Repair Stories

The Amazing Break: Flaming Johns and Wayward Wheels

As part of our first Community Survey, we asked iFixit members to tell us their most epic break stories. You guys delivered in a big way.

Broken iPhone screen as part of The Amazing Break series

Almost 5,000 people gave us the details of their most harrowing repair moments. Of course, this is the iFixit community; we fix things. So, for every break story someone sent us, another person told us about an incredible repair he or she performed.

We enjoyed your repair trials, tribulations, and victories so much, we decided to preserve them for posterity in a series of blog posts. Here’s another installment of The Amazing Break:

Fire in the Hole

“Whilst trying to change the toilet seat in my new flat, I used WD40 to loose the bolts. That didn’t work so I heated the bolts with a match, at which point the WD40 ignited and my toilet caught fire.”

Scale It Down a Bit

“My son stood on the iPad and said, ‘Siri, give me my weight.’ And, you know, a screen replacement is not cheap.”

No One Does Good Deeds Anymore

“Electronic ignition on my 1980 Mustang died while traveling 60mph on Chicago’s Eisenhower Expressway. Got stuck in the fast lane with cars whizzing by. A nice man stopped behind me and offered to push my car with his to get it off the road. As we moved it off, a car nearly hit us. The man whipped out a .44 Magnum and threatened the offending driver. I thought I would end up on the 6pm news as another crime victim. After the car was off, he said, ‘No one does good deeds anymore,’ waved, and drove away.”

Free Wheelin’

“I was driving a rental car, stopped at a 4-way stop, and watched the passenger side front wheel continue through the intersection.”

If at First You Don’t Succeed, Break It Again

“I had a hard drive go out on me. I had tried everything I could think of to get it going again so it would be read by the PC. I then recalled my grandpa telling me 30+ years ago that if something doesn’t work right, drop it three times and that will fix it. I figured I had nothing to lose so I dropped the hard drive three times from about three inches above the ground. Sure enough, when I plugged the drive back in it worked. It hasn’t failed again to this day and it was dropped almost 2 years ago.”

Got an amazing break (or fix) story of your own? Tell us about them in the comments.