syringes with needles, indirectly related to HR.

[micky]

Home repair, sort of.

Finally got the belt for my washing machine. It was lying down for almost a week, and that's bad as someone here told me, and so did the guy at the belt store.

There are 960 drops in a teaspoon. Wow. I think I lost less than a teaspoon, but what if I lost too much?

The guy at the belt store said you can't refill a Whirlpool transmission after the oil leaks out, and told some short story about ruining a machine when he was a teenager.

But I was thinking, Why can't I drill a little hole in the transmission, squirt some oil in, and tape up the hole. They make great tapes these days.

Then I'm thinking, where is the syringe I used in college to refill cartridges for pens? It was in my desk drawer for years but it's gone!!!! If I'd known I lost it, I would have swiped one from a doctor who left a box of them in the examining room.

I don't normally steal, but it's illegal to sell syringes without a prescription, right? And no doctor is going to write me a prescription so I can refill my washing machine transmission, right?

Then I have a new idea, use those syringes with the tapered plastic nozzle. I'd just have to drill a bigger hole. Sure more filings will get in the transmission, but it's not an internal combustion engine. There's probably plenty of spare room in there, even between the teeth of matchine gears. And it's not turning at 4000 rpm. It's more like 20 or 30. Don't you all agree?

But then I thought to look in Amazon for "syringes with needles" and they sell them, with blunt needles and with *sharp* needles. Without a prescription. One person even asked and two said Not needed. People were using them for injecting insulin for example, into their belly for example.

I thought selling them with sharp needles w/o a prescription was illegal because druggies would buy them.

Was that ever true? When did it change?

[micky]

I meant to say 96. Still more than I would have expected.

[gfretwell]

I have never heard of needing a prescription for a syringe. I get the

10cc ones once in a while for mixing 2 smoke oil. (10cc in a half liter of gas is 50:1, what my chain saw needs). Sometime they will just give me one if it is a compounding pharmacy.

[lkpo]

[e-mail] wrote

That's because you are obviously a drug addict.

[hubops]

There's a difference between being a drug addict .. ... and being off your meds . ;-) John T.

[invalid unparseable]

I think syringe legality is up to the state. They are illegal here in Delaware.

Kind of weird looking this up as if you are an illegal drug user in our states you can exchange your old syringes for new ones.

[micky]

What if I used a shopvac while drilling? Wooulnd't that likely get all the chunks except the last one where I broke through? How much damage can one chunk do?

As to needles and prescriptions, though now this sounds like a state issue, I didn't think of that before.

see that in Maryland, one has to sign a log book, but in a few states a prescription is needed. In some they can sell 10 of them without and then you need one. In NYS, after 10 you need the paper prescription, the doc cannot phone it in.

[Clare Snyder]

No, that is NOT correct. I bought suringes with dull needles all the time for filling cartridges.

If you grease the drill better than 90% of the chips come OUT. Then grease a tap and threadthehole. Again, virtually no chips get into the transmission and using a machine screw and soft washer you plug the hole - Tape will NOT work for long

Insulin needles are VERY FINE - you would NEVER get gear oil intothe transmission that way

[gfretwell]

Does this help?

[Ralph Mowery]

Here is a bunch for $ 7 postage paid in the US

Probably hundreds more on ebay.

[micky]

Yeah, I've started talking as if this were a real possibilty, buit think originally I meant, What if I had lost a lot more? Could I have added more somehow?

Looks good!

[gfretwell]

That You Tube I posted makes it look like there is a vent hole in top of that transmission that you can shoot oil in. That may also be where it came out.

[Marilyn Manson]

Can't you tell where the oil came out? Isn't *some* area of the transmission wet?

Did you end up with a perfectly dry transmission yet a puddle on the floor?

[micky]

With the machine on its front, I can't see it directly. It's not coming from the bottom or it would leak normally. Maybe from a shaft opening on the top. I could tell more if I usaed a mirror and got a better light.

I found 3 sets of instructions online and one more straight from whirlpool came with the new belt. They were all very similar but not the same.

It was small puddle on the backside of the front of the cabinet, when the machine was a face down. For the first 5 days it was a puddle only but because the machine was tipped, at that point it got big enough to run down to a lip and spread out a litle there. I wiped it up when I finished installing the belt, but I couldn't stand the machine up on the first try. In the following 6 hours, there was either one or two more drops. So that was some measure of how fast it was dripping.

I think I lost less than a teaspoon (96 drops!!) and there is still plenty of oil, but I like these hypothetical problems.

The machine was able to spin very well. That is the problem all the instructions warn about. Whirlpool said to stand it up before tightening the transmission attaching bolts**, then lay it down again to attach tthe brackets, the pump, and one spring.

But other instructions say it's rare that the transmission doesn't get tightened into the right spot, so just tighten those bolts when it's lying down and if the machine won't spin, loosen the bolts and do it again (I forget if you had to lie it down or not).

It's hard to work on it when it's standing up. It's access opening is only a little bigger than a chess board. Newer machines enable the entire front and both sides to come off. I think all of t hose are direct drive and all the parts are in different places from belt drive, last made about 1985.

The woman at one of the parts stores said what I've read here, that the old machines are better than the new ones, and she's in a position to know. Family business, I think she's been working there for decades.

I went to two places and called 3 more hoping to find a belt in Baltimore. Everyone had to order it, from Alexandria Va. or some suburb of DC. (I didn't even think of going there in person. I did drive an extra hour west of here once in the summer, and then I went to a civil war battlefield, but it's cold now, the days are short, and DC has too much traffic. She says they don't stock them, not because it's an old model because every make uses different parts.

And that one or still another said, while it's lying on its front, Lift the transmission up while tightening tthe bolt s, so it will be in proper alignment.

I tried to lift and it wouldn't move, and it spins well.

Unfortunately it doesn't agitate! That wasn't on their list. I'll look it again in a day or two. I'm sure I can fix it .

The instructions that are 27 pages long spend most of the time explaining how it works and giving a troubleshooting guide, and less space than others about how to change the belt.

This was a lot of fun, if eventually it works.

**Maybe they help squeeze the top and bottom of the case together and it leaks from where they meet.

[micky]

I'm not going to look for the thread I started about belt length, since this thread was about the same washing machine.

It turns out the new belt is the same length as the old one, but a) it's wide like the other one** I found and that does make it sit higher in the pulleys, like someone, and it's stiffer and that makes it push harder against the pulleys.

**As to the belt I found that I had thought was the one I bought 2 or 3 years ago. I found a tag in the bag that said USED, in my handwriting! I don't rmemeber this but I must have bought it for a quarter at a yard sale, on the chance I could use it. It would have been good except it was a half inch longer than the other two, as best I coudl tell. too much work involved to use a used belt.

I still have the one I bought 3 years ago, and some day it will turn up.

The woman at the appliance store said they often modify parts while keeping the part number the same. We all know that. That's the only reason the newer belts are wider.

[danny burstein]

[snip]

Depends on the State.

I can speak about NY, don't know about the others.

Until about 20 yrs ago yes, you needed a prescription to purchase syringes with needles (although in reality you could usually buy them without much trouble [a]).

ALSO, mere possession of them was also a crime.

This was cleaned up, again roughly 20 years ago.

There are limits to how many you can possess without paperwork. Don't recall the number.

(I had to check this out when a family member, who had a dozen half boxes of sealed diabetic syringes, died... and some other folk asked if I could bring them over to save them some money)

[a] This was back when there were plenty of independent pharmacies where they'd actually know you. Nowadays, with more and more big chains and centralized records, plus the DEA looking oever everyone's shoulder, if you're in an area where syringes are still restricted then all bets are off.

[gfretwell]

Any state that was even slightly aware got rid of syringe and needle restrictions in the 80s when AIDS became a thing. It was far better to give junkies needles than to deal with the AIDS and Hep C problems they have from sharing needles. As I said, you can usually talk the pharmacy into giving you one if you ask. I wanted some 2CC syringes without needles and they gave them to me, needles and all. I had them drop the needles in their "sharps" box so I wouldn't have to deal with them. I get 10CC syringes from the compounding pharmacy here, sometimes free, sometimes a few for a buck. They use them to dispense creams they compound. (hormones or topical steroids)

[Ralph Mowery]

I had bought a few at flea markets to use as oilers and such. They could be had with dull needles that screw on. The wife was in the hospital a while back and the nurses used similar syringes to flush out IV tubes that contained just a saline solution. The threw them in the garbage can as they were not bloody and did not have needels. I got several of them and took them home. The threads matched the ones I have with the dull needles.

I remember way back in the 1950's when doctors would actually come to your house and the doctor would just toss the syringes in your garbage can if one was in the room.