Teaching myself wheelchair repair

[Natris]

As a wheelchair user, I, as many, have been really frustrated with getting my wheelchair repaired via the typical channels. In the US at least, wheelchair repair is dominated by one, increasingly awful company. Everything has to be billed through medical insurance, it's expensive even with insurance and is just in general a big pain.The other bad thing is: the industry suffers from planned obsolescence. I have a wheelchair that I replaced 5 years ago because the manufacturer stopped making parts for it. It's in mostly good working order, but it sits in my garage gathering dust because the single repair company refuses to even look at it.

The good news: there's some huge skill overlap with bike repair. Most parts can be adjusted or removed with standard wrenches and hex keys. Tires are the same sizes as bike tires (although they're labeled a bit differently). Tubes are replaced with the same process as bikes. Wheels are trued with the same process as bikes. Bike shops have helped me already with several things which has been really cool.

So, I'm planning to learn what I need to learn to divest myself of the medicalized wheelchair industry by teaching myself wheelchair repair. To that end, I'm going to try to repair all the things wrong with that old wheelchair that I've replaced. I'm going to do it all myself and not depend on the wheelchair repair company. I might ask my local bike shop for guidance, but I'll try to do the work on my own. Here are the skills I already have:

* I've lubricated up and replaced bearings on casters (the front wheels)
* Similarly I've lubricated the back wheels
* I've replaced the tubes in the back wheels, with help from a non professional friend
* I removed the foot plate and put it on my newer wheelchair (it's smaller and allowed me to mount the wheelchair to an electric scooter using a kit I bought that wouldn't have fit with the new wheelchair's original foot plate)

My intention is to fix the following things on the old wheelchair:

* Replace the casters (I'm going to try to find off the shelf casters from the hardware store or grainier, if I can find ones that fit)
* Fix a ring on a pull cord that pulls out a pin to fold the thing up (should be trivial, it's basically a larger key ring)
* Get and install a new footplate to replace the one a salvaged from this chair for the new one (will be tricky, more on this in a future post in this topic)
* Repair the "parking" brakes. These are supposed to keep the wheels from moving when I'm sitting at a table or getting out the chair. They're pretty ineffective right now.
* Replace the tires (I have a set tires already)
* Remove the push bars (no one pushes anymore and these just get in the way)

If I can do them all, I'll be pretty confident that I can maintain my two wheelchairs for a pretty long time The only thing I could see happening is if the frame starts to have issues I don't see how i could fix that. Eventually though I'd like to figure out how to build my own wheelchair. There are plans online for some pretty rugged ones.

In this thread, I'm going to post updates on my journey to learn this skill. I know a lot of the regulars from the "fix it" thread have a lot of skills around fixing and bodging things so I might solicit some help from time to time. Hopefully learning this will help me reduce a major long term expense, avoid some frustration and sometimes be fun. And I hope that in documenting this I can provide something of interest for forum readers, find some help, and maybe help some other future forum wheelchair users

[ertyu]

go you and fuck that company

you can do under the table repairs for others too if you live in a place with a large enough pool of wheelchair users

have you considered making youtube tutorials for others? your skill development might be good to document. plus the necessity of sticking to a video posting schedule will keep you on a skill acquisition schedule

[mountainFrugal]

This is a great thread and I will be following along.

+1 on making tutorials for others.

[ffj]

I like your attitude. Please document.

[Henry]

For a wheelchair user to fix a wheelchair, he/she has to have two wheelchairs. Is that the case for the average wheelchair user? There are 2.7MM wheelchair users in the US which I found surprisingly low. When looking at the list of people who use wheelchairs, out of the top 10 users, only those with diabetes, scoliosis and maybe some type of amputation are candidates to be able to fix it. Alzheimers patients are at the top of the list, so they don't even know they are in a wheelchair. And I don't see someone with Lou Gehrig's disease pulling out a wrench to fix a loose wheel. So I'm thinking Natris is in the vast minority of wheelchair users who can fix a wheelchair.

[Natris]

Last night I replaced one of the tires. This is actually pretty cool, because it was the first time I’ve done this without any help at all. Overall it was easier than I’d anticipated, although still kind of a pain. A good motivator to continue this project!

I also learned a valuable lesson: the importance of work gloves. After popping off the second tire I went out to the garage to grab its replacement. I noticed that some dirt or leaves or something caught in the inside of the tire. I ran my fingers along the inside to clear it and anything else out and— ouch! Turns out the interior of a tire is pretty sharp! I gave myself a pretty nasty cut across three fingers.

At that point I decided to give the tires a break and turned my attention to the issue of the footplate. Recall from my first post in this thread that I’d stolen the one that belonged to this chair so that I could attach my newer one to a consumer electric scooter (this kind of plays a role like a bike for me). My original plan was to put the larger plate from the newer chair on the older one, but it doesn’t fit at all. It’s about an inch too big. So I figured I had the following options:

1. I could file down the bigger plate so it fits. But I think this might be a lot of work and I’m not at all confident in my ability to maintain a smooth edge.
2. I could buy a replacement plate from the wheelchair manufacturer. They officially don’t make parts for this chair, but I’ve learned that some parts, like this one are interchangeable with parts from newer models. I don’t like this option because it’ll cost $100 plus and it’s kind of against the spirit of the challenge: to work outside the medicalized, monopolistic wheelchair companies.
3. There are a few suitable plates for sale on eBay. I could buy one of those. Even there they’re pretty expensive, about $60 shipping. Also this seem counter to the challenge in that I won’t always be able to just buy new directly compatible parts on the pretty tiny used wheelchair market.
4. I could buy a rectangular metal plate, cut it down to size and drill the needed holes in it. This seems like a promising avenue, but given the fact this needs to be pretty hard aluminum or steel I don’t have high confidence I could get and learn to use the right tools to do this at home
5. I’ve been meaning to learn some woodworking, so maybe I could fashion a suitable plate out wood. However, this might not be very durable, it might make the chair heavier and it’s, well, kinda weird.
6. I could go without a footplate. I don’t really need it. Frankly, this just feels like giving up though.

Those were the options I initially came up with. As it was the most viable option, I was looking for ways to cut, drill, and shape metal plates and I remembered! CNC machines are a thing. I looked at my local library, and they have a laser cutter I could use for free, but metal is not allowed. Then I found what I think is my best option:

7. There are websites, like sendcutsend.com that let me upload a CAD file, choose the type of material I want it made with along with the thickness I need and they’ll mail me my custom part in a couple days. I was amazed at how cheap this is. I estimate it’ll cost $10-20 to fabricate my part. This is also pretty cool as it’ll get me to start learning to use CAD software which should be useful for other non wheelchair repair related projects.

So that’s my next step after the tires.

@ertyu - there’s actually YouTube tutorials for a lot of this stuff already, and I’ll share links to the stuff I use. I might make videos of things I do that don’t already have good resources. I’ll also post any CAD files I create for this stuff online and link to them in this thread along with any other resources I end up using.

Thanks for the encouragement and following along!

[Natris]

@Henry I think you’re right that lots of wheelchair users would have a hard time doing this, but I also think that it’s possible for friends or family members to learn to do this. I also think bike shops can and already do play a role here. I’ve used bike shops in the past for doing things like replacing tubes, truing wheels and replacing front wheel bearings. I think with some more resources the number of things bike shops could handle could be expanded.

As for the two wheelchairs thing: first, I think there is a lot a person can learn and do with only one wheelchair, repair and maintenance wise. The things that having two gives me are 1. Confidence. I know if I mess something up I’m not going to prevent myself from going about my daily life. And 2. It gives me the ability to take my time and leave my 2nd chair in an unusable state for a while I do other stuff. All that said, I don’t think having multiple wheelchairs is necessarily that unviable. With the planned obsolescence of the industry most folks get new chairs every 5 to 10 years. I’m in my mid forties and I’m on my 4th wheelchair as an adult. There isn’t much of a secondary market so most folks give their old chairs to charity or throw them away.

[Henry]

Based on your descriptions, I'm gathering you are repairing a non-motorized wheelchair and that seeing that they run as low as $133.56 at Lowes, your whole endeavor is a middle finger to the industry as time and effort don't seem to correlate to replacement costs. The electronic ones run up to 3K so I definitely see the bike repair correlation. But I'm assuming you're riding old school.

One thing I didn't see you mention is the upholstery of the seat. Do they last forever and it's only the moving parts that are a concern?

I'm always fighting the old ladies in the supermarket tooling around in their electric chairs taking corners like they're fucking Danica Patrick but of course I'll be deemed the asshole if I invoke right of way. Sometimes I get the feeling they can walk and are just literally bitches on wheels but it's a losing proposition. I do think there should be proof of immobility because I know some of them are faking that shit. Probably go home and hit the stair master the second they're done putting their Haagen Dazs in the freezer.