Fix or replace?

poopshovel wrote:

mtn wrote: Not to take this on a political turn, but this is the problem with having a minimum wage when we are so willing to do business with countries that have none. The thing that really comes to mind is shoe repair. You used to see those places everywhere--there were 3 in my home town when I was a kid. Now there is 1. Why repair an old shoe when you can buy a new one for $68.75?

And. Um. Wow. Missed this, but it seems as though we're on the same page. People just don't seem to think about that stuff until they need custom work done. Nothing political about it.

That is true, too. For what it's worth, right now I'm sitting at a made in USA, real wood desk. And it cost a little more than $199. Know what? This piece of furniture will outlive me.

Buy the new one and put the frame on CL as free scrap steel. There are some people who literally survive on that kind of stuff. Scrappers make their living on recycling other people's free metal.

I'm all for rebuilding stuff instead of buying a cheap chinese replacement, but this is a no-brainer. I could make this political and talk about US dollars going overseas, but good luck finding someone who can replace that glass without using overseas money. An abstract example: you might spend $220 paying a local guy to cut the glass, but its probably going to be a piece of glass made in Libya with Silicon mined in Manitoba, shipped to China on a Lithuanian boat where they receive an email from your glass guy to cut to certain specs. At that point a Thai immigrant cuts the glass, gives it to the shipping department where a Korean lady sets up shipping via an Icelandic airline. Once it lands in the US (after being handled by people from Bangladesh, Nepal, Argentina, Croatia, and a skinhead from Alabama) it gets transferred to a FedEx facility where an Italian, five Armenians, three Israelis, one Scot, and 35 Mexicans deliver it to your guy's glass shop.

Buy the chinese table.

David S. Wallens wrote: I dunno. I just got the glass quote yesterday, and last night we bought the new table. If it matters, we are replacing the glass on one of my grandma's old end tables. Those you can't get at Target.

I know my memory ain't what it used to be but... Google didn't let me down.

http://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/off-topic-discussion/shattered-glass-table-mystery/44239/page1/

The old make vs buy analysis. Sadly, the price of today's goods are so relatively low, it is usually cheaper to buy.

I once read a discussion about lawn tractors from the 70's on another forum. They complained about the quality of today's tractors and how good the ones from the 70's were. In today's money the 70's tractors would be in the $3-5k range. Today you can go to sears and buy something that looks like a tractor for $999. Which one would you fix, if it broke?

Duh! Cut plywood to shape and put a "clear" finish on it!

1988RedT2 wrote: Duh! Cut plywood to shape and put a "clear" finish on it!

Excellent idear dare Cletus!!!

32 yr old waffle iron died(an original wedding gift) No place to repair it and evidently ppl dont eat waffles anymore. We had to order replacement online from WW. I bet that it was a $5 or less part.

Wally World sells waffle irons. Nice fancy ones that spin over like at the hotel breakfast bar. I've also seen regular ones there. I like waffles, but, alas, Too Many Calories for me, especially when you put a 1" thick slice of chocolate chip ice cream between 2 of them...

I bought some machine tools from my industrial quality machine tool supplier a few months back. Taps, dies, handles for taps and dies, etc. All of it was made in China. I asked the sales guy if any of that was available from a US supplier and he thought a minute and said one piece might be available from a US source, but it would cost 2 or 3 times as much for basically the same quality. Nothing else was even made here anymore. Thanks W.J.Clinton for starting that process and W. for not stopping it. As a side thought, Bill and Hill thought they were going to screw us over by banning the importation of cheap Chinese rifles, handguns and ammo. What they accomplished was the creation of a new cottage industry and the preservation of our existing arms industry. If it hadn't been for that, there wouldn't be hundreds of different AR builders, AK builders, custom hand gun makers, parts makers, ammo makers, etc. I think even the big ones like Colt, Ruger and Remington would have been seriously hurt or destroyed. Perhaps not exactly what Bill and Hill had in mind, but, hey, think of the jobs created or saved.

How many glass tables have you broken? geeze. upgrade to concrete or wood.

In reply to curtis73:

FWIW: Toledo = Glass City. They had to go to China for special glass for the Museum of Toledo Glass Display.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703428604575418680197041878.html

No one in the U.S. had the capability to satisfy cutting-edge architectural specifications for the curving pavilion, even though the 2006 job involved techniques advanced decades ago by Toledo inventors: bending and laminating glass. The pavilion features 360 thick glass panels, each up to 13.5 feet tall, eight feet wide and weighing over 1,300 pounds.

Ugh. My EZ-Up popup canopy got tossed about by the storms we had the other day. Broke 6 or 7 of the outer trusses, and at $15 a truss it's almost the same price as a new one. If I wasn't about to move i would just keep the old one for spare parts and buy a new one. I hate wen they make the replacement parts so expensive it's not worth it to fix.

JoeyM wrote:

Enyar wrote: perfectly good items that could be kept out of landfills and used for another 5 years.

[smug]

That's always been my plan. I'm no treehugger, but I appreciate the idea of throwing less away and recycling where you can.

Microwave broke. Couldn't isolate it without schematics, but it was one of a few dozen relays. I don't remember exactly, but the lowest price on the board I could find was $350 and the new microwave was $200. At least I gave the old one away on CL that someone could use the parts off.

Water heater stopped heating water very much. I fixed this one with a tube and a new anode along with some swearing until I realized that I tried solder copper pipe with water in it and got some quick connects instead. Not only save money, but what idiot would fill a landfill up with a giant metal tank?

Spilt milk at this point... but I had a steel / glass table on my patio that I forgot to remove the umbrella from and the wind smashed the glass. My father took home (when I said I was going to toss it) and replaced the glass by using plywood on the bottom of the frame and then tiling it with broken pieces of cut flagstone. It looks awesome on his patio now.

whenry wrote: 32 yr old waffle iron died(an original wedding gift) No place to repair it and evidently ppl dont eat waffles anymore. We had to order replacement online from WW. I bet that it was a $5 or less part.

The wife and I were given a Munsey waffle iron as a wedding present along with a killer recipe. We used that thing like crazy for many eyars. Then it crapped out and we had to go through several before we found another one we liked. I dread the day it dies.

What everybody need is an Emitt's fix it shop from Mayberry.

I'm still embedded with what my father taught me. "Fix it if at all possible"

Sometimes though, that just doesn't work

I'd have been tempted to drop in a piece of expanded steel and let it rust to a nice patina.

I recently rebuilt my coffee maker. Cost me about eighty bucks for a heating element, gaskets, thermal switch, CLR lime cleaner stuff, etc. I'll tell ya, you use a coffee maker for 25 years and the damn thing just stops working on you. They don't make those things like they used to.

On the plus side, all parts were available. I called the factory (Bunn) and they don't sell parts to the public, but pointed me to dealers that do. I paid $140 for it back in the 80's. They are about $240 today on Amazon.

Dr. Hess wrote: I recently rebuilt my coffee maker. Cost me about eighty bucks for a heating element, gaskets, thermal switch, CLR lime cleaner stuff, etc. I'll tell ya, you use a coffee maker for 25 years and the damn thing just stops working on you. They don't make those things like they used to. On the plus side, all parts were available. I called the factory (Bunn) and they don't sell parts to the public, but pointed me to dealers that do. I paid $140 for it back in the 80's. They are about $240 today on Amazon.

I bought my current coffee maker at a garage sale for $2. Works great, I've used it for 3 years. Not really sure how anything could go wrong on it either.

I recently replaced the top LCD screen on my sons Nintindo DS. His cousin gave it to him because half the screen was blank. 15 bucks for the screen, a few solder connections and 2 hours later it was as good as new. Better than paying over $100 for a new one. I tried to repair a power supply for a 42" LCD tv, ordered the capacitors, got them installed.. nothing.. so i mess around a little replace a fusible link with some wire to test something and POW BLAM ZAPPPP. There goes that TV for sure now... oh well I tried.

Yes, you can find waffle irons in the store but not the ones with removable and reversible plates. Think grilled cheese sandwich as the alternative use. And those grills were like good cast iron skillets; cooked and tasted better with age.

t25torx wrote: I recently replaced the top LCD screen on my sons Nintindo DS. His cousin gave it to him because half the screen was blank. 15 bucks for the screen, a few solder connections and 2 hours later it was as good as new. Better than paying over $100 for a new one. I tried to repair a power supply for a 42" LCD tv, ordered the capacitors, got them installed.. nothing.. so i mess around a little replace a fusible link with some wire to test something and POW BLAM ZAPPPP. There goes that TV for sure now... oh well I tried.

I did that with a monitor once without the "POW BLAM ZAPPPP" but with the "It still isn't working" part.

ultraclyde wrote: I'd have been tempted to drop in a piece of expanded steel and let it rust to a nice patina **because I like the sleeves of every shirt I own to have nice orange stains all over them** .

FTFY.

What a waste David. You should have made a go cart out of it and written an article about the process.

mtn wrote: I bought my current coffee maker at a garage sale for $2. Works great, I've used it for 3 years. Not really sure how anything could go wrong on it either.

My frist coffee maker I inherited from my parents who got it as a present in 1983. A generally non-descript model by Hamilton Beach. It made thousands of pots of coffee for 25 years before the heating element melted through the plastic housing and made a horrible smell.

This has been said, but really, it's all about cost benefit:

How much time will it take me, and how much money will I save?

If it costs more to fix then to replace, then you replace it. Pretty straightforward.

People's time is worth a lot. When factories mass produce items at super low rates, it makes it difficult to justify the "time" required to diagnose and fix something. Lets get real for a second here, the reason why manufacturing costs dropped for a long time wasn't cheap labour, it's technological advances that allow machines to do what humans do cheaper, better, and faster.

I see no problem with what you did. I'd see a problem with it if the pricing was reversed. It's the same reason I do all my own work on my cars, I don't get paid $100/h at my current job, but thats how much a mechanic charges me. It pays for me to do it myself.