What was the last thing you repaired?

Mini fix this morning. I bought some MTB shorts, but the poppers were a bit weak (nothing to do with my girth) and popped when I bent over.

I spread the male part of the popper a bit with a hammer and an allen key. Sorted!

Fixed our 30+ year old boiler today.

Domestic hot water escaping into radiator circuit, replaced the diverter valve as this was the cause a few years ago – nope still doing it.

Removed secondary heat exchanger / calorifier as this is the other potential cause.
Unable to remove fittings from H-EX so took it to work.
Applied heat but they still sheared from the metal casing. TIG welded a bolt to the sheared remains – heat plus vice = removed fittings.

Installed new heat exchanger – boiler working properly again.

I have been doing a bit more wood work than usual in the garage and this has created a lot of wood shavings. My home made dust extraction was made from 40mm push fit plastic and coped fine with dust and small debris but was getting constantly blocked and choked by the wood shavings.

I upgraded the 40mm pipe to larger waste water pipes for the section leading to the main work bench but left the 40mm in place for the other extensions for dust collection elsewhere in the garage which don’t get the wood shavings.

The difference is amazing with no blockages and no loss of suction event though the pipes are not permanently glued but just have blue painters tape keeping the joints airtight.

It only took a couple of hours to repair including 2 trips to B&Q but then another hour or so to clear up all the shavings that have accumulated over the last few days.

In an effort to get the electrical side of mum and dads decades long house renovation finally completed I’ve been getting a bit of workshop time in rebuilding this outside lantern for them…

Record 75 bench vice for scale…

The sparky persuaded them to get the whole lantern and bracket powder coated… unfortunately the lantern is made of copper and was soldered together and disintegrated into myriad pieces when it went in the oven 🤦‍♂️

It’s now partly held together with solid copper rivets (fiddly but interesting to do) with the top all re-soldered together.

Had to rig up a jig to hold everything straight-ish for soldering using The Daddy Of All Soldering Irons…

Pleased to get it done 🙂

Next on the hit list is a A901 Kenwood Chef that I rescued from the local tip some years back with speed controller problems 🙂

£38 for 6 meters x100mm

https://www.dustspares.co.uk/flexible-ducting/flexible-ducting-6-metres.html?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIvN7FjKjY9wIVkLbtCh3l1gCDEAQYASABEgK5UfD_BwE

Power steering pump on the van. Turbo next, garage job that one though!

Hoofed the Dremel down the drive (by accident).

This it did not like and it displayed such feelings by removing the “rotary” from “rotary multitool”.

Bit of YouTubing and it seems the winding (?) wires are a bit fragile.

Sure enough it was a broken wire to a connector. A bit of solder and a strand of wire from some old cable and it’s working again.

Yea, i fixed my gas boiler too. Only required wd40 on the valve as it was sticky from previous owners love of fry-ups!

Recently sorted out the speed control on my mums Kenwood Chef A901 that’s considerably older than me…

Got the same job to do on another one for my nephews mum that I rescued from a skip some time ago. Sadly its a bit later and a wee bit more tricky to do 🤔

Last couple of days have been dedicated to putting a new clutch in my mates mums Daihatsu Terios. Bit of a tedious job 😬

My wife decided that my ornamental painted bowls should become ornamental painted flowerpots. This was lovely but when it rained they behaved like bowls and filled with water.

Just drilled three holes in the bottom of each

Repaired is probably pushing it a little, but i sourced (which was actually pretty tricky) and fitted a replacement battery in my Garmin Edge 25 so I’ve now got 7 hours of battery life again rather than the 2 it had ended up at.

Feeling pretty smug as Garmin don’t really do a newer version and its nice to keep this one going.

I think I’ve mananaged to repair my pir floodlight for the second time, as it had gone into random disco mode again. The previous fix was to pull out the old white sensor lens and to wedge/glue in a random eBay replacement lens (never was quite as good but it mainly worked). Anyway, after a few years, disco mode again, sensor lens all brittle and cracking and bits flapping in the wind. I managed to break out the old sensor unit fairly neatly, and then by cutting the light body where the pir unit was fixed I’ve managed to be able to screw in a replacement pir sensor unit that came with built in screw thread (with lots of uhu to help /water seal), rewired it all and it’s now back up on the wall, it worked in the garage so hopefully it’ll work in real.

Last thing I fixed: nerf gun for my neighbour’s kid. Well I kind of cheated and replaced a bunch of inside bits with bits from another differently broken nerf gun of the same model, but he doesn’t know that.

Next thing will take a little longer, sometimes finding gold flecks is a good thing, but not when it’s in an oil filter!

Recently sorted out the speed control on my mums Kenwood Chef A901 that’s considerably older than me…

Well get you, Mr Johnny Come Lately, with your A901 Kenwood Chef.

We’re still using the A701 I fixed about 10 years ago.

Repaired my Mrs’ hair straighteners after Jnr w2k dropped them on the floor. Heater plate had cracked, 5 mins on ebay found some replacements for £5, then it was a relatively easy repair. Everything that needed disconnecting was a small screw fitting instead of solder, just a bit fiddly.  Maximum browny points for me 🙂

Went all in on this one. My old (>10 years at least) Black & Decker belt sander died, ironically while I was doing a job as a favour for a charity – karma, eh – but I knew it had been unhappy for a while. I thought the belt was just stretched, but then it seized solid.

Got it on the bench at home and started taking it apart. Obviously there was 10+ years of caked wood dust, despite the occasional blow out with compressed air. Things escalated quickly.

I thought one of the gears had stripped, which might have been came over (spare parts seem to have all been available at one point, but lots no longer stocked now) but it turned (no pun intended) out the end of the toothed shaft is just ground down to locate in a bearing:

There’s actually a bearing under that clump of grease, bits of gearbox and wood dust above the gear on the left.

Then having extracted the rotor from the plastic housing, I realised the main problem was that this was all that was left of the main drive side motor bearing:

Fortunately there was enough left to identify it for replacement.

Checking the rest of it over, I realised that driven roller that holds the belt was turning pretty stiffly. I took a while to extract the aluminium base it’s mounted into from the gearbox. It had two needle bearings inside, which were fairly shot but they proved a nightmare to extract. There was a spacer between them that had a slot in it, but I couldn’t find anything that would fit in the slot and still give sufficient purchase to drift it out. Eventually I ended up drilling one out, and going a bit into the spacer which turned out to be plastic. Not ideal, but not terminal.

Bearings ordered, I cleaned everything out, and then couldn’t resist doing one of those **** flatlay pictures of all the bits. Those far too familiar with the B&D KA85E (Type 2) may notice that one of the rollers has furtively rolled off out of shot under the pizza oven.

About an hour of putting together, realising that bit should have gone in there first, taking apart, and then putting back together again (one screw I must have put in at least dozen times), and it looks like a belt sander again. Screws leftover: 0.

I reckon all the taking apart, cleaning up, trying to remove bearings, ordering bearings, and reassembling must have taken at least 6 hours all-in. A new one is about £50. The sound when it started back up: priceless (and much quieter than before!).

Auxilary belt tensioner on the van, only took an hour but was a git of a job, needed about 3 pairs of hands. No more squeeling racket when parking now though 😀

Bled the brakes on the full suss too.

Started renovation on my conservatory… much shout out to Neil who lurks on here for helping me. He’s a joinery dude with skill and patience.

I’m a clot with a claw hammer…

Anyway I’m not overly enamoured with the build quality of the timber kit. The pick of the rusty stringer is the joint between top frame and lower frame, no step or sealant, just 2x beads to act as weather strips. Might be ok in Surrey but not up here.

Nothings in permanent were just cutting out rot and letting it dry out and treatment being applied.

Also have a pic of Geoff….

Pretty pleased with my kid free Friday evening. Free to me pressure washer was always patchy firing up and a winter in the shed had killed it completely. Handy YouTube video showed a common problem with these so stripped it down. Cleaning the corrosion off the pressure valve bore was a bit tricky but a bodge with some wire wool wrapped round a drill seemed to have done the trick.

No pictures but repaired my parents conservatory. Nearly a rebuild including a new screed floor. Managed about a 2 mm deviation over 4.5 m was happy with that.

TIG welded a bolt to the sheared remains – heat plus vice = removed fittings.

Tig welder has been on my don’t need but really want tool list since I did a welding course ~ 20 years ago. I keep making do with a big old buzz box but of course no good for anything requiring “finesse”.

Surfboard ding. UV torch makes it much easier to control the cure.

Non DIY proficient (ironically, aeronautics engineer) mate lost a peak retaining bolt on a spin last weekend, back to my shed after, sift through the bolt stash, found the correct size, out with the dremmel to cut to the right length, simple job, happy “customer”.

And replaced the positive air chamber seals on the fox float X2 rear suspension unit on the secondhand bike I bought which hopefully will sort out the 50psi per spin pressure loss issue.
Sunday’s spin will provide the answer as it only loses pressure on spins.

Now I’m no handyman but earlier this week my hot water cylinder died so I needed to get under the house to Isolate it so we could at least have cold water until such time as it can be replaced. Problem was the hinges on the inspection hatch were seized making access a problem. Fortunately they bent so I could get in.
Anyway today I bought brand new set of hinges and replaced the seized ones. Inspection hatch now works as it should.
I also completely restrung the rotary washing line. This is quite significant as I didn’t break and wasn’t told it was broken (i only found out when going to put laundry out to dry) and upon finding it broken I haven’t waited several months to get around to fixing it.

Small fry to the stuff above, but just changed a toilet inlet valve. It failed earlier this week and I just turned the supply off and put an ‘out of order ‘ sign on it. That wasn’t deemed an adequate solution so have now got on and swapped it. Checking for leaks now.

Replaced the steering pump pulley belt on my Daihatsu 4Trak.

Simply remove the engine bash guard, loosen the pulley adjustment bolts, remove the old belt, fit the new belt, re-tension and tighten the pully before re-instating the bash guard.

Simply was obviously a typo as every bolt was sieves, every bolt head was partially rounded, the pully wouldn’t move, even with the bolts fully loosened and the new belt wouldn’t fit even with the pulley at the maximum adjustment. Apart from that it was simple I guess.

Small fry to the stuff above, but just changed a toilet inlet valve. It failed earlier this week and I just turned the supply off and put an ‘out of order ‘ sign on it. That wasn’t deemed an adequate solution so have now got on and swapped it. Checking for leaks now.

Mine has failed in the upstairs bog so it’s only refilling on a dribble, this is proving troublesome for heavy traffic or double flush situations. So far my solution has been to put an empty 4 pint milk container beside it so it can be refilled from the bath tap but this is proving a surprisingly unpopular “solution”. I’ll get to it when I get to it.
Replaced the screen on a Nokia 8 the other day, let’s just say my peripheral neuropathy made using tweezers on the wee connectors and screws a bit tricky!

Haha, sounds as unpopular as my mid week solution! I put a fluidmaster replacement in. £16.50 from screwfix.

Rear airsprings on my merc. YouTube tutorials should be used as a guide only. Fortunately I can see where they are wrong and sort out a solution / better way fairly easily.

Went to service the compressed Air drier for the above to fimd it fitted backwards.

Then spotted the intercooler hose not fitted correctly either and practically hanging out the intercooler, which needs a flush as it contains pcv oil.

just noticed that the radiator was cold, so looked at the boiler and pressure was too low. 5minutes on google, and figured out what needed doing so the heating is back on. Im new to boillers
currently trying to repair my car, think its a turbo problem. The last 2 nuts,very tricky to access, havent been moved for 15 years, going to try again with the impact drill
Also didnt like the white colour that my planet x fleegle bars came with, so now theyre blue, thanks to the powdercoating dept at work

Sticking caliper changed on the mazda and then a parasitic drain found on the the t4…

It’s been flattening the battery… so out with the multi meter….

Rebuilding our 215k XC90, finished the front end disassembly today – struts, control arms and driveshafts. Pretty much everything being replaced with new and the inner arches being cleaned and zinc epoxy’d before moving on to the back end then engine stuff.

I had forgotten about this thread, and I’ve been busy.

Changed the engine oil seal and thus the clutch on the car (Ford 6 speed boxes weigh a lot more than mk2 Golf 5 speed ones!)

Changed the chuck on my DeWalt combi drill, turns out you need to dismantle the whole gearbox to get to a bit of the shaft you can grip in a vice, and the gearbox turned out to contain 3 sets of planetary gears and lots of other bits. Does work beautifully now though for a good clean and grease.

Sabre saw needed some love as did the SDS drill, but relatively simple machines.

The heat pump tumble dryer needed the clever bit cleaning, you can’t do that everyone said. Of course you can, just needed a bit of care, patience and ultimately a hosepipe. Knocked about an hour of the typical drying time 🙂

Now repairing our house exterior, the render has failed and was trapping water into the brickwork. Once removed this has uncovered rotten wooden lintels and that the lead flashing had only been set into the render not the brickwork, so plenty more work to keep me busy 🙂

Repaired a crash-damaged Timberbell with bits of Sugru. Good as new now.

Yesterday I used gorilla glue to fix two snapped plastic sliding brackets on a Lakeland clothes horse which I had broken in a fit of stupidity a few weeks ago. Try as I might I still managed to get the stuff on my fingers!

As mentioned elsewhere the oil boiler. Turns out that heating oil pumps work better not full of dirt and rust.

Snow outside and no heating fixed for £2.25 (half a can of carb cleaner) and my time, and as snow had stopped me working on the roof I was looking for something useful to do.

Added bonus, running the burner outside of the boiler means you get to see the fire you make!

It just never ends.

This is a in progress report. Fuel lift pump on a B275 international Harvester (early 60s I think forget exact year). Ordered gasket. Remove to find stripped thread on one bolt. Heil coil kit 5/16″ ordered, replacement bols (cap head for easier access).

Leak around hydraulic control for linkage and and auxiliary diversion valve. Still under investigation. Don’t want to pull apart until I have bits aas I really need to use the tractor asap.

Heating oil system. The new and clear filter body showed up an air leak in the line somewhere. This turned out to be at a 6mm x 3/8″ fitting which promptly stripped with fingertip pressure on the spanners. Cut the fitting off, sleeved the 6mm with some 8mm, new fitting and joy!

carbon chainstay on the wife’s road bike, it been dropped on something and cracked quite nastily but not all the way though. So sanded it back “resined” in a carbon wrap seems to have done the trick and very solid. Not pretty but still to paint it.

@Klunk – unless that is carbon cloth, normal carbon wrap is just printed vinyl so not that strong. Hopefully the resin will bond with the cracked original CF though