Here's another tuner one: Bris.1969. I was in tuner a repair dept and received a tuner from a regional town where they had a dual business, automotive repair & appliances. It was one of those small 'incremental-type' Pye tuners, "not working". Upon removing cover was shocked to see it was packed solid with car grease. They must have heard "a little grease for the contacts" (not that kind of grease!)

Has anyone else had the joy of having to catch a 26" TV cause a leg has been torn off but then just propped under the set.
It all looks fine until you attempt to move it to get to the back.
Usually the owner (who is watching you intently) at that point says "Oh by the way that leg is dodgy"
Yeah thanks for that!

1960s tuner shaft worn to a point due to rednecks using pliers after knob missing. More sophisticated rednecks use 'Vice-grips'.

Red neck innovation with a long shaft, is knocking out the centre of a dead shotgun cartridge, cut it of behind the brass, put a bit of cling wrap on the shaft & push the cavity full of mouldable Marine Putty. If its a split shaft bit of the plastic casing, works wonders.

All done new knob in very few minutes.

Brad will like this story.

Our firm was asked to attend the standby power plant at the old Auburn Hospital in Sydney sometime in the 1980's.
The thing would not start up. Standby power generators at any hospital are number one priority!
Long story short, both banks of lead acid batteries, one for the starter and one for control systems were stony cold flat with NO fluid in the cells!
My estimation after scanning the maintenance logs (or lack of) was the batteries had never been serviced.
Something had to be done STAT as both feeds to the Hospital were in trouble and Surgery and Pediatrics were threatened.
Out came the battery from the Chrsyler and with a couple of jumpers we powered the control system up first.
The static battery charger fed the Chrysler battery to spec and the logic panels lit up.
I checked for water, fuel and oil then swapped the battery over to the engine and the diesel controls powered up with its static charger ditto.
I slid the battery over to the starter motor leads bolted them on and jumped the same battery back to the control panel.
Then I held the diesel fuel rack manually ON and got my boss Keith to key the starter.
The Chrysler battery must have groaned internally but the engine turned over (BIG DIESEL) and fired!
As soon as the rpm came up the alternator charged, up came the DC voltage and the rack held in by itself.
Once running the 415 alternator came on line and back up was ready if needed.
By this time the Hospital staff had rustled up some de-ionised water and we filled the dead batteries up slid them into position and Lo they accepted charge. The hospital boss got engineering to hot foot down to the nearest battery place and buy replacements, my view was if they stopped the set the cranking battery would not work.
So, the set was running, we put the Chrysler battery back and were free, but we agreed to hang about until the boys came back with new cells.
And this is the funny bit. The venting system of the genset shed has failed, the fans would not run. That was for the engineering boys to track down. To avoid overheating we had to pull the soundproof shed doors open and the set was then quite audible. We were checking gauges and stuff on the set and I got hit in the head with a piece of chalk! What the hell! Then Keith my boss got hit. We realised that there were pieces of chalk bouncing into the open doors from the OUTSIDE!
At that moment the Hospital CEO walked in and HE got hit!
We walked outside in time to track the trajectory of the next missile coming from a window a couple of floors up in an adjacent building.
The CEO looked said some very naughty words like "i'll sort f!##$ers out".
It was a not well liked Tutor who was enraged that HER nursing class was being interrupted by those noisy workmen doing unnecessary work down there. The CEO reminded her that power was priority one and her precious class was priority LAST, take it or leave!
Once the crew got back with the batteries, we clued the new engineering staff up hot swapping the cells and got the hell out of there without any more chalk marks.
Fred.

Those priorities are indeed correct. I annoy a lot of people when I crank up our 1MW generator for its monthly test under load. It uses a lot of diesel too, as one would expect from an 18 litre twin turbo V12 engine. We have a service company look after periodic maintenance as we don't have the time to do it ourselves. But unlike Royal Adelaide Hospital, our set starts first go, every go and that keeps the hospital engineer (me) very happy.

Nicely done Brad, doesn't matter if its the megawatt set for the stock exchange or the 10kw set on the farm.

If the starter battery is dead so is the rest Not good look for the patients!
I could not emphasise so strongly to customers that the batteries on the floor have to be serviced and re-newed according to the makers life cycle charts NO MATTER WHAT. My life seemed to be a series of unserviced batteries with a complaint "your set wont start"!

My subsequent conversation with the NEW hospital engineer revealed that the bean counters had removed the maintenance contract on the genset as a cost cutting move on the basis of not being important!
The short time I had on site showed log books filled in for about a year and then nothing.
That's all the set had - one year of service from what I could see.
The hospital eng wanted to know if I would pick the service job up, I was doing 3 jobs at the time and had to decline!
I suggested a well known reputable company that had the resources.

Fred,

One day back in the seventies I had a call to a Healing C211 colour set which had sound but no picture.
After doing all the usual checks I found the CRT heater not lit.
I traced this back to a fuse in the power supply.
I had to this point never seen that fuse blown but replacing it restored everything.
Later that day I had another call to another Healing C211 for a customer with the same surname as the first but in another suburb.
A bit of a coincidence I thought but off I went to fix the C211.
When I got there the set had sound but no picture.
I was thinking it couldn't be could it?
Sure enough the heater fuse in this set was open circuit also!!
I asked if they were related but she said they had no connection other than the same surname.
Since that time I never saw another C211 with that fuse blown.
Coincidence or what!!

"the batteries on the floor"

Let's hope not a concrete floor that some say "causes (lead acid) batteries to go flat" (wonder if this is true or a myth?)

Well yes it does if you don't maintain them!

Myth I think. What mechanism would be in place to cause it?

I've had batteries for standby set ups installed on the dirt/concrete floor, in welded frames, in sheet metal cabinets, in wooden frames and all I can say is what Ian just said: if you don't maintain them, they fail!

Going flat on a concrete floor? a myth.
Of course a battery dumped on the shed floor and left alone will go flat, that's called internal drain and any battery whether its sitting on a concrete floor or floating in a space shuttle needs to charged at the stated rate so it does not go flat!

Installation guides generally suggest batteries to be raised in some sort of holder.
That's to isolate the cell structure from vibrations, keep clear of spilled liquids that may attack the case, and that sort of thing.
All engineering reasons and vary with the cell structure and type.
Battery life may be shortened by many other factors not being optium: charge discharge rates, high temperatures, lack of equalisation, loss of water in flooded types. Plenty of reasons for a dud/flat battery other than what it is sitting on!

Practical example: My solar cells, BIG SIZE, have sat flat on the concrete floor for nearly 20 years and they never go flat!

Fred.

I would tend to agree that in older design batteries, vibration would encourage "shedding".. We use different separators now & that's probably one reason less car batteries catch fire. I have plenty of examples where that does not apply to Gel cells when they drop a cell & go to 10V.

The oldest still good Gel cell here in a no break is 1998

Wood is flexible & absorbs a lot of shock: The fire pump here (1980's) has a steel cage however to stop it cracking the cage, it is bolted to a wooden plank. Opposite to that we compare concrete rail sleepers to wood.

Again Termites do not eat Concrete: Fine. But the concrete unlike the mortar use in China's "Great Wall" used in these sleepers is inflexible and the number that are cracking, mainly in the middle, is enormous, making the claim that they had a fifty year life span: Folly. Many are now being replaced by wood.

When you look at the flexing on the Melbourne Albury lines, no wonder they break and trains fall off this third world line.

I don't know what the cause is but yes, a lead-acid battery will not just go flat but get to a state where it cannot be recharged if it is placed on a concrete floor for an extended period. I've tested the long-standing theory on two identical batteries about 25 years ago with one on the garage floor and other beside it on a stand made of mild steel.

Both were charged up to full and left for three months undisturbed. After the time had expired I tried a car horn on each battery, the one on floor was dead. The other made the horn go off, though one could tell the charge was reduced a bit.

Apparently there is some weird phenomenon in concrete that destroys batteries. Whether this is the mysterious 'dark energy' left over from the time the universe was born or for some other reason I don't know. I am not an expert with such things. The only thing I do know for sure is that placing a lead-acid battery on a concrete surface will see the end of the said battery in the long term.

Dark energy, yep that's what it is, causes all sorts of problems!
Jaycar should have a meter to detect that stuff, must get one.
Probably why electros dry out and valves lose emission as well.
Should have known.

Fred.

It's probably to do with the temperature of the concrete being lower than a raised platform.
You usually find that batteries in cars die on the first cold day in winter.