a simple repair and a Bridge Too Far

Some repairs are straightforward, others frustrating and now there is one I began and backed off – it was a Bridge Too Far.  An instantaneously rewarding repair was replacing the gasket on the cappuccino maker – immediately thereafter we were again enjoying our once a day treat and this time without spluttering plumes of hot water.

About 14 years ago I bit the bullet and purchased a good cappuccino maker (Expobar) and a coffee bean grinder. (Rancilio nicknamed Rocky).  We have enjoyed cappuccino at least 5 days a week ever since – a gratifying investment.

Expobar needed a new gasket.  I shopped and found a modestly priced E61 which arrived timely.  The trick was removing the old gasket – not easy at all.

I removed the movable parts of the maker and inverted the machine.  The gasket holds the dispersion screen in place and there are various suggestions for removing the dispersion screen or the gasket – none worked for me.  So with my portable electric drill and an appropriately sized drill bit I drilled holes into the gasket taking care that the drill only entered the gasket.  It was then easy to pry out the gasket.  I removed and cleaned the screen and re-assembled with the new gasket and it worked fine.

The repair I abandoned was attempting to fix the CD player on my RCA (RS 2502) stereo system.

The 5 CD player opened fine and rotated among CD’s fine but when it came to playing a track it gave an error message that it could not read the CD.  I  opened it up which was easy enough – just remove a few screws and take off the cover.

I studied and tested and concluded that the problem was the spindle motor – this is the motor which spins the CD around, and the reason for the error message was that the laser disc reader did not recognize the CD because it was not being spun around.  I tried lubricating the motor to no avail.

Perhaps I should have ordered a new motor (they are less than $10 on eBay) and tried to install it.  My hesitation was because I was not sure which motor I needed – I could have disassembled further and identified the motor but the bad weather had turned to good and I was losing patience), and because new systems come with blue tooth and I am using blue tooth extensively in my car trips to hear podcasts and so, to my mind the RCA had become somewhat technologically obsolete.  Lots of rationalizations.  I put it all together again, donated it since everything else worked fine,  and upgraded to a nifty blue tooth Sony system.