Conservation of Bustedness

There's only so much stuff that can be working correctly in the universe at one time.

I scored a *really* nice Thor D-handle drill at a garage sale last week, ten bucks.

This weekend I had some spare time so I took the Jacobs chuck off and dismantled it, cleaned it, and re-assemebled. Then I figured the cord was pretty old and the plug was punky I would change that out too.

I had a nice heavy duty cordset with a molded plug, so it was an easy change. I was gonna have a nice D-handle drill to compliment my smaller milwaukee.

While doing the cord I figured the cord clamp wasn't *quite* grabbing the cord enough, so I thought some heat-shrink on the cord OD would improve matters. A quick trip to the heat-shrink department and then I fired up the heat gun to do the deed on it.

There was an impressive *Pop* from the innards of the heat gun, and then smoke began to gently waft from the air intake. Turns out the handle (which had been spinning a bit loose for a while, this is an elderly Veeco that I've had for years) had finally spun enough to short the neutral wire against the hot switch lead.

So after I put electrical tape on the drill cordset instead, and had that all back together, I opened up the heat gun next.

Cleaned out all the crud in there, cut back the linecord and also put red locktite on the handle (too bad I didn't do that 20 years ago!) and generally cleaned up the wiring which was, honestly, kinda haywire. "Who the hell made this mess," oh it was me. There were even wire nuts in there! I could replace those with soldered joints and put some heat-shrink tubing.... well, never mind, wire nuts lasted 20 years so far.

So now the drill and the heat gun work. So something else is fixing to go bust anytime now...

Jim

Reply to
jim rozen
Loading thread data ...

Any time I want to hang a picture on a wall I have to: Paint the picture, make the nail, fix the hammer and build the wall.

Reply to
Tom Gardner

That's why you should always keep a spare BIC Lighter around. Just rotate the heat shrink, like a pig on a spit, well over the flame so that it shrinks evenly and doesn't char or burn.

Reply to
DeepDiver

I guess that makes you a full-service operation!

:^)

Jim

Reply to
jim rozen

"DeepDiver" wrote: That's why you should always keep a spare BIC Lighter around. (CLIP) ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ According to the Law of Conservation of Bustedness, there is another way to use the Bic lighter. Smack it with a hammer. Your heat gun ought to fix itself. But it DON'T. Why not?

Reply to
Leo Lichtman

| >Any time I want to hang a picture on a wall I have to: Paint the picture, | >make the nail, fix the hammer and build the wall. | | I guess that makes you a full-service operation!

You must not believe in outsourcing, unless you bought the hammer, paint, and painting tools!

Reply to
carl mciver

One cannot influence the Law of C of B . It derives from aleatory and universal powers. If Murphy's selective gravity law had let the hammer fall on the Bic lighter on its own accord, then maybe just maybe the heat gun might be fixed, but most likely it would be some arrow in Papua that would have been straightened overnight by mysterious forces.

cheers T.Alan

Reply to
T.Alan Kraus

Because you cant direct the directions that the un-bustedness takes. YOu whack the lighter, and perhaps some ones in mongolia has their busted tooth fixed. jk

Reply to
jk

"jk" wrote: (clip) YOu whack the lighter, and perhaps some ones in mongolia has their busted tooth fixed. ^^^^^^^^^^^^ Okay, I see. So, breaking things you don't need is GOOD. Next time the Red Cross or Cancer Society calls, I'll just tell them, "I broke at the office."

Reply to
Leo Lichtman

Yep. It did. At my house. So it's YOUR fault my cordless drill stopped working!?

Peter

Reply to
Peter Grey

Yeah, and my ethernet router?

Reply to
Don Foreman

Yeah, it got me too.. I just limped the old lady's car home with a flat tire. Hope you knock off that fixing stuff soon..

Seems to be some multiple effect, branching out like the particle tracks from the particle accelerator.. hits something and that breaks, then you repair it and the bustedness particles branch out and hit other stuff. I'll get somebody back for it, soon as I put a new tire on..

John

Reply to
JohnM

. Hope you knock off that fixing stuff soon..

You know, I think there's a P.Hd dissertation there somewhere. Now if you could get a Government research grant and a few spare years..........................?

Reply to
Tom Miller

There's a song in UK called "On the Monday morning, the gas man came to call".

A guy moves into a new house on the Friday but someone had painted over the gas tap so it couldn't turn on. So, on the monday morning, the gas man came to call. He had to replace the gas tap so the kitchen units had to be cut around. So, on the tuesday morning, the carpenter came to call. He replaced the kitchen bases but couldn't connect the sink. So, on the Wednesday morning, the plumber came to call. He fixed the water to the sink but drove a screw into the mains cable. So, on the Thursday morning, the electrician came to call. He chased out the wall and repaired cable. That left the decorations in a mess. So, on the Friday morning, the painter came to call. He painted the walls. He painted the ceiling. He even painted the doors. When he left the kitchen looked great - but he'd painted over the gas tap so it couldn't turn on. The Gas company don't work weekends. So, on the Monday morning, the gas man came to call.

John

Reply to
John Manders

That's my house. The worst thing in the world is a puddle on the floor. I see that and expect the worst. Is it dripping from the ceiling above, or is it welling up from the floor underneath? What the *hell* is going on now?

Then my wife tells me, "oh, I dropped some ice cubes there a while ago."

Old Chinese proverb, "Fear has many eyes and can see things underground." They were talking to homeowners.

Jim

Reply to
jim rozen

It probably fixed something somewhere else. Kinda like in the 80's all those rock bands were smashing guitars left and right--computer industry got going. Obviously we now need to start smashing computers for the sake of future generations.

Reply to
B.B.

Speaking of bustedness, how many of us have gotten fed up with some POS product which keeps breaking faster than you can fix it. And you get so frustrated over wasting your time without obtaining the satisfation of a "job well done" that....

You just pick up the biggest hammer around and smash the offending item to bits, then chuck it in the trash barrel to eliminate the possibility that you'll be tempted to take another frustrating go at fixing it???

Especially when you know that YOU probably could have designed and made something better in not much more time than you just wasted trying to fix up the dumb thing anyway.

***************************

I think I've done that about four times in my life and the most recent one happened this Memorial Day weekend when teen aged son complained that he couldn't get his '95 Honda Civic to pass state inspection because the headlights were way out of alignment and the guy at the inspection station said he couldn't adjust them.

Of course I said, "That's BS son, I'LL fix 'em for you..."

Turns out the girl friend he recently bought the car from had let someone replace the stock headlights and front parking/turn signals with some s**te aftermarket "Angel Light Projector" units which might have been this model:

I took a look and realized that while the units fit into the car's front end just fine there was no way to reach all of the beam alignment screws because some were located where parts of the car's front end metal blocked them completely.

We took the light units out of the car and I started testing the alignment screws (separate sets of three for each low and high beam assembly). Some seemed to do their thing while turning others didn't appear to make anything move.

The clear fronts and black plastic backs of the units were glued or heat sealed together, so there was no easy way to get inside them to reach the moving parts.

Peering inside down through the light bulb access hole in the back of the units I saw that one of the reflector adjustment screws had popped it's ball end out of a plastic socket on the reflector assembly, probably because some klutz had backed the screw so far out it pulled free.

I set up a 1-1/4" hole saw in the drill press and carefully cut an access hole through the housing right over that ball and socket joint. Snapping the joint together was easy then, and I twisted a girdle of binding wire tightly around the outside of the segmented plastic socket to help keep a disconnect from happening again.

Checking the second light assembly found a similar disconnected joint, and I repeated the process on it.

I took the fiberglass resin and hardener out from where they sleep in the kitchen freezer, warmed them to room temperature and put three layers of glass cloth over the holes I'd made.

Elapsed time spent so far maybe 2-3/4 hours...

Feeling smug as a bug in a rug we set out to align the headlights by holding them where they'd mount in the car, seeing which way the beams needed to move, moving them away from the car, turning the adjusters and testing them while holding them in place again.

We were "sort of" making progress about a half hour later when I encountered yet another non-functioning adjustment screw. Peering inside through the light bulb access hole I saw that this adjuster used a different style of connection than the two I'd already fixed. It had a broken plastic piece that would have been as difficult to fix as a dentist trying to crown a tooth by accessing it solely through the patient's rectum.

That's when I picked up a four pound hand sledge hammer and ended the whole foolish exercise.

************************

Postscript:

Son's girl friend still had all the car's original light assemblies in her basement. She brought them over and we put them in his car. Piece of cake, requiring only one trip to the parts store to replace a bad bulb.

Lined up the headlight beams in two minutes.

************************

Hopefully young son understands, but the look on his face makes me sort of doubt it......You do what you have to do, I suppose.

Jeff

Reply to
Jeff Wisnia

Lousy picture, bent nail, duct-taped hammer, crooked wall...I can do everything, but not well.

Reply to
Tom Gardner

Pete's drill wasn't ALWAYS a cordless...could be why it stoped working, the cord broke off.

Reply to
Tom Gardner

What size bits does your router take?

Reply to
Tom Gardner

PolyTech Forum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.