Xan wrote: ↑Tue Apr 06, 2021 9:18 pm
My favorite home repair was not too long ago: the dishwasher quit making heat.
It turned out that the problem was the connection between the control board and the heater, and the "by the book" repair was an expensive new control board. The actual fix was to put $.00001 of solder to connect the wire from the heater to the control board.
Yes. The old "repair and replace".
My father had a secure job with the local utility company. But he was gifted at automotive repair. When he'd come home from his job there'd oftentimes be three cars be lined up in front of our house for him to work on. He was both much cheaper and much better than going to a repair place.
The one thing that he told that I always remembered was when he described to me how he fixed a car that would not start.
The typical mechanic would just automatically replace both the starter and the alternative, an expensive proposition. My father, possessing diagnostic skills, would check where voltage was and was not in the starting system. And, instead of doing the repair alternator / starter route....he'd diagnose that it was simply a dirty battery cable. He'd disconnect it, clean it, reconnect it and the car would start fine.
He could fix almost anything. As a result at a time when most families only had one TV we had six working ones in the house for four people. The neighbors would give him things that stopped working and, invariably, he'd fix them with the fixed item either going back to the neighbor or us keeping them.