Cool find, op!
The reason our grandparents generation was good at fixing things is because they had to be. My grandparents lived through the Great Depression and worked difficult manual labor jobs. Contrary to the Reddit memes about how past generations lived like kings on trivial jobs, they worked extremely hard for everything and made it last.
It’s really easy to get service manuals and do basic maintenance on simple things like faucets these days. I think the only reason it’s becoming common for people to not know how to do basic repairs or even find basic service information is that many people grew up never having to think about it. I still have adult friends who went from living with their parents to dorms to rented apartments who never learned the first thing about maintaining or fixing things around the house because they’ve never had to and they don’t want to - and they can keep going that way without really losing anything. It’s a choice at this point, but it works for them.
My generation learned how to plug computer components together and install operating systems and drivers.
The reason people did that is because they (more or less) had to.
The generation being born today will need neither of those skill sets.
Cars, by and large, stay working for as long as people care to keep them and the things that do go wrong are, mostly, uneconomical to fix at home.
It's likewise rare for, dunno, uninstalling a video game to accidentally delete some crucial OS dependency that causes the thing to need to be reformatted.
It's hard to say what skills the next generation will learn, but I can guarantee there will be something that they need that their children will not. And that they'll complain about their children being useless for not knowing whatever that is.
And because it's software, it happens to be a perfect way for the manufacturer to extract rent (er, "recurring revenue") from car repair business. It's not complexity that's shaping how end-user repair experience looks like, but the fact that you often need proprietary connector, proprietary software, and a valid license key to interface with the car's computer.
Software is just the latest layer on the cake. Non-repairable designs, special tools, unavailable parts, unavailable instructions, fragile and error prone procedures, encryption, and more. They're all occasionally used to with the main purpose of blocking any attempt to easily repair without generating revenue for the manufacturer and their network.
Source: I have family working for two large car manufacturers both in engineering and management, who have personally experienced explicit demands to make things hard to repair by the owner but make them in a way where a reasonable explanation can be used for plausible deniability.
These are all things I learned to do myself and have done recently (even the alternator).
Like I said, it’s easier than ever.
I’m kind of baffled that I’m getting downvoted for saying it on HN. Anyone with a little resourcefulness and a willingness to get their hands dirty can do these trivial operations too.
You mean minutes to find the right bootleg manual site with PDF for an adjacent product category, then some more minutes to realize you cannot safely (if at all) get at the manual, some more minutes to find a different bootleg PDF site, realize that it's actually not close enough to the model you have, and 1h later, finally find the good enough PDF... only to realize that "service manuals" today are often useless, and decide to repeat this process on YouTube?
> I can have common parts at my door overnight from Amazon with the press of a button on my phone.
Overnight is often too long. Also good luck finding the right parts and reconciling conflicting IDs between manuals, manufacturers and vendors.
> Every local hardware store carries replacement cartridges and gaskets for common faucet types.
Except when 90% of the faucets are uncommon, and support for them gets effectively discontinued after a few years.
Now contrast that with our grandparents, who usually had repair manuals included with the product, most parts were universal (and probably on-hand or extractable from something else at home), and you could actually go to a local hardware store where the clerk would be able to figure out what parts you needed on the spot, and with luck had them in stock.
I'm not claiming our grandparents had it better in general, but let's also not pretend there are no downsides to ongoing specialization and market competition. We may have more stuff, prettier stuff, better stuff[0], but nothing is ever compatible with anything, it's that way on purpose, and people are no longer supposed to repair anything themselves.
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[0] - That's highly debatable in appliance space.
This state of affairs is partly due a change in the nature of products. They are in general more complex and no longer meant to be repairable. They are meant to have shorter life spans, and if serviceable are meant to be serviced by professionals. How much that is an improvement for the consumer, is questionable IMO.
I just linked to the full CAD library for the modern version of these parts, though. It’s not dumbed down.
Use the search phrase “service manual” and you can find documentation for every appliance in your house. I frequently fix appliances for friends and even neighbors and have yet to be unable to find the service manual.
Same for cars.
I’m so confused by this comment section. Why is everyone convinced that the situation is so much worse today?
The rise of the publicly traded corporation run by fiduciary duty has, in my opinion, squeezed out repairability, pride, and workmanship for marginal financial gains.
I fear it won’t have been worth it in the long run. Shame short term incentives run the show.
I looked at Delta’s website and sure enough you can even download CAD models and drawings of their faucets: https://www.deltafaucet.com/bim-library
My other comment pointing out that these materials are still available and easily found online is getting downvoted.
I suspect a lot of the comments and arguments are coming from the perspective of people who haven’t done any of this type of work, so under a thread about a historical document they assume that the content of the document was only available in the past?
This is on of the stranger comment sections I’ve seen on HN lately. The comments about how only our grandparents learned how to do things like read manuals or change oil in their career is really revealing.
Funny, that exact model dominates the shelf space at the Lowe's near me. Practically a whole bay for just those, over 50 in stock right now.
Incidentally, the newer variants also have flow restrictors, which aren't hard to remove.
Works great. Amazing how durable the faucet is!
I find foul language to be the most effective tool for this job.
Ultimately we replaced the whole faucet and fixture, but that single reply probably made me a customer for life.
Its the eigenvalue of taps. It's hot, or it's not, and which orifice it's coming out of is completely unclear as well as which motion causes more, or less of water and heat.
It sems these days shower valves have all been enshittified to have exactly one dimension, which proceeds from "off" to "small trickle of cold water", then "slow flow of warm water", and finally "slow flow of barely hot water".
Unless someone wired the cold/hot in reverse, which happens surprisingly often.
Otherwise, agreed. Should be obvious and intuitive the first time you start using one.
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1536/cpsprodpb/AF32/production...
For my bathroom sink I specified a two taps/one spout unit (similar to this one https://www.screwfix.com/p/swirl-traditional-chrome-104mm-cl... ) because I prefer to be able to get "this is definitely cold water with absolutely no hot water mixed in" when that's what I want. (My hot water comes from a combi boiler, so if you run the hot tap for a short time all that happens is you burn some gas when the boiler detects the water flow but you just get the cold water in the pipe.)
I like the combined handle type for showers, where you always want some hot water and are generally running the water for a long time.
I wonder what font was used, couldn't tell.
seg_lol•2w ago