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Mr Bill
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Re: Anyone repair anything today?

Tue Mar 21, 2017 1:43 pm

Currently trying to resurrect a Lava Lamp that sat in storage for 15 years. Half the wax is floating half is sunk. I'm guessing I will need to find a refill replacement because, so far, its refusing to do any Lava action. I suppose loss of some critical volatiles has altered the density contrast.
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ludi
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Re: Anyone repair anything today?

Tue Mar 21, 2017 1:52 pm

Mr Bill wrote:
Currently trying to resurrect a Lava Lamp that sat in storage for 15 years. Half the wax is floating half is sunk. I'm guessing I will need to find a refill replacement because, so far, its refusing to do any Lava action. I suppose loss of some critical volatiles has altered the density contrast.


Sounds like the heavy and light portions separated. If you can remix them, it might work again.

Or...track down an old Red Comet fire grenade and you can even mix the original patented wax formula :-D
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Mr Bill
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Re: Anyone repair anything today?

Tue Mar 21, 2017 2:50 pm

ludi wrote:
Mr Bill wrote:
Currently trying to resurrect a Lava Lamp that sat in storage for 15 years. Half the wax is floating half is sunk. I'm guessing I will need to find a refill replacement because, so far, its refusing to do any Lava action. I suppose loss of some critical volatiles has altered the density contrast.


Sounds like the heavy and light portions separated. If you can remix them, it might work again.

Or...track down an old Red Comet fire grenade and you can even mix the original patented wax formula :-D
Ah hah, after googling about this, it seems that the heavy solvent dissolved in the wax to make it denser than water may have evaporated from part of the wax. Found this oozinggoo formula on line that jives with a youtube video I found. As an environmental chemist, I don't really want to use perchloroethylene or carbon tetrachloride to up the wax density. The bottle fell on its side in storage so it looks to me like there was indeed a loss of heavy volatiles dissolved in the wax.
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Ifalna
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Re: Anyone repair anything today?

Sat Mar 25, 2017 9:25 am

My mouse (Logitech G700s) annoyed me with double clicks for quite some time now.
Finally found the courage to repair it following this guide: http://www.instructables.com/id/Repair- ... he-spring/

Well, so far everything is great again. ^-^
The backbone of modern industrial society is, and for the foreseeable future will be, the use of electrical Power.
 
Darkmage
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Re: Anyone repair anything today?

Sat Mar 25, 2017 10:01 am

Captain Ned wrote:
Add to that my rapidly-ebbing desire to be busting my knuckles on my back on a cold VT garage floor in the winter and I've gone fully to "write the check". Plus, if they did it worng, they pay to fix it.
It's funny, but this year I finally took the same attitude with my taxes.
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just brew it!
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Re: Anyone repair anything today?

Sat Mar 25, 2017 5:49 pm

Darkmage wrote:
Captain Ned wrote:
Add to that my rapidly-ebbing desire to be busting my knuckles on my back on a cold VT garage floor in the winter and I've gone fully to "write the check". Plus, if they did it worng, they pay to fix it.

It's funny, but this year I finally took the same attitude with my taxes.

The complexity of my return ramped up gradually, as I went from being a straight W-2 employee to having other sources of outside income to being fully self-employed. Every year or two another couple of forms or schedules would get added, and I'd be like "well this isn't much worse than last year", and continued doing it myself. Now that I'm (mostly) back to being just a wage slave again, doing them myself feels stupidly easy.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
 
ludi
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Re: Anyone repair anything today?

Sun Apr 02, 2017 12:09 am

Cleaned drains in two bathrooms. One was doable from the top after removing the popup plug and ball/stem hardware. That one took 15 minutes. The other was filled with a tangle of hair which served as an excellent strainer and growth medium for anything else that ever went down the drain, hence full disassembly of the ball-stem and P-trap. That one took 4+ hours, including the loss of the ball-stem gasket seat and requisite two trips to town, followed by malcontented muttering and one trip to Amazon.
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llisandro
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Re: Anyone repair anything today?

Sat Apr 08, 2017 10:13 pm

I replaced the shattered screen on my wife's iPhone 5s last and forgot to take pictures! This is the second time I've taken her phone apart (dead mic), so the tools I bought have paid for themselves already.

Last time around I was almost screwed as the #000 phillips I got in the set from ifixit was WAY bigger than 000. I found an old crappy "precision" driver that damn near stripped a screw, just barely got it out.

So this time around, I bought a set of Wiha drivers. Man, they're nice 8)
 
Mr Bill
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Re: Anyone repair anything today?

Mon Apr 10, 2017 11:39 am

Not sure this counts as a "repair" spent the weekend digging ditch to put three 6inch x 20 foot plastic irrigation pipe (PIP) in a couple places around the edge of my yard to keep the water flowing this year rather than slowing down and dumping dirt and flooding my yard. Managed to get a half bubble slope for the 40 foot run and a quarter bubble slope for the 20 foot run. Most everyone here with the water right can buy a share of water (~$100/yr) to tap off with an irrigation pump and water their yard or gardens all summer long.
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cheesyking
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Re: Anyone repair anything today?

Mon Apr 10, 2017 12:15 pm

Mr Bill wrote:
Not sure this counts as a "repair" spent the weekend digging ditch to put three 6inch x 20 foot plastic irrigation pipe (PIP) in a couple places around the edge of my yard to keep the water flowing this year rather than slowing down and dumping dirt and flooding my yard. Managed to get a half bubble slope for the 40 foot run and a quarter bubble slope for the 20 foot run. Most everyone here with the water right can buy a share of water (~$100/yr) to tap off with an irrigation pump and water their yard or gardens all summer long.

I'd say that counts, you were repairing your yard.
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derFunkenstein
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Re: Anyone repair anything today?

Mon Apr 10, 2017 12:36 pm

The roof of my car is pretty flexible, and I think hail over the years had caused the paint to crack and peel, and some minor rust spots appeared. This weekend, I sanded that sumbitch down and primed it. Unfortunately it'll take a couple weeks to get the custom-made color-matching paint delivered, and it's hailing again today. :-/
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Captain Ned
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Re: Anyone repair anything today?

Mon Apr 10, 2017 12:37 pm

Well, you'll get plenty of practice applying and sanding out primer coats.
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derFunkenstein
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Re: Anyone repair anything today?

Mon Apr 10, 2017 12:44 pm

Captain Ned wrote:
Well, you'll get plenty of practice applying and sanding out primer coats.

:cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry:
I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.
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Mr Bill
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Re: Anyone repair anything today?

Mon Apr 10, 2017 3:11 pm

derFunkenstein wrote:
Captain Ned wrote:
Well, you'll get plenty of practice applying and sanding out primer coats.

:cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry:
My problem is that just the clear coat is peeling off the top of my car just behind the sunroof. The local paintshop says nearly a grand to fix it (because they say they have to do the whole top panel). Wondering what I can do to keep the clear coat from peeling more. Current patch is maybe a foot by six inches.
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derFunkenstein
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Re: Anyone repair anything today?

Mon Apr 10, 2017 3:40 pm

Well, you can, but sanding finished paint is a bitch. I sanded with 120-grit paper for a couple hours, and I got it nice and scuffed. Now I'm priming and sanding and washing and drying the roof ad nauseum in an effort to fill in the spots where the paint went missing. Three coats seems to have made a decent difference, since the primer does grind down pretty well. But there's more to go and I can't drive the car while I have the whole roof taped off since I can't open the door or see out the windows with the newspaper covering them. Incidentally, that's all the use I have for print media. :lol:

And a quick inspection shows nothing damaged. Fortunately the hail today was just pea-sized ice drops.
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ludi
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Re: Anyone repair anything today?

Mon Apr 10, 2017 4:17 pm

Mr Bill wrote:
My problem is that just the clear coat is peeling off the top of my car just behind the sunroof. The local paintshop says nearly a grand to fix it (because they say they have to do the whole top panel). Wondering what I can do to keep the clear coat from peeling more. Current patch is maybe a foot by six inches.

Ask a local tint shop to do a custom application of 3M ClearBra, or if you have some skill at painting, you can tape off the panel yourself and apply an automixing 2-component epoxy clearcoat. Haven't had a chance to use one of these types yet, but my BIL highly recommended it after self-performing a complete repaint and clearcoat of the family van's hood.
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the
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Re: Anyone repair anything today?

Mon Apr 10, 2017 11:52 pm

I got to play around inside of a Christie Boxer 4K30 projector today. Couldn't fix it.
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notfred
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Re: Anyone repair anything today?

Tue Apr 11, 2017 8:31 am

30,000 lumen :o
 
SecretSquirrel
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Re: Anyone repair anything today?

Tue Apr 11, 2017 5:25 pm

notfred wrote:
30,000 lumen :o


And 160lbs....

That thing might just set my screen a blaze if I were to set it in my theatre. That assumes I could actually support the thing from the rafters. Can't imagine was a set of replacement lamps must cost.

Patrick M
 
toki
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Re: Anyone repair anything today?

Tue Apr 11, 2017 8:01 pm

Ifalna wrote:
My mouse (Logitech G700s) annoyed me with double clicks for quite some time now.
Finally found the courage to repair it following this guide: http://www.instructables.com/id/Repair- ... he-spring/

Well, so far everything is great again. ^-^
I have tried this regrettably. The springs in those things are so tiny that I couldn't actually get them back on correctly. Also my eyes aren't the greatest anymore. I have a hard time being able to see things when they are really small or have really small print. Everytime I would think I have everything back in place, the springs would pop back off.
 
ludi
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Re: Anyone repair anything today?

Tue Apr 11, 2017 9:49 pm

More door upholstery repairs in the 2005 CR-V, with my handy assistant, the bottomless can of 3M Super-77.

Sister previously had to do it in an '01 Civic she had for a while. One of the areas where Honda's early-to-mid 2000s cost-cutting shows through, unfortunately.
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notfred
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Re: Anyone repair anything today?

Wed Apr 12, 2017 11:51 am

Fixed one of those floor standing uplighters last night. Turns out there's a switch on the top to make sure that you put the top bit on when you assembled it. I guess whoever had assembled it (got it passed along in the family) hadn't done it up very tight and after time it had backed off enough for the switch to trip out. Of course I only found this after disassembling everything else like the actual on/off switch and checking the bulb and bulb wiring etc.
 
Ifalna
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Re: Anyone repair anything today?

Wed Apr 12, 2017 12:51 pm

toki wrote:
Ifalna wrote:
My mouse (Logitech G700s) annoyed me with double clicks for quite some time now.
Finally found the courage to repair it following this guide: http://www.instructables.com/id/Repair- ... he-spring/

Well, so far everything is great again. ^-^
I have tried this regrettably. The springs in those things are so tiny that I couldn't actually get them back on correctly. Also my eyes aren't the greatest anymore. I have a hard time being able to see things when they are really small or have really small print. Everytime I would think I have everything back in place, the springs would pop back off.

Oh yes, you need a good light source and quite a bit of patience for the reassembly. It is doable though.

Think it took me around 15 minutes worth of careful tries to get the copper spring back in.
Mouse is still working like new. :D
The backbone of modern industrial society is, and for the foreseeable future will be, the use of electrical Power.
 
the
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Re: Anyone repair anything today?

Fri Apr 14, 2017 2:14 pm

Had Christie come out and repair the projector themselves yesterday.

Image

Image

And a few more pictures here.
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ludi
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Re: Anyone repair anything today?

Fri Apr 14, 2017 3:24 pm

the wrote:
Had Christie come out and repair the projector themselves yesterday.

Okay, somebody clearly spent too much time designing plot-critical junction panels and computer cores for StarTrek sets before signing on to this project.
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confusedpenguin
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Re: Anyone repair anything today?

Fri Apr 14, 2017 8:41 pm

Fixed the water pump on my car. Stupid front wheel drive so the engine is mounted sideways. The water pump was 25 bucks, and two gallons of antifreeze was 20 bucks. So, about 45 bucks to fix it myself. Would have cost at least $300 for a mechanic to do it.
 
just brew it!
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Re: Anyone repair anything today?

Fri Apr 14, 2017 9:18 pm

Not really today, but it was finally declared "done" today. We still have an old-school waterbed. Every so often, it springs a leak. The latest patch (put on a few days ago) seems to be holding, so I just detached the adapter for the fill/drain kit from the faucet in the master bath, and put everything away.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
 
cheesyking
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Re: Anyone repair anything today?

Sun Apr 16, 2017 7:17 am

Replaced the window regulator in my car. That's all of them done now. Considering the car is now 17 years old I'm really pleased with how easy it is to get decent spares for it. £20 was all it took to get a complete new 3rd party regulator (less motor which is fine still).

It really pays to drive a car that's one of europe's most popular taxis if you want to keep it working on the cheap.
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ludi
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Re: Anyone repair anything today?

Sun Apr 16, 2017 11:07 pm

Viewsonic LCD monitor, multiple swollen capacitors leading to erratic transitions to sleep-mode and lockups. I've seen a few old Dell monitors recently that showed signs of PSU failure with no visible evidence at all, but this one was the classic swap-and-fix.

Monitor isn't worth much (widescreen, VGA-input only) but the capacitors were pulled from old motherboards that died of other causes, so...
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Mr Bill
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Re: Anyone repair anything today?

Mon Apr 17, 2017 1:02 pm

just brew it! wrote:
Not really today, but it was finally declared "done" today. We still have an old-school waterbed. Every so often, it springs a leak. The latest patch (put on a few days ago) seems to be holding, so I just detached the adapter for the fill/drain kit from the faucet in the master bath, and put everything away.
I had a queen sized older ones for nearly 20 years. And prior to that I had a double for from 7th grade through HS. But the bed got brittle while being stored for a year when I moved here. Someday, gonna get another.
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