On Sun, 14 Jan 2007 17:59:14 -0600, Alan wrote:

On Sun, 14 Jan 2007 17:46:09 GMT, "Rick Brandt"
wrote:

Too_Many_Tools wrote:
In my opinon...no.

I intentionally try to have older appliances, vehicles, machines to
lower repair costs and keep overall ownership cost to a minimum.

Your thoughts?

TMT

Irreparable damageBy Bryce Baschuk
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 9, 2007
Bill Jones, after 42 years, is finally closing the Procter Appliance
Service shop in Silver Spring.
"You can't make a good salary to survive on the way you could years
ago," said the 61-year-old owner of the oven, refrigerator and
washer-dryer repair shop. "Everything has changed in the appliance
business."

This raises an apparent contradiction. Most people believe that appliances were
built much better in the past than they are now and yet in the past a whole
industry survived on doing appliance repairs. Perhaps they only seemed to be
built better in the past because we kept them longer and the only reason we kept
them longer is because we repaired them instead of replacing them. The flipside
of that same coin is that perhaps today's appliances only seem to be inferior
because we replace them more often and the only reason we replace them more
often is because we don't repair them.



I think the main problem with today's appliances is that
they are NOT made so that they can be repaired.

Modules are stamped together, molded together, whatever and
the little part that wears out can't be replaced without
replacing the whole module, which probably isn't available,
anyway, so the appliance gets tossed.

I have an old toaster from the '40s or '50s. It is a
mechanical thing, not electronic, and is made of individual
parts that can be cleaned, oiled, and if you could get them,
replaced as needed. When something like this stops working,
less than an hour's work will set it up to run for another
25 years!



Alan


When I bought this house, there was a problem with the built-in oven
(an older Frigidaire). The (mechanical) clock (that I didn't need)
wouldn't keep time but made a loud UHH-UHH-UHH noise all the time. I
disconnected the wire to it, something I would never have been able to
do with a modern oven.
--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.laughingsquid.com

"Properly read, the Bible is the most potent
force for atheism ever conceived." -- Isaac Asimov