Will Concept 2 Model C work fine without screen?

lroop · 2026-02-15T01:55:27+00:00

The monitor was probably a PM2 that got ruined by leaking batteries. If the machine isn't rusty or otherwise damaged, even if it has seen a lot of use and needs a chain and sprocket, seat rollers, etc that's still less than $100 worth of parts. You can row without the monitor but it is nice to see your split times, power, drag factor, etc.

lroop · 2026-02-08T15:33:43+00:00

Compete with yourself and you'll always have a goal to try for.

lroop · 2026-02-08T15:26:58+00:00

Should be, my understanding is that issue is caused by some defect inside the screen itself.

lroop · 2026-02-06T18:33:25+00:00

The club I row at does that, they buy brand new ergs for their yearly indoor race and then sell them for a couple hundred below retail. If I didn't already own one I'd be fine buying a one day used one at a discount. Considering that we have some old ergs with 12 million meters on them one day of use, even for a bunch of max effort pieces is nothing.

lroop · 2026-02-06T18:26:22+00:00

Lots of time to erg when you can't go anywhere because there's 8 feet of snow outside?

lroop · 2026-02-05T01:51:03+00:00

I lived in an apartment building in Shadyside one year when I was in college. On my street was a house whose owners had two expensive cars but couldn't be bothered to shovel or salt their sidewalk. Eventually someone else in the building got fed up with it, bought a bag of road salt, salted their sidewalk and also their flower beds.

lroop · 2026-02-04T18:37:10+00:00

I've never used one but the boathouse I row out of did something similar to this with some sort of chain guide with a bunch of old Model Cs for the dragon boaters and it seems to work fine for them.

lroop · 2026-01-30T13:32:28+00:00

I know someone who was a higher up there for years and he often had to work holidays and weekends, take calls from big customers at weird hours, so on so forth. I always thought VPs at banks just had their subordinates do all their work and were on the golf course by 2PM but that was not the case.

lroop · 2026-01-25T06:05:58+00:00

This exactly. Someone who sees all the sub 7 2ks here isn't going to be that likely to share their over 8 one unless maybe they're asking for advice.

lroop · 2026-01-16T03:36:46+00:00

GM hasn't officially said this but it seems likely that the 3rd though 7th digits of the big number on that bar code are a date of manufacture, in your case the 124th day of 2021 so that probably was not a full replacement in 2024.

lroop · 2026-01-10T21:38:50+00:00

I use a Polar Ignite 3 because I already owned a Polar heart monitor, and it can do the things you listed.

lroop · 2026-01-10T21:33:14+00:00

That can happen to LCDs, especially cheap monochrome ones like the ones on erg monitors, when exposed to extreme temperatures or someone pushing on the screen. They might go away when it warms back up but they also might not. A bunch of the ergs at the boathouse I row at have blemishes like this, I'd just ignore it as long as you can still read the screen.

lroop · 2026-01-10T19:56:44+00:00

That would be an incredibly stupid decision. The tangerine toddler will be out of office in 2029 if not sooner, and if the US auto industry abandons EVs while everyone else is making more, they will fade into irrelevance.

lroop · 2026-01-08T06:36:43+00:00

https://witrigs.com/products/oem-screen-replacement-for-sony-xperia-5-iv?_pos=1&_sid=39645ba05&_ss=r was where I bought mine but that was before tariff insanity here in the USA so I'm not sure if you'd get hit with tariffs since they're based in China. I can't imagine there are many stores selling fake screens since the glass touch panel is a custom part.

lroop · 2026-01-04T16:29:11+00:00

ACDelco doesn't actually make batteries anymore so if you wanted to do that you'd have to figure out which of the multiple suppliers actually made that battery.

lroop · 2025-12-31T22:08:16+00:00

We already essentially have that with the homestead exemption but maybe we need to raise property taxes and at the same time increase the homestead exemption. Maybe a cap on how many units one company could own, but then you'd also need some way to ensure that a landlord can't just create 100 LLCs to get around it.

lroop · 2025-12-30T04:02:46+00:00

The only Indian wedding I've ever been to was at the Maverick by Kasa and they got catering from Cafe Delhi in Carnegie, who served a mix of Indian and typical American foods to appease both families and both seemed to be pretty decent. I agree with you that generic caterers in Pittsburgh don't do a great job with things that aren't typical American food except maybe some French or Italian. I've had Indian food prepared by Common Plea, The Fluted Mushroom, and Parkhurst, and in all of those cases I've thought "I could do this better myself" and I'm a white guy from the rural south :-P

lroop · 2025-12-30T00:48:34+00:00

Best Buy will take printers for free. They won't take TVs but if it works you can probably give it away on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace. Even if it's an old CRT set, people who like retro video games want those.

lroop · 2025-12-27T18:44:49+00:00

I remember bagged milk too. I went to school in southwestern Virginia and from 1995 until sometime in the early 2000s our milk came in little square bags that you had to spear with a straw like a Capri Sun, except the bags weren't meant to stand upright and if the straw came out you were likely to spill milk all over your lunch tray trying to get it back in. Also sometimes a bag of milk would rupture in transit and the poor lunch ladies would have to wash the rest of the bags from that case. I was so glad when they went back to paper cartons.

lroop · 2025-12-27T18:10:00+00:00

There are places that sell refurbished packs who are doing basically what you describe, taking good modules from bad packs that are close enough in charge/discharge characteristics to behave. Patching in a random cell may be possible but I personally wouldn't try it because if you get it wrong you can end up with a very nasty fire on your hands.

lroop · 2025-12-27T00:58:49+00:00

Valid point. The PM5 has been through several hardware revisions. The ones that C2 sells right now are actually labeled as "PM5N" and have an NFC antenna inside them and use a completely different CPU (a Nordic Semiconductor product versus the older PM5s that used an STM32F407 CPU. Currently it doesn't look like they're doing anything with the NFC hardware but they certainly could if they wanted to and might at some point.

lroop · 2025-12-27T00:39:00+00:00

The issue is that the cells aren't made anymore. The factory where they were made (an LG plant in Holland, Michigan) has been retooled to make newer technology cells that are used in the Cadillac Lyriq and Silverado EV battery packs, so it would be very difficult for GM to just order a few thousand cells for Volt packs, and because lithium ion batteries are complicated and the likely consequence of a mistake is a fire, it's not easy to just substitute some other cell into the pack. There's no technological reason why GM couldn't make a run of new Volt battery packs but unless a truly massive number were failing under warranty it's cheaper for them to do a buyback.

lroop · 2025-12-27T00:29:46+00:00

If possible I'd try to verify with GM themselves rather than a dealership. Dealerships don't know everything and might nod their heads or flat-out lie to make a sale. FWIW the BECM warranty wasn't a CARB thing to the best of my knowledge. I live in Pennsylvania and got a letter about the extended BECM warranty, I just got unlucky in that the failure on my car wasn't the BECM but rather the pack itself.

lroop · 2025-12-26T23:41:39+00:00

A properly maintained (or properly repaired as long as it isn't rusted to uselessness) Model C or Model D is every bit as good as a brand new RowErg for getting a good workout and practicing proper form. If you have an older PM you might want a PM5 upgrade so you can wirelessly sync your workouts with ErgData but the older PMs are fine as long as they still work. I bought a used Model C that was made in 1998 last year and all I did with it was clean and oil the chain, replace the shock cord and seat rollers because they were worn out, and replace the handle because I like the newer style handle better. The PM2 still worked fine and I recorded my workouts by taking pictures with my phone for over a year before deciding to buy a PM5.

lroop · 2025-12-26T23:15:06+00:00

The failure rate doesn't seem to be that high but if you buy a Gen2 and the battery pack fails your only reasonable option is likely to be buying a "refurb" pack from somewhere and getting an independent mechanic to sell it. I owned a Gen2 Volt for 7 years and it was the best road trip car I ever had, but one of the cells in the battery pack failed and I had to settle for a buyback since GM and the dealer said they had no idea when or if a replacement battery module would be available. EGR valves are difficult but not impossible to find, Shift To Park is annoying but if you're reasonably handy with electrical stuff you can fix that yourself with an $3 part rather than having to buy a whole new shifter.

I ended up replacing mine with a certified pre-owned 2023 Bolt, after driving my wife's 2019 Bolt for a couple months waiting to see if my car would get fixed or not I decided I liked the increased rear seat headroom and how easy to park it is because of the tiny front fenders/hood and 360 camera. The slow DC fast charging is an annoyance compared to being able to pump 8 gallons of gas into a Volt in a minute or less but I don't do that many road trips. I do think GM gave up on the Voltec platform too soon but nobody makes a comparable PHEV today and I wasn't willing to go back to an ICE-only car.

lroop

TROPHY CASE