The community repair thread

crunchman

Danny1969 said:

Can you hear a relay click when you turn it on ? a lot of amps have a relay to protect speakers against power on pop and DC faults

Yes

Danny1969

crunchman said:

Danny1969 said:

Can you hear a relay click when you turn it on ? a lot of amps have a relay to protect speakers against power on pop and DC faults

Yes

I would check the relay as these go bad over the years ... the contacts can jitter losing connection, sometimes cutting out completely or adding distortion. I've jumped across the relay in my amp as it went bad and I never had a direct replacement to hand. 
You can test if it's the relay by using a couple of jump wires to simulate the relay in the on position. Then if it is that find the correct replacement and solder it in.  If it's not that then check for bad solder joints but that would be the first thing I would check after a quick visual

Danny1969

roundthebend said:

My microwave stopped working - literally doesn't power on (no clock, no beeps).
It isn't the fuse in the plug. Should I attempt to fix it myself?

Generally if the internal fuse has blown then something is likely shorting  and fixing it isn't advisable due to the high voltages and safety issues involved. IMHO  ... 

crunchman

Danny1969 said:

crunchman said:

Danny1969 said:

Can you hear a relay click when you turn it on ? a lot of amps have a relay to protect speakers against power on pop and DC faults

Yes

I would check the relay as these go bad over the years ... the contacts can jitter losing connection, sometimes cutting out completely or adding distortion. I've jumped across the relay in my amp as it went bad and I never had a direct replacement to hand. 
You can test if it's the relay by using a couple of jump wires to simulate the relay in the on position. Then if it is that find the correct replacement and solder it in.  If it's not that then check for bad solder joints but that would be the first thing I would check after a quick visual

Thanks

Danny1969

So winters here and it's cold and wet, which means it's time for the car to start going wrong. There I was waiting for the wife in her car while she's having her hair done. I've got the heater on, the stereo on and the heated seats and like an idiot I've let the battery drop to an extent it wouldn't turn over to start. Bugger I think, I'll have to call a mate with jump leads and get a jump start. So I go to open the bonnet and that's when I discover the keyed bonnet release catch doesn't work. She's had the car a year but there's never been a reason to open the bonnet after buying it with a new MOT and service. So here I am parked in a 20 minute zone. battery is flat and I can't even open the bonnet to jump start it !

Well there was only one thing to do, wait until I see a group of at least 3 blokes walking up the road and beg a push start. This is a diesel car which is quite hard (and not advisable really) to jump start but I've no choice. It wasn't easy but on the third attempt it started so I could at least get it home. 

So first job go on the net and see if anyone else has had the same problem. Turns out it's a common problem on a Focus and caused by very small plastic intercoupling going brittle and breaking meaning turning the key doesn't turn the actual latch. I watch I couple of videos but they are showing a Petrol Focus, where you can get at the bonnet catch underneath or their cable is broke at the key end. On my car you can't get at it from the bottom, no choice but to smash through the grill first. 



then cut the cable, then pull off the cable jacket. Then I pulled out a rubber boot and I could see a plastic housing covering what I need to get to so no choice but to bash that to pieces and finally I could see what's wrong with it. This bit here is supposed to mate with another crossed section piece of plastic but they are so weak they were always gonna break. 



So I cut this bit down so it mates properly again with the inside piece, then I attached it to a piece of metal rod so I basically now have a tool to open the bonnet .... 

And boom, I'm in at last. What a complete pain in the arse and I now have to buy another grill. 



So if you have a diesel focus you can't access it from the bottom, there's just no room. What I did was cut the grill all round the Ford badge where the key goes into. then pull the plastic lugs apart that hold the key barrel to the badge so you can get that out of the way. Then I cut cable with a Hacksaw blade, then removed metal jacket. Then I could slide off a rubber boot and behind that is the plastic cowling covering the plastic coupling you need to get at. So chip away with a screwdriver until you expose the coupling, then you can use a flat blade screwdriver to turn the coupling and release the bonnet. As you can see the grill is screwed down and you can't get to those screws to undo them with the bonnet so I had no choice but to make a large hole in my grill. 
Be interested to hear if any mechanics on here have seen this problem before and and how they would have done it. I don't like breaking things but literally couldn't see any other way. 

Snags

@Danny1969 Do you approach all these jobs calmly and with serenity, or is there a lot of swearing and grumping involved?

They always read like you're the calmest chap out, but the car one in particular would have punched my buttons no end

Chris.B

Danny, your determination to succeed is admirable, looks like you did a great job and once again, saved yourself a load of cash - great work.

BahHumbug

Yes, nice work.  I’m intrigued about the cost of replacing that grille though.......

Chris.B

BahHumbug said:

Yes, nice work.  I’m intrigued about the cost of replacing that grille though.......

I expect Danny is already making a new grill in his workshop!

crunchman

On a car that age, you should be able to get a second hand one quite cheaply.

m_c

Danny1969 said:

Be interested to hear if any mechanics on here have seen this problem before and and how they would have done it. I don't like breaking things but literally couldn't see any other way. 

I've never done a focus, but with the car up on a ramp, you can often remove the bumper underskirt/tray and get your hand up.
Looking at your photo, getting a thin blade/lever in, you might have been able to remove/cut the plastic rivets out, then manhandle the grill out without any damage.
Having another similar vehicle to look at, is always a bonus, as it lets you judge what you actually need to remove to get the required access. I'm sure every mechanic will have tackled jobs like this and spent ages removing something that doesn't help whatsoever.

However, sometimes destruction is the only option, and it's a case of weighing up what is likely to be the cheapest option to destroy.

Danny1969

Snags said:

@Danny1969 Do you approach all these jobs calmly and with serenity, or is there a lot of swearing and grumping involved?

They always read like you're the calmest chap out, but the car one in particular would have punched my buttons no end

I am generally pretty calm and methodical thinking except when fixing cars in winter. Because it's it's always cold or raining and slipping off a spanner and banging your hand hurts 4 times the amount it would in summer:)

@Chris.B and BahHumbug       I actually did contemplate repairing my grill but found these guys on Ebay 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/usr/quality_car_panels ; and brought one for £20 delivered after messaging the guy to make sure I would receive the correct one. 

@m_c it's a common problem on the Focus apparently ...  easier to do on the petrol version as you can get to the bonnet  catch and unbolt it from the bottom (with great difficulty but possible) my diesel version has the rad in the way though so your screwed. The actual coupling makes no sense at all ... it has a very strong steel core wire enclosed in an armoured jacket that has to turn a large clunky mech but it's connected to that mech by the kind of weak plastic coupling you would find in a cheap tape deck.   Maybe it's a mechanical fuse and designed to break if someone tries to force it. Mine will never break again because I wouldn't refit such a prone to failure system. 

Emp_Fab

It could be an internal fuse.  It's worth checking.  Don't operate it with the lid off though.

Danny1969

So it's a tale of 2 external hard drive repairs today and a bit of advice on what type to buy. Both of these drives were dead, wouldn't spin up and weren't detected by the PC. i can see they aren't drawing any current so somethings open circuit. So first job is open up the caddies so the dog can see the rabbit



Now the sharp eyed amongst us will spot the drive on the left is a standard 2.5" SATA drive with a SATA to USB converter PCB which can just be replaced of it fails. Sure enough, that's the bit that's failed. I won't bother even looking at it as a whole replacement caddie with PCB is £14 to buy. Job done. 

Now the other drive is one of those pesky WD Passport drive's that have the SATA to USB converter built into the actual PCB of the hard drive it's self. So first thing to do is get the controller board off. 



Now you might be thinking if the controller board is so easy to get on and off then I could just buy a good working drive and swap the controller PCB to the customers drive. Now before drives got big, say around 100Gb you could swap controllers and 9 times out of 10 as long as the drive model and revision of the PCB were identical this process worked. As capacity of drives increased though not all the area of the drive was 100% so a little map of what bits to avoid had to be put into a chip on the controller on a drive to drive basis. Now you can swap the chip over and as it's an 8 pin DIL it's not a hard chip to swap either. In this case though I don't need to as I've spotted the 5V pin of the shitty micro USB port isn't actually touching it's pad. That's why it won't spin up it's not getting any power. So I cut a piece of that black plastic strip away, bit of flux and resolder all 5 pads 



Put the thing back together, plug it in and boom, back in the game and customer has all her data 



So the point I wanted to make is if you buy an external drive to back your stuff up buy one that is a standard drive with a removable converter PCB. If you're not sure whether the model you're interested in is built like this then buy an empty caddie and a standard drive and bolt it on yourself. A caddie suitable for a 2.5" SATA drive, rotational or SSD is about £14. The drive it's self depends on how big it is but a 1Tb is around £50. Then if the drive fails and it's a converter board problem you won't even need someone like me, you can fix it easily yourself. 
I wouldn't advice going above 1Tb in 2.5" format as in my experience the larger the capacity the more likely it is to go wrong. And the more data you will lose. Desktop 3.5" drives are more robust but unfortunately they still fail. As nice as it is to have all your stuff on one big 3Tb drive or so it's just not safe to do so. If you really must have it like that then spend the money on a NAS RAID 1 setup like a Synology Disk Station, then if one of the 2 drives dies you can buy another and rebuild the raid from the good drive with a few clicks. The downside is you will only get slightly less than half the capacity of the drives due to the redundancy. 
So 2 happy customers and a good earn for an hours work

Chris.B

A very interesting post, thanks Danny.  If I need to go down that route with external drives, I'll do as you suggest.

Deadman

No pics, but thought I'd share a big money saver I carried out on my car last month.

Car is a '67 BMW 140i. It went to BMW for its first MOT, passed but they showed me a video of a bent adaptive lighting control rod and missing plastic cover that shrouds it (all attached to the rear axle). I'd had to lower the aim of my lights a few weeks earlier so this made sense. Presumably I'd hit a pothole or something.

BMW quoted me £347 inc VAT to remedy it. I said yes and booked it in. After that I looked at the parts illustrations and identified the cover and control rod BMW part numbers.

To cut an even longer story short, for genuine BMW parts (brand new control rod, second hand cover) cost me £23.And then it literally took me half an hour from start to finish to replace. Lights work like a dream now. Can't quite believe it to be honest as I'm no mechanic!

I've parted company with the main dealer now.

Deadman

Ironically, I didn't look at the thread author until now. My only other big money saving/pub table discussion in this century (and pre-covid) involved @Danny1969 .

I sent him my knackered Yamaha THR10 in 2019. I was close to binning it as it'd already been looked at several times. I took a punt. And I really thought it was just that.

He charged me around £20 if I remember rightly and sent it back in full working order having kept it for testing until he knew it was right. Clever, clever guy.

Danny1969

@Deadman cheers mate and well done on the Beamer fix. Has to be sad cars are getting harder to work on so you have to pick your battles but a willing to take on some jobs can greatly reduce the cost of ownership. 

Danny1969

So giant keyboard comes in today. Never seen a home keyboard quite this big before, I mean my own keyboard is as long but that's a pro keyboard not a keyboard with built in one finger chords and built in speakers. This thing is huge !



The thing is dead, doesn't do anything so has to come apart. So after removing some 72 screws later !



There's not a lot in it as you can see. The white cones of the speakers make me smile, that's a very Yamaha thing to do. Look at the brown PCB, that's a rare sight these days. It's a linear power supply all thru hole and basically just some diode and overcurrent protection then a couple of regulators for the audio and digital. 
A quick measure shows 12V on the DC socket it's self with respect to ground but nowhere else at all so straight away we know the socket has cracked its +V joint  on the PCB. So need to get to the other side of the power supply PCB. Now I've been repairing stuff like this for 30 years but have never worked out why they design it so some cables can be unplugged from the PCB and others are directly soldered. It seems to make no sense at all, also means I 'm gonna fix the board in situ rather than on the bench. 

So here we are. This is the same type of DC socket I've repaired on Boss GT effects units, Roland SPD drum modules, various keyboards and drum machines. If the cable gets a good yank this is what happens 



So rather than just bridge the joint I cut a couple of jump wires and solder them directly to the socket contacts and the first point of contact with the circuit. This means another yank on the socket won't cause the same problem. I also put some hot glue around the socket to stop it moving as well. 



So that's all it was and all it ever tends to be on a lot of Roland and Yamaha stuff. Generally it's well built but this sockets will crack their joints if the cable is yanked. A better design would be to have the socket mounted off board with a plug to the PCB like a lot of the better designed laptops. 

So being so big I expected this to sound quite good once I fixed it but it doesn't. Doesn't sound as nice as my smaller Yamaha home keyboard really. Doesn't play nice either as the keys are strangely narrow. 

But it's done and back with the happy customer now 




So if you have a totally dead keyboard,  Boss GT effects, Roland SPDX, drum module or whatever take a close look at the DC socket joints on the PCB. 9 times out of 10 that's all that will be wrong 

BahHumbug

Nice one Danny.  Reminds me of a much smaller Yamaha keyboard that I fixed a few years ago. It had some sticky/skewiff keys IIRC.  I took it apart and sorted that quite easily.  Inside the case there was lots of empty space, just like this one.