For Old Guys Only
- Thread starter 2door
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How many of you have a son, daughter or friend that brings you everything to repair? My son brought me a chain saw and a 47 inch TV, he said give them a shot they were free. He and I removed the power supply from the TV and found two bad capacitors, I'm waiting on him to pick those up. The chain saw was worked on by a couple different people before I got to it, the fuel lines to the carb/ primmer bulb were all wrong. After searching on the web I found a diagram and corrected it, now it runs like a top.
My so gave me a fathers day card once that read, Dad thank you for teaching me everything I know about hand tools. Then on the inside it says, I just hand you the tool and stand back and watch! I still have that card.
Yeah X, that free climbing thing is pretty far up the list of duma$$
stunts i pulled as a kid. I took a fall head first. The only thing kept
my head from being busted like an egg was that I stuck my arm out at
the last second & rammed my elbow up into my armpit. They relocated
the elbow, but the head of the radius bone was totally shattered so they
surgically removed it. The arm still works okay; my ulna has since gotten
twice as thick to compensate.
stunts i pulled as a kid. I took a fall head first. The only thing kept
my head from being busted like an egg was that I stuck my arm out at
the last second & rammed my elbow up into my armpit. They relocated
the elbow, but the head of the radius bone was totally shattered so they
surgically removed it. The arm still works okay; my ulna has since gotten
twice as thick to compensate.
I got a birthday card from my Golden Retriever.
It said, "Dad, I made you a birthday gift. It's in the backyard"
Tom
Har, lol, snicker..snork
I'm thinking our wives and dogs shop at the same stores.
Hey, remember Steve Martin and his cat? The cat was cashing his checks and buying cat toys.
"Ya can't return em because they are covered in spit!"
We got the gulls here, also. They seem to think that the landfill substitutes for the beach.
Lots of bugs here......however, at least we don't have those stink'n 'Love Bugs' they've got in the SE part of the country. Small favors, I guess!!
My kids already started bringing me stuff too. Fixed radio controlled cars, talking dinosaurs, a motorized toy train engine, and since they know I can sew too, they bring me "over-loved" stuffed animals and favorite clothes.
But there's only so much I can do. Recently my one daughter Kassandra came in from playing outside on the verge of sobbing and asked if I could mend her favorite pair of tights. I turned around and...they looked like somebody had dragged them through a rose bush and then tossed them in a wood chipper. Hardly a scratch on her though. I shook my head and told her that only my Zippo lighter could help her tights now.
A/W I have learned a lot in my life time, a lot of trial and error. One thing a man must do is know his limitations, the guy in the picture below has higher limits than I.
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My dad is The Guy Who Can Fix Anything. From a trades college education in England, to over 30 years as a building and machinery maintenace man for General Motors (locomotive and armoured vehicle division), he has the tools and the knowledge for almost anything. I was his 'helper' as a kid, and it rubbed off.
Now I look at something that's either not working well or seems to be kaput, look it up online if it's something I'm not familiar with, and start undoing things. I pulled the wife's KitchenAid stand mixer apart and got it going again last week after finding a grainy copy of the service manual online. Saved an appliance worth a couple hundred bucks from either half it's value in a repair bill or the landfill (okay, electric stuff recycling center).
She's going to get me a T-shirt that says "I Void Warranties".
That is a stupendous idea for a T-shirt!!! Heck, I'd even buy one!!
(Dang it, just had another flashback to a scene in the Forrest Gump movie.)
From thinkgeek.com, here you go:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/8f52/
(they have a lot of other good T's, too, like "Stand back! I'm going to try using SCIENCE!")
Not sure if my 'fixing talents' are always appreciated. My wife's clothes dryer quit working and she was all happy and ready for a new one. I pulled it apart, found a little thermal overload that went bad, picked up a new one from an appliance parts place and the old dryer works great.
She gave me a 'look' and said, rather flatly, "Thanks" and walked out of the laundry room. Hmmmm.
Tom
She gave me a 'look' and said, rather flatly, "Thanks" and walked out of the laundry room. Hmmmm.
Tom
However........if a small part failed on your hotrod, just see what would happen if you went and bought a new one instead of just fixing it!!
When my wife and I got home this afternoon there was a push mower sitting in front of my shop, my father in law dropped it off because it would not run. Rust in the carb was probably the results of his using that old steel gas can from the 60's, I cleaned everything up and it runs again. I never know what will be next.
We're getting ready to sell the place so I've slowly been going through the shops & barn trying to decide what to part with. I can't pass things up sitting beside the road that might be useful for something, someday.... We moved here in one truckload, biggest truck I could rent. When we move I'll need to do 2 truck loads, even if I get rid of half the stuff I've accumulated over the years. I forsee a yard sale in the very near future, but it's hard to decide what to part with and what I won't be able to replace without having to buy another to replace it just in case I need it. And of course I will need half the things I let go of after we buy a new place!
It seems like every time I get rid of some mechanical or electrical doodad that I have held onto for years, 6 months or less later, I find another doodad that could be easily repaired with part or all of the doodad I just threw away.
It's a vicious cycle!
It's a vicious cycle!