mount, I’ll need to support the transmission from below by placing this jack with a piece of wood up against the bottom of the transmission.
Cars
How To: Install Boost and Air Fuel Gauges in a Turbocharged Car
Today I’m going to install these AEM gauges in my turbo Honda CR-V so I can monitor air pressure in the turbo system and the air/fuel ratio going into my engine.
First, a little unboxing. What do you get from AEM for $360? The air fuel wideband gauge comes with alternate faces so you can match them to your factory gauges. It also includes two wiring harnesses and an o2 sensor (not pictured).
Tech
How to Draw a Dick on the City of Bellevue’s “Report Gatherings” Map With Go
The city of Bellevue, Washington recently debuted an online tool to allow residents to report “gatherings” or other violations of Governor Inslee’s “shelter in place” order. Bellevue Police Department plans to make a heat map to identify areas with high concentrations of violations. This guide will walk through how to reverse engineer an API and use Go’s standard library to send form data. We’ll use the “report a gathering” application as the example API.
Cars
How to Restore Damaged Wheels
Today I’m going to restore these aluminum wheels.
These are OEM 16” x 7.5" Honda S2000 wheels. They’re made in Japan by Enkei. They’re pretty sought after but I got this set for $120 on Craigslist because they are in rough shape and have no tires.
The plan:
🔹Sand the failed clear coat
🔹Fill in the curb gouged edges
🔹Prime, paint and clear coat
Here are the supplies I’ll be using.
Cars
How to Replace an Accelerator Pedal Position Sensor
2004 Honda Accord outside of a detail shop
This is my 2004 Accord. It has been my daily driver for 6 years. It has 285k miles. Everything works and it’s great — except that lately the throttle has been… weird. It starts jerky and doesn’t cruise at a consistent speed even if I am very smooth with my pedal input. I hooked up my OBD reader (on-board diagnostic reader) to see if I had any error codes.
Cars
How to Restore Your Car’s Exterior Trim
I’m going to show you how to restore the lower plastic trim on this ‘99 Honda Prelude but the process will be the same on most cars.
Everyone knows that the Honda Prelude is one of humanity’s finest achievements. In terms of engineering, style and heritage it has few rivals — But sadly the last one rolled off the assembly line in 2001. Those of us who own one today have a moral obligation to maintain it.
Tech
API Basics With Postman — the Martin files
This week I’m stealing all of Martin Castro’s hardwork from Twitter (with his permission) to bring you his guide on using Postman to consume APIs. This is a great way to test an API before you starting writing code. The rest of this post is straight from Martin’s thread:
👽 LEARNING THE HARD WAY: API basics with Postman 👽
I am going to use Github’s Noop Challenge — Hexbot to teach y’all about one of biggest tools in my API toolbelt, Postman.
Tech
Make a Stack Overflow Reputation Leader Board for Your Team With Python
If you’re a developer or student you probably have a Stack Overflow account. If you’re as (overly) competitive as I am you probably compare your Stack Overflow reputation with your colleagues. If you’re a real weirdo you might even want a sort-able leader board to compare yourself against your friends, enemies, etc.
Well, look no further than this simple Python Flask application!
Screenshot of example leaderboard
Here is an example of this website in action using myself and some friends: http://sampleleaderboard.
Tech
How To: SSH to Your Azure Linux VMs With Username and Password From Windows, Linux or Mac
If you’re looking to generate SSH keys and use them to login to an Azure Linux VM then good on you because that’s the recommended and most secure method to access your VMs. It’s readily documented here in official documentation. However, I’ve seen people asking on forums how to simply connect to a Linux VM hosted in Azure via SSH with a username and password. If that’s you then I assume you have a good reason (like this VM will generally not have ports open to the internet or this is a proof of concept) and this post will detail how.
Tech
How To: Embed Your Azure Web App Bot in Any Web Page
Embedding an Azure bot in your web page is actually very simple but the Azure portal doesn’t make it obvious how to do this. The portal blade for bots is geared towards developers who are integrating bots into channels like Skype, Facebook Messenger, Slack, SMS, etc but I’ve seen several questions on Stack Overflow asking how to simply slap the bot on a web page - so here you go.