What have you fixed lately?

[rogerdraig]

replaced screen and digitizer on friends Iphone 4s

[rhyds]

Its been a productive weekend of minor vehicle repairs this week.

First off was my sister's Octavia down in Cardiff. A while back the car needed a jump start to get it going, and considering the battery was still the original (and 10 years old) we decided to stuff a new one in. Luckily GSF have a discount most weekends an I got the battery and wipers for both my sister's and brother in law's cars (all branded) at a very good price.

I also grabbed a pair of anti roll bar droplinks for my focus. I'd found one was loose and rattling, and its as easy to do both as it is to do one, so I went about it and was done within a couple of hours and peace and quiet was restored. I then spent the afternoon polishing the old girl up

[Osem]

Our Flymo lawn mower - well partly... The belt started to shred itself this afternoon so I stripped it down to see what would be involved in fixing it. It looks straightforward so I've ordered a new belt and hope to be able to cut the grass again next weekend.

[Mike Flex]

Originally Posted by Kymmy

after blowing a seal

What you do in your private life is no concern of ours.

[Osem]

Very happy with myself this morning.

Went to empty the dishwasher and found the power switch had broken from its internal mounting and fallen back inside the top of the door assembly. At first glance it looked like I'd have to dismantle the entire door but then I discovered the control panel at the top can be accessed by removing about 8 screws. After doing this the control panel fell away from the door and I could see the 2 plastic lugs securing the switch in place had broken. It's been a bit loose for a while so I knew something was up and guess after he first one broke, the second was bound to follow. Luckily the breaks were clean and the plastic used suitable to glue with my industrial strength superglue so I did just that. Whilst having a peak inside I could also see that the plastic opening mechanism had broken on one side where it pivots so I set about a quick fix using a hot nail to melt a whole in the plastic and secure it with a cable tie to allow the required movement but keep it in place. Screwed it all back together again and she's now purring away nicely. We'll need to treat the on/off switch with care but we don't leave the machine powered up unless it's in use so we may just leave it in the on position from now on and continue to use the machine using just the mains plug to switch the power on/off.

This was one of those rare jobs which looked at first as if it was going to be a real PITA but turned out to be much more straightforward than I could have wished.

[alanbjames]

A blocked head on my Epson Printer!

[heero_yuy]

Originally Posted by alanbjames

A blocked head on my Epson Printer!

Well done. I use this utility:

http://www.ssclg.com/epsone.shtml

It allows clean cycles of varying severity separately on black and colour carts plus many other useful tools. It seems to have only been developed \ tested up to XP but worth a look.

Here's the latest version with w10 support:

http://ssc-service-utility.en.lo4d.com/

Freeware.

[raging bull]

Osem: The style of plastic switch you described is used commonly in industry, I had a similar switch on my Bosch grinder which I ended up replacing with one from Maplins.

[Osem]

Originally Posted by raging bull

Osem: The style of plastic switch you described is used commonly in industry, I had a similar switch on my Bosch grinder which I ended up replacing with one from Maplins.

If I'd have thought about it Id have taken a picture to post here. :slaphead:

The assembly is very similar to that shown here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSO3nXetiOM

49 seconds in you can just see where the switch body is located by screws down into 2 quite flimsy plastic lugs formed as part of the plastic control panel cover. Anyway another nice simple fix which has saved me a few quid.

[raging bull]

Looks like a unique replacement from dishwasher part stockist!

[mart44]

Mended the steering wheel ring accelerator on our car (disabled persons hand control). As soon as the hand controls were switched on. The engine revs went up to 3000. Turned out to be the coupling from the ring to the potentiometer was loose and out of position.

[Taf]

Window catch spring failed, found a similar one in my box of bits.

Garden cupboard needed a couple of screws.

[Osem]

Ahh... You can have enough boxes of bits and pieces mate!

Anyway I've just taken apart the wife's Rio ultrasonic facial cleanser which started playing up. It'd charge up then run down within a few seconds or stop/start intermittently. I wondered if the battery pack might be at fault and sure enough it appears to be. There are 3 nimh AAA cells (600mah?) shrink wrapped up to form a 3.6v pack with black and red wires leading to soldered joints on the circuit board. There's some leakage apparent so one or other of the cells has failed. Not being too hot with a soldering iron I thought I might just cut the wires near the defective battery pack and then join a new battery pack to the existing wires. I've seen battery packs like these on Ebay for a few quid but is there anything I need to know when choosing the replacement or will any similar looking 3 AAA cell/3.6v pack do the job?

Oh, and is there an easy way to see whether the item is still otherwise OK before I go about ordering another battery pack? I have some 3.6v li-ion rechargeable AA batteries so could I test the unit very briefly using one of these and just clamping the red/black wires on the relevant terminals? No point wasting time/money if the product is broken now.

Cheers all.

[Taf]

Don't swap between types of batteries as often their rechargers operate differently, and you don't want to overheat a Li Ion battery!

You can buy cells with solder tags which makes them a lot easier to join together, just remember to join them together as per the original.

[raging bull]

Just to echo what Taf said, just solder onto the tags not the battery.