DIY Repairs: Successes and Failures

[Kasey Chang]

I just spend 45 minutes repairing my foot massager... and it worked. Feels like the switch is "stuck in place", and I don't really want to toss it yet. Opened it up with one of my various toolkits, and found that the switch had indeed been gummed up my dust and whatnot. Blew it out, lubed it, reassembled it, tested the switch, it clicks properly now (whereas before it'd stuck in the downward position). Reassembled the switch, it works, then reassembled the massager, and it also worked. Saved myself $60 if I had to buy a direct replacement.

[LordMortis]

Still haven't worked on the fascia and roof on my garage that I started when I got hit by a car this time last year. Maybe I'll be able to soon.

Seems like every time I turn around, I'm working on plumbing in the house. I've replaced to faucets. One was easy. One was exceptionally difficult that started as an attempt to replace a gasket and eventually and took six trips to home depot getting tape and dope and shut off valves. While trying to snake a drain, I put a hole in a pipe and called in plumber. Now I have a fill valve in a toilet that is leaking as well as a diverter in my shower that aren't working correctly. I also need to either do some electrical work or call an electrician. Still, it's nice to have the time and head to work on these things.

[YellowKing]

I've had three big DIY repair success stories. I fixed my dryer twice - once was a heating element that went out, and the other was replacing a dryer belt. Incidentally, this is when I first discovered how crude a piece of machinery a dryer actually is. It's essentially just a spinning barrel next to a toaster. That was kind of a disappointment.

The biggest money savings was fixing our refrigerator that had a circuit board go out. That one was scary because I took a chance on a $250 part from Amazon, but it worked and I saved myself several hundred, if not more than a thousand dollars.

I got instruction for all of those from YouTube, which is an absolutely invaluable tool for DIY repairs.

Being completely clueless about cars, it's also been a great resource. I'm not always able to repair it myself due to lack of tools, but at least when I take it into the mechanic I have a pretty good idea of what's going on and can get some idea if I'm getting ripped off or not.

[Jaymann]

I can remember a couple from back in the day.

I was living near the beach in an old house built in the 1920's. One of the pipes under the house broke. We couldn't contact the owner, because he would just as soon tear the place down as fix anything. I knew virtually nothing about plumbing except turn the water off. I ventured into the crawl space under the house and found the culprit, but the pipes were rusted solid. I had to work back 20 or 30 feet to find a fitting I could unscrew. I had to lay out the damaged pipes in the yard and measure them so I could buy replacement pipes at Home Depot. It was a dirty, nasty job but I got it done.

The other one was on a nice computer chess game built into an actual full size wooden chess board. The pieces had magnets in the bottom so you could just make your move and the computer would tell you its response on an LED readout. One day the thing froze up and no amount of reset or unplug/replug did anything. In desperation I unscrewed the back to have a look-see. I noticed there was one component that looked like a battery connected by two copper wires. Since it was busted anyway, I clipped one of the wires and the thing went dead. Then I soldered the wire back together and it fired right up. That's a hard reboot right there.

[Daehawk]

Not a repair yet but needs to be sooner or later.

Years and years ago my mother in law was a seamstress. She needed lots of light. So her sewing machine was in front of two large sun facing windows and she had a big 3 bulb ceiling light. Well after she retired or died..i cant remember which,,,,our cousin gave us a ceiling fan. the fan always worked but the lights were always flaky. Im down to one working light and it will flicker on or off unless i tap it or twist it or something. Also I chipped the ceiling bad around it when installing it.

I NEED to replace it. But I cant find the old original fixture to put back up and I cant find a new one that looks like the rest in the house. Plus Im now 15 years older and in worse physical shape than my entire life before this. Im not even sure i could stay on a ladder and take the weight of that fan and get down. Well get down slowly..falling is always an option to me now.

The other ceiling lights are 2 and 3 bulbs and have a square glass shade that hangs a bit lower. They are not flush. Need to find one before I do anything. I keep my eye out for those at thrift stores..or did when I used to go.

[hitbyambulance]

i've done a lot of old video game console cleanup (e.g. opened a GameBoy Color and made the buttons/d-pad more responsive by removing grime and corrosion), but also some repairs. biggest successes were cobbling together one working PlayStation 2 from two free broken ones i had, and doing the same with two broken Dreamcasts.

FAILURES:
- any Xbox 360 RROD problem. i had two units with that, and it was beyond my ability to fix
- a PS3 with the YROD. needs a whole new motherboard (i had an electrical technician look at it as well)
- an Atari 2600 with a failed TIA chip. tried to replace it, but still has the same problem of 'not working'

MIDDLIN':
- two different original XBoxes and their stupid DVD drives - those drives liked to fail easily, and i eventually learned it wasn't worth replacing them

TODO:
- an Atari 2600 with a busted-off reset switch - shouldn't be difficult
- a PSOne with a sticky 'open lid' button - also should be an easy fix
- remove the 'timebomb' clock capacitor from both my original XBoxes

[disarm]

I repaired an Xbox One X that died close to two years ago... stopped turning on and only made a faint buzzing sound. The internet said it was probably a failed power supply, so I bought a used one and made the switch. That xbox has been working flawlessly for close to two years now, with my son pulling multi-hour Fortnite and Minecraft sessions. The job was surprisingly easy and got us back in business for around $50... much cheaper than replacing the whole console.