randomdreams

Every time it gets really windy (meaning once a week or so) the flapper on the oven hood vent starts clanging, as gusts of wind suck it open briefly and then it falls closed again.
Tonight while doing some other stuff I decided to fix it.
The problem with vent lines like this is that they're supposed to be airtight, so all the pieces fit together with positive overlap, meaning you can't just slide a piece out. It's held on both sides. So I had to drop the microwave from the cabinet it's screwed into, to get the space to get the flapper loose. Unfortunately, the hole in the cabinet the vent goes through interferes with the microwave being rotated down by the bracket against the wall, which I'd forgotten.
The process should go: lower microwave by about 2cm.
Pull upper vent hardware upwards, loosen the screw on the flapper, extract the flapper bracket.
It was a lot more difficult than that.
I wrapped some tape around the flapper itself, to dampen it, and

threemeninaboat found some adhesive foam and put a bit of that on, and I went to put everything back, and twisted and bent the side part of the vent system outwards so I could see in and make sure the flapper worked correctly.
It closed all right (my concern, as I'd bent the bracket it's in, during extraction) but I noticed it only opened halfway. Somehow, it hits against the inside of the upper vent section, which is an adapter that goes from a 2" x 6" rectangular opening to the 5" round vent line that goes up and out the side of the house.
Well, I can turn the flapper around so it swings the other way.
Except the bracket that holds it is a one-way bracket: it only bolts to the top of the microwave in one direction, because it has slide tabs to hold it down, on one end, and just a sheet of metal on the other end with a slotted hole to screw it down.
This is why I have calipers and a milling machine.
So now both ends have tabs and slotted holes, and the bracket is in reversed and I've verified that it fully opens (which makes the fan quieter) and closes.

This weekend involved an awful lot of house maintenance.