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Qualcast strimmer issues

Always keep your garden tidy.

Top tips for keeping your petrol strimmer running like a ‘Rolls Royce’

Make sure the fuel you have in the tank is fresh and not from three years ago (it goes off)
Keep the spark plug gap set within the manufacturer’s tolerances
Lubricate all moving parts lightly with a generic spray oil each time you use the strimmer

Someone got in touch with a strimmer that would not start. Anything that involves moving parts and petrol always gets my attention, so I accepted the challenge. Once in the workshop, I tried to start it using the pull cord and as predicted, it wouldn’t run, not even a cough. A little bit of carb cleaner sprayed in to the barrel, a pull of the starter cord and the engine did fire, suggesting that the engine could run. More analysis was required.

The strimmer had not been started for many years, so the first job was to remove the old fuel from the tank as old fuel goes off after a while. The engine on this strimmer is a two-stroke design, so the special two-stroke oil must be pre-mixed with the fuel in the right proportion before re-filling the tank.

While sorting the fuel out, I noticed the first fault. Both flow and return fuel pipes were cracked and one had come apart in the fuel tank, meaning that no fuel would flow to the carburettor. No fuel, no work.

To start most petrol strimmers, mowers and chainsaws from cold, a petrol primer pump is usually used to fill the carburettor with the right amount of fuel and this one was no different, but in this case, the pump was cracked.

After fitting some new fuel lines, a fuel filter and primer pump, the engine fired up and ran well again, ready for more garden work. See slide show.

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Cost of replacement: £80 and up. Cost of repair: £7.53 plus my time and custard creams.

Smoky Kenwood Chef A901E

Another Chef enters the workshop with a smoking habit that’s hard to kick.

Top tips for keeping your Chef running smoothly, for longer:

Keep all moving parts free from dirt and old cake mix
If the feet are squashed, change them. The gap allows airflow to the motor
Keep the hinge mechanism lightly lubricated

FixItWorkshop, Worthing, May’19. Kenwood Chef A901E (1980’s model)

This A901E Chef had a developed a smoking habit. Due to age, one of the capacitors had failed on the speed control circuitry making a lot of smoke while in use. An adjacent resistor had also split in half during the failure.

Despite a smoky situation, there was hope for the Chef.

Removing the motor on these mixers is pretty straightforward. Just remove the blender accessory power take off cover and remove some screws. Lift up the top half of the mixer on the hinge and you’ll get access to the base of the motor area. After you’ve removed the belt, the motor should come out. There’s a bit more to it actually, but there isn’t much holding that motor in.

The later A901E features a better speed control circuit than the earlier A901 and it’s also made on proper circuit board, rather than just soldered-together components.

With this machine, the correct repair kit was obtained and fitted, so the circuit was as good as new and wouldn’t smoke anymore.

I treated this Chef’s motor to new motor brushes since the old ones were worn. I also fitted new feet, as the existing ones were squashed and one was completely missing.

I was about to sign the job off , when I noticed a small tear in the outer cable flex. I couldn’t let the Chef out of the workshop like that, so I had to replace it with a new piece.

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After some fettling, the machine was running like clockwork, once again.

Cost of replacement: £000s. Cost of repair: £12.74 plus my time and several ginger nut biscuits.

A bit of 70’s fun: Sona J996 Coffee Percolator

An office find, escapes the scrap yard.

Despite the 1970’s kitsch-ness of the electric percolator, they are very good at making coffee and the delightful coffee smell you get when brewing-up is sublime. Here’s an advert from the time.

FixItWorkshop, Worthing, May’19, Sona advert.

FixItWorkshop, Worthing, May’19, Sona coffee percolator.

Top tips for keeping your coffee percolator in good order:

Descale using a kettle descaling solution as needed
Keep the coffee strainer clear of debris
Make sure the lid always fits between the strainer and the percolator body

A colleague found this percolator while clearing out an abandoned office cupboard. I suspect that this one might have been bought as a wedding present way back and had ended up in the office when someone had decided play the role of barista at work.

It was missing its power lead and was headed for the recycle bin, when I intervened.

The power lead needed was an obsolete design used on British appliances of the era and was similar in design to the more modern and current, IEC C13 or ‘kettle lead’. However, modern kettle leads did not fit this percolator.

More drastic action was needed. Luckily, I had an old appliance I no longer needed, so I scavenged a board mounted IEC C13 socket from it and replaced the one originally fitted.

After some soldering and a bit of jiggery-pokery, this Sona Percolator now brews coffee using an up-to-date power lead.

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Cost of replacement: £40. Cost of upgrade: £0.

Dyson DC40 missing a beat

A small repair on a Dyson DC40 leads to a big improvement.

A powerful, easy to manoeuvre vacuum cleaner, that gets into every nook and cranny. But not this one.

FixItWorkshop, Worthing, May’19, Dyson DC40.

Three top tips for keeping your Dyson DC40 in rude health:

Keep all filters clean (wash or replace frequently)
Clean all rubber seals with a damp cloth to remove dust build-up
Occasionally lubricate moving parts of jockey wheel mechanism (springs and lever) with silicone spray

Do these things and your Dyson will love you forever.

I’m a bit of a sucker for Dyson products. They are well engineered products from the school of function over form and in my opinion, objects of art.

This Dyson wasn’t very well when it was admitted to the workshop. The owner had complained that the vacuum cleaner wasn’t picking up dirt and dust properly. The beaters were not spinning either.

FixItWorkshop, Worthing, May’19, Dyson DC40 beater head.

The beater ‘head’ is attached to the main body of the vacuum cleaner and is held in place with a sliding clip. The head can rotate and move to allow maximum control. The beater roller is driven not via a belt from the main motor, but from its own smaller motor in the head unit. So, there is an electrical connector between the main body and head unit. As the beaters were not spinning, it seemed sensible to test the electrical connection. Upon testing, it was not working.

The mechanism on this vacuum cleaner is quite complicated and relies on levers and joints working in harmony. Dismantling the wheels, filters, brackets and covers around the motor revealed the problem. The supply that feeds power to the beater head is routed around the motor and sliding lever mechanism and a broken cable was to blame for the beaters not spinning.

Access was difficult due to the design so rather than completely tearing down the body to replace the supply loom, I reattached the broken wire with some soldering and heat shrink to make a robust repair.

After carefully rerouting the cables and reassembling the body, wheels and beater head, the beaters spun once more. Result.

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After a new set of filters were fitted and a light service, the machine was as good as new.

Cost of replacement machine: £000’s. Cost of repair parts: £11.69 plus my time and two teas.

A Dyson DC34 Animal dodges the bin

A repair and top tips for keeping your Dyson DC34 running for longer.

Every home should have one of these hand held dust busters. Simple as that.

FixItWorkshop, Worthing, May’19, Dyson DC34 Animal.

Why? Because they are easy to use, easy to clean and last ages on a charge.

Top tips for keeping your Dyson DC34 running for longer

Keep the filter cleaned (wash regularly)
Remove any build-up of hair from the roller beaters
Keep all electrical connections clean (use WD40 or similar)

This one was admitted to the workshop with one fault, but the diagnosis revealed two problems.

When in use, the roller beaters would stop frequently and not restart. The cure for this problem was to remove all the hair from the roller spindles and the internal motor belt drive, which was held together with a couple of screws. Once all the hair was removed, the rollers worked much better, but not perfect. A quick blast of air and a quick spray with contact cleaner into the motor and the rollers were once again, working as they should.

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On a full charge, one of these Dysons should run for about 20 minutes, but this one didn’t. The battery wasn’t holding the charge, so after a quick look online, a new one was purchased for just under £20. Great value.

It felt really good to save another product on its way to the bin.

Cost of replacement: £200. Cost of repair: £20, plus one cuppa, ginger cake and ice cream.

Kenwood Chef repair: Real time video

A Chef repair gets it’s own video!

I carry out a few Kenwood Chef repairs a year and usually, they can be brought back to full health with simple tools and repair components. I’ve not had a faulty Chef brought in to the workshop which hasn’t left ready for service. Yet.

Fixitworkshop, March’19, Kenwood Chef A901 with a repaired motor.

One common theme with all older machines is that the motor speed control circuitry can fail which either manifests itself with symptoms including, but not restricted to; electrical burning smells and smoke, the motor not running smoothly or not running at all. While the failure of a Kenwood Chef may look spectacular when it happens, the repair is fairly straightforward, if you have some basic skills, tools and some patience.

This particular A901 came in with four faults; poor feet condition, cracked cowling, the speed control knob was loose and once I opened up the motor unit to look further, burned-out capacitors.

To some, this list of faults might seem a bit daunting, but it’s standard fare on a Chef of this age and to be expected after thirty plus years service. Due to the excellent design of the product, the faults are all repairable with commonly available parts.

After about an hours’ work, the feet were replaced, the motor circuitry repaired and the replacement cowling refitted. The speed control knob had come away from the motor body and only required the pin that held it in place ‘pressing’ back in to the housing, resulting in one happy mixer.

One of my aims on this website is to share my experience and best practice so for the first time, I made a video of the complete motor repair in real-time. So, if you have a Chef to repair and twenty minutes, grab yourself some popcorn, a notepad and pen and enjoy.

Cost of replacement: £150.00 and up. Cost of repair: £30 plus my time and tea.

Leave the light on…

A Philips outdoor wall lamp with a major case of built-in obsolescence, gets a cheap fix.

A mate of mine mentioned that his outdoor wall light had given-up-the-ghost, despite not being more than three years old. He’d put them up around his house as part of an extension and exterior restoration project. The trouble was that despite only being a few years old, the product now seemed to be discontinued. This meant that, should the lamp need to be replaced, he would need to replace all of them (three in this case) to keep them matching. Annoying quite frankly.

FixItWorkshop, March’19, Philips outdoor wall light, working.

He’d read that the bulb within the Philips lamp was not replaceable, in which case a faulty lamp would render the whole thing broken, which seemed very daft to me. Items made in such a way that prevents even the most basic of repair get me very annoyed. Sometimes an item is developed in such a way for safety reasons but I suspect that most of the time, the motive is just pure greed. It’s such a shame.

At my mate’s house, over a cup of tea, I removed the lamp from the wall to take back to the workshop, to see what Philips had been getting up to.

Opening up the casing was straightforward, just a few simple screws and retaining nuts holding the casing together, before finally revealing the bulb itself, under a lamp diffuser.

FixItWorkshop, March’19, Philips outdoor wall light, lamp unit.

The bulb/ lamp unit itself appeared to be a custom/ bespoke disc light, that wasn’t user serviceable. It had blown and there was evidence of scorching on a few of the LEDs, linked in series, indicating the failure of the entire circuit.

I couldn’t find any replacement disc LEDs suitable for the lamp from any of the usual sources, which I expected. It could be that Philips can supply a replacement disc, but this was not evident on their website.

Not wanting to be beaten by a bespoke part, I thought about what else might work, within the lamp’s enclosure, to have the same effect. I had a spare GU9 LED bulb, about the same brightness, sitting on the shelf, left over from another project which was going spare, so I set about fitting it in the space.

The generic GU9 bulb, available from most hardware shops, fitted in the existing disc mounting bracket, with a small modification and once connected to the lamp’s circuitry, worked well, albeit with a slightly warmer glow.

In case anyone else has the same problem, I made a little video of the repair. I hope it gives others inspiration if faced with a similar problem.

Cost of replacement (with something similar): £50.00. Cost of repair: £1.50 for the bulb and a couple of Belgian beers for my time.

A Challenge Circular Saw

A tool gets saved from the bin!

I had a slightly unusual request to do a ‘bit of soldering’ on a circular saw recently. As I’m not one to say no to a broken item, I said “yes, I’ll have a look” as I was intrigued.

FixItWorkshop, March’19, Challenge Xtreme Circular Saw.

This Challenge Xtreme Circular Saw was working fine, but the spring-loaded safety guard had split at one of the ends and was now dangerous to use.

I guess this saw was originally sold at the ‘budget’ end of the market and some of the materials used on it were light-weight to say the least. But having said all that, for light use, this saw was a very good tool with features like a laser to guide cutting.

The guard was made of a ‘mazak’ style alloy, which would have been pressed together at the factory and therefore quite difficult to re-attach. Definitely not for soldering, welding or brazing.

I could have used a chemical metal compound as a glue or even epoxy resin, but in the end, I opted for making a simple couple of neat drilled holes with a small cable tie to bring the separated halves together, a neat mechanical and cheap fix to get the tool usable once more. Sometimes, simple is best.

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Cost of replacement: £40.00 Cost of repair: One cable tie. One cup of tea.

Money, that’s what I want

A cool 1980s toy robot money box gets repaired.

Who doesn’t like a toy robot? I mean, everyone loves a toy robot, especially one with pop up eyes and one that eats coins. No? Well, you’re wrong if you don’t agree!

Money 2 — FixItWorkshop, March’19, Tomy Mr. Money.

This is my own Tomy Mr. Money, which I’ve had since about 1988 ish, so it’s getting on a bit. Like me.

Back then, I wasn’t that diligent about leaving batteries in situ for long periods and when I dusted off this piece of retro cool for my daughter to play with, we discovered that the passing of time had not been kind to the old battery or insides. Which was a bit of a shame.

However, I wanted to show everyone that old toys are way cooler than new ones, so out with the screwdrivers, cleaning stuff and hammer (well, not the hammer) to see what could be done.

Luckily for me and Mr. Money, the battery compartment hadn’t fared too badly with just light corrosion to the battery terminals, which soon cleaned off with brake cleaner and some light filing to near good as new standard.

With a new AA battery installed, Mr. Money didn’t really respond that well to having money placed on his hand. In years gone by, a coin placed on his hand would trigger his eyes to open, the hand to raise to his mouth, the coin to be eaten and lips to be licked, as well as doing a little side to side dance. Mr.Money was now looking a bit arthritic. Could it be that new money is a lot lighter than the 1980s money he was designed for or was it just that the battery corrosion had run deeper than first appeared. I suspected the latter.

I took Mr. Money apart and found that the microswitch that triggers the mechanism was corroded and needed cleaning and that some of the moving parts also needed a quick brush up, all of which had Mr.Money back to rude health.

FixItWorkshop, March’19, Tomy Mr.Money, in pieces.

While doing the repair, I decided that it wasn’t obvious how the toy came apart and that some owners might decide to scrap theirs due to similar problems. So, I decided to make a little slide show of the dismantling, to help others. Enjoy.

Cost of replacement: £ priceless/ eBay if you’re lucky. Cost of repair: One IPA beer.

The heat is on…

Dimplex DX300T heater gets repaired in the workshop.

I acquired this Dimplex heater as the previous owner had reported that it had tripped their electrics and smelled of burning, it was perfect material for the workshop. The owner had given up on it and I felt like I could give it a second chance. This is the usual way we end up with much of the stuff in our home.

FixItWorkshop, March’19 Dimplex DX300T heater with timer.

FixItWorkshop, March’19 Dimplex DX300T heater.

Now, this heater is only a few years old and on the face of it, it looked in reasonable condition, with just a couple of scratches, so it would be a shame if I couldn’t get it working.

With electrical faults like this, I always check the basics; the condition of the flex and mains plug etc. I then measure for resistance to earth from either live or neutral to see if there has been any electrical shorts, that would have triggered the reported fuse incident. All clear.

Through the top heat vent, I had a quick look at the inside of the heater to see if any stray paperclips or other metallic item had found its way to the heating element or wiring creating an electrical problem, again, all clear.

Upon checking the mains plug again, something didn’t seem quite right. It felt a little ‘warped’. I’d already checked the fuse for continuity via the live and neutral (there was resistance), but it was time to take it out to have a proper look. The plug on this heater was a ‘moulded-on’ type, with no screws and the fuse carrier was accessible from the outside, should it need replacing. Upon levering the fuse holder out, the plastic carrier sheared off, revealing burned plastic and signs of melting. The plug was toast.

I decided to break the plug cover off and see what was going on. The plug had ‘run hot’ for some time causing the casing to melt and smoulder and the excess heat had probably caused excess resistance, exacerbating the problem, making the previous owners’ electrics to go pop.

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With the cover ‘broken off’ the plug, I was then able to cut back the internal connections and remove the cable from the mouldings, without sacrificing the cable length, which was a good job as the flex was quite short anyway.

I always keep a few replacement ‘quality’ mains plugs in the workshop for occasions like this, as not all moulded plugs are terribly well made and the melted one I had here was a good example of what can happen when the quality of the plug can’t match the potential current flow required. The heater is rated at 3K Watts (max), which would mean a current of 12.5 Amps, which is close to the 13 Amps fuse fitted. Poor quality materials and connectors would generate excess resistance and therefore heat. The resistance was probably detected by the sophisticated minature circuit breaker in the previous owners’ electrics board, which was a good job as who knows what could have happend if the plug had been next to something flamable.

With a new plug fitted, the old fuse re-fitted, the heater sprung to life and didn’t seem to draw excess current when checked. A nice cheap fix and I didn’t even have to take the heater apart.

Cost of a replacement heater: £50 (circa) Cost of repair: One cup of tea.