repairing things

I feel ready to take on a lot of handyman stuff now, much of which I think will be easier than the dryer.

The fuse has gone on the microwave, the 5000v fuse.

Search on Google and it links to a video that looks easy enough but it links halfway through the video and skips the bit about discharging the capacitor containing said lethal voltages.

Anyway, I have new fuses and it's been unplugged for 3 weeks and they reckon it discharges itself within a week so...

to remove all doubt you can get one of those twin probe capacitor discharge units for about £20, but you could probably get a new microwave for the same price these days!

I replaced a wall socket the other week, shit was easy

Yeah I’m looking to do a bunch of those soon - I apparently need to rewrite some of them (polarity is reversed?) and also I want to put some usb outlets in for device charging.

Lol usually apprentice electricians are let loose on second fixing the sockets because apparently it's too simple a task to fuck up!

Although I often seen houses where the polarity is wrong at the incoming isolator of the supply side. God knows how that works, I'd guess motors in fans and vacum cleaners all run backwards etc...

I was thinking of replacing double switches where only one worked effectively or removing the actual switch part of the excess switch after finding myself clicking the wrong one recently.

If you don't have any kind voltage tester, always make sure you don't forget which are the permanent lives, switch wires, two-ways etc because if you get them mixed up while swapping the switch, sorting it out without test leads can be a bit of a pisser!

its not repairing things, but me and bf built a new kitchen table a few weeks ago which was fun.

I've got to switch out a fluorescent fixture above our kitchen sink and really don't want to blow myself up.

oh, i fixed a broken lightswitch! Have never done anything that was directly connected to the mains so was a bit nervous even of something that simple!

it was just fixing a loose wire

There was a time I'd casually fault find on switches when they were live, like touching every arcing sparking wire to the live until we'd worked out which was which. Lol my snips have been hung up for 9 years and I wouldn't dare do such craziness these days. Mind you I have had hundreds of electrical belts over the years. Which some say is either a sign that you are either a shit electrician or working with too many shit ones!

lol u mad bastard

It's not like there is anything complicated about a 2 or 3 gang switch or whatever, but if you lose track of what is what it can become a confusing jumble of wires, especially if there is an intermediate switch on there as well.

YouTube videos and the like have been a godsend when it comes to repairing stuff, but I find it really frustrating when a thing I really need isn't some skill or online help but some obscure screwdriver or other tool that has one use. Looking at you, stuff like snap ring pliers, or Apple, with your funky one-off T5 torx screwdrivers.

uh, it's pretty easy to just buy the obscure tools -- most of which aren't all that expensive, in general. ... the most frustrating thing for me is when I can't find the fucking manual online. ... though I did learn that magic chef refrigerator/freezers are the same as three other brands of refrigerators.

It's super easy to buy the obscure tools! But then you have an obscure tool that you use once. Like my own snap ring pliers, I'm pretty sure I bought them to repair a gear in our stand mixer. And that's literally all I have ever used it for. Repairing that stand mixer, once, 10 years ago or whenever. Was the repair easy? Yes. Did I save a bunch of money doing it myself? Yes. And that was maybe my realization that so many repair shops are really in the end just convenience stores. They're not necessarily selling skill, they're not selling knowledge, they're selling that one weird screwdriver that you don't have or have the time to research and order. I have an oscillating tower fan I once wanted to disassemble to clean. Something like 15 regular screws ... and one weird screw. Why the one weird screw? To make it hard to do yourself.

I've had a couple of instances lately where there were actually two manuals, the consumer manual that comes with the product, but then a repair manual that repair people have access to. The former was no help, the latter took me forever to dig up, And that was only once I learned it existed.

my most recent repair was unclogging the defrost drain in our side-by-side refrigerator ... no more ice on the bottom of the freezer or water on the kitchen floor

the owner's manual was useless, but sifting through YouTube videos got me going in the right direction

the funniest "repair" or more like rough-as-fuck bodge in this case, I ever witnessed was: when some dodgy fucker I worked with had put an electrical distribution board way too close to a front door to the extent that if the door swung open with any force it might smash into it. The clerk of works was wandering about and if he noticed this the whole board would need moving, which would be a massive pain in the arse and some of the cables might not have been long enough to do it. So he improvised by screwing a plastic coca cola lid into the floor as an improvised doorstop and his pièce de résistance was then colouring it black with a sharpie marker pen!

I once saw the same guy fixing a lighting pattress to a ceiling with decorators caulk, by wedging a sweeping brush on a toolbox on a bed to hold it up till it it dried! He was one of these cowboys that took a perverse pleasure in doing terrible work!

I recently "repaired" a slat on an outdoor table by holding the slat in place with a paint stirring stick that I wood glued under it.

My fave DIY story was when I had to change a lightbulb in my car, which shouldn't be that difficult except that everything is more difficult in cars these days because they all require computers and stuff (which is ironic, because the computers make things easier ... for the people with the right program/disc/whatever; see: special screwdriver). I look up a youtube video and it was a bit trickier than I might have expected but even so, the video was something like 45 minutes long, which seemed a bit high to change a lightbulb. I get what I need from the store and dive in and ... it takes me more like 10 minutes, because it turns out that the only reason the video was 45 minutes was because the dude was filming himself with one hand while he did the lightbulb change with the other. With two hands, it took 10 minutes.

screwing a plastic coca cola lid into the floor as an improvised doorstop and his pièce de résistance was then colouring it black with a sharpie marker pen!

omg this is hilarious!!!!! hahahah

a repair manual that repair people have access to.

yes, this was what I was trying to find online for my fridge/freezer ... and how I learned that so many fridges are the same fridge with different names.

Can't find one for my sewing machine either.
Drag.

one thing I did discover online, which was cool, is there are websites for repair people that are like, diagnostics-for-dummies kinda? ... like, "it is 50% likely the problem is actually this" vs. "it is highly unlikely that when the thing has this problem, you will need to replace this part" ... that's how I figured out what was wrong with my fridge sans manual.

Having gone down the rabbit hole of this sort of thing for cars, I was happy that my assumption that there would be the same for household things was correct.

At some point I need to take a sewing refresher course, or just sew some things again. it has been awhile

join us on ILX Sewing!

Four weeks after I replaced the support roller in the dryer, the drum stopped spinning. Presumably it's the belt. It's something I could fix (especially now that I already know how to take apart the dryer), but then what's going to go next? It's clearly an old dryer. So I said fuck it and ordered a new dryer.

I fixed my dyson (new battery)

microwave still sat behind the sofa, waiting for me to change the fuse. will only take 30 minutes, if that, and will pay for itself, timewise, within 3 cups of coffee / 2 bowls of porridge, but still...

I had (to me) a kind of fascinating microwave fix to do a year or so ago. I'd noticed that the microwave every once in a while would kind of behave as if there were a small piece of metal in it. Basically freak out and force me to turn it off. I could't figure out what was going on, and while a close inspection didn't reveal any answers, it did reveal this little square of relatively flimsy cardboard on the side that I'd never noticed before. It turns out this thing is called the waveguide cover, or magnetron cover, and is actually not cardboard:

It covers the magnetron (which is what generates microwaves) from food splatter and debris. It is not made out of cardboard, even if it looks that way on some models. It's made out of Formica-molten rock and shaped into a sheet.

What had happened, or what I was able to surmise, is that over the years the thing did its job, but in the process got a bit of splatter stuck to it, and that splatter of food, over time, got cooked and cooked over and over again until it essentially carbonized, and *that* is what was causing the sparking. Once I figured that out it was easy enough to take off and clean the waveguide cover.

done the microwave, was easy enough to put a new fuse in without touching anything metal, not even the fuse... (the wire was stiff enough that i could hold it by the insulation and push it over the fuse, then pick the fuse up by the same wire and push the other wire onto it). but haven't plugged it back in to test it yet - i wiped down the cover and am waiting for it to dry before reassembling.

win. after 2 months the microwave makes things hot again.

(i also wiped down the mica window over the magnetron, just in case)

bless you both!

I didn't know that the cover was mica, I always assumed it was cardboard.

We had some guests over in the backyard last night, and after they left, I half-drunkenly loaded the dishwasher, pressed start and ... nothing. Just a blinking red light indicating it wasn't latching. Except I heard it latch, and it's less than a year old and has worked well so far, so no way should things be falling apart this soon. I load and reload all the gross, covid-y dishes and glasses multiple times, but no dice. Still, I notice that if I push on the front of the dishwasher after I press start it *does* seems to work (until I remove the pressure; then it stops again), which implies, yeah, a latching issue. It's pretty late and I just want to lie down, but I also want this full dishwasher clean when I wake up, so I spend several more minutes googling potential solutions. Indeed, the blinking red light means it's not latching, and the only solution is either inspecting and fixing the latch (which involves 20 minutes of disassembly) or replacing the latch (which involves ordering a $50 part and ... 20 minutes of disassembly). Or, I suppose, calling a technician to come out, which even if covered by warranty would mean several days of no dishwasher. Regardless, it's late, so I go upstairs and pass out. (Figuratively speaking.)

I wake up with a start sometime pretty early this morning, like before 6am (it's still dark). I realize the dishwasher still needs attention, and it's annoying me so much that I can't fall back asleep. I go downstairs, make coffee, take an Advil, then get to work googling, reading forums and watching DIY youtube videos, figuring there has to be a simpler solution than taking the whole thing apart and/or paying for a repair. I remove everything in the entire bottom rack, and then the rack itself: doesn't help. Then I start taking everything out of the top rack and ... there was one coffee mug turned around just enough in its place that its handle was protruding out from the back of the rack the *tiniest* bit. Aha! The simple solution. I rotate the mug maybe 10 degrees, reload everything, press start and ... fixed!

Basically, I am a genius. Bosch should pay *me.*

either all dishwashers matter, or none do

i burnt my tongue this morning on microwaved porridge.

Serves you right for repairing the microwave.

the god of inbuilt obsolescence is a vengeful god

Oh god, I've had a frustrating weekend with trying to repair a broken toilet handle and I'm still not done with it. Should be one of the most basic, simple fixes on a toilet, no? Unhook the chain, unscrew the flange, pull out the old one and reverse for the new one. Except whomever renovated our bathroom years ago installed a side mounted handle on a toilet that was less than 3 inches from a chase wall - so no angle to slide the new handle lever in directly.

They make "universal mounts" that are designed to fit any configuration (front-mount, side- and angle-), with the supposed benefit of the bulk of the lever being installed from inside the tank and you only attach the handle on the outside last. Great, except the hole for our side mount handle it so close to the front wall of the tank that none of the three versions I've tried will fit and still turn for flushing.

Also tried an allegedly bendable plastic one that was super cheap, but that snapped as soon as I tried to maneuver it into the side.

So five hours and three trips to Home Depot, still no luck. The guy I talked to there told me that I have "no choice but to replace the whole toilet", but I refuse to believe that because, a) come on, and b) a moron at Home Depot also told me a few years ago that I would have to replace my entire kitchen sick faucet when the sprayer hose broke, but actually it turned out I could buy a $7 sleeve online and fix it in 15 minutes myself.

So going to try the local Ace today to see if they have any suggestions. Some online research indicates there are metal handle levers that are a little bendable so that I can get it angled in and straightened out. I certainly hope so, because having to take off the entire toilet to replace a handle seems absolutely batshit to me.

And Josh, I feel you. Our microwave decided to give out in the middle of all of this yesterday. Googling tells me it's likely donezo for good, so it appears microwave shopping in the pandemic is also in my near future.

Keep the toilet, demolish the wall. Problem sorted.

No, more seriously, could you take the tank off, replace the handle on the tank while it is detached, and then reattach the tank?

Not quite visualizing your problem so I don't know if that's feasible.

I'd have to see if the tank is detachable. Not near it at the moment, but I want to say that it's all one piece - the bowl and tank are all molded together. I think going down that route would mean taking off the lugs and lifting the whole toilet off, which I'm not exactly stoked to do - I foresee a mess and a few cracked floor tiles in my future.

I've done it a few times and it wasn't THAT bad.

But - hate to say so in this thread - at some point it may be cheaper and more efficient to just have a plumber do it.

I've certainly done plenty of five-hour sagas with multiple trips to HD... And then reflected that if I valued my time at even minimum wage, I would have come out way ahead by calling a professional and handing them $200.

You probably aren't wrong, I'm going to give Ace one more go (since I have a few other things I can grab while I'm there) and see if that helps, then maybe call in the pros. I certainly thought this would be a quick run for the part and a 10 minute fix, not the saga it became. Had I known Friday where this would go I might have just called someone from the start.

Certainly removing the tank would be easier than removing the entire toilet, which can be a PIA, because all/most of them (iirc?) have a sort of wax seal/ring at the base you'd have to replace as well. But it's definitely doable.