What I have fixed today

Today I'm "fixing my shed door" (by shoring up the shed front wall)...

Lately the door has been difficult to lock. Only just worked out a couple weeks ago that the front wall was sagging slightly - potentially the underlying stoney-clay subsoil shrinking due to hot dry UK summer - potentially tree root soil movement - potentially rodent burrows under/into the supporting gravel layer under the shed floor...

And the door Mortise lock has potentially been supporting the wall from sagging. It's built well - pretty sturdy DIY job...

Yesterday the key broke in the lock while I was locking it...




Which meant I needed to somehow get the wall back into square. Square-ish, anyway...

Brushed out some gravel and used timber lever and car jack...





Proper floor level re-established - broken key then easy to remove...

We've had a little Shark cordless vacuum cleaner for ten years or so. It has a powered brush head that turns on when you lean the main wand back from vertical. But just lately it sometimes turned on if you got the angle right but mostly didn't.

According to YouTube repair videos it's probably a break in a bit of wire where it goes past the hinge. I also learned that there are hundreds of subtly different models so it's unfeasible to show every variation on how to get inside.

However, one video did show me the trick of getting inside. Not only do you have to remove about ten visible screws (first having sent away for a set of long Torx security bits) you then have to prize off two bumper strips round the edges. These don't feel like soft flexible plastic but with enough confident tugging do come off, revealing three more screws hidden inside.

So, after a couple of hours, I could see the obvious break in the black wire and the places where the white and orange ones were about to fail:



After quite a lot more close examination and careful dismantling I managed to remove the surprisingly stiff original wires and replace them with the inner cores of some decent flex. There's really not much space for these wires to fit, in a special channel alongside the flexible hose, but it was really quite satisfying to manage it, work out the correct lengths, solder the ends and get everything back in place with no bits left over.

I hope it lasts another ten years now - I can look forward to the joy of replacing the rechargeable batteries!

The same thing happens in dishwashers the wire they use doesn’t have enough strands to be flexible enough.

Pete

I wonder if they choose it for easier assembly, as a planned failure point, or just because it's a tiny bit cheaper?

AndyT said:

I wonder if they choose it for easier assembly, as a planned failure point, or just because it's a tiny bit cheaper?

Click to expand...

I'd bet on cheaper.

Built in obsolesence . No money in making anything that lasts forever.