'Right to repair' law to come in this summer

[Harry Bloomfield, Esq.]

on 11/03/2021, Dave Plowman (News) supposed :

The Haynes manuals used to be based on the manufacturers version, plus their own experience gained in stripping cars down. They stopped doing that long ago, now they just repeat excerpts from the manufacturers manuals.

My last Granada, the final version, was bought cheap with lots of electrical issues. I bought the Haynes manual assuming they were like of old, with a full set of diagrams. I was very wrong, so I complained to Haynes who very helpfully posted me a full A3 set of the manufacturers diagrams. They would have filled several Haynes manuals. ...Yes, I did manage to sort out all of its issues and ran it for many years, whilst hoping Ford might bring out a successor to the Granada.

[Harry Bloomfield, Esq.]

Radio Man submitted this idea :

I'm a bit obsessive about making things work, or work for me, better than they were originally designed to do.

Leaving that aside, if something fails, I try to ensure it will not fail again with the same fault. Our washing / drier must be almost 10 years old now, it first failed at just over 12 months old and outside its warranty. It's motherboard had gone faulty. A very new design, there was no information I could find on a possible repair, the only option was repair the m/b or replace it. I tracked it down to a failed electrolytic, mounted a hot resistor and a heatsink, the cap had begun to swell and was a low temperature rating. I replaced it for 10p with a higher temperature rated version and it has been fine since - I also posted the fix on the whitegoods site, for the benefit of others with the same issue. As a result I received lots of thanks from others who had suffered the same failure.

Next the drier failed. A simple bi-metal overheat trip, which once trip could not (as designed) be reset. The manufacturers fix was a complete replacement heater/condenser section. A tiny hole drilled in the case of the trip, allowed that to be reset with a watch makers screwdriver.

We have not used the drier for many years though, instead we line dry using a fan and dehumidifier system, I set up in the utility.

[charles]

I bought a manual for my Anglia _ not a Haynes - a bit cheaper. There is one sentence that I still remember after nearly 60 years " If the windscreen wipers fail to operate or operate intermittently, connect a 0-15 volt meter across the terminals and check that a current of 5 amps is being drawn."

How to find the wiper motor waa never explained

[The Natural Philosopher]

No, its about planned obsolesence by EU diktat mostly

[The Natural Philosopher]

neighbour got his iphone battery replaced no trouble.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Mine is showing a wonderful array of faults...'gearbox fault/handbrake fault/DSC not available/cruise control not available/'

Apparently it may be a combination of a brake switch that was subsequently modified and needs upgrading to later spec, and my habit of left foot braking and mashing the loud pedal together, to force an upshift...

It goes away after two reboots. I will try no left foot braking and see if it comes back ;-)

However, a plethora of sensor faults usually indicates something else - low battery voltage is a classic.

[Steve Walker]

I once had a company car that snapped a cambelt and had to have the head rebuilt. It was not running right afterwards - it was fine most of the time, but would occasionally refuse to accelerate why you tried to overtake someone.

I spent a couple of weeks driving with a data logger plugged into the OBD2 port and then that was returned to the garage, who said they couldn't work out the problem and they referred it on to Vauxhall.

Vauxhall looked at the data and diagnosed an engine bay wiring harness problem, replacement cost £1200.

In the meantime the garage had closed down and the car had to go to another one.

It went into the garage one morning, due to be there all day, but was returned a couple of hours later. I queried how they'd done it so fast, only to be told that one of their "old school" mechanics had had a look at it and changed the ignition leads - it ran perfectly from then on!

[Jeff Layman]

Well, it depends if the repairer has the skill and equipment to remove the old SMD and replace it with a new one. If the original was a multiconnection device flow-soldered in, I doubt many would be able to replace it. Then, of course, you might have the issue of a multilayered PCB where a via or two has failed, or is very close to the smd.

Pricing is a very relevant issue. If the smd is priced at a high level, and you have to add to that the repairer's fee, in the long run it might not work out much different from a completely new circuit board which only needs to be plugged in.

Maybe that's something to be considered for amending legislation. ;-)

I can't see a way round that if it is considered commercially confidential.

Printer cartridges come to mind!

The first few test cases of non-compliance in the EU/UK are going to be most interesting!

[Jethro_uk]

I'm amused you ever thought they did.

[Fred]

Not always, they often get it right.

Or decide if the sensor etc that has been claimed to have failed would produce the symptoms you see.

[John Rumm]

Well let's assume that a professional board repair outfit has the equipment and skills required. The only thing standing in their way is lack of official access to parts and data.

If the board is available. On high priced Apple kit its not that difficult to charge a flat rate £300 no fix no fee deal, even if the part is £100. Especially when all Apple will offer you is a discount on something new to bring the price down to £1000.

You can't really argue that access to a part is commercially confidential - the internal design of it perhaps.

Even access to a schematic and board view is not really confidential since once you have access to the physical board, you can reverse engineer the schematic.

Yup... and many modern cars.

Yup, I can see a few of those coming :-)

[Tim Streater]

Even on a multi-layer board? Well I could see GCHQ doing that, but a repairer?

[Steve Walker]

That's the problem, lack of a schematic makes it too much effort for a repairer, but does not stop a pirate who wants to produce their own copies and where the effort is worthwhile. Effectively there is no good reason not to make schematics available.

[The Natural Philosopher]

No help at all faced with a 64 contact SMD PGA whose internals are proprietary.

Design moved on from PCB layout to chip level years ago... ...and faced with that, our local Belarusian 'I fix your Apple OK?' has a bunch of dead smartphones that he simply swaps parts from until the customers set works

[John Rumm]

Component level SMD repair is pretty commonly done stuff...

For example, go have a look at Louis Rossmann or Jessa Jones (iPad Rehab) on youtube, they routinely fix stuff that apple claim can't be fixed. They have posted tons of detailed walk-throughs of many repairs.

[John Rumm]

I had similar once - The check engine light came on shortly after starting, and it would not rev above 1500 RPM.

Alas that was at the start of the return leg of my journey and not sat at home on the drive. However I did have the ODBII gadget with me, so plugged that in to read the faults on my phone, and got a collection of half a dozen seemingly unrelated ones - over temperature, throttle position sensor failed, lambda sensor failed or open circuit and so on. Looked at the temperature gage, and it was pegged accurately FSD - not moving at all (and the engine bay did not seem exc3essively warm either), even running the heater full on.

So I thought about it for a bit, and thought these sensors are scattered all over the place, there is nothing that links them logically together, other than the possibility they might share a multi-pole connector, or some CAN bus wiring. So I had a poke under the bonnet - found all the connectors I could see, and partially separated them and pushed them back home. Restarted and everything was back to normal with no hint of a problem. :-)

[John Rumm]

Basic SMD rework is really not that difficult, even with fairly basic kit. I manage quite a number of jobs with a cheap hot air rework station, and a TS100 iron with a fine tip. Plus some quik-chip bismuth alloy low melting point solder. For magnification a large illuminated anglepoise style lamp.

(for phone sized stuff, a decent binocular microscope would be pretty much essential)

[Chris J Dixon]

Nor their method of measuring the current with a voltmeter across the device? ;-)

Chris

[charles]

indeed so,

[Adrian Caspersz]

No. Everything.

In real terms most parts seem to

You are expected to recycle to the component materials and buy again new. Your phone/car/computer is expected to last the life of otherwise consumables, the software updates, the security patches. You simply throw it all away when it breaks.

If ye don't do that, then capitalism apparently fails, profits die, and people lose jobs. If ye run a non-authorised repair centre, "them" will close you down. If you import a pattern part, "them" will close you down also. If you go anywhere near infinging a patent, years after the last actual commercial use, "them" will close you down.

There are many that can recycle, fix electronics to component level, and collectively save themselves a fortune. Others may not be able to handle SMD, doesn't mean a thing to the skilled - but prevented.

Hey, seems we are finished with Brexit, Vegans, BLM etc.

This is the march on the "right to self-repair".

The ethos of DIY folk.

Folks that are seen by "them" as socialist do-gooders illegally sharing secrets, and must apparently be stopped.