My other avenue of income :)

[coffee]

So, I have not been that active in the forum for the last few months or so. Its not that business has dropped off. I have remained steady actually thru the summer and service calls are continuing to come in. But I have started to branch out into a different area. I actually got into this by accident.

My neighbor brought over a car amp that he said quit working and wanted me to take a look at it. Well, My electronics was a bit rusty and I needed to brush up. So, I cleaned off the bench and started studying amplifiers. My brush up didnt take all that long really and he didnt have a time set on repairing it. So, I used it as a test learning amp. Nice amp really. It is a 2 channel amp about 1600 watts (RMS actually about 800watts as I remember) and after some testing I replaced the output transistors and a diode. Started working like a champ. I returned it to him and got paid for my work. Now it gets interesting. My neighbor turned me on to a friend of his that does car stereo installations and such and he brought me two amps to look at. One was a pretty old Kenwood 4 channel. The other was a rather large Powerbass ASA800.2x amp. I went thru them and rebuilt the power supply on the kenwood and spent considerably more time on the Powerbass. But I repaired both of them no problem. I got paid for those too.

Now, When the customer came and picked them up he brought another for me to look at. I know what he was doing. He was sizing me up to see how good I actually was because he mentioned that he had about 18 more that needed servicing. Now, This next amp was rescued from a burning car! But I took it in and decided to take the challenge to fix it. Its actually a pretty new and expensive amp.

Around the edges of the circuit board I could see that it had some solder traces that had actually melted and flowed over. So, I removed the output transistors, The power supply mosfets and checked the main caps / shorts to ground. After cleaning it all up and testing the transistors I had it backup and running. I called him and let him know it was ready to go. He was pretty darn impressed. So, Now he is going to drop off a few more amps and he is going to talk to another person he knows that has some amps to be repaired.

I guess I have stumbled into a possible avenue of income - Totally by accident. With some of the money I earned I invested in some much needed supplies. I bought a great desoldering pump that I needed badly for double sided boards (thru hole they call them I guess).

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00PGFAJWS/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

So, I have been pretty busy actually branching out in a different direction. The area I live in is very into car stereo systems and the competition is pretty non existent really. The thing about car amps is decent ones are quite expensive. Its not like your going to spend the money on one and if it fails just through it out and buy another like keyboards and mice. Also, Getting my feet wet in this area of repair took quite a bit of studying and lining up suppliers for parts and equipment. Another benefit of this is that I no longer through out as much equipment because I will scavenge them for components.

I am now starting to look more into board level repair on other items too.

I think Technibbles should add a section for component level repair. I am sure I could keep it active if there are others here. Would like to see it private though from the public. Anyone else get into this?

coffee

 

[labtech]

Just curious, I assume you charged flat rates, but roughly, how much would it turn to be per hour for those jobs you completed?

 

[Larry Sabo]

Good job, @coffee, ... and fun, too!

 

[coffee]

Just curious, I assume you charged flat rates, but roughly, how much would it turn to be per hour for those jobs you completed?

My first amp probably turned out to be at best Minimum wage. Thats because I took a lot of time to tinker around with it and learn a lot. Now with ramping up my knowledge and also importantly, The tools that I use, I think I am sitting at approximately 50.00 per hour. Some repairs take longer of course than others. But it all averages out. Also, The cost of parts is low really. Its the knowledge on how to test / remove / install that the client pays for.

Most of my time is waiting for parts to arrive from suppliers. There are quite a few that I stock in the area of caps, resistors, and some of the more common transistors and common alternative replacement transistors.

 

[coffee]

Good job, @coffee, ... and fun, too!

Thanks Larry, What really opened my eyes and got me going on this was actually my newly acquired Oscope . I bought it for 75.00 off ebay and it has saved unbelievable hours of time in tracing signals and such.

Its quite fun! The only "Learning by experience" moment I had so far is that not discharging the main caps before working on it. I had a transistor hold down clip accidently drop onto the board. AH. So, I immediately sat down and took about a 5watt ceramic resistor and made a cap discharger.

 

[Larry Sabo]

The only "Learning by experience" moment I had so far is that not discharging the main caps before working on it.

LOL. Thankfully, you weren't working around the EHT cup of an old CRT, where that lesson can be "exciting!"

 

[labtech]

Thanks for the description. $40+ is reasonable.

 

[coffee]

LOL. Thankfully, you weren't working around the EHT cup of an old CRT, where that lesson can be "exciting!"

Reminds me of High School Electronic class. We used to charge up a cap and then toss it to someone (lol)
"Hey Dave! Check this out!" (tosses charged cap to them)...

Yep. A CRT could really do the damage there. One big gigantic cap Nice way to Arc weld a probe or screw driver eh?

 

[brandonkick]

Component level repair could be quite profitable. I wish I were better at it really, I only know the
very, very basics. It's something I'd like to learn really. I have a good scope that was given to me
and I think with just a bit of soldering tools I could be set up quite nicely. The problem would be
getting steady work, but even as side work it would be fun. I just have a lot to learn, and not sure
where to start.

 

[coffee]

Component level repair could be quite profitable. I wish I were better at it really, I only know the
very, very basics. It's something I'd like to learn really. I have a good scope that was given to me
and I think with just a bit of soldering tools I could be set up quite nicely. The problem would be
getting steady work, but even as side work it would be fun. I just have a lot to learn, and not sure
where to start.

Nothing directed at you but this is what I have noticed in people.

Someone is always telling me they want to know how to do whatever. But when it comes right down to it they never accomplish it. They do not even get started. I think a lot of people feel that they have to go to school in order to learn how to do something. This is not the case. I bet a lot of them just want someone to hold their hand and do all the hard stuff and force feed them knowledge. They never get anywhere and always complain about not getting that "Break" they needed to accomplish something.

I wanted to learn about car amps. I see potential in the market here. So, I spent a great deal of time studying on sites like YouTube and joining other forums to just spend hours reading and watching videos. I have the determination to not give up and to pursue my goal of learning to repair car amps. While I am learning I run into the 'nay sayers'. They are everywhere. There the ones that never attempted it or tried and failed and such great advice for you - Dont bother. You will never make it. Well, Blow them off.

If your worried about steady work then look at the business your in now. Do you have steady work? When you are good at something the customers will basically seek you out. You also get them by contact in the general public. For me, I will be honing my skills a bit more on some more amps and then I am going to hit up places that see amps, People that install car stereo systems and probably pawn shops to pick up more business.

Check out your area and find out who repairs electronics there. In my area is practically null. So, I will be helping to fill a void and do a darn good job.

 

[labtech]

+1 on the attitude/perception. That is exactly how it is.

 

[brandonkick]

I guess that's pretty fair.

I can do some basic things, like replacing capacitors and know some very limited
knowledge on component level knowledge.

Lots of great information out there on the internet, I'll agree with you there. I have
the basic tools, and some basic knowledge. I think in all honesty wanting to learn
is more for me than wanting to do it to make money. Being able to fix your own stuff,
or fix something that isn't working but you need is great. You get a lot of great deals
when you buy something broken and can fix it yourself.

I gotta get an area set up where I can play around, and try to find a meaningful application.


As a child, my grandfather had two Atari Lynx hand held game systems. Awesome units,
and they were good fun to play. Pretty decent library. His stopped working, and at the time
I had no idea why. Some research has yielded that the internal power circuit goes faulty
and replacing two parts can have it running again. I think they will be my first project, and
I might even fit them with a new high quality aftermarket LCD that has just come into existence
recently!

 

[HCHTech]

Reminds me of High School Electronic class. We used to charge up a cap and then toss it to someone (lol)
"Hey Dave! Check this out!" (tosses charged cap to them)...

When I was a sophomore in high school, I made a science project by ganging together several of those old television barrel caps (I don't remember their specs, but they were about the size of two D-batteries put together). I think I had about a dozen of them courtesy of the local TV repairman. I built a transformer to charge them, then I could discharge them all at once through a single output. For effect, I would discharge them through an 8" length of thin copper wire - it sounded like a 12-gauge and produced a satisfying bit of purple smoke where the wire used to be. I also lit up a high-power xenon strobe - I'm surprised now that it didn't explode. I welded together about 4 switches until I found one beefy enough to take the current. This was in the 70's - I can't believe now that they even let me do that. That could have gone bad so many ways.

 

[Altster]

Since the Internet has come into being it is so darned easy to find just about any bit of information on how to do just about anything. Back when we didn't have Internet it forced us to rely on books (GASP!) AND "Sam's booklets" and whatever else we could find at the public library.

You can find just about anything you can think of from the Internet. It is a great place for research on any subject.