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No pics but my new house has suffered a bodgy central heating install in the past which left it with loads of bad and creaky and moving floorboards, and inevitably being 1950s the boards are a random nonstandard size and it's impossible to find a perfect match for replacement boards short of expensive salvage, so I'm going through it and stepping on every square inch of the floor looking for movement and squeaks then going through it and replacing screws and adding more and occasionally lifting a board and literally gluing all the broken bits back together with wood glue and clamping it together to make a single good board again, time consuming but immensely satisfying.
Yesterday - fancy thermostatic kettle was getting picky about how it sat on its base and wouldn't turn on unless it was just right. Took the base apart, found that one of the sprung connectors had cracked and bent a bit out of shape. Soldered a bit of reinforcement behind it and kettle is now back to behaving itself.
Another one of the connectors broke yesterday - fixed again using a bit of copper wire to join the two halves.
Tales of washing machine doom woke me from my gentle slumber this morning.
"It won't spin, everything is soaking and not cleaned. Shall I order a new one?"
To be fair, we don't tend to persevere once the big stuff starts going wrong and my initial thoughts were motor, (brushless so not just a case of carbon replacement) or bearing.
I said no, let me take a look first. Found it still full of water, so took to carefully draining through the pump, in which I also found 3 hair bobbles.
After a quick bobblectomy it's sloshing away merrily. Bonus.
If the Hoover design team are reading this, an error code or 2 might have been helpful.
My rear wheel has sounded scrapy for ages now, the disc guard thngy had come loose again and i knew the pad/s were way down so i had a look and one pad was worn out so bad it left scrapes on the disc. Thats becos the piston had seized up. Id ordered new pads but now just twisted the disc shield off and ordered a new caliper.
The other side pad was good {70%} so today the caliper arrived.
Id got a caliper rewind tool now but the piston was too far out for it to work on the old caliper so that was a waste of money anyway.
Brake pipes unscrewed ok once i figured out how it was put together. Had a minor heart attack when the rigid pipe thread was the wrong size for the new caliper, but that was cos it was upside down. Tried a few times to get the pipe screwed in without cross threading but it worked in the end, everything fitted back, quick bleed and its good now
Went to thailand last month with a big lightweight suitcase which somehow wrecked a wheel. Unscrewing the unit from inside nowhere had a replacement so i saw a wheel the right size in tesco ,and eventually found a mate with a drill to remove the old one and a shop with washers and bolts so was able to rig it to get home, although it would roll a bit sideways. Had a look when i got back and the internal framework was broken, i guess i was lucky it lasted so long
The middle part of a cellotape snail dispenser
The last thing of any significance, ie more than a dab of glue, is the grip on my bow. The original one cracked down the lamination, I fixed it but it cracked elsewhere, turned out the two screw holes were mis-aligned causing it to be over-stressed. I got a replacement, but I’ve been wondering if I could customise it to better fit my hand, because my arthritis in my thumb joints can make it quite uncomfortable after a while - the top of the joint can rub raw, which is painful.
So, I bought a little rechargeable rotary tool, and used the cylindrical grindstone to reshape the screw holes, then scored the top and rebuild it with black Miliput, adding a little bump lower down the handle, then wearing a nitrile glove pressed the grip against my hand in the position it rests against my hand. It’s important to point out that you don’t actually grip an Olympic recurve bow, it sits in the ‘V’ of your thumb and forefinger as you hold it out, with a chord or strap around the back of the hand, it’s drawing the bow that holds it in place, once you release, if there wasn’t a restraining strap it would fall on the floor.
After shaping a bit of dense foam and sticking it where the top of my thumb fits, it now happily sits in place with no effort.
Really pleased with how it’s turned out.
The new grip alongside the customised one on the bow.
In place, sitting in exactly the right position, with no effort, the strap is the woven paracord hanging down below, it would normally loop up over the back of my hand.
I’ll probably wear the elastic wrist support now, which I couldn’t before, it gets a bit uncomfortable after shooting for two hours or so without it.
My last end last night, using the new grip, and a bit of coaching to correct som bad habits I’d got into…
Original Dyson dc07 died. Was gifted to me around 10 years ago when it was around 10 years old.
Not only has it been a great 'hoover', it actually has some sentimental value.
I've replaced the filters and belt a couple of times and brush bar a couple of years ago, but this time it smelled funny and just straight up died.
£36 for new motor, power cord, filters and belt. Took an hour, some swearing, a nasty cut and a bruised thumb but it now performs like new!
The teenage boy's school shoes started to lose their sole last week. Quickly acquired a tube of shoe goo and sorted them yesterday. It's the first time I've used it and it seems to stick like the proverbial to a blanket. Only has to last 4 more weeks to the end of term so we should be good for that.
Garage door is the latest one. It's an electric one and while it's been very good it decided to shit itself the other day - all the brackets that hold the door to the powered spindle breaking resulting in the door being inoperable.
Weirdly spares were readily available on amazon of all places, so bits arrived next day and after some tinkering it's back in use and better than before as our installer was a bit of a muppet and had bodged a couple of bits / used the wrong screws. Trickiest bit was resetting the top stop for the door.
A Bosch hand mixer. The button had decided to stick shut, which required a complete disassembly to free off. Only broke one bit as it was physically impossible to separate it without breaking the bit I wanted to fix.
I think I've fixed the oil temperature gauge in one of my cars as well. The oil pressure one is still bollocksed, sadly.
So my active sub started making a weird farting noise and had no volume.
The cause of the issue soon became apparent!! 
to be fair I've owned it 25yrs and the foam suspension has simply perished by the looks of it.
A quick look on the internets and and my reaction to the prices of new 10" active subs was "ooow blooody much!?!?!"
It then dawned on me I could just swap out the driver for a new one, but that brings its own headache, as the amp and speaker are made in-house by Paradigm in Canada, a lifetime ago with unknown specs other than 100w, 10", so pairing a new speaker to the box and amp might require a bit of guess work. I supose I could have contacted tem to see if they had any detailed tech-specs buried in a filling cabinate somewhere, but, meh..
Enter the £10 repair kit! includes two new surrounds, some special glue and a brush. Well actually £15 as I had to buy an additional tube of the correct glue.. the 15ml supplied was a bit of a stretch for a 10" speaker.
Watched a few youtube vids to get the jist of what's involved and variations of technique people use. Who would have thought there were so many hi-fi nerds doing speaker refurb videos? 🤣
Slight hiccup in that the gasket is some sort of paper/card laminate, and I mangled it slightly removing it, so a bit of generic hobby glue gently massaged into it, & clamped down took care of that.
All the caps on the amp look good so I've not touched that.
Good as new for £15... 😎
Out of curiosity exactly how long does it take before you trust diy plumbing work you've just done? I'm thinking probably a decade is reasonable?
Not sure it counts as a fix but new house had a huge load of redundant plumbing and pipework in it, it had an attic water tank which is gone, but the mains pipes still went all the way up to the attic and back down, complete with a load of pipe size changes and random connectors and loose fittings so that it made maximum noise every time anything in the house draws water. And also about half of an old central heating system still under the floor. (you can tell you're dealing with a lazy half-arsed heating installer, when they didn't bother to steal all the old pipes) Had to take a bunch of floor up anyway to fix wobbly floorboards (part of the same problem, lots of ineptly chopped rafters and poor pipe locations so that the boards were hanging) so removing a load of that crap made sense as it was getting in the way and preventing me stabilising the floor. Not to mention extracting like 30 kilos of copper so far for the scrap man at a cost of nothing but lost skin and time.
But now I have Plumbing Fear.
if its still dry in 24 hours I'm happy. I have replumbed 3 houses / flats
Ancient car footpump that was my dads, decent quality with an accurate gauge.
The hose punctured at a crimped joint, worn through by the metal collar, new hose was more expensive than an ECP foot pump.
Hacksaw all around the collar reveals a barbed fitting into the hose, chop the hose above the hole, push onto the barbed fitting, jubilee clip, job done. I'll put a spring clip on when I get one
Back in Feb the lights on our cooker hood failed. I was at the start of long covid so couldn't think straight enough or summon the energy to look at it. I've finally got round to it - it's a chimney hood supported from the ceiling so is a bit of a faff to get it down and needs 2 people, but once down I diagnosed a failed transformer and fortunately had a spare in the garage. Stuck that one in and light is restored, but more importantly it feels like I've got rid of a persistent reminder of my condition.
Our Vitamix, bought from Costco over a decade ago. The blade pack in the 'jug', for want of a better term, had become graunchy and was on its way to seizing. Vitamix will not sell anything other than a complete new blade pack at 200€ or so.
No.
Worked out how to remove it from the jug, then pressed the bearings out to find that the seal on the top one had started to disintegrate. Cleaned them up, relubed, then reassembled them with the old bottom bearing at the top as its seal was still perfect. Works brilliantly again, and now I know the bearing specs I'll grab a couple of food-safe SKF ones at a fiver each to guarantee I'll never need to touch them again.
A bit of oak framing to the rear bay done a couple of weeks ago. Found a good local sawmill that I hadn't known about before for some replacement oak, so that will now be my new source for external hardwoods and maybe some internal joinery items too.
My car has a slightly suspicious lack of shut line gap on the bonnet to offside front wing...and some tell-tale scuffs that my son absolutely denied had nothing to do with him driving it and a gatepost. So that's next to sort. Access the inside of the wing, ease it back out a bit then t-cut the scuffs out. Or maybe he should do it?
Or maybe he should do it?
Sounds like a perfect opportunity to spend some "quality" time with your son. He gets to do the work and you drink coffee and ensure the quality of what he's doing
Haha, yes indeed!. This weekend will be ideal for that! I am after identical shut lines between the bonnet and both front wings. Hopefully this will be the start of him doing a bit more car maintenance and not just driving it. Tbf though he does have interest in certain diy jobs and helped a lot with the oak framing which was useful as the replacement oak posts were heavy and I needed the extra muscle. He also likes woodwork, so all the planing, chamfering and finishing was done by him. I just now need to transfer some of that woodwork enthusiasm to attention on the car.
Fixed the charging issue on my drone controller by reworking the solder on a few chips. Had to buy a £30 reworking station ( which is surprisingly good) and I’ve never done any reworking so it was complete trial and error. It has however saved me having to spend £150 on a replacement unit. Test flight completed and all functioning as expected.
Motor replaced in our shark vacuum cleaner. Surely having only one screw 'spare' constitutes an almost perfect repair.
Hopefully using an old inner tube tied round the main body and dust collector in lieu of the long gone plastic latch reinstates my membership to the 'bodge boys' though. :-).
Grips on my MTBs!
Flappy door on the fridge that allows ice to be dispensed has been broken for a few months. Took the door apart today and found there’s an almost Victorian mechanism in there. It connects the flap to a large solenoid via some shoddy plastic axle that had simply sheared in two.
Drilled both parts of the axle, cut an old spoke down to size to act as some internal reinforcement, then glued it all together with some epoxy. All working fine. Just as well as you can’t get parts any more for the fridge.
Repaired the hose attachment on my SKS rennkompressor. Threads had gone so drilled out, tapped and fitted a m10x1.5 to 6mm barb. Also finally fitted the larger dial and lower pressure gauge I bought ages ago.
The clasp that holds the battery compartment shut on my head torch has been getting weaker and weaker. Last night one half off it snapped off completely.
Youtube has been presenting me with vids about using a soldering iron and cable ties for plastic-welding, so thought I'd give it a go. It's not the prettiest, but feels fairly strong. I was a bit rushed before work when doing it this morning, I might try and tidy it up a little over the weekend.
Replaced a heating element in a vented tumble dryer.
A very old toy donated to us, all the plastic holding the front axle in place had broken and disappeared. I used a small piece of Ikea chopping board with a groove to hold the axle and a self tapper to hold it in.
Ikea chopping boards are a resource that no workshop should be without, easy to saw, slightly flexible and also takes a screw. I’ve used them for kitchen drawer sliders, door catches and stopping adjustable tow bar rattles - amongst others!
Good tip re: Ikea boards.
Just fixed a broken volume dial which my daughter snapped of a set Xbox wireless headphones.
Big thanks to @stumpy01 for the 3D printed parts 🤗
Photos are in the reverse order but I'm posting with my phone.
Fixed the Shark vacuum cleaner using just the tools on my Swiss Army Knife Tinker Deluxe. It now sucks just like it did when new and the wife is happy after questioning why I had bought the SAK 🙂
@citizenlee - nice one. Pleased that the repair seems to have worked!
I set the preload on the collapsible spacer on the pinion bearing of my XC90 rear differential after hours at work today.
The official Volvo/Ford/Landrover tools are very expensive but I made them myself from a chopped down socket and a quad bike wheel adaptors.
The pinion preload is very difficult to set correctly and if it you go beyond the value the bearings and crushable spacer should be replaced and the procedure started again. Its why the differentials fail in the first place.
Thankfully I got it spot on and the rest of the differential and Haldex unit can now be reassembled.
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MrsP has a phone holder in her car that has a sprung sliding clamp. Except it stopped being sprung so wasn't much use for holding phones. I prised apart the mechanism and found that the two plastic lugs that fix the end of the springs had broken off, so drilled a couple of small holes and glued in some small lengths of copper wire. Reassembled and it's a functioning phone holder again.
Had to sort out a leaky pipe under the sink recently. It turned into a bigger job than I thought 🤪 ended up replacing a section and re-sealing all the joints. Bit stressful at first, but pretty satisfying once the drip finally stopped.
Chez Sandwich was wired by an "electrician" with a tenuous grasp of the 17th edition regs. Yesterday I thought I would sort out the pendant fitting that had blue and brown cables showing below the rose. What should have been a 5 minute job required a new rose and pendant plus making sure the cables were in the rose terminals not joined with off-cuts of terminal blocks, earth sheathing was added too as it was optional for the technician. Rawplugs in the ceiling ensured the mechanical fixing to it was better than before. Then the pendant wouldn't fit the lampshade, a 50mm holesaw eased that. Just over an hour to put it all right. Just another 10 to check and put right.