5 Reasons Why Repairs Fail
We’ve all been there. We’re halfway through a repair or just about to begin when we realize that, whoops, a 14mm open-ended wrench is not in fact a tool I own. So it’s off to the store and a quick job becomes one that takes all weekend.
Drilling a hole anywhere will work. Trust me.
Sometimes we curse, other times we may just crack the beer we were saving for a job well done, say “screw it,” and enjoy some suds because we already know this is going to take a lot longer than it was supposed to. Whether you need to mow the lawn, build a porch, or change your oil, chances are you have experienced–or will experience–one of these problems.
5. Loss of Power
So there I am, mowing the lawn and my mower just quits. Why? Because, oh right, I forgot it was running low on gas last week, and now I have to stop what I’m doing, get in the car, and head to the gas station.
As far as derailments go, a loss of power usually isn’t the worst thing that can happen. Even a power drill battery can charge in a couple of hours. But when I’m relying on an impact driver to build a shed, then spend two hours waiting for a battery to charge, well, let’s just say I get a little frustrated.
4. Using the Wrong Part
This shouldn’t happen to you if you use our handy parts finder or talk to one of our reps. It’s happened to me while working on my car. though (we don’t sell car parts yet). On a Sunday. When the only place I could go to get the right part was closed. My repair straight-up died that day.
It's nothing a hammer and excessive force can't solve.
In my case I was adding a performance exhaust to my car. And I had the wrong donut gasket. I realized this only after I’d removed the downpipe, the cat-back, and the axel-back sections of the exhaust. The process was arduous as many of the connectors had rusted closed. Now I had to decide: get the part on Monday and resume my repair after work? Or put it all back on so I could drive. Except that wasn’t an option, because the old gasket crumbled to pieces when I removed it.
I took the bus to work the next day. And lost an entire afternoon of project time–all because I grabbed the wrong part off the shelf.
3. Not Enough Parts
Like getting the wrong part, not having enough can send your repair to the bench in a flash. But coming up a screw or two short is infinitely more frustrating than having the wrong one–and often times not your own fault.
I'm missing four dowels, three screws, and five of those twisty fasteners that always loosen themselves in a day.
The classic example here is that pouch of Ikea hardware that appears to have two very important screws waiting. So now I can’t finish assembling a particle-board bed frame, but I also can’t sleep because I’ve spent the last two hours assembling a particle-board bed frame in the place where my bed belongs. Good thing I have a comfortable couch.
From this point on I’m building all my furniture with 2x4s, plywood, and a bag of nails.
2. Time Constraints
You might think I’d just lump time constraints in with poor planning. But they’re different enough that I’m giving them each their own category. And since I’m writing this, I can do that.
Sometimes a repair that should only take an afternoon ends up taking three. In my experience this usually happens because of some combination of the above. Trips to the store, wrestling with old, rusty bolts, and poor planning can all combine to ruin everything.
Great. Now I have to fix my clock, too.
But other times, I’ve just expected a job to go smoother than it did. Turns out, the first time you do something (like say wire new horns on a switch into your car) you may take more time and double-check those instructions with frequency. As a result, even with all the right tools and parts, you can find yourself laboring well into the night because you’re new at something. Happens to me all the time.
And leaving a car on jack stands all weekends makes it hard to get around.
But then there’s the real repair killer…
1. Poor Planning (a.k.a. I just assumed it would work)
This one gets me every time. Whether I just don’t do enough research or I don’t do any at all, I’ve had this derail even the simplest repairs. Let’s take for example the first time I changed the oil in my car.
My old car had a small engine and the oil plug pointed downwards. Not so on the Subaru. Thinking that the change would be exactly the same I loosened and removed the drain plug with the pan waiting beneath it to catch the old oil.
Except the oil didn’t fall straight down. It shot out at a 45-degree angle, missing the pan completely, spilling four quarts of oil all over the driveway. A 15 minute repair then involved about an hour of cleanup and disposal because I just assumed that changing the oil was going to work like it did before. Whoops.
Move along. There's nothing to see here.
And that was a small repair. If you’re building a shed and forget to check out what permits you may need, or don’t plan for the weather in your area, you can complete the entire project only to find yourself tearing it down or rebuilding it in the near future.
So remember to do your research, because if you don’t plan ahead, you’re going to have a bad time.
