Tuesday 12 March 2019

Built in obsolescence

.... is a phenomenon more and more widely experienced (by me but I can't be alone) as the need to keep the tat machines turning and money merry go rounds fed. Anyhow the canal link here is the little Flymo I had at Hunts that I passed to my neighbour Mandy of NB Don't Panic. 

When last summer she said it was not working I took a look and found and repaired a broken wire in the main cable near the mover itself. Fast forward two summers and while doing my batteries she brought it over as it has once again stopped working.

This time I took it fully apart to find and remove a lovely little mouse nest ...


Using my trusty multi meter I could not get a reading at the switch while plugged into my inverter. So I took it to Mandy and while connected to her genny she held the switch on while I worked my way up the cable bending it at 6 inch interval until the motor fired as I got to a section once again near the top with a hidden broken wire. Took about two feet off the cable and all was good again.

Now like me you must have been to the tip and seen that pile of old bright orange mowers with I would guess half if not nearly all of them with simple broken wire faults like this  - it makes me angry they will be scrapped when with a little time and patience they could be checked and repaired... rant over  !

2 comments:

Davidss said...

I recall reading that at one time the 'new-fangled' Dyson vacuum cleaners could be obtained from rubbish centres with just the same sort of fault.
Unfortunately I visit these places so rarely that I've never been able to take advantage of situations like than myself!!

Regards.

Nev Wells said...

I'm sure they pass (sell) them to the people who run the market stalls where you can buy second hand Dysons and other vacuums. Good recycling imho.