So my iPad was showing multiple strange colors

[malaise]

Hmmm I said and checked Google..

https://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/174170/Display+screen+colors+distorted

It worked! Who would think 10 whacks on the back would fix it but it did! Thank you..........

I only whacked it five times. Howling with laughter.

[Cirque du So-What]

1. Not a fan of the whacking...

but it's probably better than opening the back and checking for loose connections.

[malaise]

2. I thought whacking was a really weird option

but since it worked for others I tried it and am still in shock.

[Cirque du So-What]

3. Sounds like a loose cable connection

and like I mentioned, it's probably better than opening the back and rooting around blindly. Also, it's a temporary fix, as the connection will surely work loose from the sweet spot it got whacked into.

[malaise]

6. I 'll soon have my Laptop back

iPads are grossly over-rated. This one is almost seven years old.

[BSdetect]

4. Apple are adept at planned obsolescence

[MineralMan]

5. Whacking works for many things that rely on plug-in connections.

You jar things a little and the contacts shift a little. Bingo!

I used to have an old car that sometimes wouldn't start. The starter mechanism didn't engage the flywheel ring's teeth. Whacking the starter with a hammer would fix it, for a while. Of course, it kept happening. The real fix was to buy a new starter and install it, but I kept whacking that old starter and kept the car working for another six months.

I noticed today that Target has a sale on iPads. I didn't let my wife see the ad. She has a perfectly good old iPad, but might have decided it was time for a new one. I'll remember this whacking fix for her old one if it develops that problem. THANKS!

[dalton99a]

8. Whacking also works on fuel pumps

[MineralMan]

14. It does, but not for long.

Back in the early 70s, I bought an 1959 Austin Healy bugeye Sprite. It was in some guy's barn, and he was only asking $200 for it. Cool beans. So, I went up there, handed him the $200, and then finally asked him if it ran. I didn't really care, but if I could get it running, I wouldn't have to have it towed to my house.

"Nope," he said. "Bad fuel pump It's been sitting here for 5 years." I tried tapping on the old mechanical fuel pump, but no go. I had brought a can of gas, my jumper cables, and some tools. It was a Sunday afternoon and I was many miles from home. There wasn't a parts store that would have a pump for that strange little British car. I went to a local parts house though, and bought a 6-volt electric fuel pump, some fuel hose and hose clamps. I came back and in half an hour I was ready to try starting the thing.

I put gas in the tank, checked the oil level, hooked up the jumper cables to the borrowed 6-volt battery I had brought with me, pulled out the choke and tried it. It started up instantly. The dash gauge said the generator was working, so, I was good to go. I put all the tools and stuff back in my car, told my wife to follow me, and headed for home in my somewhat rusty AH Sprite. It made it home just fine and I went to work on it.

[2naSalit]

21. I've extended the life of many a headlight

by bumping it hard with the palm of my hand.

But, as with all whacking fixes, they are only temporary.

[ProudLib72]

33. Wow! I can understand the electric fuel pump working

The oil is what would worry me after it was sitting for 5 years. Well, the oil, about a million gaskets, and a British electrical system that (never good in the first place) would have been chewed on by rodents.

This really does deserve a picture.

[MineralMan]

34. Back then, I wasn't taking pictures of things.

The Sprite was in my hands for about 6 months. It's biggest problem was the need for a new radiator, for which I didn't have enough money, being an impoverished college student. I loved the little car, and drove it everywhere, but finally sold it to someone for $ 400. The next weekend, at the swap meet, I saw a brand new radiator for it for just $15. Damn! Story of my life, really.

I've owned a bunch of small British cars. Despite their reputation for problems, none of them ever let me down, at least not for long. Most were purchased for $100-200 dollars, back in the 60s and 70s and sold again later for about twice as much. I'd clean them up, shine them up, tune them up, and then sell them, after driving them for about six months.

I wish I had them all back right now, especially the bugeye Sprite and the 1958 Mini. The Mini was the first year of production of that classic little microcar. The one I had was straight, stock, and very nice. I paid $100 for it and sold it for $400 after getting it running and cleaning it up. It was parked in the back of a garage and I noticed it. I went to the door of the house and asked about it. "That piece of junk?" the guy said. Give me $100 and get it out of here. It doesn't run.

I brought him the $100, spend about half an hour on the car and drove it away. It just needed a new set of points, a jump start and it was fine. I never did any more work on it. Just cleaned it up and drove it.

[ProudLib72]

40. Oh man, I wish I had a Mini

There was a local vintage importer shop that I dropped into a couple years ago. They had an early 60s Mini for some ridiculous price (seems like it was in the neighborhood of $8K). Of course I sat in it and played with everything, but I wasn't about to make an offer when the asking price was that out of sight. The interesting part of the story is that I actually fit. I'm 6'2" and have trouble fitting in some regular sized cars (I hit my head in the VW Scirocco), so fitting into the Mini was somewhat of a surprise.

[ProfessorGAC]

36. If You Can Get To It

So many cars have the fuel pump integral to the gas tank now. Really have to be an expert and have all the appropriate safety gear to do the work of replacing when they do that.

I've had 5 or 6 cars, since the late 80's where the pump was a submersible in the tank itself.

[MineralMan]

45. Yeah, but back in the 50s and 60s, fuel pumps ran off a lobe

on the camshaft and were mechanical, so they bolted up to the engine block. Changing one out was a 15 minute job - if you had a new one. Problem was that there were no new ones available near that car. But, every autoparts store had 6-volt electric fuel pumps in stock. The 59 Sprite had a 6 volt battery.

These days, you're right, the pump is in the fuel tank, which makes a replacement an expensive deal that takes a lot of time.

A 59 Austin Healey Sprite is probably the easiest car to work on ever made. The whole front end of the body tilts up toward the front of the car, so everything is completely exposed in the engine compartment. Simple, too. Bare bones automobile engineering there. A wonderful little car. Fun to drive, too. Not very comfortable, and the convertible top is far from weathertight. I was surprised to find a brand new replacement top that had been installed on that barn find.

[malaise]

9. Haha

Give her a new one for Christmas.
I love my laptop but it needs a new touchscreen and we refused to buy it here.

[spanone]

7. That's probably what they would have done if you took it to the apple genius bar

[malaise]

10. Worse - a local technician would have charged me big bucks

for whacking it

[spanone]

11. Exactly...professional whackers demand high dollar

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

22. They're highly trained in where and how hard to whack. It ain't easy. nt

[rickford66]

12. True story about my 83 Dodge pickup.

When it was new, the horn quit working. I had bought the shop manual and looked up the problem. The directions said to get a 6 inch 2X4 and whack the horn relay. Which I did and it worked OK for the next 9 years I owned it. Too many other problems with it weren't corrected that easily.

[malaise]

15. LOL

That's too good

[Grammy23]

23. Malaise, when I was 18 my parents bought me a pink and white Metropolitan

for my first car. It was a quirky little thing but I thought it was kinda cute. It had a few habits that were inconvenient and potentially dangerous. One was a stuck excellerator. The other was a shifter linkage.

No worries. I carried a stick of wood that I could use to beat it back into submission. Just pull over to the side of the road, raise the hood and wail away. A few good whacks and it was good to go until it got out of alignment again.

Ah, the stories we have to share about our youth. Good times.

[Denzil_DC]

24. If all else fails ...

[canetoad]

27. Austin A40 Farina

Had my first driving lesson in one of those.

[Denzil_DC]

28. Sadly, my "magic touch", mentioned below, doesn't extend to cars.

On a particularly bad day, quite the opposite!

[malaise]

31. I believe you

Funny how those British cars were all over the Commonwealth.

[rickford66]

25. Would you believe we double dated in one of those in HS ?

My Buddy's GF owned one. Since she was the only one with a car, me and my GF were stuffed in the back.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

35. double blind date in a '65 beetle

Started the night by making the couple get out of the back so I could take out the back seat to get to the starter relay to start the thing with a pair of pliers to jump across the contacts. Their comments, "Are you serious?" and "Will this thing last 60 miles there and then back?"

It had worn out king pins so at certain speeds on certain surfaces the whole front end would start shaking. The cure was to slam on the brakes for an instant and continue at a slightly different speed. Forgot to warn the other 3 for the first time that happened.

Obviously, we made it to our destination and back. My blind date from that night is still with me, after over 40 years. She learned to drive in that car. Only cost me a clutch, pressure plate and throw-out bearing.

[rickford66]

37. A lot of this sounds very familiar.

[malaise]

26. LOL I have long known that our parents gave us very old cars because they knew

That most teenagers lack the judgement required on the road, so we got our real driving skills in cars that could not kill us with speed.
Great story.

[Grammy23]

32. Malaise, a couple more stories about my pink Metropolitan...

It had a shifter and so I had to learn to drive a manual car. (I learned to drive on an automatic transmission.). Our house was on a corner so you could enter on one street and drive around in a curve and exit on the other street. It was easy to go round and round in circles to practice. The driveway had a slight incline so I could get used to shifting and slowing down.

The first day I tried it, my younger sister (who was about 16) rode with me. I was having trouble getting the hang of letting out the clutch pedal and pressing down on the gas in a smooth manner. So we were bucking around the yard, lurching and lunging. It was probably pretty comical, but just about everybody has to go through it until you get the hang of it. Finally, my sister (who always could say just the right thing to make you laugh) said, “Get out your saddles, boys. We’re on a bucking bronco.” For a split second I was so mad at her, but then we both laughed our asses off because it was pretty funny.

The sticking accelerator caused me no end of embarrassment. One day I was leaving school at the local Jr. College I was attending. The Dean of the school and another person were outside near the parking lot just chatting. I waved a cheery goodbye to my friends who were standing near him and then took off. At that moment the accelerator stuck and I screeched across the parking lot, careening rather wildly as I struggled to get the stupid accelerator unstuck. I am sure I was mortified because as I looked in my rear view mirror all I saw was the Dean staring at my car with his mouth hanging open. And my friends were standing there laughing like hyenas.
That happened more than 50 years ago and I still remember how red my face was. 🤭😳🤗. But it is funny now.

[Denzil_DC]

13. "Fixed" some pals' old TV using this technique.

I dropped in on them, they had the TV on, then all of a sudden it went off.

"Yeah, it's a pain. It's been doing that for a while. We need to get a new one."

I wandered over to it, spent a few moments clinically picking my spot, then gave it a hearty slap on the side. It came back on again.

"Woah, genius!"

Probably a loose solder joint on the power supply. As long as it didn't arc and cause a fire, that fix would likely work OK for a while till they upgraded or took it to an engineer (too many high voltages inside to volunteer to do it myself on somebody else's telly).

[malaise]

16. I've seen comedians on TV use that but did not know

itreally worked.

[Denzil_DC]

17. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't.

In this case, they said the TV worked OK till it warmed up, so I figured a faulty solder joint was parting when everything got hotter and expanded. There was nothing to lose, and I hit lucky!

Old-fashioned TVs used to need a fair bit of thwacking as they got on in years to keep them going. I also remember my dad taking the aerial plug out of the telly and blowing into it then replacing it whenever reception played up. That was more a ritual than a technique.

I have a bit of an embarrassing reputation of being handed faulty gear and it coming alive again in my hands. Drives my wife crazy sometimes when something that's been playing up for her comes good again, makes her feel jinxed.

Unfortunately, employers take a dim view of claims to a "magic touch" on your resume ...

[Hugin]

18. A friend of mine had to swaddle and burp their iPad for a few months.

My guess is it was a battery problem and in order to operate it had to be within a certain temperature range.

This friend is not technologically inclined, but, figured out how to get her iFix.

So, we'd watch her wrapping her iPad in a towel and pat it on the back a few times and it would wake up with the little Apple boot up logo.

She finally switched to a newer hardware and admitted, in a way, she missed her old pad. It had become like an ePet.

[malaise]

19. ROFL

You win the thread.

[Hugin]

20. Something like that should be included in the 'Baby for a weekend' part of health classes.

"If you want to Instagram, this is what you're going to have to do."

This along with a few other episodes has caused me to realize my dry clinical technologically driven world view may be flawed.

Sometimes, life should be enjoyed for what it is.

[hunter]

29. The Apple III had a similar fault.

It could be fixed by dropping the machine.

https://www.tekrevue.com/apple-iii-drop/

[malaise]

30. Too good

[Roland99]

38. Wish that worked for the charging port

My wife’s iPad will no longer charge

Tried multiple cables and power sources.

[Baltimike]

39. My apple keyboard was being wonky. I broke down an ordered a new one

but then checked online and it said to remove the batteries and run it under tap water. Since the other was to be here that afternoon, I did it and repaired the keyboard 100%

[malaise]

42. Are you serious?

[Baltimike]

44. Very. I'm using it right now. Take the batteries out, put the battery cover back on,

and rinse gently with lukewarm tap water. Let dry (I put mine on top of a damp towel on a radiator space heater. When the towel was dry, so was my keyboard.

[Vinca]

41. I thought maybe you'd just stumbled across a new Trump photo.

[malaise]

43. Hehehe