The Future of Repairing ... (list those soon to be extinct..)

[GH85Carrera]

We have a old Kodak Versamat aerial film processor. It was designed and built in the 60s. It was bought originally by the US Navy and put in a wooden crate and stored un-used until the late 2000s. The Navy had it has a backup film processor on board an aircraft carrier. We bought it cheap and used it only for a few years. It just sits there taking up floor space now. I could repair it and get it running but not much need for a B&W film processor now. It will sit there until we need the floor space and we haul it to the dump.

[strupgolf]

We have, or had, a TV repairman in town, and had been there forever. I had a old RCA tube type that had problems. This would have been years ago. But, that TV still works fine and my wife still likes it. The pic is not what you see today but it's still a picture. Great sound and a good picture. Oh well, hope it lasts.

[JJ 911SC]

Originally Posted by strupgolf

We have, or had, a TV repairman in town...

I took TV repair in Hight School back in early 70's. We had 100's a books for every TV/company produced to dates.

Join the Navy and maybe fix one TV but it get me in the Electronic Warfare trade.

Back then every pharmacy had a tube checker... and Radio Shack had 1000s of piece part. Now a day they got less 50!

[jorian]

Timely this thread.

My office chair stopped cooperating (won't keep the position I like). So I had a repair guy here about an hour ago.
He fiddled for about 15 minutes and declared the chair unfixable. Said that the chair would have to come apart. I'm thinking, "OK have at it."
"No we can't do that but we can probably get you a discount on a new one." Nice guy but about as helpful as t1ts on a Nun.
I'm sure that once it's apart it will obvious what to do, even if it means setting the "right" position permanently. So I will have to transport it home and blow off a half day doing what I would have happily paid someone else to do. Most people would likely buy a new one and send the otherwise perfectly good chair to a landfill.

[herr_oberst]

My dad ran a punch-card machine when I was a kid...probably not too many punch-card machine repairmen around anymore...

[targa911S]

sadly I will throw gunsmithing in there as well.

[JD159]

Fixed late grandfathers craftsman snowblower. Needed drive belt, auger belt and drive disc. Called sears foreign support parts, gave them model number. Couldn't find it. She asked how old it is, I said 25 years. I could hear over the phone her brain exploding at such a drastic deviation from the script. Sorry, parts are long gone.

Called some local small motor repair, he had them in stock.

He told me that all the parts that will break, are universal. The parts that aren't universal are never going to break anyway. When I dissected the track driven beast, his was right on the money.

Love old stuff...

[targa911S]

then you must like me..

[M.D. Holloway]

My Son has 'Fixed' his riding mower many times over. The latest 'fix' is to install a motorcycle muffler to the engine. Why? Cuz when your 15 that's what you do!?!

[manbridge 74]

Relationships.....

[rayng]

organs. in the future, we'll clone our own livers, hearts, pancreas, kidneys, prostates, brain, teeth and other bits grown from our own cells. unfortunately for most of us, we don't have the technology to do this yet.

we ought to start now by taking and freezing a good sample of our major organs, combine them with stem cells and grow the organs in a tissue bank. then harvest them when we need a replacement. no need to fix an old broken heart when we can clone then transplant a fully grown 18 year old heart.

[sammyg2]

It's not the products, it's the people.
I've watched my dad spend hours repairing 15 year old christmas light strings. I mentioned to him that new strings were $3 a piece and he said good, he just saved $9.
To him, spending time fixing something is time well spent and money well saved. I inhereted allot of that. Unfortunately it'll prolly die in my family with me.

Over the past few years I've posted about fixing all sort of things like replacing the motor for my HVAC blower (which went short to ground), repairing the thermostat switch, rebuilding the swimming pool pump motor and replacing the seal in the pump, repairing the washing machine (twice) by replacing the rubber clutch center member once and replacing the ratchetting pawls in the agitator another time.
I bought another spare pool pump offn ebay cause it was cheep and I wanted to have a spare just in case, but it needs bearings and a seal. I just ordered that stuff so I'll have something to do this weekened.
Oh and my 13 year old sawzall from harbor freight finally gave up the ghost and started slipping, I plan to take it apart and see if i can fix it before I go throw away $21 on a new one.

[Jrboulder]

Originally Posted by sammyg2

Oh and my 13 year old sawzall from harbor freight finally gave up the ghost and started slipping, I plan to take it apart and see if i can fix it before I go throw away $21 on a new one.

The switch on my HF sawzall broke and they wanted $22 for a new switch. Yeah.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

I agree with Sammy on the value of fixing things versus buying new. I find fixing things to be satisfying. Buying something new? Not so much. New stuff tends to be crap - all plastic, made-in-China garbage that's prone to breaking in short order to make you pay for it 3, 4, 5 times anyway. I'd much rather fix something than buy it again. Case in point - I went to look at a wood stove yesterday. Good lord, the ones in the local HD / Lowes were junk. They felt like they were made of sheet metal, not a big, heavy, honkin' piece of cast iron which will last 100+ years (that's what I'm looking for!) And they were EXPENSIVE. $800 for a friggin' wood stove? Really guys? It's a wood stove. About as low-tech / basic as you can go. I just want to get some heat in my workshop without running the propane heaters all the time... I went to Craigslist and found a great looking used one a guy is getting rid of - exactly what I'm looking for. $250 out the door... The way it ought to be.

The problem is it becomes burdensome. I only have so much free time in a day and I like some of it to be spent not being a fix-it guy all the time. Sometimes I just want to enjoy the stuff I have and live life normally without constantly feeling like I'm in a mad rush to fix whatever broke today.

Quality has really gone down the dumper and I sadly see little likelihood that this will change anytime soon. We've become a fat, bloated, throwaway society dependent on Chinese slave labor rather than a culture which values a few, good, quality things and the better life they enable us to have. We've really lost our way.

[Scuba Steve]

Originally Posted by Porsche-O-Phile

The problem is it becomes burdensome. I only have so much free time in a day and I like some of it to be spent not being a fix-it guy all the time. Sometimes I just want to enjoy the stuff I have and live life normally without constantly feeling like I'm in a mad rush to fix whatever broke today.

This is the way I feel about the house sometimes. Which leads me to...

Neighborhoods. We're friends with several other young couples/families who are only interested in living somewhere 0-5 years old. Once their place reaches that magic age they get the itch to move because they're building bigger/better, the water heater and everything else aren't old and scary, and even though they have no kids/none are in school yet they heard that they're building a new school farther out that way. I doubt this is a new phenomenon though, just something I've noticed.

[herr_oberst]

Originally Posted by sammyg2

It's not the products, it's the people.
I've watched my dad spend hours repairing 15 year old christmas light strings. I mentioned to him that new strings were $3 a piece and he said good, he just saved $9.
To him, spending time fixing something is time well spent and money well saved. I inhereted allot of that. Unfortunately it'll prolly die in my family with me.

Over the past few years I've posted about fixing all sort of things like replacing the motor for my HVAC blower (which went short to ground), repairing the thermostat switch, rebuilding the swimming pool pump motor and replacing the seal in the pump, repairing the washing machine (twice) by replacing the rubber clutch center member once and replacing the ratchetting pawls in the agitator another time.
I bought another spare pool pump offn ebay cause it was cheep and I wanted to have a spare just in case, but it needs bearings and a seal. I just ordered that stuff so I'll have something to do this weekened.
Oh and my 13 year old sawzall from harbor freight finally gave up the ghost and started slipping, I plan to take it apart and see if i can fix it before I go throw away $21 on a new one.

Hell, it's good to have this knowledge even when buying new. I can't count the number of times I've had to take something brand-spanking new apart and fix it because it arrived broken and I didn't want to drive back or send it back...

[sugarwood]

On the flip side, the DIY potential is higher than ever with all this internet information on how to fix things.
I just replaced a broken laptop screen for $100, instead of buying a new laptop for $300 b/c of a 3:00 Youtube video.
10 years ago, I'd never know how to do this.

As Porsche-O-Phile said, I think it has to do with the fact that people are over-scheduled in their lives.
As a Sammy said above, his dad spent hours fixing $3 Xmas light. It's b/c he had the time.
Today, he'd be driving his kids to 5 different sports camps.

The other factor is that too many kids are going to college, and not learning trade skills.

The biggest driver is the ultra low cost to replace things.
Today, you can even buy a used one from Ebay for 50% off, so that is even more enticing supply competition against fixing the old.

The local shoe guy is always jam packed when I go there.
Most people wear disposable shoes, and a $50 resole is really only for high end shoes now.

Porsche-O-Phile, the $800 wood stoves have a built in shipping cost.

By the way, they've been talking about the "disposable society" since at least the 1950s.
http://life.time.com/culture/throwaway-living-when-tossing-it-all-was-all-the-rage/#1

[GH85Carrera]

I have my grandfathers old 1950s Sears electric drill. I keep it only as a neat item. It is an aluminum case single insulated no ground wire 3/8 inch wimpy drill with a cord. My 18 volt cordless plastic drill is 1000 times more useful.

I do have my father in law's 1/2 inch chuck big bad mama jama torque monster HEAVY drill. It too is aluminum body style single insulated but for drilling a 2.5 inch hole in a 2x4 it does not slow down and my cordless drill just wimpers in fear. If you get it off center and the bit lock up in the wood and you are holding hon you go for a ride in a circle real fast.

The old drills can be fixed but they still work just fine. When the cordless drill dies it will just go in the trash and get replaced.

[asphaltgambler]

Originally Posted by doug_porsche

I saw an interview with Jay Leno and he was talking about one of his old cars and he said:
"These cars were built back when technology was expensive and labor cheap. Now, it's the other way around--labor's the killer............................................ ..................diagnosed the problem, fixed the problem and reinstalled the now working alternator on the Jeep. (I think all this cost us less than $40us). It was amazing to watch.

My perspective on this (and not to hijack the thread) is that the service industry is too front loaded with bloated administrative costs which adds almost no value to the customer. Good examples currently are the health care and auto repair industry.

The actual provider of the service receives little; comparatively to the final charge to the 'customer'. In the DC / metro area the average auto repair shop labor time is $120/hr and up. The technician / mechanic is making less per billed hour today than 20 years ago..................................but the billed labor rate has almost doubled.

Somewhere along the way, whether it be repairing a toaster or medical care, the admin costs have gotten out of hand.


So I disagree with statement labor is expensive and technology is cheap. Billed labor is expensive.

[74-911]

Originally Posted by sugarwood

........The biggest driver is the ultra low cost to replace things.

I don't know if this was a case of he just didn't want to mess with it or if he had no idea what was wrong or ?:

A neighbor recently sat a Craftsman chain saw out by the curb with his garbage. Asked him what was with the chain saw? he said he couldn't get it to start and was fed up with it and had just bought an electric one and said I could have it if I wanted it. Knew what the problem was as soon as i picked it up: the weighted fuel filter/pickup was rattling around loose in the fuel tank. The fuel line had disintegrated. I believe with an hour or so to disassemble the fuel system, replace the lines and clean the carb I will have a perfectly good chain saw and the price was certainly right.

Then I shall have the quandry of do I give it back to him or keep it ??