I not completely gone just went to lurking mode. Yesterday was a bad day in the shop here. Everything went wrong. ATV that came in for u joints needs a new drive shaft instead because the idiot drove until u-joint ears are ready to break. I wasted my time buying the u-joints. What worst is that if install a new half shaft it is $400 vs $75 it was for the u-joints. I did manage to find an used half section but probably will need to change out the u-joint. But $50 is a lot easier on the customer's wallet.
Then a darn Briggs pressure washer comes in a leaking pump. Briggs has NLA the pump seals. Briggs is getting to where everything I order is NLA. Then I get snapped at here for offering a different way of doing the job as I solder will stiffen the wires. On top of that I had warm up my fingers in my coffee because they were hurting so bad from the cold. Adding the guy to my ignore list just means I not wasting my time reading his posts; unless, I want to.
And I have used about every method of soldering over the years. Some works better than others. But just haven't much experience with the hot air method for doing surface mounts yet. I started using the splices as I had make up several Briggs kill harnesses over the winter. And I had been looking for them for years to install thermal fuses and make other repairs where solder just will not hold or work. One place is portable heater elements. They perform just just as well as other solderless terminals such the F56 (GM, Aptriv) terminals that use open barrel crimps. You can also add an extra wire (tap) without cutting the first wire in two, just remove enough insulation to make the connection and reseal the insulation with heat shrink, liquid tape, or whatever you normally use; just not scotch tape or paper tape.
I feel you. Starting last year I lowered my stress level a lot with my shop I no longer taking everything that everyone wants to bring me.
I streamlined the type of equipment I work on so now I turn down more than I actually take or about 50/50.
For those pressure washers, I've been telling people for years that I only work on the engine running part because in my climate, 95% of the calls I get are ones that worked fine last time they use them but they simply won't start now.
I tell them I can fix that and make them run properly but if they hook water to it and it leaks or doesn't pump I don't do those repairs and they're out of luck.
Three or four years ago maybe five or six it certainly was not cost-effective to fix them because the cheapest pump you could get even on eBay was $132. Then the pumps bottomed out to 62 to 68 dollars and I did manage to fix a small handful for people that were really nice or long-term repeat customers because it was an economical cost effective repair.
Now those pumps have gotten back up to about 80 minimum so it's borderline.
I've told a lot of them where to order and how easy it is to install the pump so they can do it themselves because frankly, I don't have the time.
I could fix 20 mowers a day and still have a backlog.
I know some of the older and more commercial grade pumps do have parts available and you can get the seal kits and files etc but most of the consumer grade ones now aren't available like that and it's an entire pump replacement.
If you haven't already, take the part number from one of them and put it into an eBay search box and you should find a price that makes it worth swapping off the pumps instead of trying to put seals and stuff like that internally.
There was a time about 9 years ago that certain parts were actually cheaper on Amazon but hasn't been the case for five or six years now. If you scroll down eBay you will be able to find better pricing on almost everything outdoor power equipment related.
