Skill Builder: Adjusting Bike Shifting
In this how-to, mountain biker Chris Nodder explains common problems with bike shifters and how to deal with them.
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repairs
Circuitry, Anatomy, and Repair Tips for Common CFL Lamps
I don’t know about you, but I’m so used to the paradigm established by old-style incandescent bulbs that when one of my CFL’s “blows out,” it doesn’t even occur to me that I might be able to repair it in the garage. Or at least, it didn’t until I saw this page from Pavel Ruzicka, which does a good job of explaining the general principles of operation of CFL lamps and gives great details about their most common failure modes. Apparently, replacing a single capacitor will often do the trick. [via Hack a Day]
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Earth Day 2010: 7 easy fixes for electronics
7 easy fixes for electronics
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Motorcycle brake rotor repair kludge
Drilled and tapped for the screw and drilled a clearance hole for the mount bolt.At 20 threads per inch, that would be .050″ per turn. So .01″ would be 1/5 of a turn. Put on a standard six-flat nut for reference. Turn less than one flat would be .050/6 = .0083 inches, a little margin to the spec.
So, to use it, you spin and gradually drop the screw until it just touches at the highest point. Turn to the lowest point, and tighten down. Took less than one flat, so I believe I am in spec!
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Blogging epic kludges
The latest addition to my feed reader is There, I Fixed It, a site collecting fantastic and hilarious examples of jury-rigging in daily life. My favorite so far is the point-of-use hot water heater shown above, but the “Franken-chair” has to take a close second. Thanks to Melody for steering me to it.
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DIY teardowns at iFixIt.com
One of my favorite things at this year’s Maker Faire was iFixIt’s repair area. They had obviously worked their butts off to create a really cool environment conducive to teaching people about fixing their own cars, home appliances and electronics gear. They had awesome displays, like physical exploded view “diagrams” of handheld devices, using the […]
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Make: Repairs – Upgrading a MacBook Pro hard drive
Make: Repairs is a periodic column written by Kyle Wiens and the fine folks at iFixit.com. As you probably know, iFixit is the go-to source for Apple-related do-it-yourself repair info and parts and for gadget first-looks and teardowns. Kyle, Luke, and company are in a unique position to know what the common complaints and sticky-points […]
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