For me its the old fans and vacuum cleaners. Over 40/years old each and still going strong. Clear labeling inside and have been fixed up multiple times.
Probably the 72 year old Ferguson tractor I own, new parts are so easy to find and usually very reasonably priced. It’s also designed to be easily user serviceable and user repairable.
Nearly everything is repairable as long as you invest your time for it.
My crown Victoria. I’ve had it for 15 years and do all the repairs on it myself. Sometimes it’s difficult to get to a part cause of a stupid design, but I usually win in the end.
For a unique answer, I’m going to say my model trains from the 1940s & 50s (Lionel, O gauge). They were designed to be taken apart & serviced, and it shows. And they have enough common parts that even though they’re now 75+ years old, you can still get parts.
I’ll also throw my 1997 Ford F-150 into the mix as a more common answer. Ford made literal millions of these, so not only are parts still available, they will be for decades still to come. Heck, I replaced the motor last year, and was able to get most of the bolt on parts I wanted straight from the dealership. Not bad for 25+ years old.
Guitars. I have more than enough, but I still cant resist a good deal on a dirty, old, neglected vintage guitar. Clean it up, fix up any problems, re-string it, play it for a while, and sell it. But if it’s better than something I’ve already got, then I’ll keep it and sell the old one.
I’m slowly building and improving my stable, without spending much money at all. It means my guitars probably won’t say Martin, or Taylor, or Gibson, or Fender, but they’ll all be excellent guitars anyway.
I’m also good with dryers. There isn’t anything on a dryer I can’t fix. They can almost be a Ship of Theseus situation.
my cheap ass salvaged speakers. I got them from a friend who got them from her father who got them from a school janitor who got them from a school that was throwing them out. Each of those step did some “repair”, until they got to me and my roommate, and we undid every previous “repair”. we are still using them
My mid 2000’s Japanese SUV. Manual transmission, regular old v6 gas engine, only one “computer”. Same engine, drivetrain, and frame for 3-4 different models so parts are abundant. Can repair/replace anything on it with a handful of power tools and elbow grease.
I don’t have it anymore (sadly), but for a while I owned a Hitachi TX200 projector.
All of the fans were standard PC fans and easily replaceable. The polarization filters came on little extra modules, you could take them out, replace them and realign them easily. The service menu had an option to shift the pixels for each individual LCD to counteract for pixel-drift and you were also able to calibrate the colors for multiple zones. It’s a great projector and can run for many years with a few replacement parts.
Sadly, it was only 720p and Hitachi never made a higher-resolution model. :(
Possibly my dingy. It’s a eighties fibreglass boat. I’d feel super comfortable swapping any part of the rig and doing light repairs on sail or hul. Although, if the mast broke or the hull was badly damaged I would probably have to let it go ):
Also, on the topic of boats. That one isn’t my boat, but I somewhat frequently sail a stjärnbåt, a type of smaller wooden boat. There we have a real ship of Theseus situation, I think there’s no part of that boat we couldn’t repair.
Do they stink? Like, old vacuums got stink like the shit they’ve been sucking up for years. How do you fix that?
Not the OP, but you can clean all the parts when torn down for service. Vacuum bags instead of holding tanks also helps with that, but mostly it’s the filters. Replace all the filters and the smells go with it.
Yeah every couple of years, you just unscrew and clean. Its pretty easy.
Vacuuming a cotton ball damp with something smelling nice to fix this. Just leave it in the vacuum. I use peppermint oil.
My Thinkpad:
I’m still rocking an A22p! It was my first notebook in 2003. People went mad when I brought it to school because of the 1600x1200 screen. I used its S-Video output so the whole class was able to watch movies on an external CRT TV. :D
There’s even a docking station with eGPU support - before it was cool!
That’s a very nice machine. How’s the screen nowadays? The one on my T60 is extremely dim and yellowed, seems like your’s is still pretty good?
All of those screens have a CCFL, it’s basically a miniature version of of those old tube lights. If that one reaches its end of life it gets dim and yellow and needs to be replaced.
The A22p also accepts the IPS displays from an A31p. I modded mine with one of those, so now I have a Windows 98 notebook with an especially beautiful display. 🥰
Is that XP? That looks amazing!
Yes! :) I have dualboot with 98SE on this machine (the eGPU is pretty terrible to use on Windows 98).
Probably hand planes, I can easily keep those going for decades myself.
Some of my furniture I guess, I’ve already rebuilt the bookshelf that fell apart.
I have a reusable bag. I repaired the seams at least 6 times.
I really love the bag, I got it from CES about 7 years ago. And even it’s an evil entity now, it is hands down the best reusable shopping bag I own.I’m pretty good at repairing computers, but please don’t tell my friends and family.
3d printer. Just wish I didn’t have to do it so often.
