OT: Fixing things yourself

[scottq]

I too had a father that was an engineer (internal combustion engines) and a grandfather that started/raised a family through the Depression. Fixing things with whatever he had was the only option for my grandfather, cuz money certainly wasn't one of those things.

Literally, just months before my grandfather passed last year, during my sister's last visit with him, she helped him create a platform to properly aim his TV's remote control right at the IR receiver on the TV. He had a lot of trouble keeping the remote steady and aimed correctly while he hunted and pecked for the right button (had terrible vision due to macular degeneration), and would end up getting channel 6 instead of 36 ...cuz when he pressed the 3, it was aimed at the ceiling. It frustrated the sanity right out him - LOL. So, he was bound and determined to get the remote "mounted properly." He spent 2 weeks going through friends' garbage and recycling to find enough small boxes to recycle the cardboard for this new project - one of his favorite construction materials. With lots of patience, my sister worked with him for a couple hours to cut and tape together this cardboard monstrosity taped on his end-table. LOL

I have one of his old workbenches from his "shop." It's pieced together drawers from kitchen cabinets, old dressers, and a few he made himself with scraps. And because of the variety of drawers, there's no "walls" - just scraps nailed together to fill gaps. I LOVE that bench. And I loved going over to their house, and looking at how creative he was at salvaging things and re purposing them. He was a sweetheart, constantly making little gadgets and do-dads for Grandma. He would paint and stain things... but you knew what was "grandpa's" in the house.

Grandpa saved everything. Every nail (literally would pull nails out of used lumber, and pound the nails "straight" to reuse them), every scrap of wood, every bottle (that could potentially hold some of the aforementioned recycled nails). When it came time for him to go into a retirement home, he was really good about selling and throwing stuff away. He wasn't a hoarder (honest), but out of necessity was conditioned to save everything and make something out of nothing.

My dad was certainly more lax about it. He was fortunate enough to be able to afford to buy tools and parts and had the knowledge to tackle just about anything, very competent in electrical issues as well. He was born almost 20yrs after his older brother and sister... so he had a different upbringing his older siblings. When I was very young, dad fixed everything around the house. By the time I was a teenager, he still fixed just about everything due to my mother's very frugal nature, but started saying "I'm sick of fixing old junk" all the time. He slowly started convincing her to replace things, rather than just keep fixing. My mom still uses an electric drier that was around before me... still works great. All the while I was growing up, we'd get old washing machines from the curb - my dad and a friend would fix them and re-sell them or "upgrade" theirs and donate the old one. One time, all it took was reconnecting a loose motor lead.

While I certainly agree with edgecreek's evaluation of our current situation ("cheap imported products and grab-the-Vaseline prices for repair parts" - LOL), I think a big part of the problem is the massive variation and qty of "toys" and "tools" and gadgets that everybody has nowadays. Even the nerdiest of nerds can't possibly understand it all enough to dive in and "fix" something. Every device requires specialized skills. And certainly, with the foray of digital electronics, things get foggy very quickly even to FPGA programmers. Everything is customized and instead of having to swap out 10 valves/tubes the size of a D-cell battery in your radio or TV, you have to now manage an oscilloscope, diagnostic software, a network analyzer, a solder reflow station, and some power supplies just to diagnose something... amongst THOUSANDS of parts in a few square inches. One has to concede that "it's a whole other animal."

My father-in-law's philosophy is "call someone and pay them to fix it." If it's broken, he doesn't pretend to have the faintest idea of what to do. And he's a surgeon. Get your face smashed in during a car wreck? He's your man. If his WiFi stops working, calls his son or me. But, I do respect the fact that he does often lean towards repair vs. replacement and disposal.

The fast-paced nature of technology developments and changes in the last 3 decades have made it incredibly difficult. But, I do strongly believe in trying to fix something before discarding it. I also think that's just a personality/desire that I have to learn how everything works. Most people don't know the first thing about digital or analog, or how a switch works, or HDMI - they just know that when they plug it in, there's a pretty picture on the screen. By making things "easier" on the consumers, we've engineered a "dumb" society. (Not intended to be a "holier than though" persona).

I enjoy the challenge of fixing/repairing things, but I echo my father's cry: "I'm sick of fixing old junk."

I did attempt to fix my RROD on my first 360. While I see the hesitance, the "penny fix" is a valid approach and I've personally seen it work. The root cause is overheating of the CPU/GPU due to the cheap stock heatsink grease drying up and not transferring efficiently enough, heating up the board enough to create some bad solder joints. The adverse pressures of the "penny fix" were, at times, enough to "reconnect" some of the bad surface mount joints. Re-flowing with a heatgun was really the best method. On my unit, I ended up not keeping a steady hand as I was pushing down to keep the GPU in place during reheating; when the solder all melted the GPU slid on the board - a couple pads got messed up and I was never able to get it to produce video again. The fix did work successfully on other peoples' units though. It is also key to use good heatsink compound and properly clean all the old crap off the GPU and CPU - very tedious. In the end, I bought a new 360. Just glad it was mine and not a friends' unit...

[mattsk8]

Good post ^ . I definitely try to fix it before tossing it. Problem w/ electronics is it all changes so fast that by the time it breaks it's obsolete anyhow.

[manu et deo]

i can into the diy world by marriage; my father-in-law is the same as many around here, he grew up in the world of you fix it because you can't afford another; and he saves everything(if it has a use-even if you cant see it,but will throw away it it doesn't). now when i met daddies little girl that's how she thought a man acts and have slowly morphed into that way of thinking. but now even more so its just a reaction to the throwaway quality of stuff nowadays and the fact some things you want to fix! now i never will pound a nail straight to reuse it but i will try and fix just about anything.

craziest thing was the water dispenser on my fridge broke a plastic tab that activated the switch and the part was like $50, went to lowes bought some special plastic glue and voila(knock on wood) it been two years and going strong.

btw, i have reheated four different xboxes and they all are still running strong(using the solder reflow method)

[Psycoacoustics]

Some people's tool boxes have a lot of tools in them, other peoples tool boxes have a checkbook and a pen!

My tool box has both. I fix what I can, and replace what I can't. Of course like most of the us,,, I always try to fix it first! Like many of you, I'm the product of depression era parents, and a pollack from the south side of Chicago to boot! Needless to say, sometimes I pinch the nickel so hard I make the Indian ride the buffalo!

When my 5 year old Speed Queene washer was dancing across the floor on the spin cycle, I figured a new belt, idler pulley, and spring, would fix it right up! Luckily enough, it did! I really think though, that adding that second spring is what did the trick!

I guess I'm a tweeker too! Mark

[chrisn]

If something breaks I'm going to tear it apart, whether or not it can be fixed. I like to see how things work. I like to improve things, make them faster, more powerfull. I pay for tire mounting/balancing, and alignments, because I don't have the right equipment to do it myself. I used to take apart computers and mess with them, but I'd prefer they just work

[dlneubec]

Our heat pump started making a serious wine and later vibration. I called in the HVAC company. They told me the bearings were bad on the fan motor and the motor needed to be replaced. Total cost, was around $600 including the original service call. Unfortunatley, th fan sits under a plastic cap and then they took off the plastic cap to get at the 4 bolts that holds the fan motor/fan assembly, they found that the steel housing was fractured between the bolt holes and said we needed a new top piece for the heat pump before it was safe to runl. Of course, the estimate was about another $600.

No way I was going pay that, so I ordered a 12"x12"x1/4" piece of aluminum plate, drilled holes in it for the fan motor mount and sandwiched the old steel housing between the motor and the aluminum plate. Took me about 1/2 hour to fix and cost under $30, including shipping cost. Seems to be working just fine.

I don't fix as many things now as I used to and our throw away economy bothers me. I haven't built a computer since Windows NT days, but if I wanted a new one I probably would. Been a DIYer in a number of ways for a lot of years. One thing I never got into was working on my cars, though I have rebuilt small engines when I was a kid.

[rene]

About the only thing I don't do/fix is electrical or plumbing, because they both scare me!

I've been taking apart and building computers since the 386 days! So as someone else said, it's like adult lego for me. I tried to fix an amp or two once before, but with the rising cloud of smoke and a bunch of bad words on my part... I gave that up

Over the years i have scored more free stuff because someone is throwing out.. well anything that is "broken". I got a nice pioneer amp and CD player because one of the buttons didn't work..... that was one of the amps that went to watt heaven

My current project has a extremely steep learning curve, I just can't see to figure out how to fix "stupid"... Once I figure it out i'll make BILLIONS teaching it to others

Rene

[dwigle]

What I find interesting is how different some of us are in terms of fixing/doing/taking initiative. My brother in law lived with a bathroom exhaust fan that sounded like a chainsaw for years. I climbed up and fixed it in about 45 seconds.

He was surprised and asked "how did you know how to do that". Just then it occurred to me how different we were. I didn't know how to fix it! What's to know, I just did it.

I have a neighbor that has absolutely nothing in his garage other than $20K in bicycles hanging on the spotless white walls. No tools, no paint or cleaners or chemicals, spare parts, camping equipment, boat cushions, water skis, snow skis, old beer making kit, 6 sizes of ladders, mower, rake. Nothing. I dying to ask "how do you function"?

[ROTECH]

I'm not very old (30) but I think I have become a jack of too much, and a master of not enough. My interests change like the weather and everything becomes an obsessive path to learning until I am comfortably proficcient- as far as my free time goes. I do have one flaw of tinkering/mechanics in my free time; I hate fixing my own stuff such as cars, quads, sleds..etc.. Because of this, I always buy new. I love new things that work flawless and I love warranties. I have only had one vehicle long enough to ever change tires or windshield wipers, and that is my current Ram 1500. If it werent for the mortgage and school loans I am sure I would have traded that one already too.
As with many of you here, I love woodworking now and I repair everything at my house. I wired my whole garage top to bottom, do all the plumbing and heating. I have been steadily building my "green thumb" and have managed to turn .91 acres of sand and gravel into a better homes and gardens lawn that I am very proud of. I screened about 25-30 yards of soil by hand over 2 years from a large pile of fill that came with my property. That saved a few bucks but I would never want to do it again.

However, in my professional world I have always been paid to fix things or build things, until my current position at work.

I started fixing motorcycles at age 14 for a Honda Kawasaki shop. I moved on to cars at age 16 through an internship while doing the auto tech program at high school. This is where I began to learn to weld. After High School I went to NHCTC through the General Motors sponsored ASEP program. I only stayed in the program a year because I ended up landing a great paying job that had nothing to do with automotive. During all of this I was very avid with car audio. I had an "in" with a guy who owned 4 audio shops and did work for him on the side for about 8 years. This taught me the beginnings of audio which to this day has been my only passion to last throughout all.
That job was an on the road service tech for commercial bakery and restaurant equipment. This job was great, I would travel from NY to Maine on any given day and repair things at any location from Au Bon Pain to Boston College. I learned a tremendous amount at this job because you have no one there to help you. We repaired anything from 120 year old artisan bread ovens to fully automated high speed manufacturing equipment. More often than not we didnt have a manual for anything.
After getting my feet wet doing that for 4 years I moved on to a single facility in the maintenance/engineering department. While there my boss took a liking to my MIG welding ability and offered to buy me a TIG welder so I could perform sanitary stainless welding. After a while I didnt do much for maintenance because they had me very busy saving the company $180/hr by not having to hire in outside welders. If you have ever seen a sanitary stainless pipe weld, you will know it takes time to learn. Throughout the 7 years in that department I got a now defunct welding, wastewater treatment, and boiler license. That department did everything from painting,concrete work, rigging, in addition to keeping a 130k sq/ft manufacturing facility running 24 hours a day.
While doing all of this I received a dual major in psychology and business management which led me to my current position here as Sanitation manager where I still get plenty of opportunity to fix things.

Thats my story and I'm sticking to it.

[feltrider99]

I've been taking apart and fixing things since I can remember. My dad used to get so mad when he would go out to the shed and find something I had just taken apart.

I did a couple years of automotive management in school then switched to computer science. I like computers a lot better but I miss working on cars. I'm looking for a Porsche 914 to restore as a project.

Back in 2006 I built my house (and 6 others in the neighborhood) through a self help program. Housing had gotten so crazy out here that even though I had been out of school for a few years we couldn't really find anything affordable. It was a lot of hard work (took 18 months), but I learned a lot and can honestly say that I can fix about anything now. As a bonus I'm also one of the only ones in my neighborhood who isn't upside down in my mortgage.

I draw the line at anything that involves concrete or jack hammers....my back is messed up enough as it is without doing backbreaking work!

[AR3A]

I fix anything I can

Working on restoring a 1983 BMW 320i, finished the engine build now on to the really poor body work from the previous owner.



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[Wolf]

Well- let's see...

For things I've owned, my dad and I in tendem replaced virtually everything in the cooling system in my old '87 Cavalier- which was my first car that I won at Afterprom my senior year of HS. Not much, but it lasted me 2 years. We also replaced the brake pads once, the fuel injector, filter, and distributorless ignition module. The one seat-spring broke, and we rewound that. rear-window seal popped out, and we adhesived in back into place. Lots of stuff went wrong on this car, but the grand total came to about 1200 clams doing it ourselves, which 1000 was the appraised value when I got it, and I sold it for 200 bucks when it kept blowing ECM fuses. Then of course the rear deck speakers had a buzz- and replaced those with Rat Shack $50 3-ways- hence the snowballing addiction I have. Turns out a nail (not a small one!) was on the cone of one of them, but didn't know til I took it apart.

In the Tempo, we mainly did some exhaust work, replaced the temperature module a couple times, along with a tuneup or two.

I just put new pads on the Magnum this year myself due to the warranty expiring, and unsatisfactory results from the shop the couple times before. I cannot get underneath the thing to do an oil change, so I usually take it in or I'd do that myself too.

My dad rewired and replumbed his entire house when they got it, as well as adding on to it a total of 3 times, and adding a detached garage. He's very handy with mechanical stuff, and has helped me in the process of our bathroom remodel at my own place. He likes helping, and I learn how to. He blew a set of speakers they had for a long time on 'Drag City', and I watched him replace them internally- probably also added to the addiction.

The electrical stuff is more my thing, minus the wall wiring. I took apart a 100CD changer my uncle asked me to try and fix, so I retracked the carriage, and he let me keep it. It would have been thrown out. I tried fixing an old pair of RS biradial horns that blew using new diaphragms I removed from other RS tweeters, and while they worked, the output was not as strong, and they've been retired- I figured it was worth a shot!

And then there is the whole PC thing- I've been tormented by trouble since the old processor died in this former Compaq tower I have about 4 years ago now. Just when I think I have it fixed, something else goes wrong. I'm not certain why it's running a bit slow currently on this brand new install, but I hope to figure it out at some point.

I tinker because I'm cheap or don't want to spring to replace when I can fix it myself. It can be more headache that way, but less money spent in the end.

Later,
Wolf

[bkeane1259]

I'm not very old (30) but I think I have become a jack of too much, and a master of not enough. My interests change like the weather and everything becomes an obsessive path to learning until I am comfortably proficcient- as far as my free time goes.

Holy crap....are you my brother from another mother or something? Is it an Irish thing? The only difference between us is that I am old and don't have size 15 kicks.

[bolland83]

Just last week I took apart the microwave because it stopped heating things up, turns out a magnetron for a $400 microwave is almost $200. Had this particular model not gotten such rotten reviews from people having the same problem I did, I might have replaced the part. But being that it's only a year old, and already had a major problem, I opted to just buy a new one from a different manufacturer. I'm happy to report that the new microwave is much quieter, and based on the online reviews, more reliable. My only problem now is figuring out what to do with the old one... maybe recycle it at the scrap yard?

I also learned that installing an over the range microwave is not a one man operation, but it's pretty easy if you have help. I don't even wanna know what it would have cost to get some one else to install it.

[johnnyrichards]

Holy crap....are you my brother from another mother or something? Is it an Irish thing? The only difference between us is that I am old and don't have size 15 kicks.

I think it might be an Irish thing. For example, I am still exploring this whole drinking thing

[johnnyrichards]

I'll be honest here, I spend a good chunk of my professional life fixing stuff that is broken due to poor industrial design (the vast majority of automation equipment is absolute junk, junk, junk, junk - but it still works better than people) or apathy on the part of the operators.

When I get home, the last thing on my mind is fixing something around the house. I will do so if the professional exceeds my means or if I am reasonably sure I can accomplish the task with a minimum of unexpected expense/time expenditure, but there is no deeper meaning than that.

However - I will take something apart before tossing it. Except in the last twenty years I have broken less than 1/2 dozen electrical devices not counting flashlights and cheap childrens toys. 15 year old Sony 5.1 receiver in the bedroom still going strong, older PC stuff still going strong - the newest PC I am using is coming on six years old and is still rocking for what I use it for. I have no idea how people have so many problems with PC's. I suspect lack of case maintenance, which will kill any computer. Dust don't care what OS you are running

[johnnyrichards]

By the way Paul, you working on a thesis?

[LouC]

For sure life changes when you get older, and/or less physically capable. I'll still tackle simple stuff (toilets, faucets, minor home repairs) most I buy. I found some good craftsmen who charge a fair price. Also bartered speakers for some roof repairs. Preventive maintenance is usually cheaper than repairs.

To me, the biggest problem: Once you learn how to do it right (after 5 trips to the hardware store) you probably won't have to do it again!

[PWR RYD]

Paul,

In addition to designing great sounding speakers you hands down start some of the most interesting OT threads!

[mattk]

We have granite countertops in the kitchen with an undermount sink. The contractors that put all this in didn't use anywhere near enough clips to support the sink, so after a couple of years it came loose. The base cabinet for the sink has a center stile, so I had to wriggle in, lay on my back and drill holes in the granite to epoxy in the bolts that the clips attach to. Good thing I'm only in my 50s, because my body wasn't really happy for the next few days after that.

There are projects/repairs that I could do myself, but my wife insists get done professionally, e.g., brake repairs. I don't know if it is because she doesn't trust me to do it right, or if she just doesn't trust me period.