A couple of years ago, I made a light for our porch. I wanted to ‘back-light’ the area under the porch with a subtle glow, when coming back home in the dark, handy when trying to find the front door keys. I used a clear section of hose pipe, several clips and a strip of LED tape, commonly available from lighting suppliers. I used a standard 12V power supply unit (PSU) from an electrical wholesalers’ and controlled the whole thing with a neat little PIR motion/ day-night detector. It all worked quite well until the other day.
FixItWorkshop, Jan’18, LED strip light outside light.
FixItWorkshop, Jan’18, LED strip light outside light/ PIR.
Whilst walking past the PIR detector the light came on in the usual way, but there was a strange ‘arcing’ noise, coming from the inspection panel, behind which I’d mounted the PSU. The PSU seemed a sensible place to begin investigation.
It’s really irritating when manufacturers’ chose to make it so that a casing for something does not come apart, without breaking in to it. This PSU was made this way and to gain access, I had to carefully lever the two halves of the glued casing apart with a screwdriver, breaking the glue holding it together. It wasn’t working anyway, so what did it matter.
Looking at the printed circuit board (PCB) within the plastic casing revealed that the mains feed, presented as an IEC Kettle type connector in this case, had a ‘dry-joint’ and had begun arcing (small sparks) which left unchecked, would have caused permanent damage to the PSU.
FixItWorkshop, Jan’18, LED strip light outside light, dry joint.
FixItWorkshop, Jan’18, LED strip light outside light, evidence of arcing.
With a small clean-up of the affected joint and a little soldering, the PSU was as good as new. Sadly, the casing won’t be the same again, but as it’s hidden out of sight, I decided that a good wrapping of electrical tape around the two halves of the PSU casing was all that was needed.
Cost of a replacement PSU: Circa £15. Cost of repair: A bit of solder and my time.
This lovely wall clock had been running perfectly fine until a friend of mine decided to move it temporarily from the wall, during a recent bout of home decorating. Now, I’m no expert on French wall clocks, but we think this one is circa 1920s or 30s, but either way, it’s a lovely thing to have in the house. This one is also fitted with Westminster chimes, so one assumes it was made for the English market as an export item, all those years ago.
Once the paint had dried, the owner decided to re-fit the clock to its hook on the wall, but it simply didn’t run, even when fully wound-up. Strange, what had happened?
Having a quick look at the front of the clock revealed nothing much. The pendulum was where it should be and appeared to swing freely, as a pendulum should, but there was a slightly strange ‘double-click’ tick-tock, indicating something wasn’t right. Clocks of this type should emit a definite even tick – tock -tick-tock. This one wasn’t. Hmm.
Before going to see the clock, I had already decided that the small spring that suspends the pendulum could have been broken, so I packed a few spares I happened to have, just in case. Opening up the mechanism revealed that the spring was actually intact, not bent or warped and therefore perfectly serviceable. It was fairly obvious almost immediately that the small clasp which secures the pendulum to the escapement lever was bent and the probably cause of the problem. All that was needed was a small amount of tinker-time to fix that with a small pair of pliers. However, that wasn’t the end of the story. Having undergone a ham-fisted removal from the wall, the escapement pendulum lever was now in a slightly different position and some more fettling was required to get the clock back ‘in-beat’, a common requirement on this mechanism type and often the reason why a clock won’t run, even when fully wound.
As the clock mechanism was out of the main casing (see photo) I decided to prop-up the mechanism on two tins of beans to allow the pendulum to hang over the side of a level table. This allowed me to access to the clock’s mechanism and hear what was going on clearly. A slight adjustment on the main pendulum lever to the right on this mechanism and the clock was back ‘in beat’, keeping good time.
After giving the case a general clean up and polish, I refitted the clock mechanism back inside it and hung the whole thing back on its hook, back where it belonged, on the wall.
Cost of a replacement: Sky’s the limit. Cost of repair; 1 cup of tea and 1 chocolate digestive.
Now, before I start the story, I have a confession. I technically stole this room fan. I didn’t pay for it, I just took it.
Just before Christmas 2017, I noticed that a room fan had been dumped in the small carpark at the end of my road. At first, I assumed that it was being left on a temporary basis, ready to be taken to the tip in a responsible manner, but as the days and weeks rolled on, it became clear that someone had carelessly left it there to turn to rust, which seemed a shame.
I did the only responsible thing; pick it up off the ground and take it back to the workshop in broad daylight.
Once I’d allowed it to dry out, I plugged it in and guess what, it powered up and ran on all three speeds without an issue. Its operation was very smooth and quiet. On closer inspection, it didn’t seem that old to me. How strange.
The major problem with the fan was that it didn’t stand up properly, in fact it would fall over easily. The fan’s base stand was a simple cross-section of metal feet, supporting the main pole which holds the fan itself. The whole assembly was loose and being held together with masking tape, which was far from ideal.
FixItWorkshop, Jan’18, fan repair, stand.
FixItWorkshop, Jan’18, fan repair, stand underneath.
Once I’d removed half-a-roll of masking tape from the stand, it revealed that one of the screws that holds the main pole to the stand was missing and the remaining three were loose. Could it really be that simple?
Once I’d straightened the slightly bent metal work in the vice, replaced the missing screw with one I already had in my nut and bolt pots, tightened the rest up, the stand performed as a stand once again and the whole thing worked without wobbling in a drunken manner.
FixItWorkshop, Jan’18, fan repair, stand repaired.
FixItWorkshop, Jan’18, fan repair, stand reassembled.
FixItWorkshop, Jan’18, fan repair, stand, missing screw.
Now, this probably wasn’t an expensive item. It’s not the finest example of good design or build quality. But it struck me then that the otherwise fine fan had been condemned on the one missing screw and the owners’ simple lack of screw driver aptitude. Crazy. I find it very sad that something with plenty of life left in it ends up dumped in a car park over one missing screw. Some people have a very disposable and wasteful view of everyday items.
FixItWorkshop, Jan’18, fan repaired.
I did repaint some of the rusty metal work after these photos were taken.
Cost of a new fan: £15 to over £100. Cost of repair; 5p.
A Fender Precision style Satellite P Bass guitar repair…
A friend of mine, who plays in a Portsmouth-based Psychedelic Garage Rock & Roll band, brought in a Satellite Bass Guitar with a few issues. Firstly the volume control was noisy and crackly and secondly, it was a little quiet. Not good for those moments where you need to go one higher, to eleven.
Opening up the compartment behind volume, tone and jack plug socket revealed messy wiring and dodgy connections. The owner had already supplied a replacement potentiometer for the volume control, so all I had to do was replace the one fitted, re-make the poor connections and give the wiring a general tidy-up.
FixItWorkshop Jan’18, Fender Precision style, Satellite P-Bass, wiring before work.
The guitar has Dimarzio ‘Model P’ pick-ups which can be wired many different ways, depending on the application and musical taste. This particular guitar, circa 1976, is a Fender Precision style Satellite bass (P-Bass) and has a modified ‘through neck’.
FixItWorkshop Jan’18, Fender Precision style, Satellite P-Bass, volume (top) and tone (bottom) controls.
Testing the guitar before commencing work revealed a slightly quiet, but mainly crackly output from the amplifier, the tone control was fine. The owner had also complained that the bass sometimes cut-out, mid song. Not ideal.
Removing the volume control was straightforward and only required a spanner to remove the nut, after pulling off the volume knob. The rest of the job just involved careful de-soldering, cutting out the poor wiring and replacing it with new wiring where needed and some heat shrink to tidy things up. Having not repaired an electric guitar before, I did make a quick wiring diagram for reference!
Once completed, I hooked it up to the amplifier again which revealed a much cleaner, crackle free note. Sadly, I can’t play the guitar, so I wasn’t able to test it properly!
On first impressions, this machine didn’t have a lot going for it. It had been stored in a garden shed, never the best place to store a sewing machine, it was dirty, neglected and broken. However, the weight of it indicated that this was a quality item and worth investigating.
FixItWorkshop, Nov’17, Elna SP Sewing Machine in case.
This machine comes from a different time in manufacturing where the focus was on quality rather than on price-point in the market and as a result, it’s made to outlive most people. In fact, many electric sewing machines made by Elna, Singer, Toyota, Janome, Brother and so on, built until the 1980s, are items of sheer mechanical excellence inside and should be cherished. Anyway, on with the problem and repair.
The owner had stashed the machine away many years ago and as a result, it had seized. Details of the fault were scant, I was just told that it didn’t work! Upon powering it up and operating the foot pedal, the hand wheel turned slightly before making a horrible mains AC hum. It was time to un-plug, rapidly.
FixItWorkshop, Nov’17, Elna SP.
There are exposed oiling points on the Elna SP, a nice maintenance touch, but clearly these hadn’t been used in many a year. Opening up the machine’s lid on top of the motor and bobbin transmission cover below revealed a lot of dirt and neglect which I first cleaned and then oiled lightly with special oil, in to all the moving parts. Automotive brake cleaner was used to remove old dirt and grease from the needle area and gears. New grease was then applied to the parts that needed it and more oil to other ‘metal on metal’ parts. The trick here is to not apply so much oil that it ends up on the fabric being stitched.
Once the machine was running smoothly again, I noticed that the bobbin shuttle wasn’t turning, not even a little bit. Not ideal. Time to delve a little deeper and on this machine, it meant complete disassembly of the bobbin shuttle assembly, which then revealed a stripped worm-drive hook gear (part 403030). This seems to be a fairly common issue on these machines as they get older.
FixItWorkshop, Nov’17, part 403030 for Elna SP.
Obtaining a new hook gear was quite easy via eBay; BSK (Bedford Sewing Knitting Machines) supplied the part for a reasonable £15.99 including P&P within 24 hours. Once fitted, it was a case of fine-tuning the bobbin/ hook timing to suit the needle. It’s a similar principle to valve and ignition timing on a petrol engine car, a process that will be familiar to anyone who’s ever done any spannering on an old Mini or Escort for example.
With the timing complete, a few tests using old material revealed that the machine was working once again with no missed stitches. I gave the machine a final polish with car wax before handing it back to the owner for my own satisfaction.
A simple repair…. That’s what I thought when a friend asked if I could look at his Gaggia Classic Coffee Machine, which had developed a nasty little leak when in use. The coffee wasn’t all that good either, due to the lack of pressure available, caused by the leak. In short, it needed attention.
FixItWorkshop, Oct’17, Gaggia Classic Coffee Machine, with a leak.
The owner had already bought a repair kit consisting of the main seals/ gaskets that commonly fail, so I thought no problem, take to pieces, replace seals, happy days. Er, not quite.
Once I’d stripped the machine down, pretty straightforward on these machines, the bare parts were exposed, which revealed the problem. After being fired up briefly, not to make coffee I’d like to point out, water could be seen escaping from the boiler unit, a alloy bodied lump of metal, split in two halves, held together by 4 screws. The boiler, as the name suggests, heats the water up with one heating element and creates steam for the steam wand, with another element, all part of the same module.
After separating the boiler halves, I traced the leak to a faulty gasket, but crucially, one side of the mating faces was heavily corroded and unlikely to re-seal with a new part fitted on its own. Remedial action was required.
This model is a few years old and a replacement boiler is still available on a few websites and prices vary from £40 to £60 at the time of writing, so at that price, starts to make the cost of repair unviable.
I decided that the face with the corrosion had enough material to withstand loosing some, so went about sanding the worst of the corrosion away before gradually moving on to smoother and smoother sandpaper.
Because Gaggia Classics are fairly common, I decided to video this repair process as I suspect the corrosion affects many machines with age and just fitting a repair kit won’t cure the problem on its own. See below. I hope it helps anyone else with the same machine facing the same problem.
Once I was happy with the new finish, I fitted a new gasket and reassembled the boiler. After putting it all back together, I purged several tanks of water through the system to remove debris, before attempting a cup of coffee. Once filled up with my favourite Lidl coffee, the machine performed well once again with no leaks and the end product tasted great.
Cost of a new machine: £249.00. Cost of repair: £4.50, plus time.
A noisy Kenwood Chef A701a gets a gearbox rebuild.
This Chef had been sleeping quietly in a kitchen cupboard for some time before being woken up to make cake mixtures once again. The owner had owned the mixer for many years from new and was sentimentally attached to it. I fully sympathise, they’re great machines. It had been used many times in the past and then packed away as new machines came and went. Having decided that there was still a place for the A701a, it was fired up.
The owner didn’t remember it being quite as noisy and wondered if something was wrong with it. She got in touch and brought it in to the workshop. After listening to the mixer at varying speeds, we agreed that perhaps it was a bit noisy and that further investigation was required.
At this stage I must confess at this repair has been on the bench for a long while..!
I think the A701 is my favourite Kenwood Chef product as it’s very elegant, beautifully proportioned and almost over-engineered. It comes from a time where built-in obsolescence was a swear word.
FixItWorkshop, Oct’17, Kenwood Chef, A701a.
On with the problem. After disconnecting the gearbox by removing the drive belt, I checked the motor for general wear and tear, the brushes and speed control mechanism and I concluded that it all seemed OK and working smoothly. The gearbox however did seem a bit noisy when turned manually, nothing hideously graunchy, but a little rough. To be honest, it would have probably survived, but I wanted to open up the gearbox to make sure that it was as it should be.
Whilst removing the Chef’s casing around the gearbox, I’d noticed traces of grease around the joints and various power take-offs. All models seem to do this to an extent, but this one seemed to be quite bad. Closer inspection revealed that some of the grease had escaped out of the seal between the two halves of the gearbox casing. Opening up the casing revealed that the grease that was left had been pushed to the corners of the space within the gearbox and that the gears were a bit dry, this was probably the root cause of the noise. The planet wheel that drives the beater was also bone dry.
FixItWorkshop, Oct’17, Kenwood Chef A701a, gearbox before cleaning.
FixItWorkshop, Oct’17, Kenwood Chef A701a, before cleaning- dirty sticky grease.
Luckily, there are plenty of suppliers who can supply rebuild kits for Kenwood Chef gearboxes, including new gears and grease. The gears in this seemed serviceable, but it seemed very sensible to replace the lubricant with the correct 130g of Kenwood gearbox grease, which is food safe. I used ‘Kenwood Chef Restore’, an eBay seller and the kit was a reasonable £10.99, including P&P. The kit included the main gearbox grease, white grease for the planet gear and sealant for the gearbox casing.
FixItWorkshop, Oct’17, Kenwood Chef A701a, repair kit from Kenwood Chef Restore, eBay.
Before replacing anything, the first job was to clean out all traces of the original grease which had gone very sticky and was contaminated with general wear. The first pass clean involved using paper toweling, followed by water and detergent, before a final clean with brake cleaner, which removed the last few traces of grease and dirt.
FixItWorkshop, Oct’17, Kenwood Chef A701a, adding new gearbox grease.
FixItWorkshop, Oct’17, Kenwood Chef A701a, adding new gearbox grease- note spacers.
FixItWorkshop, Oct’17, Kenwood Chef A701a, showing idle gear.
FixItWorkshop, Oct’17, Kenwood Chef A701a, new grease.
FixItWorkshop, Oct’17, Kenwood Chef A701a, before grease.
FixItWorkshop, Oct’17, Kenwood Chef A701a, planet wheel grease.
FixItWorkshop, Oct’17, Kenwood Chef A701a, parts before reassembly to the main body.
With the gearbox refilled and resealed making sure the spacers were re-fitted to the correct parts, the drive belt re-fitted with just enough slack, the gears sounded much sweeter with the final parts of the casing reassembled. One last point to note is that I used silicone sealant on the blender attachment power take-off plate in replacement to the one fitted, since the original seal was well past it (see below).
FixItWorkshop, Oct’17, Kenwood Chef A701a, belt in situ.
FixItWorkshop, Oct’17, Kenwood Chef A701a, adjustment.
FixItWorkshop, Oct’17, Kenwood Chef A701a, cover fitted.
FixItWorkshop, Oct’17, Kenwood Chef A701a, silicone sealant.
As a finishing touch, I replaced the existing machine feet which had turned to mush with replacements from Sussex Spares (eBay shop) for a very reasonable £2.70, delivered.
The Chef was now ready to prepare cake mixtures again.
Cost of new machine: £300 and up. Cost of replacement parts: £13.69 (plus my time).
A colleague of mine came in with a broken microphone, which is part of a Lucky Voice karaoke set and retails for about £60.00 on Amazon. The microphone had worked pretty well, but recently had lost its ‘X-Factor’ somewhat.
The microphone is fairly standard fare and connects to a standard XLR plug and socket arrangement. As this part is usually under the most stress as the singer moves about, it seemed sensible to have a look at that first. Upon connection to my amp, there was a huge amount of crackling which seemed to coincide with cable movements at the microphone end. Swapping the lead for a known good one I had proved that the microphone was fine, but the lead not so fine.
Only one screw holds the plug together and straightaway, the problem presented itself.
The main core had detached from the connector, as the outer cable sheathing has come away from the XLR connector body clamp. Not ideal.
A quick strip back and solder job and the wires were connected back where they needed to be. A little dab of hot-melt glue on the cable grip and a re-tighten and the cable was not going to move anyway.
FixItWorkshop, Oct’17, X-Factor Microphone.
FixItWorkshop, Oct’17, X-Factor Microphone, XLR.
With the plug re-assembled and the screw put back, the microphone tested perfectly on the amp, ready for karaoke once more.
Cost of a new similar lead: £10, Cost of repair: 15 minutes, dab of glue and solder. Nice.
About a year ago, we bought an Early Learning Centre Freddy the Fish Bubble Machine for our daughter and it’s been a great addition to summer garden fun, as it unleashes thousands of bubbles per minute. It’s been truly bubble-tastic.
However, it’s decided to become a little temperamental of late when switched on. With good batteries and a full tank of bubble fuel, the machine would sometimes cough and sputter and generally be a disappointment in the bubble-making department.
The toy is shaped like a fish, like the name suggests and has a small reservoir for the bubble mix and a carousel of bubble wands operated by a motor which is ‘blown’ by a small fan inside, to inflate the bubbles to the optimal size.
The fault: The fan would sometimes, by itself, vary in speed, reducing the speed of the air though the bubble wand carousel, which would limit the quantity and quality of bubbles produced. Most disappointing.
The toy is held together by small Pozi-drive screws and the whole things comes apart in two halves. It gets a bit tricky inside as there are a few small components held in place using the internal plastic parts. After testing the batteries, I thought I’d start by testing the action of the on/off switch which seemed to click on/ off OK, but I wondered what the quality of the electrical mechanism was like. A quick test with the multi-meter revealed slightly variable resistances, indicating either damp or dirt had entered the switch, highly likely considering what the toy does.
FixItWorkshop, Sept’17, Early Learning Centre Freddy Fish Bubble Machine
The switch is reasonably well protected from the elements, but I suspect it had become immersed in water, not really what the switch or toy is meant to handle. It’s not Ingress Protected Rated (IP).
The switch isn’t really designed to be repaired, but after a few minutes bending the small tabs holding it together, I revealed the switch contacts. A quick clean with switch cleaner and blue towel and the switch was working as it should once more. Once reassembled, the toy performed well once again and was soon filling the garden with bubbly magic.
FixItWorkshop, Sept’17, Freddy Fish Bubble Machine, switch wipers
FixItWorkshop, Sept’17, Freddy Fish Bubble Machine, switch
FixItWorkshop, Sept’17, Freddy Fish Bubble Machine, in bits
FixItWorkshop, Sept’17, Freddy Fish Bubble Machine, switch inside
Someone got in touch regarding a family heirloom clock that wasn’t running. The Bentima clock itself was in good overall condition and considering its age, had been in the same family for a couple of generations or so. The owner really missed the clock ticking and chimes on the hour.
FixItWorkshop, Sep’17, Bentima mantelpiece clock.
Access to the clock’s mechanism is pretty straightforward on this type of clock as there’s a simple wooden door on the back with a catch. Opening up that door reveals a weighted pendulum with escapement above. It was clear that someone, at some point, had replaced the pendulum spring and that all that was probably required was a minor adjustment to make the ‘tick match the tock’, or in other words, get the clock back ‘in beat’…tick-tock-tick-tock-tick-tock… evenly spread.
On this mechanism, all that was needed was a level surface and a small flat-bladed screwdriver to slightly move the pendulum pivot point. Once running, a small adjustment to slow-down the running was needed (time was too fast), but this was easily adjusted using the knurled screw on the pendulum. I recommended that if a flat level surface at home couldn’t be found, 1 penny pieces could be used under the clock’s feet to restore balance. A nice little repair.
Cost of a clock like this: Check eBay. Cost of repair; my time.
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