Problems arise. Things break down. The service is expensive or they are out of stock in the store or on the Internet. You come up with a cheap solution. You feel pride at your thrift and ingenuity.
For me, two useless problems.
First, I like to squat biggish weights at the gym. I don’t want to pay hundreds of dollars for squat shoes I would rarely wear. Partially standing on a plate does not give me the height, angle or stability I want. I discover you can buy a squat ramp online, but they are expensive - and backordered.
But I found a foam block at a dollar store for $4 and sawed it in half diagonally to make little ramps. Although light and portable, amazingly it does not bend or collapse even under 400 pounds of weight. I couldn’t believe it.
Secondly, with Covid it is impossible to find basic thermometers in stores. Haven’t seen one in months of drug store visits. But the dollar store had appropriately ranged ones - as part of a garden decoration. Does the job. And cheaply too.
Anyone have a cheap fix, hack or solution they are proud of?
Fixed a floor joist under my toilet. Long story short, the builder/contractor was shady lazy crooked and so was the inspector (as well as blind drunk high being bribed or all of the above)
With some scrap bits of 2×4, a hydraulic car jack and a few concrete pavers. And lots and lots of 3inch screws. Jacked up the floatingand sagging ends of the floor joist, installed footings and supports, boxed in the soil stack (connecting the cut joist and “replacing” the missing section)and supported that with a strap
Total $ cost, 10, maybe 15? Plus a little bit of time. A buddy that does framing said I did it pretty much correctly if amateurishly.
I had to change a tire in my parents’ garage and one lug nut was being really stubborn. So I found a six-foot piece of copper pipe in the garage, put it over the wrench handle and stood on the end. Worked just fine. Sometimes it’s enough to stand on the end of the wrench.
Well, I’m “Mr. Fix-it,” and I’m always repairing one thing or another. I hate to throw away fixable products.
I have numerous examples, but this one is typical: One Thanksgiving (of course), my wife was heating something in the microwave (an over-the-stove version), when it made a loud bang, and stoped working. My wife said to just get rid of it and buy a new one, but they are at least $700. Now, I knew that microwaves only have 4 major parts: Transformer, Magnetron, Rectifier, Capacitor. Basic circuit is incredibly simple. I took it down, opened it up and tested the rectifier. Blown. I bought a new rectifier for $30 (a rip-off, but what the hell), and a new capacitor just to be safe, and installed them both in 15 minutes, and it’s been working fine since.
The mechanism inside the bathroom door was getting more and more worn, to the point where it was hard to unlatch. All the hardware stores are shut (unless you’re a tradie) so I can’t get a new one.
So I swapped it for the one in the kitchen door. We shut that door maybe once a decade - not a big crimp on our lifestyle.
Bought used pavers from a salvage yard, “borrowed” a pick from an ex-workplace (excavated the old ap20 by hand) and laid the pavers - total cost approx $2100
Our office forms printer was acting up a few years ago. I determined that the problem was that the doojigger was vibrating out of place, so I steadied it by putting a canister of Morton’s Salt on it. (It was the first thing that came to hand). Perfect! However, a co-worker did ask me if I had thought the printer was too bland.
My wife and I get a lot of mileage out of an Instant Pot. It’s basically a pressure cooker with some timing circuitry and its own heater. It eventually stopped working.
The problem was simply a blown thermal fuse. A quick order online and a little wire clipping and splicing and it’s good as new, for a pittance. As opposed to the “we’ll be glad to just sell you a new one” prices being offered.
My lawn mower is too wide to fit through the back gate. I had no idea this was the case until I brought my expensive investment home and went to mow the lawn. In my garage was this large hook-shaped metal thing that had been hanging around for years but I had no idea what it was for (still don’t, I think it had something to do with my old trimmer) and duct-taped it to a piece of bamboo stick (my uncle grows bamboo and we’ve got sticks everywhere). Now when I go through the gate I can use the hook to pull up the grass catcher on the mower and drive right through. The stick stays hung on the gate. Been using it for 10+ years and have to re-tape it every so often but the tool remains. Probably the most useful thing I’ve ever done at the house.
My child’s bedroom has a 7-foot long rolling shade. And it’s a blackout thickness. The plastic dowel on one end broke. After 10 years since we purchased, Ace Hardware no longer sells the brand or replacement parts. Nor can make any shades over 4’ long. So I cut the computer-end plug off an old MacBook charger (as it had the appropriate external diameter) and then jabbed a miniature screw driver bit into it to fit into the metal hanging bracket. Gorilla glued, super glued, and then Sugrued the fix together. It’s been two years, and my contraption has survived 730 downs and ups like a champion!
A few years ago the electric window crank thing on my car stopped working correctly, so I opened up the door to figure out what was wrong with it.
The problem was that a little plastic piece that goes around the cable at the edge of the motor and fits into a metal hole on the door to stabilize the motor had broken, so instead of the motor lowering the window all the way, it would do some combination of pulling the motor up inside the door and pulling the window down.
No one sells the part. Everywhere I checked wanted me to buy the full motor/cable/etc. assembly for like $150. And if I had that I’d have to take even more things apart.
A few holes drilled in the inner sheet metal on the door and a few zip ties later, the motor wasn’t going anywhere.
I have to do that every time I back my riding mower out of the shed. However I do this awkward thing where I hold up the grass catcher with my right hand and drive with the left.
Which brings me to my cheap fix. The shed is about 6" off the ground, so there is a ramp with an angled 2x4 frame and plywood surface in front of the door. The ramp was there when I bought the house and is still in reasonably good shape, but it has sunk into the ground over the years so it is now a bit too far down from the edge of the shed floor. My solution was pull out the ramp about 5 inches and put a couple pieces of firewood of an appropriate height in the gap. The mower wheels roll over the wood just fine and has worked great for years to get the mower in/out of the garage.
PVC pipe is a quick and cheap fix for the expensive rods that hold up Jeep tailgates and BMW trunks and hoods.
The steering colum on the Jeep shattered, So I peeled off the cheap hard rubber trim off the door exterior, and cut it to fit. Hose clamped it around the busted part. Yay!
Cracked the oil pan on a BMW. Cleaned it up real good, JB Welded the sucker. Works like a charm!
Got lots more, 'cause I’m the cheapest bastard around.
I used to own a 1995 Saturn. It was a reliable car, but it always failed California’s smog test on it’s first attempt. Except for one year. On someone’s advise, I cleaned the EGR valve the weekend before I took it to be tested. I can’t remember if I found instructions online or if I used the Hanes manual (which I had for that car), but it turned out to be a really easy job to do on that car. The part was easily accessible and removing it just required unplugging a connector and unscrewing it. Then just spray it with carb cleaner, wipe it down, and reinstall it. Now I can’t be sure it wouldn’t have passed if I hadn’t done that, but that was the only time it actually passed on the first try.
I bought a ’72 Chevy LUV as-is from a friend of a friend. It had a broken timing gear and a bunch of other stuff messed up in the timing system, but for $200, I figured it was worth it. I repaired it, and got it running pretty well. It was missing the front bumper, and I called around to all the junk yards looking for one. They all said that they didn’t have one, and I eventually came back around and called one that I had called earlier. He said - “you are never going to find a front bumper for that truck.” I asked him why, and he said - “think about it - the reason they end up here is because they have been in a accident, and the front bumper is the first thing to go.”
So, I made one out of a 4x4 piece of wood, with a welded steel frame to mount it to the chassis. It worked just fine, and was always a conversation starter.
That reminded me of one of my dad’s stories. It’s not actually my repair since it happened well before I was born, but I think it still fits this thread. Some time in the early 1970s, someone gave my dad an early 1960s Rambler for free, thinking it was on its last legs, as it was running quite poorly. Dad and his friend parked it in a garage and turned out the lights, with the car running and the hood open (I hope they had good ventilation), and could see that the spark plug wires were arcing everywhere. They gave it new spark plugs, wires, and maybe a distributor cap. It ran well after that, and Dad got like a year of use out of it, which isn’t bad for a free car.
Would eat the timing gears all the time. Inadaquate oiling. I tee-ed off the oil pressure line and plumbed a line that squirted oil directly onto the distributer drive (driven off the cam shaft) and never replaced a set since. Net cost zero. All stuff I had kicking around the garage.
Of course, a few years later, the Turbo-Hydramatic 400 went out and its been sitting since. But it STARTS!
Washer stopped before the spin cycle. Figured it was the door switch (won’t spin if the door is up).
Found the wires from the switch are in a plug. Unplugged the switch, stuck a loop of wire in the socket, and bingo, it now thinks the door is down. Yes, this is safety issue (as now the washer can spin with the door up), but I always close the door.
I saw the thread title and thought, ‘Oh, yeah! There’s that… Wait. What was it?’ There was building the new roof for the shed a couple of months ago. That ended up costing $700, but it was a lot cheaper than hiring someone to do it, and it turned out very well for never having done anything like that before. A couple of yers ago Mrs. L.A. wanted to get rid of her storage unit so I built a seven-by-twelve floor upon which I erected a canopy shed. I used pressure-treated two-by-sixes throughout, and probably too many concrete piers so it wasn’t especially cheap; but it’s very good for my first attempt and I’m proud of it. Surely there must be something else more in line with this thread.
And I’ve just remembered: The catio. I enclosed the 16-foot by 20-something foot area under the deck roof to contain the cats. It needed doors. As I planned the project in my head I thought of swinging doors. No, those would be too clunky. How about sliding doors? I thought the tracks would fill with debris and become hard to use, and I’d probably trip over the tracks. Then I had an epiphany: Pocket door tracks. Being mounted on top, they would stay clean and not pose a tripping hazard. They’re smooth and quiet, and only cost a couple-hundred dollars for four large hanging doors.
Hose clamps. The plastic handle of a flat-nosed shovel split on its seams, so I used a hose clamp to hold it together. Perfect. I have a large garden rake whose handle broke midway. I glued it together with Gorilla Glue, and put three hose clamps over it. It worked well until the handle broke close to the head and I had to get a new handle anyway.
When the food processor’s safety mechanism broke last week I was faced with a choice: Buy a new food processor for $90, or buy a replacement bowl for this discontinued model for $60. Instead, I just stick a pair of chopsticks down the handle to engage the interlock.
