Bodgery...in the interests of getting our sets going!

[emeritus]

When visiting a relative, they mentioned that the TV's remote was intermittent. After wedging open the glued-up casing, one of the legs of the transmitting LED was dry joint. No soldering iron available, but plenty of solder on both leg and track, so I used a 6" nail held in pliers and heated on the gas stove as a soldering iron and used lemon juice as flux, to reflow the joint. It saw out the life of the TV.

[Richard_FM]

My Dad once had to use a shaver adaptor for a plug on our travel kettle when we were on holiday in Rhodes & found we had forgotten to take a travel adaptor with us.

Using a pen knife as a screwdriver on the case & terminals it worked without any worrying signs in spite of the current drain.

Another time we had to power on his CD player when the main unit of the stereo was being repaired, as my Dad had left a CD inside he needed elsewhere.

As the CD player had a non standard American style plug with a plastic tab in between the only option was to carefully wrap some wire around each pin from an extension cable & quickly switch the power on while I turned on the player & ejected the disc tray.

Again surprisingly there wasn't any worrying signs but the power was only on for 5 seconds.

[Argus25]

I think Bodgery is fine in emergency situations where a fix needs to be improvised in a McGuyver like manner and you can impress everybody how you saved the day with nothing more than a paper clip, some blue tack and some rubber bands. Makes for a great campfire story.

But in my view if there is no emergency, whether you are fixing something for yourself, or a customer, there is really no excuse for it, unless you are prepared to settle for a poor job and somehow, after enough rationalization (or beers), convince yourself that you are delighted with that outcome. It is really better, if the time and resources are available of course, to plan and execute a repair in a professional manner, or there is no pride in it.

Having said that, in an emergency, anything goes and you can improvise to your heart's content and that is the time to practice and even enjoy bodgery.

[Andy Doz]

Originally Posted by Karen O

I once made a linear power supply that used an audio transformer. It worked fine but I suspect the isolation was dodgy.

I've often used a mains transformer in place of an audio output transformer...

My home made monitor used one. https://andydoz.blogspot.com/2014/09...cope-tube.html

Hardly hifi, but dirt cheap!

[broadgage]

An ancient bodge, done by a late relative in the early 1930s.
They had purchased a newly built house "wired for the electric light" but no electricity supply was available until a couple of months after moving day.

They connected a 6 volt car battery to the fusebox and used adapters to fit 6 volt, 3 watt cycle dynamo bulbs into the existing light fittings.
Worked fine, and 3 watt bulbs though a bit paltry would suffice for safe movement.
The battery was charged by swapping it for the one in the car every few days, possibly needing recourse to the cranking handle to start the engine.

Being able to turn the ordinary lights on/off by means of the switches was far more convenient than fumbling with a torch or a candle.

They had hot water from a coke boiler, and a gas cooker, and a tilley lamp if a brighter light was needed.

[TonyDuell]

I am not sure if this counts as a 'bodge' as the workaround involved some rather exotic and expensive equipment, but....

About 15 years ago, my mother's oven thermostat failed. On Christmas Eve. With a turkey to cook the next day.

Of course I took a look at it. It was a sealed unit, so no real hope of doing a repair. So I dug into my collection of useful bits and :

Type T themocouple linked to an HP3421 Data Acquisition unit (which includes cold junction correction, and can give a temperature reading from a Type T thermocouple directly).

HP71B pocket computer to control the thing. Software written in BASIC, running from RAM (but I did have a backup on an HP9114 disk unit...)

I think I used one of the control outputs of the HP3421 (rather than, say, using an HP82165 parallel interface) to control the oven element. It drove a small relay. That in turn drove a contactor that my father happened to have in his box of bits. That switched the oven element.

The software was simple. If the temperature read by the HP3421 was lower than the required value, turn on the element. If it's over, turn off the element. Yes, crude, but it's what the thermostat would have done anyway.

Yes, we had a cooked Christmas dinner. Yes we ordered a replacement thermostat as soon as we could...

[G6Tanuki]

Not necessarily "bodgery", but a while back a SWL friend had an Eddystone 840C that failed a couple of days before he went into hospital for some major surgery.

I offered to look into it while he was under the knife. Turned out the heater-dropper had gone O/C. I happened to have an - admittedly rather large - industrial 240/120V autotransformer going spare.
So I set the Eddystone's tapping to 115V (bypassing the failed part of the dropper), replaced the 13A 3-pin plug with a 2-pin US-style one to fit the autotransformer, and took the result back to his house; he was delighted to find things working-as-expected when he was discharged. OK an 840C is not everyone's idea of a 'bedside radio' but it fitted his convalescent needs.

For a few years afterwards I'd tell him "if only they could have fitted an autotransformer to your guts and bypassed the failed bit".

[Boater Sam]

Great thread!

Found a PYE 19A in the pile of radios needing TLC.
Quite a few things wrong but someone has done some work on it so had a good look at it.

The output transformer on this model is on top of the chassis so as a preliminary I check the primary.

Err, strange 6 tags, check the circuit. ( Trader 902 )
Ah, it has a feedback winding for the 4 position tone selector switch.
But only 4 have wires connected! Quick meter check confirms the primary is O/C, so why are there no connections at all to the primary tags?
Turning the chassis over to trace the missing wires I find another output transformer!
This one has a primary connected to the output valve and HT but the secondary is in parallel with the secondary of the original transformer, both being connected to the loudspeaker sockets.
So the tone circuits are being fed via 2 transformers. Very good bodge whoever did it.
There are other issues with this set so maybe I will not find out how well it worked with this unusual repair.