repairing things

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.

I learned a lot about that wax seal when my bf fixed his toilet with his brother's help, and his brother said you could add a new seal without removing the old one, which worked great until a few weeks/months later when the toilet clogged because too much wax seal had squeezed out and blocked it.

i bought a accordion on ebay and it arrived today with the bass keys all in the wrong shape so i screwed open the panel and it was a bit like a typewriter (i have a knack for repairing typewriters, they make sense to me) and i messed around until it all seemed to be in order and screwed it back together and now it seems to be working fine! didn't even consult youtube!

sidenote i'm learning the accordion now

Yeah I've read enough stories about dealing with/replacing the wax ring that I'm super nervous to go down that route.

Toilet wax rings are NBD if you have gloves and scraping tools. I used a small plaster "knife". Remember, its all designed so even a drunken plumber can do it.

Yeah, the toilet in question does not have a tank that can be removed, it's all one piece. So here's opening I can find a malleable metal lever.

laptop:
replaced faulty dc port

I've had a laptop sitting around for almost two years with what I believe is a busted DC port and I finally got off my ass to order the part in the mail. It seems like an easy fix, so here's hoping that's the problem.

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.

― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, October 18, 2020 6:45 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

this is fun. splatter on the waveguide aperture will absorb more energy because the field is still concentrated there. the field diffracts and spreads out further away from the aperture, so the food splatter absorbs less energy there and won't 'spark'. A similar thing can happen in fiber optics, where the waveguide is a glass fiber with field concentrated to a ~9 micron diameter. If you connect an optical fiber with a similar cleaved output aperture to enough optical power, any dust or other contamination on the fiber's output aperture will burn. In fiber optics work, we are always looking at the cleaved ends of fibers with "fiber scopes" to check for this kind of contamination. If we find it, we clean the fiber end with specialized tools (or maybe a kimwipe soaked in IPA). congrats, you have now completed at least 33% of a phd in fiber optics.

if you inspect a fiber end in the scope and forgot to turn off a laser, you could permanently damage your retina. in that case, the splatter might save your vision.

Last time I replaced a wax ring I got one of the new fangled foam rings (after seeing someone on This Old House use one and I tend to trust them) and it has been fine so far and way less never wracking than trying to not to nick the wax and cause a leak that shows up after a few weeks.

microwave buzzed this morning and porridge came out cold. so i guess the fuse was a symptom and not the cause. i have 4 more, but at the current rate that won't last me past the end of the month.

So, yes, my local Ace had the solution - a brass handle that was malleable enough that I could get it in through the side and bend back in place. Worked like a charm.

Can I also just add that Home Depot is one of the most useless chain stores I've ever dealt with? I'm well aware of the owner's odious politics, but there is one that is five minutes from my house while a Lowe's or Menard's is a twenty minute drive away, meaning it can be a necessary evil in the middle of a project. But this is now the third time in about five years I've gone in looking for a very specific part that I knew was exactly what I needed to fix something, only for their employee to insist that the part I needed didn't exist and that I would have no choice but to replace the entire thing I was trying to fix. Once I could write it off as an employee that doesn't know any better, but at this point I can only assume its a corporate policy to not stock common repair parts and instead steer customers to a full replacement.

Menard's owner even more evil than Home Depot, iirc

Checks out. I can't say I've been in one of those for 15 years or so.

owner's odious politics

To be fair, it's the co-founder's politics, and the co-founder retired from the company back in 2002.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/lowes-versus-home-depot-meme/

I swore I thought there was something more recent about Home Depot donating to something pretty awful, but I could be wrong.

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.*

― Josh in Chicago, Monday, October 19, 2020 8:51 AM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

I had a rental with a bosch dishwasher and for some reason stuff like this happened to me all the time - there would be like one little plastic spatula protruding slightly somewhere on the top rack and I couldn't close the door and couldn't figure out why

Bosch leaves no door unopened

I still think Bosch should release a line of dishwashers with front panels by Hieronymus Bosch.

Like, you'd put your cereal bowl in there and close it, and bam. Upside-down demons with trumpets in their butts. Melting skulls. Laughing donkeys wearing lederhosen. Awesome.

Jvc, the employee turnover rates at Home Despot and BLowe's are about as high as they come. Lots of seasonal workers, lots of people coming and leaving after a few weeks or months, etc.

The work is hard and sometimes dangerous, and the pay is shit.

I'm not scolding you, just noting that the people you talked to might not have known what the fuck they were talking about. It's baked into their whole employment model

Oh I get it, I always try to be polite to the workers there because I’ve been in their shoes in retail and I don’t blame them for dumbass corporate decisions. Still it’s kinda maddening when someone is swearing up and down that you have to buy a whole new toilet to replace a ten dollar part.

On the other hand, I had to go to Home Depot the other day, and as I was walking around I passed what I assume to be an off-duty employee, an older lady, by all indications packed up and ready to leave for the day, no uniform or smock or store identification, yet she immediately asked me what I was looking for and pointed me to the precise aisle I could find it in.

just repaired an extraction fan that was installed by an idiot (the builder who did our kitchen) real cowboy stuff of the kind calzino describes elsewhere in this thread. literally just stuck together with bluetac. Bought a couple of clips and the correct size reducer and it all seems properly sturdy now.

I am building a bike - my first ever. it is an old (at the time) high end italian steel frame. I'm classing this as repairing a thing - tbf I am having to clean and refurbish a lot of the components as I do this. it's a very satisfying process so far, though granted I've not yet got to the fiddly bit I'm dreading (cabling)

is cabling really hard?

Cabling is easier than the cleaning IMO. Spend 20bucks on a cable puller and another 10 on snips and you’ll do well.

it's not hard by the looks of things - just something I've never done before, and could be potentially fiddly. having the right tools probably key

v dedicated to hub gears for their beautifully reliable simplicity

this project all came about because I failed to repair a thing - stuck alu seatpost in a carbon frame. I've tried brute force and immersion in plusgas (two course). I'm going to try hot-cold differential expansion next... before I resort to a slide hammer or cutting the thing out

I built my bike up from a frame maybe 10 years ago and there is something immensely satisfying about getting on it and thinking 'I know every part of you' & being confident that if something goes wrong, you'll know or be able to figure out what to do. It's probably my single favourite material possession.

Recent dodgy repairs: Nutribullet. After taking it apart I saw that the mush container should activate two switches when it's pressed down and one of them wasn't closing. I zip-tied that one into permanent contact. Pretty sure I'm bypassing a safety feature but no-one's lost a finger yet so I'm saying REPAIR COMPLETE.

put me on the repair shop now

would be so handy to have men's sheds or simial in every area hosting skillshare workshops showing how to fix everyday objects so people have the knowledge. As much as getting beyond proprietary security devices preventing people doing their own repairs on a lot of things.
Could be good to teach basic prgramming and electric repairs too as well as showing what the danger points are.
Possibly some basic gardening/crp growing and garment repair/upcycling.

Nutrition, basic valuing for furture barter. Howw to tell what is actually necessary in a scenario without money?
Having the gift of teh gab basic trading/salesmanship?

learning how to make things ad hoc from existing objects would be handy, what MacGyver does but ona apracticalkk level.
Basic principles of what makes a thing work. relevant snatches of physics and chemistry etc

Also knowing what is essential and what is cosmetic in a process so you know what you actually need. YOu can build up decoration at a later point once you've got what you need.

re: bikes, I ordered a bike online this summer and it was a case study in why I don't usually try to repair things on my own. I knew going in that I would probably have to adjust the brakes and derailleurs. I bought a few tools and studied as many youtube videos as I could find about these basic tasks. I managed to adjust the brakes marginally well, but nowhere near perfect. The derailleurs were just a fucking mess. I spent hours trying to set them up and just couldn't make it happen. Because local shops were so backed up with repairs this summer, I took it to a guy in my neighborhood who had been posting online about fixing bikes. He got the brakes in perfect order, and the derailleurs are shifting well but I've still been getting a ton of chain rub. I called up my local shop and their wait time for repairs is pretty much back to normal, so I'm going to run it up there this week for some extra tweaks.

To my credit, I swapped my stem out without any problems and managed to change the tire alright when I got a flat. But all the cable-adjustment stuff might as well have been a major appliance as far as how useless I was at fixing it.

After sticking to internal hubs for years I now have a regular (externally) geared bike and it doesn't shift smoothly and I'm putting off trying to figure out why. I resent that it doesn't come with a little window and a tension dial.

I love working on bikes (and guitars) and am a much better bike mechanic and guitar tech than I am cyclist or guitar player - I've built a few of both from frames/bodies/parts. It took me a while to get the shifting stuff figured out but there are only a few settings - the upper and lower limits and the cable tension - but if you don't do it that often it can be frustrating to remember.

If you have the room and money a bike repair stand makes it orders of magnitude easier - mine was like $50 and works just fine. And something to cut cables cleanly (I use a dremel with a cutoff wheel) because regular old wire cutters will wreck them. I swore by all the Park Tools repair videos when I was learning.

I have a cable cutter from Park Tools somewhere. I've fixed up a few bikes that ppl gave me bc they didn't work or were in pieces, but it's been a while. In fact, I ended up needing specific tools that aren't made anymore bc the bikes were so old! I'd forgotten about that! Bike shops have everything. (RIP cottered cranks.)

I'm very into the idea of visible clothing repairs but have done nothing about it. I think ilxor elmo argonaut was learning about it iirc?

I follow someone on twitter who is a Navy vet & an anarchist farmer, I guess you might say? They've been watching the show "Doomsday Preppers" and picking out all the things ppl do wrong and I've been enjoying it so much. Something they specifically pointed out was that no one thinks they're going to need fiber arts after the apocalypse, so where do they plan to get clothes from?

so many annoying proprietary standards in bike maintenance (don't get me started on BBs) - really need a tool library nearby

Soooo true. Btw I wanted to say that

tbf I am having to clean and refurbish a lot of the components as I do this. it's a very satisfying process so far

...is super-relatable! Repairing things has done a lot for my mental health at certain times. It's good to be useful when you feel like a lump.

more bike repairing chat. building up my other bike has given me the confidence (and tools) to tackle some jobs I'd previously have handed off to the bike shop, so... I've serviced the rear hub on my good bike. one of the benefits of doing things yourself: you can discover when others (i.e. professionals) have previously bodged it. my rear hub doesn't have the little interior weather seal - which will probably have shortened the service life of my bearings which is annoying (altho they looked OK when I took them out). can only think the bike shop forgot to put it back in when they last serviced. looks like I can get replacement parts easily enough. very satisfying (if a little messy)

Yesterday I tackled the biennial breakdown of the internals of my ageing Gaggia espresso machine to scrape out corrosion and weird mineral grit. Don't think I will use the kettle as a handy jug to fill it any more. I will admit that I thought briefly about throwing it away and buying another, but no. At 18 it's my fourth oldest appliance, after the toaster (53, older than me), the dryer (42) and the fridge (19). I've repaired them all.