Fixit Log

[Sclass]

This handheld vac has steadily gotten weaker and weaker. I liked it because the lithium ion batteries really packed a punch. Unfortunately it is five years old now and it doesn't suck...haha. So I found these cheap batteries online for vaping and installed them in place of the old ones. Simple soldering. Take photos to document the connections. Tear apart, then resolder. Good as new.





new batteries



solder in the connections and screw it all back together. Good as new. Fixed for $7 worth of batteries.

[Sclass]

Car key fell apart. The cheap plastic head fell off. Since these are special steel keys, not like the cheap copies from the hardware store that are made from soft brass, I decided I'd fix the key head.



A little CAD CAM later...,



cut one side,



then the other.



check fit and put two identical pieces together around key.





gorilla glue





ahhhh, thats better.

[Sclass]

Fixed my garage door. My door was getting really slow and noisy. It buckled and popped as it went up using my old Genie screw drive opener. I took a close look at the door and it was cracking. As it opened it would buckle in half and make horrible popping noises. I almost called the service number on the little sticker some repairman had stuck to the wall by the opener switch. But I decided to check YouTube first. There were a ton of videos on how to fix a popping roll up door. It is a common problem on cheap doors. I just followed the instructions. No creativity here. I just did it like the video author.

After that I tuned up my motor box. There is a rotary sensor that quits if the door is opening too slowly. Mine was quitting and it turns out they go out of calibration and the clutch needs to roughed up to get some grab to it. Another YouTube video. Take the clutch apart and scrub it on the driveway to rough up the plates. Instant tuneup. Door is working great now.

And I kept the repairman out of my pocket. I hate those guys who leave stickers all over the place with their phone number.

Door with aluminum reinforcements. I got them at the 80% off clearance at OSH. Farewell OSH.



Just bolted some channel and struts to the door skin with self tapping screws.



Closeup of the cracks. With my struts there is no more buckling and popping. Its quite solid.



Clamped some conduits to the door at the existing hinge bolts to add some stiffness.



Cleaned the old sticky grease out of the carriage and applied fresh moly grease left over from a CV joint repair.



Spending money averted! Works like new. Not bad for a 30 year old door and power opener motor. Genie screw drives are actually pretty durable. Who knew. Last year I retrofitted the silly radio/code electronics with some ebay hardware that uses a rolling code to prevent kids with scanners from opening the door for fun. For about $20 I brought the security up to date. Now the motor, screw and door are good for another few years.

[Frugalchicos]

Great entry.

These have been my last projects:

- Fixed a macbook air from 2010. It was pretty much garbage according to Apple genius. Bought a $20 ssd on ebay, repaired it and sold the laptop for $220 on ebay

- Changed the battery of my iphone 6 for $11 and sold the old battery for $6

- Changed my mom's iphone 5s battery for $7

- Repaired the dryer. Swapped new bearing support system for about $10.

- I did refurbished few Macbook Pros from 2012 and sold them for profit. Changed batteries, hard drives, memory rams, cleaned them up, etc...

- Next project is refurbishing an ipod classic 30GB from 2006. Changing battery, housing, and installing a ssd instead of HD. I am also planning in repairing and refurbishing two pairs of Bose headphones I bought for $50.

[Sclass]

- Next project is refurbishing an ipod classic 30GB from 2006. Changing battery, housing, and installing a ssd instead of HD. I am also planning in repairing and refurbishing two pairs of Bose headphones I bought for $50.

That’s cool you’re fixing old laptops. I’m in the market for a new laptop during Black Friday.

I failed at repairing a gen 4 iPod clickwheel from 2004 this morning. I reflowed the dock connector and tried restoring the os. I’d replaced its HDD with a CF card many years ago. Bought it for $2 at a yard sale. I think it’s a goner now. From what I can tell it has a bad connection somewhere on the board and it goes nuts when I press on the board a little. I tried an hour reflowing chips with my hot air station and metcal needle but it didn’t help. Some logic line is messed up and many chips aren’t waking up even though they have power.

Before I broke down and tossed it in the junk box I ordered a salvaged motherboard on eBay for $9. I keep these old things because I have a bunch of the old style I Home docks I got at yard sales for $1. It’s hard to believe somebody paid $399 for this when it was new.

[Frugalchicos]

That's awesome. I also like the old apple products because they are easily upgradable and repairable. You also find plenty of parts online for cheap.

I recently built my own Macbook pro, bought a Macbook pro from 2012, changed the battery, upgraded the ram to 16gb , installed a 500GB ssd and removed the CD drive and installed the old 750GB HD instead. Everything for like $385 (you can definitely do it cheaper, I built another one for my mom for $310). I also sold the ram and the old battery, which helped reducing the cost. The mid 2012 is the last model of Mac you can actually upgrade yourself. They also sold the model until 2016 and it is supported with the last OS. I call him Brutus, it is a beast!!

Believe me, I had no idea of computers or electronics before, but I like challenging the status quo and hate throwing stuff away. That leaded me to buy the 2006 ipod, because I can repair and upgrade it myself (and buy plenty of parts for cheap on ebay).

Shoot me a PM if you need more info about upgrading the 2012 Macbook Pro!

[tonyedgecombe]

SSDs have been a boon to anybody wanting to speed up an old system. I just put one in a six year old iMac, it runs the latest version of macOS fine.

[Sclass]

Hey that’s cool that you can fix those. I bet you’ve seen that YouTube channel where the guy in the east coast shop repairs broken Mac laptops? It blew me away. With some basic electronics know how, schematics (I was unclear where he got these) and some mid range soldering gear he could repair Apple laptops.

Very impressive. Ahh, just looked him up. Louis Rossman. He has a really methodical debugging style. I enjoy watching his videos.

I get a lot of old iPod docks at rummage sales. The last ones I got for $1. Old style connector so nobody wants them. Usually the connector has a cracked solder joint and needs reflow. The connections fatigue over time at the interface where some teenager over stresses it. So I now have this pile of old docks. And a pile of iPods...those always have bad HDDs so I replace them with flash using $2 adapters from eBay. Fun. I’ve got one in every room in the house.

[Gilberto de Piento]

Fixed for $7 worth of batteries.

Where do you recommend sourcing the batteries? I have a bike light I'd like to replace them on but new batteries are too expensive to be worth it?

Any problems soldering instead of welding? Websites discussing this with lion batteries are concerned about the head of soldering. Just get it done fast? I have experience soldering nicads.

[Sclass]

Well, I bought my batteries on eBay from a vape supplier. They are no good. I got the cheapest ones I could find and the microprocessor controlled charge monitoring system on the vacuum cleaner shuts the unit down two minutes into vacuuming. It’s ok for quick cleanups on my bench but it doesn’t go the mile like the old one. I looked at my old batteries and they were Samsung “High Drain” units. They cost double what I paid for my no names.

I solder to them no problem. You can build a spot welder with plans online. It isn’t rocket science but solder works. There are many vids showing guys doing power walls with a soldering iron and brass strips from Hobby Lobby.

For things like bike lights and portable electronics I like to get my batteries from Hobby King. They have high performance LIPO that can source a lot of current in many flat form factors.

[Frugalchicos]

@Sclass

Louis Rossman - You know what I am going to do tonight!!

Watched it, that guy's skills are out of my game, and where the hell did he get the schematics from??

Got an ipod 5 classic 30gb for $20 on ebay, it seems it is just stuck in the apple logo and needs new front housing (I have an old one that it is in good condition). I will try to repair it and sell it for profit (they usually sell for $45-$55. If not, I will sell it again for parts or not working.

[SavingWithBabies]

TLDR: I glued some rubber on my kid's boots as they were leaking.

Our older child's winter boots were starting to leak. The soles are in great shape except the very rear of the boot. I'm not sure if they were slightly too big and that part wore first or if he is dragging his heels somehow or...? Of course, where they wore, is a intentional void in the sole. Perhaps to allow some flex. However, if water can make it through the bottom of the sole, it can wick right through the part your foot sits upon.

My wife purchased some replacement boots. She probably told me this and I was distracted. But when they arrived, I wanted to try to repair the old boots. So I used some Dollar Tree Fix-All Adhesive (similar to E6000 -- I think my tube of E6000 ruptured last time I used it and I forgot to replace it). I use one of those rubber circular jar opener aids to cut some patches from. The glue suggested waiting 10 minutes with each side drying before attempting to put them together. I did that and used some painters tape to aid in clamping it. Now to wait the full 24 hours and hopefully, they'll last a bit longer.

This whole experience had me wondering about making kids boots/shoes. I have wide feet as do our boys and finding shoes/boots that fight them is no fun. There is some flexible 3d printer filament that works for this and I could see coming up with some design that uses a mix of materials. I'm still thinking through how to get the right dimensions but I thought maybe foot prints with paint would be both helpful and fun to give as gifts (to grandparents) or put on the wall. Having tried a couple of 3d printing projects, I know this is a big undertaking but I'm going to mull it over some more.

[Sclass]

Nice. For those tubes of strong rubber adhesive I like to coat the threads on the tube with Vaseline or baby oil. It makes it 100x easier to open next time.

I’ve resoled the sandals shown in this thread again. I now use roofers poly urethane in a caulk tube. Cheap stuff. Then I put on a coating of ShoeGoo.

Oops I meant this thread.

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=7146&p=164911#p164911

[SavingWithBabies]

@Sclass Oh! I read that post but forgot all about it. I'll have to try that if my repair doesn't last. I'll fill the voids in the sole with the roofers poly urethane. On the one hand, I do think the voids are to provide some cushioning but on the other hand, I suspect they are also to limit the lifetime of the boots. Kids grow out of stuff fairly quickly that fixes like this make even more sense to me.

And that's a great tip on coating the threads. I'll try that. I think the E6000 ruptured due to the force required to get it open which was due to the cap sticking on the threads.

[Sclass]

Fixing again. Had a hole in my slipper. For quick fixes like this one I like curved upholstery needles. Very useful and cheap.





Good for another winter in SoCal.



My fridge drawer collapsed a couple of weeks ago. On inspection I found that the plastic around a screw on one of the shelf supports fell apart. I collected the pieces and glued them back together with epoxy. Reinforced with fiber glass cloth. It's a very strong fix with the fiber reinforcement. My fridge is from the 1980s but still works well. Glad to keep it going. Still gets cold. Nice to have a functional drawer for small items.

[Frugalchicos]

I finally completed the ipod I got for Christmas. I bought it as "for parts, not working" the ebay add described it as broken screen (actually, it was just the plastic front cover what was broken), not working, stuck on apple logo. All good things.

I opened it, replaced the battery, front and back covers and click wheel. I will sell the back cover and click wheel for parts on ebay.

Here you can see the before and after pics. It is working as a charm and sounds amazing! Everything for about $50

[Sclass]

Hey Nice fix! I just got this one. I struggled trying to fix my ipod and it turned out to be a bad CF card converter board. In the process I bid on another one and got it for $6 shipped. Non working of course. I charged it up and it worked. Usually they have bad HDDs. But this one was really good and came loaded with gigs of music that I couldn't stand. I didn't have to use a CF card to do a conversion. This trick saves most old school ipods...the HDDs just cannot take the abuse most users subject them to. So usually new battery and flash card will fix one.

The catch was it had a bad click wheel. It wouldn't respond at times and it was really frustrating. I went into my junk box and I have tons of old ipod parts. I often bid on lots of broken ipod gen 4 clickwheels. Looks like you have standardized on the next gen model.

Swapped a click wheel in and it works! Now I have tunes in my garage again.

[Frugalchicos]

That's amazing. I just fixed one of those but with a color LCD. It didn't get to start, I wasn't sure if it was a HDD problem or battery. I hit it hard a couple of times against a cloth on top of the counter and... there we go, back in business and working perfectly. Sometimes, the hard drive gets stuck and doesn't get to spin, so it doesn't start. Hitting it helps it to get back in place somehow.

This past weekend, my parents in law gave me all their old gadgets. I will be busy these days:

- 1 ipod 4 classic 20gb - I "fixed" it and I will use it for the car and gym.
- 1 ipod shuffle - will go on sale with another one I had around.
- 1 ipod nano 1st gen - I am planning in selling the nanos for parts since both have battery issues and they are too hard to change (batteries are soldered to the logic board).
- 1 ipod nano 3rd gen
- 1 ipad 1st gen - I will try to fix it and sell it for $30-$40?.
- 5 Macbook chargers -4 will go on sale for $20/each
- 1 Airport Express router - will go on sale for $20-$25
- 1 Macbook Black Matte from 2006-07 - will sell it to a nostalgic for $80
- and the jewel of the crown. A Macbook Pro 13" 2.5 dual core i5 mid 2012. - I will upgrade it for my sister with a SSD, 16gb of Ram and will place the old HD where the CD drive is. I have the same set-up and I love it. It runs the latest OS smoothly and fast.

[prognastat]

Well just finished fixing my iPhone 6S Plus, the battery was failing it's health check and struggling to get through half a day if it was being used at all, the screen cracked(the final nail in the coffin) and the headphone jack was broken.

I ended up looking at my options, but due to it being out of warranty, having a cracked screen and other problems a repair by apple would have been over $300 and I wasn't ready to upgrade either(have the option, just don't want to).

For the same amount I could get all the parts needed and the tools needed to install those parts. It wouldn't mean financial savings up front but I'd have the tools to do it again for more significant savings. I can also use those tools to repair other electronics and possibly even repair other people's devices for a profit down the line.

All in all was about an hour of work and although I was holding my breath when trying to power it back on after replacing that many parts it powered on, screen is working, home button still works, battery works and the headphone jack is working again so a complete success. I would suspect for individual repairs with a little practice I could get it down to 30 minutes or so of work.

[Sclass]

And you picked up confidence, knowledge and new skills.