|
Good luck with your retina, issybird! My brother had one a few years back. It was scary and the recovery is more of a hassle than it sounds like, but he's fine, now. I have the best eyes in my family, but that's not saying much.
My vent -- or is it a rant -- concerns my home gym in the basement. It's about 25 years old and needed an overhaul. It's a simple steel frame with a seat and some attachments for various exercises, two steel cables, and a stack of weights. The problem is that exact replacement parts don't seem to be available anymore.
About five years ago I had to have the upper cable replaced. I went to a local fitness store and they referred me to someone who services gym equipment. He was very expensive, but he did (eventually) get the job done. It worked well at first, but within months I discovered some new problems. He apparently didn't have the proper end fitting for the cable, so he simply crimped it in place. The cable couldn't be adjusted, and it began to twist.
So, this time I decided to do it myself. Everything was ordered online and delivered by mail or UPS, so it took some time.
Replacing the cables was fairly easy. I carefully measured the old cables and found someone online to fabricate a new set to my specs. But the cables run through about a dozen pulleys. I had no trouble finding pulleys of the right diameter, but the original pulleys were of two different thicknesses, depending on how they were routing the cable, and I was unable to find any exact matches. Fortunately, after some trial and error using washers as shims, it looks like everything is working.
|