The community repair thread

Danny1969

So back to gig'ing in one week and the van has to be MOT'ed. Unfortunately during lockdown the exhaust has got bored and decided to rust it's self away from the silencer in a place where there's no joint and in the part that contains the bloody CAT convertor. Not only is this length of exhaust the most expensive bit of the lot it's a special order because this is a rare 4.2 ton Transit Jumbo long wheelbase, not a standard MK6



So I speak to our bass player and he makes this on a jig at work 



So I get underneath with a little belt sander and clean the section of exhaust until I have a really tight interference fit when I slide the stainless piece onto it. Then I cover the pipe with a little oil and hit it with a mallet until it's tight as a nuns on the bit that contains the CAT.





Then I drop the rest of the exhaust off the hangers and position the stainless bit so it's in the mouth of the silencer. then when I hang the exhaust back it it's naturally pushing against the stainless bit. Then smother that will exhaust putty and run the engine to harden it and boom, all done. We did a cut on the stainless bit in case it needed a clamp but it's such a good inference fit I didn't need to fit one




So MOT was on Wednesday, exhaust passed and everything else did except 2 bits of chassis that need welding. Watch this space for more under a Transit adventures 

Kittyfrisk

Nice job. Your bass player is definitely a keeper 

Greatape

Danny1969 said:

So this PCB is out of an expensive dishwasher .. not the first time I've seen one of these and a classic example of how a £4.60 component can put a 2K dishwasher out of action. The fault is it won't drain out after the wash cycle.  Look at the board and you can there's some logic going on and this ones even got some upgradable firmware in an EEPROM. As intelligent as it looks though it can't provide power to the drain pump because a relay, a device invented about a hundred years or more ago has broke, The reason it's broken is because ever time it makes or breaks the switch to the drain pump it sparks and a  small piece of metal is vaporized. Eventually the contacts won't make anymore and according to the manufacture you have to change the whole £330 PCB



So you can simply follow the drain pump motor connector to it's relay then here's an quick and easy way to test it in situ. Although these are 12V relays it will switch easy enough with 9V so put a meter on diode mode so you can hear the beep AND see the voltage drop across and then observing polarity touch a  9V battery on the relay coil. If your not sure which contact is which look at the part no of the relay and look up the pin out. Here you can I've drawn a ring around the relay coil. 



As suspected Relay coil switch's but contacts remain open circuit. All other relays tested good. New relay ordered at £4.60 and another PCB saved from scrap. 

Dammit, I wish I'd known this two years ago. You would have saved me the best part of £400! 

crunchman

Just replaced a belt on a tumble dryer.  Basically followed this:

Those YouTube videos are useful, but he's working on a nice new one that's not full of industrial quantities of fluff.

Yearofthegoat

I repaired my old Boss ME-6 not so long back - several of the buttons stopped working: Parameter, Left, Down and a couple of others. Decided to open it up and the buttons have small round black push switches soldered onto the PCB, so I desoldered the bad ones and found as close a match as I could on eBay.

For anyone wanting to do the same they're a:

6x6mm SPST Momentary Tactile Miniature Push Button Switch, 7mm in height. Like these: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/261722185591?var=560591856152

Soldered them in and it's working fine. Only difference is the new switches make a much louder click when pressed - but you know for sure you pressed them so that's fine. Not sure if there's even a spec for 'click loudness' so YMMV.

The ME-6 is old and in the scheme of things not that good, but it seems well-made and was straightforward to take apart and re-assemble. While I was in there I gave everything a good clean out.

Before I realised I could repair it, I'd bought a GT-100 which gets much more use - but every now and then nostalgia gets the ME-6 out again. It was my first effects unit bought in '92/3 so it's not going to landfill! Still love stereo chorus...

Emp_Fab

It breaks my heart to see the amount of equipment thrown away in work.  We basically have a shed where anything that is no longer needed (but working perfectly well) or things that need a £2 part to bring them back to life get dumped.  Some of it is expensive stuff too.  Because it's out of warranty and not the latest version they bin it.  As far as I know, only laptops get sent away for paid repair work, the rest gets disposed of.

I could make a tidy profit if they were to let me take stuff home to fix & sell on, but there’s no way on Earth they will ever allow that.  I have tried but that avenue is well and truly blocked off.

I think a lot of companies operate similar policies.  I get it from a corporate risk perspective, nobody wants to introduce the slightest risk that someone could be injured from faulty equipment and all the legal implications that brings, or internal arguments as to which employee can have what etc;  It’s just safer and simpler for the company to say “No.” - especially when there is no benefit to them.  It’s still heartbreaking to watch it all going to waste though!

I’m like this down the local recycling centre too....  looking at the huge pile of electrical goods that people have dumped that are probably easy fixes....  but the council won’t let you take anything.

Danny1969

Nice work @Yearofthegoat and @crunchman ;

@Emp_Fab ;
Yeah it's criminal in my book what gets thrown away. The maintenance company for Dell notebooks doing onsite warranty work used to change the entire motherboard of a Dell Latitude CPX because the fan had failed .... a £299 + vat board because a £4 fan had failed and they couldn't be arsed to unbolt. I was lucky enough to hook up with one of their engineers and we turned this t o our mutual advantage for a few years before he got greedy

Here's a few quick ones peeps might benefit from

Mackie SRM450 speaker, making popping sounds, distorted and volume going up and down. 



This is a solid design which rarely gives problems, unlike the newer class D models. Passive PSU and 2 separate amps for horn and main speaker. 



What tends to go wrong are these dropper resistors joints. It's a vibration rather than outright heat problem meaning the legs can snap like this one has. You might find yours has different kinds of resistor, I've seen ceramics and smaller coated wire wound types but if you get this problem look here 

 

So easy fix with nothing but your eyes to diagnose it. 

Danny1969

Hard drive repair  .... customer needs data but doesn't want to pay the £500 upwards to send it to a data recovery facility. Now the fault is the drive won't spin up. In fact I can see it's drawing way too much current on the rails so somethings shorted. Now in the good old days you could just buy an identical drive and swap the controller boards but modern drives have a map of the bad bits on the platter stored in a chip. On some drives you can swap this chip over from the original drive, it's normally an 8 pin DIL but not on this kind of drive. So I've tracked down an identical drive inc the revision type which is in good working order. Now I can use the good controller board as a good known reference to help me as there's no schematic to follow.  



So boards off so nothing internal to the drive can skewer my readings on my meter.  



In modern electronics a short to ground like we have here is very commonly caused by a cap going bad. If you find a cap with both ends shorted to ground then it's either gone bad or in parallel with another component that has gone bad, only way to know is to heat and lift one end of the cap then measure it. If it's good then replace it and move on to another. I find the culprit and I have a replacement on the good board. 



Unfortunately although I got the drive spinning up and recognised by the computer I wasn't able to get his data. Inside the drive is a pre amp and that had been damaged meaning the controller board wasn't getting any data in. Shame but at least I could tell him I had a good go. This is rare in my experience, I've seen this maybe 7 times in hundreds of data recoveries. Being a tight sod I swap the component back and rebuild the good drive so that won't go to waste. 

Danny1969

Disclaimer / advice   ..... Before you attempt any repair on an iMac unplug it and leave it for an hour to make sure the caps drain down. The switch mode power supply used has rectified AC mains on the bridge rect and caps with 300 plus volts very easy to touch. 


21' Imac won't power on. If this happens to you pull out the power and press and hold the power switch in for 20 secs. If it comes on great if not then open it up using the method I showed earlier in earlier iMac repair in this thread. 



Look carefully at the motherboard, just on the left edge of the motherboard where the fan chute is and you will see a row of 4 LED's. These are diag LED's and show you

PWR present to SMPW, SMPS communicating with motherboard, motherboard on, screen on . 

None are lit so it's a problem with the mains in or the SMPS. Now I know the mains socket is good because I can measure the volts on the bulk caps without even taking the board out so it's a problem with the SMPS. So out it comes.



Caps look good, bridge rect is fine as is switching circuit. But a good look at the multiblock connector reveals a bad point of contact. Give it a little squeeze and boom, back in business with 3 lights on meaning PWR present, coms working, board running but no LCD attached. 



To refit the LCD you need the adhesive strips I linked to in the  earlier iMac repair in this thread. Just make sure you get the right size kit as the 27 is obviously bigger than the 21" version. 

Danny1969

Heres a simple trick to hold an iPhone open while you change the battery ...... coffee  jar filled with sone coins to add weight and an elastic band 


  For iPhones 7 and onwards same deal but horizontal open. There's 2 tabs to slowly pull, I'm pulling the right one, the left one is still under the little black bit of tape. Once you do that the batter is free, no heat no prodding and levering like others seem to do. 



Another use of a coffee container ..... fit a speaker in one end and a jack socket in the other and now you have a useful bench speaker ..... obviously use your common sense to what amps you use it on. 

Emp_Fab

Please send me your multimeter and let me clean it !!  It's triggering my OCD LOL  

SUNBATHER

There’s some amazing fixes in this thread but I’m still happy that I re-soldered the power wires and fixed some fairy lights last week. 

Danny1969

Emp_Fab said:

Please send me your multimeter and let me clean it !!  It's triggering my OCD LOL  

I think it's only the grime that's holding it together mate ..... it's been dropped, covered in oil, got wet doing outside jobs but has lasted 25 years ..... Fluke really do make the best meters 

Kittyfrisk

Interesting 'retro' development in laptop design.

https://www.dezeen.com/2022/01/04/framework-modular-laptop-technology/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Dezeen Weekly 745&utm_content=Dezeen Weekly 745+CID_5089c5dd39f03f88f38309216e2a06e8&utm_source=Dezeen Mail&utm_term=Read more

Danny1969

Kittyfrisk said:

Interesting 'retro' development in laptop design.

https://www.dezeen.com/2022/01/04/framework-modular-laptop-technology/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Dezeen Weekly 745&utm_content=Dezeen Weekly 745+CID_5089c5dd39f03f88f38309216e2a06e8&utm_source=Dezeen Mail&utm_term=Read more

Yeah @digitalscream sent me a link to that a while ago. A step in the right direction for sure. 

roundthebend

I was going to write up a report of a job I did today. However, I failed to complete the job. Not so much a repair but a replacement of some kitchen cupboard down-lights. They were 240v I believe and we decided to put 24v LED strips in. I spoke to a company who offer great customer service, they built a kit for me and advised the best approach. All that's left is for me to install.

However. Issue #1 - fishing the cables through a gap behind the cupboards. I eventually succeeded by using magnets attached to string. Win.

#2 the profile caps have a slot to pass the power cable through, but where our cables are long they have a clump of solder and shrink wrap which is too big. I'll have to cut them and re-solder around the caps.

#3 I can't get the sodding solder-less connectors to slide into the LED strip. I've even scraped off the 3M tape but still they won't fit.

#4 my mains supply is a typical twin and earth. Blue, brown, earth. The power supply accepts Live, Neutral, and Live¹ - I believe that's the switch wire. Am I supposed to guess which or is there a standard?

I'm off to the workshop to try some soldering and to see if that cheers me up. Nothing is easy for a Muppet like me.

Success post to follow.

Simonh

crunchman said:

Just replaced a belt on a tumble dryer.  Basically followed this:

Those YouTube videos are useful, but he's working on a nice new one that's not full of industrial quantities of fluff.

I used this exact video this week to help me do the same - and yes industrial amounts of fluff were found! Still £14.99 for a new genuine belt vs £450 for a new dryer is a proper result.

menamestom

Simonh said:

crunchman said:

Just replaced a belt on a tumble dryer.  Basically followed this:

Those YouTube videos are useful, but he's working on a nice new one that's not full of industrial quantities of fluff.

I used this exact video this week to help me do the same - and yes industrial amounts of fluff were found! Still £14.99 for a new genuine belt vs £450 for a new dryer is a proper result.

My drier is about 20 years old, its had thermostats, heat exchanger, jockey wheels, numerous belts.

I've saved a fortune with DIY repairs..  The fact it's so old and inefficient and probably costs me £100 a year to run than a modern one, I generally ignore.  It's like keeping an old V8 running forever when I could bite the bullet get a plug in hybrid.

roundthebend

roundthebend said:

I was going to write up a report of a job I did today. However, I failed to complete the job. Not so much a repair but a replacement of some kitchen cupboard down-lights. They were 240v I believe and we decided to put 24v LED strips in. I spoke to a company who offer great customer service, they built a kit for me and advised the best approach. All that's left is for me to install.

However. Issue #1 - fishing the cables through a gap behind the cupboards. I eventually succeeded by using magnets attached to string. Win.

#2 the profile caps have a slot to pass the power cable through, but where our cables are long they have a clump of solder and shrink wrap which is too big. I'll have to cut them and re-solder around the caps.

#3 I can't get the sodding solder-less connectors to slide into the LED strip. I've even scraped off the 3M tape but still they won't fit.

#4 my mains supply is a typical twin and earth. Blue, brown, earth. The power supply accepts Live, Neutral, and Live¹ - I believe that's the switch wire. Am I supposed to guess which or is there a standard?

I'm off to the workshop to try some soldering and to see if that cheers me up. Nothing is easy for a Muppet like me.

Success post to follow.

I made progress. The community workshop I joined last week has a fully stocked solder bench so I sorted out the cable and think I did a pretty good job considering my lack of expertise.

And, I think I've got my head around the twin and earth problem. I don't need the earth, it's not a switch wire or anything, simply there if I was connecting a metal light fitting. I've wired in all the more voltage side, just need to shove the LEDs into the connectors (still seems impossible) and connect up the 240v supply side. Then I need to cut the profile and fasten to the cupboards. I would post some photos, but I haven't taken enough and I'm being too lazy to upload to Imgur. This is a really rubbish pair of posts, ruining the thread a bit. Soz

Danny1969

@roundthebend ; ... it's interesting so keep it coming