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Aneirin -> RE: my refridegerator is breaking. what to do? (7/18/2009 3:07:19 AM)
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Things we buy are not as good as they were, the idea of industry, is to maintain custom, so building something to last is against good business, that being if an item lasts almost forever, they may be reducing their market, bad for business. The other thing is, everyone now seeks to cut costs, bung out a product that if it does for the years warranty, it is good enough, but corners are cut, substandard parts are used when manufacturers can get away with it, something that will last for the guarantee period is the aim of many.
Another thing, I recently repaired a refrigerator which had developed an annoying buzz, a buzz that developed into a really annoying vibration, driving the owner, one of my friends nuts. To save my ear from the constant wingeing about the noisy fridge, I went in there and discovered the fault. The compressor though mounted on vibration damping mountings, was not screwed down properly, the nyloc nuts were at the ends of the threads, they had never been tightened onto the seating washer. The result, the rubber mountings were shot, battered to death between compressor mount and mounting stud, the noise was vibrating metal on metal, transmitting itself to everything that touched around. I made new rubber packing pieces, ran a die down the mounting to reform the damaged thread and with repair washers corrected the ovalised hole worn in the compressor mounting.Once the original nyloc nut had been threaded down, to the place where it was secure, but allowing movent to be damped, the fridge took on a much, much quieter operation. All that, because of in manufacture, some half assed numpty had not tightened the nylocs down.
That could have been the death of a fridge to an owner out of warranty period, I wonder just how many of that make suffered the dump because of the same fault. Manufacture, or rather assembly as it seems to be now, is not anywhere near the crafted with care goods of the past.
Pahunk, others words are true, purchase pre owned, it is a much much more economical buy, and the old, well, they might not be efficient according to the efficiency scales, but they do tend to be built well and last. The other thing I do when seeking an appliance, is use online recommendations from the likes of www.which.com, as to what is a reliable and value for money buy, reports made on the product from the point of view of the buyer and user, not the hype of a commission seeking sales rep that does not even have the knowledge to wire a plug.
But electronics in household appliances, aside from the obvious, tv and stuff like that, I try to avoid any device with an electronic brain, as more often than not, that electronic brain in it's enviroment is short lived, I prefer with fridges to manually defrost from time to time and all my appliances I interact with their action, not simply leave the brain to it's own devices.
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