The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning

Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.

Tag: Repairs

If it used to work, it can work again

  • Frostproof Faucet: Attempted Repair Part 1

    Our house has three frostproof hose faucets, with the closest one to the garden being inside the garage. Unlike ordinary garden faucets (a.k.a., hose bibs), these have the valve seat at the end of a foot-long tube that projects inside the foundation wall where it (usually) can’t freeze. The valve has required increasing amounts of force to turn off (meaning the ancient washer inside has solidified) and the packing around the stem has begun leaking copiously with the faucet turned on (despite tightening the cap).

    I’ve been putting this repair off ever since we bought the house, because I knew how it would end, but with no rain for nearly a month before planting season the garden needed water. So, we begin…

    The first complication is that, while there’s a shutoff valve for the faucet, I’m reluctant to turn its corroded-in-place stem for fear of starting up an indoor leak:

    Corroded gate valve
    Corroded gate valve

    The small stem to the left of the valve body is a drain cap, which means that one can, in theory, turn off the valve and remove the cap to drain water from the line to the left. That line leads downhill to the faucet, which will turn out to be critically important later in this story. FWIW, I think it’s a gate valve, given the length of the casting around the stem, but for obvious reasons I haven’t opened it up to find out. If it’s a washer-based valve, it hasn’t been closed in decades and I expect the washer & seat to be in poor condition.

    The house has an unusual plumbing arrangement: a direct line from the water inlet to the outdoor faucets, toilet flush valves, and a separate faucet at the kitchen sink. This originally fed well water directly to those points, meaning that the largest water consumers didn’t go through the water softener and they weren’t watering the lawn with soft water. I took pains to preserve that arrangement while replacing the softener and having the town water supply plumbed into the house.

    In any event, I shut off the water upstream of the shutoff valve (hence, no toilet flushing for the duration) and proceeded.

    The valve handle came off easily, as did the cap, revealing the crumbling stem packing inside:

    Frostproof faucet - stem packing material
    Frostproof faucet – stem packing material

    Nota bene: the builder firmly cemented the faucet into the foundation wall. The same cement was applied on the inside wall, so removing the faucet requires chiseling out what might be the entire depth of the faucet through the foundation blocks. That’s one of the many reasons I didn’t want to do this project: the possible failure modes looked grim.

    With that out of the way, the stem support came loose easily; old-school heavy brass construction works great:

    Frostproof faucet - stem support
    Frostproof faucet – stem support

    Unfortunately, unscrewing the stem eventually reached the point where it spun freely, but refused to pull out. That means the washer a foot inside the valve has swollen beyond the minor diameter of the threads near the seal and that means I must destroy the washer to extract it. The usual advice recommends pulling on the stem with pliers, but … suffice it to say that was not sufficient in this situation, not to mention that I didn’t want to goober up the stem.

    Here’s the nose of my homebrew slide hammer, with a 10-24 steel screw in the valve stem and a pair of nuts jamming everything in place:

    Frostproof faucet - valve handle with slide hammer nose
    Frostproof faucet – valve handle with slide hammer nose

    I hoped that the valve handle would prevent the screw from distorting the stem if this operation required force majeure and that part worked out perfectly: a few whacks pulled the stem out and left the washer behind. Some tedious fishing, using various all-thread rods to grab the washer and then fragments of the washer and then fragments of the fragments, eventually produced this tableau:

    Frostproof faucet - stem with slide hammer
    Frostproof faucet – stem with slide hammer

    A closeup of the seal end, with the larger fragments of the old washer and a replacement beveled washer of about the right size:

    Frostproof faucet - valve with washer
    Frostproof faucet – valve with washer

    The brass screw turned out easily, the new washer went on, I reassembled everything in reverse order, put new valve packing material under the cap, and… of course, the valve leaked when I turned it off.

    A frostproof valve tends to dribble after being shut off, because there’s a foot of nearly horizontal pipe that must drain completely, but this leak was in the gallon-per-hour territory. Obviously, the situation had gone from bad to worse, exactly as I’d expected.

  • Sears Kenmore Dryer Rattle: Quieter

    Our re-sealed Kenmore clothes dryer developed a horrible rattle that Went Away with slight pressure here & there on various surfaces. I eventually located the most sensitive spot: inside the lint filter duct, on its upper surface. That suggested something lying atop the duct.

    Remove the two screws securing the duct to the top surface, push forward on the back of the control panel, and the front of the top panel pops up. Tilt upward against the springy hinges, peer in above the duct, and what do we find?

    Kenmore dryer - wire routing
    Kenmore dryer – wire routing

    Yup, wires resting on the duct!

    There are no obvious wire guides to be found, so I’m pretty sure those wires were in pretty much that same position when I dismantled the dryer to install the new seal. In any event, they are where they are.

    This not being a particularly hot area, I slipped a sheet of closed-cell foam between the wires and the duct, snapped the top down, and screwed the duct in place.

    The lower catches on the front panel seem to be loose, too, so a pair of cardboard shims jammed discreetly into the lower edge of the joint on either side soaked up some spare motion with excellent noisemaking potential.

    Unfortunately, fixing that rattle exposed another buzz that seems to be a loose plate buried somewhere in the back of the cabinet. Getting in there requires tearing the whole thing apart, which I’m not looking forward to in the least.

  • Whirlpool Refrigerator Fan Noise: Final Fix Redux

    Well, using a PC case fan as a freezer blower seemed like a good idea at the time: it worked, moved an adequate amount of air, and was pretty nearly silent. Until, that is, frost built up on the blades, water froze inside the frame, and the thing began sounding like a stick running along a picket fence:

    Frosted PC case fan in freezer
    Frosted PC case fan in freezer

    I replaced the first fan with another having slightly more clearance between the blade tips and the frame, but to no avail.

    So I dug the OEM fan (a.k.a., the Freezer Dog) from the heap, dismantled it, and discovered why it was howling. Turns out that the shaft nearest the fan blades was scored inside that bearing:

    Freezer motor - scored shaft
    Freezer motor – scored shaft

    A closer look:

    Freezer motor - scored shaft detail
    Freezer motor – scored shaft detail

    The rest of the shaft looked fine to me, so I put some green Loctite on rotor at the shaft and shoved the long end of the shaft (using the drill press as an arbor press) to put the scored section inside the rotor:

    Freezer motor - relocated rotor
    Freezer motor – relocated rotor

    Yes, that’s the same Loctite ridge you saw there…

    The shaft has several small grooves that probably held lubricant or acted as alignment guides or something useful, but I’m hoping none of that matters. The rotor is turning backwards now, too, which shouldn’t make much difference: it’s pretty much symmetrical.

    While I had the motor apart, I whacked the bearings with a rod to shrink them a bit:

    Freezer fan bearings
    Freezer fan bearings

    Slobbered more STP on the bronze bearings, reassembled everything again, and it’s been quiet for nearly a week.

    Perhaps the combination of new shaft surfaces and tweaked bearings will run for a few more years. I still have the “new” replacement fan in a box…

  • Soaker Hose Splicing

    We deployed several granulated-rubber soaker hoses last year and, while they certainly weep enough water, they’re exceedingly brittle: they kink and break with what seems to be ordinary handling.

    The hose ID is much smaller than ordinary “half inch” hose, so I turned some grooves on a chunk of copper tube that’s a snug fit inside:

    Grooving copper tubing
    Grooving copper tubing

    Slitting a piece of scrap hose (ya gotta have stuff) and clamping it around the hose and tubing holds the splice together against the 90 psi water in the Vassar Farms irrigation system and provides a bit of strain relief beyond the ends of the tubing:

    Spliced soaker hose
    Spliced soaker hose

    While I was at it I made three more copper splices, because I know they’ll come in handy…

  • Brita Pitcher Lid: Second Hinge Pin Failure

    Although that fix continues to work, the second pin failed pretty much as expected:

    Brita pitcher lid - second broken pin
    Brita pitcher lid – second broken pin

    I glued the pin to rebuild the base, sheared the pin off, extracted the matching screw from the Tiny Vial of Teensy Screws, drilled a hole, and forced it in. This shot of the underside of the pitcher lid clearly shows that drilling the hole perpendicular to the edge doesn’t produce the proper alignment, but it works well enough:

    Brita pitcher lid - pin angle
    Brita pitcher lid – pin angle

    The “Smart Pitcher” LCD panel in the lid that counts down six weeks until filter replacement didn’t survive its most recent trip through the dishwasher, so we’re reduced to marking the calendar. How 20th century…

  • Replacement Oven Drawer Supports

    One of the oven drawer supports in our Sears Kenmore gas range cracked and I finally got around to replacing it:

    Cracked oven drawer slide and replacement
    Cracked oven drawer slide and replacement

    I originally thought the drawer slid on the large, blocky, well-supported lump. Nope, that delicate little tab must support half the weight of the drawer; the lump might support the drawer in another oven. Perhaps we shouldn’t store the Lesser and Least Cast Iron Pans in that drawer, but that’s where they fit best. The Greater Cast Iron Pan lives atop the stove, because it get used so often there’s no point in putting it away.

    One could, of course, Fire the Thing-O-Matic! to print brightly colored plastic bits (after the usual tedious 3D modeling & trial fitting), but replacement parts cost a buck each from RepairPartsDirect. I bought three, so as to have a complete backup set, and most of the $9 total went to postage & handling.

    Done!

  • Sears Kenmore HE3 Washer Repair: End of the Story

    Our story so far:

    So here’s the Rest of the Story, reconstructed from my notes…

    Having already torn the thing apart and discovered that the repair would include both the drum+spider assembly (not available separately, which may actually make sense given high-speed spin balancing) and the front half of the plastic tub, I priced them at RepairClinic and Sears Parts Direct. In round numbers, this adventure would cost $300-400 just for the parts, a bit less than half the cost of the washer.

    As I recall, the Sears price for the drum was roughly twice that for RepairClinic, while the tub was about the same. I suspect Sears deliberately inflates the drum price to make sure nobody actually buys the thing and to pad out the tech’s time to replace it.

    The warranty in the front of the Owner’s Manual seemed promising:

    Sears Kenmore HE3 Washer Warranty
    Sears Kenmore HE3 Washer Warranty

    So I called the Sears Parts & Warranty line, walked the menu tree, explained the situation, asked for a new drum, and was told that they must dispatch a tech to diagnose the problem. Despite the warranty, there would be a labor fee and an additional fee to process the parts order. There was no way to determine those fees before dispatching the tech.

    I pointed out that I’d already dismantled the washer, knew exactly what the problem was, and just needed the replacement drum as described in the warranty. I was put on hold to “process my request”, eventually being transferred to a “tech specialist department for further assistance”.

    The “tech specialist” was willing to spend as much time as required to convince me that the Lifetime Warranty had expired, based on a deliberate misreading of the terms. As far as they were concerned, the sentence “After the first year, you will be charged for labor” meant that the warranty had expired on a five-year-old washer and that the drum was no longer covered. They would not, under any circumstances, send me the drum. Yes, I asked for a supervisor and, no, I doubt that she really was one; handing the call to the next cubicle is standard call-center subterfuge to placate irate customers.

    I eventually decided that this was not a language-barrier issue, but a carefully planned & executed part of their standard script: letting their Indian-subcontinent call center take the heat works wonderfully well for the purpose of getting rid of warranty claims.

    So I looked up the phone number of the “interim CEO/President” (I assume he’s long gone by now) at Sears Holding Corporation and gave him a call. Of course, I didn’t expect to actually reach the CEO, but I figured I’d shake the dice a bit to see if a better combination came up.

    It turns out that they expect this sort of behavior and immediately connected me to their “Executive Customer Service” department, which was described as “the highest they can go”. So I told my tale, asked her to ship me a drum, and was told that wasn’t possible. What she could do, as a “one time offer”, was to “waive the labor fee” when they dispatched the tech.

    I asked if there were any other fees. She refused to answer that question. I asked if there was a charge to order the parts. She refused to answer that question. It being a Friday, I asked when the tech could arrive; she said that they would attempt to schedule it for Monday, but Tuesday was more likely. I asked if he’d arrive with the drum. She said the tech would assess the problem and order the necessary parts, requiring a second appointment later in the week.

    I told her that it was obvious Sears had no intention of honoring their warranty. She repeated that this was a one-time offer. We did not part on good terms.

    So I ordered the drum & tub from RepairClinic, two huge boxes arrived on Tuesday, I installed everything, buttoned up the machinery, and the washer has worked fine ever since.

    Every time I looked at that big drum, I got mad all over again. I never mustered the enthusiasm to take the spider off the back for a post-mortem, which is why there’s no Part 2 after that post. Eventually I hauled the carcasses to the town’s disposal site and bid them good riddance.

    Obviously, Sears won: they got rid of me without spending a dime on the warranty. It cost them maybe two hours of phone time, but I doubt the pleasant voice in the “Executive Customer Service” department makes much more than minimum wage and Indian-subcontinent personnel are basically free compared to that.

    I’m doing a bunch of appliance repair right now and wonder just how much we’d be spending if we had to go through the Official Channels for repairs. I’m definitely earning my keep… and having much more fun than being jerked around by that corporate structure.

    And that’s the end of that story…