I bought a couple railing kits to install on my front porch. Each kit has an upper and lower rail and nine pickets. The pickets fit in plastic inserts (sockets) that snap fit into rectangular punched holes in the upper and lower rails. These plastic inserts are a tight fit.
The manufacturer applied a thick, but brittle, plastic film to the powder coated rails before installing the plastic inserts. The film has protected the finish very well, but now the inserts have trapped the film so there are shreds of it hanging from the edges of each insert. These little pieces won’t pull out. I had to get out my auto trim tools and carefully remove each insert so I could get the film out. Four rails @ nine inserts each = 36. Took me almost an hour.
To put the frosting on the cake, I ended up with a big stack of tiny plastic fragments that hold a static charge extremely well. They stick to my hands and everything else. Had to use a shop vac to get them all up. I dread having to empty the shop vac.
It unfortunately became necessary to replace the carburetor on the Briggs & Stratton engine that powers my Craftsman lawn mower. (A replacement OEM carb from B&S costs 50 bucks; the one I ordered through Amazon cost me 18 dollars, but that’s another story.) Anyway, I received the carb this morning and started the job.
To get to the carburetor, it’s necessary to remove the shroud that covers the engine. There are two star-head bolts that hold the shroud in place, which are easy enough to remove. However, there is also a spring-loaded clip that secures the shroud, which just happens to be located underneath the shroud where it cannot be seen nor accessed by fingers or tools. The only access method is via a small hole on top of the shroud, through which one must poke a skinny screwdriver and position it just right while applying pressure, which releases the clip. Oh, and by the way, that hole is covered by a glued-on label which tells me the manufacturer of the engine.
Thank goodness for YouTube. I was able to find a video that describes exactly how to find the hole, insert the screwdriver, release the clip, and remove the shroud. Once I did so, I proceeded with the job and now once again have a working lawn mower.
Welcome to “No user-serviceable parts inside.” The sticker is there to prevent access by the proles, and to serve as a “This engine’s warrantee has been voided” signal.
There is nothing “stupid” about that design. It is very customer unfriendly, but that’s not the same as stupid. Your point still stands that they are bastards.
I just finished working on my wife’s Jetta. In most modern cars, the engine is covered with a piece of decorative plastic, which serves no function other than to hide the messy, hose-infested engine from sensitive eyes. The brilliant German engineers who made the Jetta decided that rather than waste that space, they would turn that piece of decorative plastic into an actual functional part - it houses the Brobdingnagian air filter. Clever, right?
No, not really. First of all, this massive piece of plastic is a huge pain to remove. And then the air filter, which in most cars is held in by a few clips, is attached with 4 extremely hard to remove phillips screws. Oh, and - let’s not forget the two huge air hoses that need to be detached to lift off the damn thing. No wonder the air filter was as black as coal. It probably had never been changed in 137,000 miles. At least when I removed this monstrosity I was able to refill the brake fluid reservoir, which is hidden underneath of it, because who needs brakes, right?
Most modern cars don’t leak until they get pretty old. Between the lack of leaks, the windage tray under the engine compartment and the big plastic shroud hiding most of it, many (most?) engine compartments of late-model cars look like that.
Or at least do if you drive only on pavement, not country dirt roads.
I recently found out our KitchenAid stove has a stupid design right where it hurts the most. The electronic controls are in front of the cooktop, and there is a seam there that the technician can open to service the electronics inside. That seam is not sealed with anything, so it is possible for cooking grease and cleaning liquid and water to seep inside, and cause corrosion in the electronics, which cost several hundred dollars to replace. It took 12 years to do so, which I realize these days is practically the lifetime of any kitchen appliance, but I’m still pissed about it.
Self checkout at Giant Eagle. Over the weekend I was visiting Akron. I stopped by Giant Eagle to buy a salad and drink for a hotel room late dinner. Picked up the food, hit the self checkout since all the manned registers were closed. Scanned the salad. The machine beeped then the opening screen returned. Scanned again, same result. Let’s see what happens with the bottle of water. Same thing.
What I didn’t know is that Giant Eagle requires their shopper’s card to be scanned before the checkout machine’ll ring up your purchase. I’ve not seen this requirement at any other store until I went to the Acme Fresh Market down the street the next day. I guess these places don’t want to take money from visitors like me.
I discovered a perk at the grocery store self checkout. If you scanned liquor first, someone had to come verify your age and that first scan didn’t register. Unfortunately, that “feature” didn’t last long.
I’ve got a whole house fire & CO alarm system, with wireless sensors. The CO sensors apparently need to be replaced every 5 years. How do you know this? Because when the sensor realizes it’s been powered for 5 years, it starts flashing a yellow light and chirping every 45 seconds. What can you do about it? Take the alarm down & pull out the battery, because there’s no option for “Thanks for the heads up, please be quiet for a while since it takes at least a week to obtain a replacement CO detector that’s compatible with my system.” Since both CO alarms started doing this nearly simultaneously yesterday, my options are to go buy a plug in CO detector that will only be needed for a week or two, or go unprotected until the new detectors arrive.
Regular, standalone CO detectors do that, too. Apparently, unlike smoke detectors, CO detectors have a limited lifespan. There’s some chemical in there that gets used up over time or something like that. And yes, it would be nice if they had some alert that was a “heads up, this CO detector will be used up in a month”, so you have time to obtain a replacement without having to go unprotected in the meantime.
Figures. It’s got to be some kind of timer in the alarm, I refuse to believe both sensors used up their chemicals at such a similar rate that they both started chirping within an hour of each other 5 years after they were installed.
Yeah, I’m sure it is a timer. And I would bet that the engineers who designed the things were conservative when they calculated the rate they would get used up, and you probably are still protect when the chirping starts. Except they don’t give you a way to silence the alarm until you can obtain a replacement.
