The community repair thread

boogieman

thermionic said:

 What’s sad is that the SW bands are now almost silent - I used to love finding SW stations from obscure parts of the globe.

I was going to suggest the radiogarden site if you like foreign stations 

http://radio.garden/visit/banjarmasin/iOl8lqb8 

but I just checked and there’s currently nothing available to listen to outside of the U.K. at the moment, due to copyright issues. Which is a bit of a shame. I used to listen to US rock stations through it sometimes. 

BillDL

I have a KB (Kolster Brandes) Rhapsody Deluxe Super 8 transistor radio from between 1959 and 1963 sitting in a box up in my loft.  It belonged to my grandmother.  I've never tested it because I thought that the flat PP11 battery in it that had leaked and damaged some of the cardboard battery casing when I got it over 30 years ago was a 4.5 volt one.  I now see it's 9v (4.5 + 4.5).  It's the yellow (tweed type) covering like this:

http://www.kbmuseum.org.uk/kb_images/vp31/vp31.htm

I have toyed with the notion of trying to fit a small guitar amp inside it and use the existing switches and knobs to mechanically move switches and volume pot on the amplifier, but never got round to it.

Sporky

drofluf said:

Kittyfrisk said:

^  I am developing bench envy 

Me too. I thought it was a kitchen worktop to begin with. 

To begin with it was. Well, two kitchen worktops. 

Kittyfrisk

BillDL said:

I have a KB (Kolster Brandes) Rhapsody Deluxe Super 8 transistor radio from between 1959 and 1963 sitting in a box up in my loft.  It belonged to my grandmother.  I've never tested it because I thought that the flat PP11 battery in it that had leaked and damaged some of the cardboard battery casing when I got it over 30 years ago was a 4.5 volt one.  I now see it's 9v (4.5 + 4.5).  It's the yellow (tweed type) covering like this:

http://www.kbmuseum.org.uk/kb_images/vp31/vp31.htm

I have toyed with the notion of trying to fit a small guitar amp inside it and use the existing switches and knobs to mechanically move switches and volume pot on the amplifier, but never got round to it.

Why were almost all these old radios so cool looking?
I enjoy my Roberts Stream 93i for what it does, but it is so bland.

My grandmother's old portable, with 6 (count them!) transistors.

pigface

boogieman said:

thermionic said:

 What’s sad is that the SW bands are now almost silent - I used to love finding SW stations from obscure parts of the globe.

I was going to suggest the radiogarden site if you like foreign stations 

http://radio.garden/visit/banjarmasin/iOl8lqb8 

but I just checked and there’s currently nothing available to listen to outside of the U.K. at the moment, due to copyright issues. Which is a bit of a shame. I used to listen to US rock stations through it sometimes. 

Wonder how that works. I'm in Germany and it's working for any country I've tried so far.

Kittyfrisk

Bit of an explanation.  https://forums.digitalspy.com/discussion/2435593/radio-garden-now-uk-only-stations
UK Brexit PLC wins yet again...  =D>

Emp_Fab

I took a car load of crap to the tip today and spotted a rather new looking Henry hoover in the electrical goods skip.  I've always fancied a Henry, so I smuggled it past the Tip guards and got it home.  Once I'd opened it up, it was clear that some muppet had hoovered up wet sawdust with it.  I stripped it completely, washing everything out and drying it.  I put the motor in my halogen oven set to 60 C for an hour to dry out any moisture in the windings.  Meantime, I check the resistance of the mains input circuit and found there was some concerning readings.... so I pop open the main power rocker switch to find that too is full of wet sawdust !  (HOW ?!!!)  Cleaned that out, put it all back together.....  It WORKS !!!

I've just ordered a replacement hose and accessory kit, some genuine bags and a genuine Tritex filter (which was missing) and I've got myself an almost-new Henry for £72 including ten bags !

thermionic

Here’s a tale of failure… I have my “good” glasses for work (need to go to the opticians again actually) and a cheap pair of reading glasses I can carry around without risking breaking the good pair. The arms of the cheap pair periodically work loose and I’ve been able to catch them in time and tighten them with a tiny screwdriver. The last time one screw actually came out completely but remarkably I was able to find it and reassemble them. I thought I could prevent this happening in future if I added a drop of threadlock to hold the screws in the threaded metal inserts.

I couldn’t remember where I’d kept my little bottle of threadlock, but I found it today. So I gave the screws a gentle tighten, added a tiny drop of threadlock and let it dry. Picked them up just now and they fell apart… the threadlock had dissolved the plastic!

sev112

Superglue doesn’t go well with plastic glasses lenses either, so don’t fix frames with it or your lens will dissolve !  Happened to me 

crunchman

I buy £1 reading glasses from the pound shop.  I've got 5 or 6 pairs of them dotted around the place.

pigface

crunchman said:

I buy £1 reading glasses from the pound shop.  I've got 5 or 6 pairs of them dotted around the place.

I guess this works OK if your eyes are of similar performance. I use reading glasses and recently tried out many pairs of 'instant' readers in a shop here. No use at all. Stuck with going to the opticians again.

crunchman

pigface said:

crunchman said:

I buy £1 reading glasses from the pound shop.  I've got 5 or 6 pairs of them dotted around the place.

I guess this works OK if your eyes are of similar performance. I use reading glasses and recently tried out many pairs of 'instant' readers in a shop here. No use at all. Stuck with going to the opticians again.

I have a prescription pair that I'm wearing at the moment.  It's just handy to have a pair in the kitchen if I want to read the label on a food packet, or have a pair upstairs for reading to my daughter at bedtime.

Kittyfrisk

A couple of weeks ago my parents house suffered a power outage.
Both of their electric recliner chairs stopped working.
At their age, comfort is important & the problem was causing my Mum physical issues as her chair was stuck in a half reclining position.
 I looked the chairs over, everything seemed OK & then researched likely issues. It turns out that the power supplies on such furniture is remarkably vulnerable to power surges killing them. Who knew?
No problem I thought, I now have the PS details so I'll just order new ones.
It turns out that 15 year old PS's made in Italy are obsolete...  
More research & I found a UK company that did a replacement PS along with a new wiring control harness, as the old PS had elements of the controls wired in, so a straight swap would not work.  £78 per kit, against up to £1500 per chair for like-for-like quality replacements   Worth a punt I thought, so ordered one to start with. Next day free delivery was very welcome  
 Fitting was relatively straightforward, with a bit of cable re-routing & terminal connection swapping and it worked a treat!

Repeated the order & now I have two happy parents & I'm being written into the will again 
Quite a saving over two chair replacements, so even though the kit cost initially seemed pricey it was well worth it.

 Pics of the workings (silver gaffa tape on the metal plate is my belt & braces bodge to constrain the cables & PS unit).
Dog was helping out, chewing my screwdriver handle & hiding some screws...

BahHumbug

Brilliant.  Nice story.  Well done you Cute dog too.

Jfingers

Back onto reading glasses for a moment, I've been using 1.5 for about five years now. I recently had an eye test and was happy to learn that my cheap ones will do for now as both my eyes are within a similar range at the moment.

I keep all the broken ones in case it all goes a bit like 'The Road' but what I would like some advice on is where to get properly made 1.5 uv400 readers for summer that aren't too spendy. Sorry for the derail, and yes that is a cute dog ^

ESBlonde

I’ve got some £1 reading glasses also dotted about the house and workshop plus a pair in the glovebox. You need to be able to see which fuse is blown or what tyre pressure the book says!

thermionic

A friend asked me if I could help fix his bike light. He does a lot of long distance rides often involving riding through the night, so these guys all use hub dynamos, which are very efficient and powerful these days. The lights themselves contain a lot of complex voltage regulation circuitry to prevent blowing things on fast descents! This one also contained a couple of Li-ion cells which keep the light going at traffic lights and at slow speeds, so the first thing to do is unplug them for safety.

https://i.imgur.com/CZwQ9xL.jpg

This is the problem - he bought the light second hand and the previous owner had snipped off the cable attaching a remote switch which allows you to switch modes without taking your hands off the bars (and also has a USB socket for charging phones etc). 

https://i.imgur.com/UuppiB1.jpg

He’d managed to source a spare remote switch from an earlier model - which plugged into a TRRS mini jack socket. These had been discontinued due to water ingress problem and later models had a captive cable in a grommet. I snipped the jack off and was very glad to see they used the same colour code for the wires. It was quite a fiddly job as the pads were very close together.

https://i.imgur.com/33jDT8T.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/1AwQacS.jpg

The other thing was make up a new cable to connect the spade terminals on the lamp light to the spade terminals on the dynamo hub:

https://i.imgur.com/foLe8Hh.jpg

It’s quite a neat connection, done with magnets so it’s impossible to connect with the wrong polarity. If you need to take the front wheel off to fix a puncture they just pull off, leaving the cable attached to the fork.

https://i.imgur.com/pFzV8mG.jpg

thermionic

Up next is a TC Electronic Polytune Mini, an old one I wasn’t using so I gave it to my partner’s son. He tripped and fell down the stairs rushing to catch the bus to college with a gig bag on his back. Luckily (and remarkably) his PRS SE was unscathed but the tuner pedal in the gigbag pocket must have taken a knock. The dc power plug wouldn’t stay in the socket and a small plastic piece had come off.

https://i.imgur.com/S3WezC7.jpg

It comes apart pretty easily with all the sockets and switch on a separate board.

https://i.imgur.com/R7cCLKQ.jpg

There’s the power socket with the tunnel-shaped shroud missing.

https://i.imgur.com/nCm551X.jpg

Luckily they used a standard part, although it was a tricky job removing solder from three terminals so I could free the broken part.

https://i.imgur.com/OZla0z6.jpg

All done!

https://i.imgur.com/UH4HRqu.jpg

roundthebend

I've got to do a repair on a guitar, does that belong here? I need help to get started.
The middle pot on my Hamer XT has come loose and, I think as a result, the wiring has got damaged to the point that I get intermittent signal loss.

So I need to secure the pot and check the solder joints, probably cleaning them up and doing them again.

How do I get the pot out of the cavity? I can't get the dial off the front, or I'm too scared to.

roundthebend

Found this guide from Thomann which sets to use a thin cloth to wrap around the knob and tease it off.

I'm using a pair of old boxers but they're ripping. I've just tried to gently lever it off with a claw hammer but it's stuck solid.