Re: What have you fixed lately?
 

Toilet flush: Went to do it this morning and the handle went almost full circle.

Turns out the lever inside had fractured and allowed the square handle shaft to rotate. Luckily my local B&Q had a universal lever repair kit for £3.50. Fixed now. :)

Re: What have you fixed lately?
 

Osem Jnr's bunk bed - now transformed by removing the lower bunk entirely and fitting his folding sofabed in the space created. It no longer converts to a double bed but if a spare sleeping berth is required the sofa is adequate and all the floorspace saved in his bedroom will be used to accommodate a nice new desk and chest of drawers (when he gets his finger out...). :)

Re: What have you fixed lately?
 

Solar powered rocks and lamps: Charged up several sets of batteries. 5 rocks worked straight off and so did 3 spike lamps with a little attention with the contact cleaner spray.

One more spike lamp with some close attention to the battery compartment, these are disintegrating as the plastic has gone brittle. Two won't work at all so I'll need to get the scope onto them to find out what has failed. These are my oldest lamps (10+years) and have two batteries and a big solar cell and quite a bit of circuitry inside. They're considerably brighter than the offerings today and light the surrounding area nicely.

The rocks only have a 4 pin IC, choke and switch. A bit more work and replacing the IC and a failed LED in one and re-soldering the switch in the other got the last two up and running.

I have a supply of high output solar cells, LEDs and the ICs and I've seen a neat idea of using a screw top jar to house a light. Tempted to make some up. :)

Re: What have you fixed lately?
 

The apex of my shed roof. The felt succumbed to hurricane Dierdre (or whatever it was called) a few weeks ago and I only noticed the other day.

Re: What have you fixed lately?
 

You sure it wasn't hurricane Brexit? :D

Re: What have you fixed lately?
 

Sir, if Farage has been tampering with my appurtenances I shall be most annoyed.

Re: What have you fixed lately?
 

just replaced the pull start on my suitcase generator used twice and disintegrated [its a cheap Chinese joby] replaced part with a genuine Yamaha starter [and hey presto we have life .reason it broke all the metal parts of a genuine starter had been copied in plastic so not very robust at all.

Re: What have you fixed lately?
 

Fixed Osem Jnr's workstation lighting problem by installing a 5m set of remoted controlled multicolour 5050 LED waterproof strip lights. The lights are great and very simple operate but fitting them under and around the wall mounted storage unit I made for him years ago was a bit of a faff. In the end the result looks really nice and he's just waiting for darkness to fall to try them out in the dark.

For anyone who's interested this is the set we bought:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/LEDemain-Fl...050+led+lights

£21 for 2 x 5m light strips, 44 key remote control, IR light controller, power adaptor and assorted fixings.

Don't forget to use the site link to Amazon. :)

Re: What have you fixed lately?
 

Oh brill Osem I bet he's really thrilled with them.

I spent the morning putting up large hooks in the garage to hold the strimmer and other garden tools.

Re: What have you fixed lately?
 

Yep they look great in a darkened room and not too bright that they light the whole place up.

You really can't have enough hooks, they're soooo useful. ;)

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Tape gun. Made a decent one out of two crappy ones.

Re: What have you fixed lately?
 

Height adjuster on the patio parasol: The lever had broken and I tried superglue but it broke again. I had some wooden sash parting bead so I cut off a piece, traced the critical part of the outline (cam and hole) from the broken part, fashioned a slightly longer replacement lever using a small saw, the palm sander and drill.

After rummaging in my assorted fixings tin I found a small shanked M8 bolt the shank being the same diameter as the rivet that I had drilled out. Fitted it together with a nylock nut and after a bit of fine tuning of the lever cam profile where it clamps the pole with the sander and a bit of candle wax it works a treat.

I don't know if you can get the clamp thingy as a replacement or the whole lower pole but I bet even then it would cost. 30 odd minutes of DIY and the job's done. :)

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Not fixed but reclaimed:
Did a dump run this morning. Whilst I'm there a bloke walks past me with a Bosch sander identical to mine. I think 'spares' and ask him for it. He gives it to me and says that it works. I now have a backup sander for free! :)
People are strange :confused:

Re: What have you fixed lately?
 

Yes it is weird what some people with just throw out. :shrug:

Re: What have you fixed lately?
 

Last one of my big solar lamps: Had to get the scope onto it to find out that a capacitor and the LED had failed. These were made before there were specialist chips to make these lamps so use a circuit with quite a number of components in it and two batteries. Fortunately I had traced out the circuit and drawn it up some time ago.

Very bright and stay lit all night even when they only get a small charge during the day but then they were quite expensive as I recall.

One of the rocks is looking dim so I'll need to take a look at it. Runs all night so it's probably a failing LED (out of 4)