emrr wrote:Need a new lawnmower, the old deck has rusted through and is falling apart.
When I first moved down south from CT in the mid '80s I took my yankee lawnmower down with me... It was too small to cut serious grass, but I used it for trim. It was rusting apart, and so wimpy it would stall out every two minutes when trying to mow my rain ditches. I broke down and replaced it a few years ago, and the new improved version trim mower is 6.5 HP... It doesn't stall out so much any more, but drinks more gas.
Dishwasher died in April. Haven't looked at it, other than occasionally to make sure there's no mold growing inside.
I replaced this dishwasher a few years after buying this house... The no longer new one, is still working but falling apart. The soap compartment that is supposed to hold a second dose of soap to dump mid wash, no longer latches so that doesn't work, A couple months ago the counter spring to offset the weight of the rather heavy front door broke. I don't know if the spring itself broke, or where it was attached rusted off,, I can see the spring hanging down, and now I have to be careful to not let the door fall open and swing against the stop since it will probably bend something with all the weight slamming against the stop.
Putting a new AC fan motor on a 27 year old central AC today, hoping nothing else is wrong.
Killed a box fan using it to test the AC unit.
good luck
Found a stray torn piece of roof shingle on the deck, can't spot where it came from. I'm sure the current roof was put on in 1989.
It seems roofs should be more robust,, but I guess they're better than old thatched straw.
Wife and I each have cars over 15 years old, where do you wanna start?
I'm still driving my '97 (mustang cobra). The good news about a car that old is I dropped the collision insurance and cut my bill in half...They probably wouldn't pay me squat for an accident on a 14 YO car anyhow.
New ceiling fan I installed 2 years ago breaks the pull cord on the switch every time I try it. I have yet to use the fan because the cord just severs. Bad design, where there's no place for the pull cord to go once you add the lighting attachment, so it does a right angle in a tube.
I just leave my kitchen ceiling fan on slow speed all the time...
Intermittent points on studio patchbay.
Sytek preamp needs a trip to the manufacturer for repair. Can't sort it myself.
New projects? HA!
I am pretty proud of being able to fix almost anything... and I need to say "almost".
I just bought a new timer switch (actually bought two). I use one for my electric blanket in the winter to turn it on and off automatically, I use another timer to switch a box fan I point at my in wall radiant unit so I can heat up the large living area warmer for the day time and not as much at night. The motorized timers, usually wear out their timer motor after a couple years of constant operation. So this time I invested in a modern, electronic timer switch for one, $13 at Walmart. Another problem with the motorized timer switches is they get noisy before they fail, and that isn't good when you're trying to fall asleep in a quiet room.
Well brand new out of the box, the cheap motorized timer works fine, but the more expensive high tech microcomputer based version doesn't. The clock part works good enough, and I can program in up to 6 on.off times, but the sucker doesn't run the programs. I can manually switch it on and off, so the mains voltage control part works, and the micro computer works, it just doesn't do what it is supposed to do.
I took it apart to fix, and I can trace the 3 position selector switch (program on, programs off, programs random) all the way to three lines on the PCB that apparently go to the microprocessor sitting under a small black blob (epoxy?). The three switch positions correspond to one of three lines being shorted to ground, so the switch is OK and doing what it should.
The 4 layer PCB has a 25-40 pin square footprint roughly 3/8" square for a larger normal small sized SMD microprocessor, with smaller lump covered by a black blob in the middle of that footprint. I speculate there is tiny BGA package under the black (epoxy?). I'm not sure how much success I will have removing the black protective blob and re flowing the tiny BGA part.
So from now on, I only claim to be good at fixing things that worked when new, while I have a list too...
JR.