Fix-It Night for Crappy Tire Stuff

We have a bunch tools at ylab, and some of them from Crappy Tire. We can call them that – after all, Canadian Tire fought for the use of that name. You would normally think we would be using their tools to fix other things. Nope. We had to fix the tools.

This  Mastercraft drill is about 4 years old, the first 3 1/2 years being unused in a unopened box. Still new, but out of warranty. We used it about 4 times… and it died. No grinding noises. No sparks. Just… stopped.

Opened it up, did a big of poking, and the problem was obvious. That white wire at the bottom coming out of the power cord. It goes into the power trigger. Just touched it, and it came right out. On the other side of that trigger control is a screw that had to be tightened to hold it in place. It was never tightened.

This is the model number, in case you want to not make the mistake of buying this drill. But it is working fine now that we’ve fixed it.

Then we come to our Crappy Tire pliers set. Probably about 3 years old, but still relatively lightly used.

Those insulating handle grips should not be sliding off like that. One of our members has a lightly used set at home that’s doing the same thing, so it’s not just us. We’re testing some decent quality spray adhesive to see if that will hold it in place.

Then there’s the side cutters. Let’s zoom in a little closer

When you’re snipping a wire, it’s the end of the wire that’s supposed to snip off, not the end of the side cutter.

Unfortunately, we don’t have a way of fixing that. Well, some of our members do… but it would not be worth the time and effort.

Come on, Crappy Tire. You should be doing better than that.