On 26/04/2016 2:40 PM, Mountain Man via Mercedes wrote:
Dan wrote:
I was amazed at parts availability.
Ours is a good name commercial mower - Bobcat Ransomes which is now
part of a Wall Street leveraged buyout company named Schiller Grounds
Care. Parts still available 20-years later? - fuggedaboutit. Well
maintained by us for 20-years but gearbox crapped out. I wish it was
20-years ago when parts seemed available more universally.
mao
_______________________________________
People don't fix things these days.
We had a good quality electric tea kettle - Russell Hobbs (sp?) that we
used for probably 20 years. The cord started to separate at the plug
that connected it to the kettle. It actually had the type of setup where
one could unplug the cord from the kettle. I looked online for a cord
and found one but to buy it cost about as much as a new kettle and I
would have had to order it and pay shipping etc. Needless to say, my
wife went out and bought a new kettle the next day. Another of the same
brand but a bit different and less likely to last 20 years than the old
one. The point is that the powers that be did not want us to fix the old
one and most folks could not be bothered which is likely why the cord
cost so much. Not many are sold so stocking them is not a profitable
thing to do unless one gets well paid when one does sell.
The young folks just buy new ones because labor is too expensive and
parts are unobtainium for most things.
I am continually disappointed when I go to stores that used to carry
things I remember but cannot find anymore.
Things that I once considered very basic have become extinct because the
business won't carry them in inventory because their computer says not
enough were sold last quarter to justify the space on the shelf. Try
buying a new plug to put on the end of an extension cord. It is usually
just as much money as a whole new cord. Wasteful!
We are being dragged into a changing world whether we like it or not.
With the lawnmower, you have an alternative. You can get a machine shop
to repair it if you can find one that is still in business. Or, you can
buy some machine tools and make parts yourself. That is the way our
forefathers did it before parts inventories were common. They mended
things themselves - more crudely in the earlier days of blacksmithing
etc, but back in the 40's, 50's etc, people made or fixed things because
they had no choices. Look at an old Popular Mechanics magazine from
those days and it was all about doing it yourself.
RB who has acquired some of the tools but sadly not the skills as yet to
do much with them
_______________________________________
http://www.okiebenz.com
To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/
To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to:
http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
