Show us your ugly repair

[TerraHertz]

Swapping in the PCB from another random fan was cool.

Thanks! But I swapped the hall effect sensor, not the PCB. I think you typoed?

Although the upside-down dead bug and solder blob do qualify as an ugly repair, I think that overall it's a bit too good for this thread. Next time, duct tape an old AC fan to the exterior of the case!

Aww, and I deliberately left that solder blob to improve it's qualifications for this thread. (Also, because scared of heat-killing the sensor, and the blob makes no practical difference.)

Actually these projectors are rather useless to me, since they require a very flat projection surface otherwise the image is nastily distorted due to the highly oblique light path. So I'm going to see what I can get for them on ebay. They work well when set up as intended, but that setup is finicky. As online reviews repeatedly complain about.

[bitseeker]

Swapping in the PCB from another random fan was cool.

Thanks! But I swapped the hall effect sensor, not the PCB. I think you typoed?

Yes, indeed, I was typing too fast. It's "ugly typing".

Although the upside-down dead bug and solder blob do qualify as an ugly repair, I think that overall it's a bit too good for this thread. Next time, duct tape an old AC fan to the exterior of the case!

Aww, and I deliberately left that solder blob to improve it's qualifications for this thread. (Also, because scared of heat-killing the sensor, and the blob makes no practical difference.)

Hehe. I believe you are the first one I've seen to actually repair one of those little fans.

Actually these projectors are rather useless to me, since they require a very flat projection surface otherwise the image is nastily distorted due to the highly oblique light path. So I'm going to see what I can get for them on ebay. They work well when set up as intended, but that setup is finicky. As online reviews repeatedly complain about.

eBay FTW!

[TheBay]

Broken laptop, USB Connector had been snapped off and the board damaged.
Someone had previously tried to repair, the SD Card socket needs to be removed to get to the USB port solder points.

Tracks damaged going to SD Card socket, carefully removed SD Card socket, removed broken USB socket, fitted new part.
Re-fitted SD Card socket and used solid wire to repair tracks on board, solid wire soldered to SD Card socket pins and then to 0201 resistors.

All done with a Weller WSD80, ugly repair but works. Saved board going for scrap.

[setq]

No photo unfortunately but 30 feet of my garden's lap fence panels were held together for 5 years with CAT5 patch leads and cable ties after a storm took them out.

[bitseeker]

Wow, a fence held together with CAT5. First I've heard.

[TheSteve]

I'd never thought of networking my fence before.

[VK5RC]

My metal fence is part of my rf ground plain network :-)

[T3sl4co1l]

My metal fence is part of my rf ground plain network :-)

If you had used rainbow colored CAT5, it could've been a ground fancy network.

Tim

[VK5RC]

Should have used cat5 cable,  then I would have an iFence!

[SeanB]

There is a pic on Reddit of a BMW with the front lower control arms held together with random network cables and other wire.

Don't think I would srive in it, and I have seen some real bodges here, including a vehicle with brake linings made from cardboard.

[setq]

Another bodge I just remembered from a physics supply teacher I had. He had a flat on his bicycle, pumped it up a bit, soaped up the wheel with some hand soap, found where the hole was. No puncture repair kit and no spare tube available. So he confidently proceeded to pump it up with a car foot pump borrowed off another teacher in a large bucket of water. Due to the ridiculous amount of friction this took about half an hour and probably ruined the pump.

Logic here: H2O molecules were larger than O2/N2 etc so they'd take longer to come out. Long enough to get home.

He was right. It didn't come out. But he forgot that it was nearly impossible to ride with a front tyre that weighed as much as the rest of the bike, hit a drain cover, lost it completely, went flying and smashed his face on the ground.

[bitseeker]

Ouch! Ugly repair lands ugly result.

[VK5RC]

I think one of the finer points of the "Art of Bodging" is to know when to stop and throw the bl**dy thing away!

[bitseeker]

After desoldering the good bits.

[tatus1969]

it is not exactly a repair, but it is ugly 

What you see here is my attempt to modify an existing circuit to do something completely different (measuring an inductor's Q factor) than before (measuring its inductance). I ended up reusing only the SOT363 comparator and it's bypass cap, and adding all the rest somehow.

The heat compound nicely adds to this mess.

[DimitriP]

After one of the heatsink retainers flew off to another dimension.

[All2skitzd]

9800GT for free. Fan was bad so I cable tied a Dell rackmount server fan on it and added a cigarette pack shroud

[kakureru]

Person was not too thrilled to continue the use of a monitor that set off many smoke detectors and caused a near office evacuation...

[richfiles]

i don't have pics, but at my old employer, we had three magnetizers (for magnetizing rotors for motor manufacturing)... Not relevant to the repair, but certainly a very impressive machine, was "Big Blue", a machine that took three full depth, full height 19 inch racks, with 2.5 of the rack space filled with capacitors, and the other half rack's worth of space containing the actual electronics... That was a BEAST of a machine, and did once put someone in the hospital when it vaporized a magnetizer winding that had been improperly connected... 

Anyway, this is not about "Big Blue"... This is about a smaller unit that I once repaired. It had a mercury filled glass tube thyratron as it's trigger, and it had failed. It was an older machine, and the thyratron was pretty expensive for it. I was one of the site technicians, and I unbolted the thyratron, and started to "gently violently" shake it. I got some odd stares... I reassembled the unit, and it worked beautifully.

Over time, mercury would deposit on the outer glass, and sometimes on other internal structures. This eventually shorted it out, in such a manner, that it'd never allow the capacitor banks to fully charge... It'd always trigger early. Shaking the tube basically, "washes" the mercury residue off everything that does not need it, and coats everything that does need it... Well, thats the simple answer I gave, anyway. It was a simple fix, and the machine continued to operate right up until we were eventually bought out by a bigger company and our site closed down.

[martonmiklos]

This one was performed years ago by one of my friends, but I think it worth sharing here. He was awarded the "ditching of the year" between the buddies for this.

He repaired a MSI - EX630 notebook which had a faulty power rail caused by a dead SMPS power supply controller IC. The IC was hard to source and had a very long shipping time and -as always- the client wanted to use his machine as soon as is possible.

He removed the output choke and the controller IC from the faulty power rail and he cut a power supply PCB part (with similar ratings) from an another notebook motherboard with his Proxxon drill. He adjusted  the feedback loop with a helitrimmer to match the necessary voltage. Then he wired back the power rails and the enable and the fault signals back to the motherboard. It worked perfectly until the original SMPS controller arrived and the original power supply topology restored.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/9k9qxvr1ij4kwhz/IMG_0035.JPG?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/23xz6id3iinjx21/IMG_0036.JPG?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0kvn8e2ws72zy52/IMG_0039.JPG?dl=0

[pa3weg]

This one is to replace a design F*ckup that was using a special IC to do a certain job (signal conditioning)
Could also be done with an op-amp circuit, but that did not fit the socket.

So I did some serious landscaping
I can not find a picture with the thing installed, I will dig a bit further.

[wine+dine]

Ah yes, landscaping 

This CA3046 from a Tektronix 7603 had one bad transistor (C-E short).
With no spare at hand initially, and to avoid blowing another anyway, here's an ugly hack to continue troubleshooting.
It survived, and through an accidental deep search of the parts bin, a replacement has since turned up ...

[kakureru]

Who remembers the sampo firmware hacks, this caused the specific line of EEPROM prices to spike during those years. Fortunately I found a nice alt at a fraction of the price but required an "adapter" (It was also slower but aside from menus loading a tad slower, it DVD player had little problem with it.)

(this was from 2002) I have a grainy pic of it installed somewhere.

[richfiles]

Blower motor went out on my home's central air unit in the peak of summer. I don't recall the price, but they wanted some ridonkulous amount to replace it.

I duct taped a car radiator fan over the side panel, and put in a sheet of solid cardboard between the filter and the intake ducts. It pulled air in from the basement, which is fine as long as the basement door was left open so air could circulate. I powered it from a car battery charger. ran like this for a couple days, till I salvaged a proper replacement blower motor from scrap for about $30.

If i recall, i think I twisted the blower power wires onto the prongs of the battery charger plug and wrapped the crap out of it with some electric tape.

[Zom-B]

What to do when your CCFL backlight driver is fubar?

First image is old. Other images are the current version with relay and switch.

(Detatched keyboard unrelated)