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Planned obsolescence vs routine maintenance

Esperdome

Remedial Humorist
Esperdome
Joined
Jun 6, 2006
Messages
4,022
Recently my faithful(non-denominational) dryer quit working for me. I bought it along with a washing machine back in 2000. Rather than call a repairman to fix it or replace it with a new unit, (replacement would most likely be cheaper), I decided to fix it myself. I troubleshot the problem down to being a faulty thermal fuse that normally goes out when you have a severe airflow blockage due to lint.

I didn't have a blockage, perhaps it just went out with time as many electrical components do, but I took this opportunity to completely de-lint the machine. About $25 later, I had a kit that had not only the replacement thermal fuse, but also a fuse for a gas dryer and the thermostat sensor for this one( they recommend you replace them both). You can't actually purchase the little thermal fuse by itself.

So I spent 3-4 hours replacing a part that should cost less than $5 to make my seven year old dryer hopefully run for perhaps another seven years. The simplicity of this machine and the easiness to fix it, I could keep it drying for fifty years or till they quit making parts for it. Maytag, I loved you when you were still made in Iowa.

Am I weird for doing this?

On another vein, the company truck I drove previous to the one I drive now I took delivery of with less than ten miles on the clock. I drove it for eight years and amassed 265,000 miles. Finally a problem with the engine ( corrosion of a freeze plug between the fuel gallery and the cooling system) caused a potential repair bill that my company was unwilling to pay. Previously it had a transmission overhaul (not replacement), water pump replacement, two fuel injectors, a vacuum pump, crankshaft positioning sensor, fuel pump housing, three starters, (I replaced these and the vacuum pump myself), and battery replacement. Bad as that all sounds, the truck only left me walking once, and that was when it had 225,000 miles on the clock (crank positioning sensor).

When I parked the truck, EVERYTHING else on it still worked fine.

Considering the cost of manufacturing a replacement dryer or truck from scratch, especially from the resource side of things, are we being shortsighted on our planned obsolescence?
 
since Chinafication, theres a term we use in the audio industry for assessing whether to turn on the soldering iron in a failure: "Fire and Forget"

"no user serviceable parts inside" takes on a whole new meaning with a lot of this junk.

meanwhile, our 50 year old tube gear keeps on chugging, with routine maintainence
 
Esperdome said:
I did just that in troubleshooting, but it's not recommended long term unless you want to burn your house down. :D
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I'm using a couple of fans right now with jumpered thermal fuses. With a dryer I might give replacement some consideration, but since my dryer is in a garage with a concrete floor and walls, weighing the chance of a dryer fire ever happening and the chance of it spreading to the ceiling joists if it did, against the effort required to get a replacement fuse, I'm sure I'd decide against it.
 
It is the debate between repair or replace. When you have a serious problem with your computer, 90% of us replace, 10% say, "Let's see how far we can upgrade this sucker".

It is my opinion that manufacturers don't want us fixing their products when they fail, they want us buying new products.
 
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Long ago in the days when I had no money, I had no TV but did have an old Commodore-64 monitor. I found a VCR in a dumpster and the TV tuner in it worked once I soldered across a crack on the main circuit board. You couldn't put the board back in the case though, or the tension on it would break some connection somewhere else. So for years, my TV was a bare circuit board and power supply mounted to a chunk of two-by-four and hooked to a 15 inch C-64 monitor.
 
Esperdome said:
It is the debate between repair or replace. When you have a serious problem with your computer, 90% of us replace, 10% say, "Let's see how far we can upgrade this sucker".

It is my opinion that manufacturers don't want us fixing their products when they fail, they want us buying new products.
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Of course - never any question about that!!!
 
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I've got an MP3 player, where the headphone output only works some of the time. Suspect it just needs a loose connection resoldering - so unscrewed it to take a look. It would be impossible to get to where the headphone socket's attached to the board - or a lot of other parts - without pretty much breaking the internals by bending a piece of metal to get the internals 'open'.

Seems to scupper hopes of repair :(
 
I drove a 1984 Chevy Citation up until about 2 years ago. It barely cost me $200 a year in upkeep, including oil changes. I ended up selling it because we didn't have room for it in the driveway. As far as I know, it is still on the road, chugging along with nothing wrong except running a little hot.
 
Esperdome said:
It is my opinion that manufacturers don't want us fixing their products when they fail, they want us buying new products.
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Manufacturers respond to customer behavior. If the dominant customer behavior is to focus on the purchase price and ignore the cost of ownership, they design products accordingly.

"Planned obsolescence" is not some sinister conspiracy by the manufacturer. It's just the market process at work. If you want manufacturers to make more durable equipment, you have to prove that there's a market for it.
 
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At some point in the last century or so, the basic economics of maintenance changed, too. I used to do my own oil every two months, but I crunched the numbers: my mechanic buys decent oil in drums the size of my car, so he can charge me for oil, filter, and labour and come out below what I would pay for oil and filter alone. It's a no-brainer.

I still have my grandmother's Electrolux from the 1950s, but have gone through five Electroluxes built since the 1980s. Pieces of ****, to be completely frank.
 
JoeEllison said:
I drove a 1984 Chevy Citation up until about 2 years ago. It barely cost me $200 a year in upkeep, including oil changes. I ended up selling it because we didn't have room for it in the driveway. As far as I know, it is still on the road, chugging along with nothing wrong except running a little hot.
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My mom had one of those little roundy-top refrigerators all the time I was growing up (circa 1965 let's call it). She had it when she and my dad got married in the mid-50s. The thing worked like a champ. In the mid 70s, she decided it was time for a new side-by-side, with an ice maker and all sorts of bins and stuff. She gave the old one to my brother who took it to use at college.

The new one was enormous, comparatively and of couse stopped working almost immediately. The repairman was there so often we were on a first name basis with him. Our dog, vicious, nasty little dachsund that would attack anyone who came near the house, would barely move when the guy would come to the door.

My brother used the old 'fridge for oh, 5-6 years at college and after, while looking for work...and sold it to someone.

The "new" fridge had to be replaced (thrown out) after I think 10 years of it's never quite working (ice maker never worked).

Tokie
 
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blutoski said:
At some point in the last century or so, the basic economics of maintenance changed, too. I used to do my own oil every two months, but I crunched the numbers: my mechanic buys decent oil in drums the size of my car, so he can charge me for oil, filter, and labour and come out below what I would pay for oil and filter alone. It's a no-brainer.

I still have my grandmother's Electrolux from the 1950s, but have gone through five Electroluxes built since the 1980s. Pieces of ****, to be completely frank.
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Not only that...you should see the dirty looks I get when disposing of old oil and radiator fluid down the storm drain these days.

Sheesh.

Tokie
 
Gazpacho said:
Manufacturers respond to customer behavior. If the dominant customer behavior is to focus on the purchase price and ignore the cost of ownership, they design products accordingly.

"Planned obsolescence" is not some sinister conspiracy by the manufacturer. It's just the market process at work. If you want manufacturers to make more durable equipment, you have to prove that there's a market for it.
Click to expand...

True, it's simply a market response.

Pop the hood of a late model car...what's in there?

Beats me. I tried to resolder some wiring for a little bath fan that stopped working and the wiring was so brittle it snapped in my fingers. Not sure what that's about. I remember the old man testing TV vaccum tubes at the Rexall...open the back of a TV today, and you have to be an electrical engineer to know what you are looking at.

Lots of people like tinkering with such things.

I hate it. I just buy a new one..depending on age. I once forced a dept. store to give me a new microwave (you'd have to be a real fool to work on these if you are just a tinkerer) after 3 years when it just stopped working because it's called a "durable" good for a reason. The manager was, fortunately, an older guy who remembered when things lasted a while...the young punk salesjerk sneered and asked "how long do you EXPECT it to work?" (thing cost $700, late 80s). I said 10 years, and the gen'l manager agreed.

On the other hand, the paint on my 2000 Dodge pickup is failing. The dealer's and Dodge's response: not our problem. It's out of warranty. This is not a widespread problem, apparently, but I've seen it on other PUs about this age. It's a paint failure, not some chemical or tree issue, and it's spreading like some kind of cancer (not to the after market bedcover...) and they'll do nothing about it.

So it goes.

Tokie
 
Tokie, about that truck. Keep trying. There have been a lot of problems with auto paint in the last 20 years, as cleaner air formulas have failed. There's a possible hidden warranty on yours. You'll have to do the leg work on that, and determine if it's the kind of defect that counts, but here, for starters, is a little LIIIINNNNKKKKK!

And I hope you're joking about your fluid disposal habits. Even if you are indifferent to the environmental effect of putting these things down the sewers (antifreeze is poisonous you know), it's big time illegal most places.

Regarding the original post, I had a similar problem with our now 18 year old Maytag washer. A seal went, and I had a terrible time finding a replacement. Most places said they could order it, but the price was all over the map. I finally got it on line for 5 bucks or so. Good as new with about 20 minutes of work. I replaced the belts too, a precaution after about 10 years. You tip the machine up and slip them on. 30 seconds tops, no adjustment needed. No clutch in the drivetrain, because the belt tensioner does double duty. Engineering genius!
 
In our company we don't repair computer which are older then 3 year by default. The computers are so cheap that the time and money spend on repairing is better invested in buying a new machine.
Yes this leads to perfectly good machines being thrown out due to a minor problem but it saves our IT department immense amounts of manhours.
 
It is the debate between repair or replace. When you have a serious problem with your computer, 90% of us replace, 10% say, "Let's see how far we can upgrade this sucker".
Click to expand...
Funny I've fixed multiple computers by saying,"Let's start ripping crap out of this thing." It works too. I've found many a computer won't start because of a bad part.
You can't actually purchase the little thermal fuse by itself.
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Yes you can. You just took the easy way out.
Beats me. I tried to resolder some wiring for a little bath fan that stopped working and the wiring was so brittle it snapped in my fingers. Not sure what that's about. I remember the old man testing TV vaccum tubes at the Rexall...open the back of a TV today, and you have to be an electrical engineer to know what you are looking at.
Click to expand...
Back then you had to be an electrical engineer/technician to know what you were looking at also... Nothing really changed between the CRT of yore and the CRT of today.
 
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jon said:
I've got an MP3 player, where the headphone output only works some of the time. Suspect it just needs a loose connection resoldering - so unscrewed it to take a look. It would be impossible to get to where the headphone socket's attached to the board - or a lot of other parts - without pretty much breaking the internals by bending a piece of metal to get the internals 'open'.

Seems to scupper hopes of repair :(
Click to expand...

That's why when I get an iPod, I get the Apple Care Protection Plan, because it's not if it breaks, it's when it breaks.

I only wish I could get the same thing for my headphones because no matter what brand I buy, I know within 9 months to a year, the plug will malfunction and I'll have to either replace the plug or--given my level of mechanical aptitude--buy a new pair of headphones.

Michael
 
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