CHARBONNEAU – The right to repair your own stuff is gaining traction

I LIKE TO repair things.

I’ve pulled engines apart. I used to darn my own socks.

After my washing machine started to wobble, I phoned a repair guy and described the problem. His reply? Junk it.

Instead, with the help of YouTube, I pulled it apart and found that the armature that holds the tub had broken. It broke because it was made of cast aluminum and the metal, in that environment, corrodes by galvanic action.

The manufacturer of the washing machine would have known that after a few years the armature would fail.

I’ve also fixed electronic devices – that’s my trade,

It used to be that when you bought a piece of electronics, it would come with an instruction manual and a schematic diagram.

With a schematic diagram, I could analyse the problem, say, a faulty resistor, and replace it.

Now nothing comes with a schematic diagram.

To make matters worse, replacing the battery in phones and other pieces of electronic equipment is difficult or impossible.

When I tried to replace the battery in my iPhone, it was glued in. And in my JBL portable speaker, I managed to replace the battery but I had to use so much force to get it out, that I damaged the circuit board.

Planned obsolescence has been followed by a denial of the right to repair your own stuff. Manufacturers don’t want you to repair things, they want it thrown out and another bought.

Or, if it’s an expensive item, they want it brought to an authorized dealer to pay what you might have been able to do yourself if you had repair manuals and special tools.

It used to be that if you wanted to repair your vehicle, you bought a repair manual and went ahead and did it. That’s what I did when I rebuilt the engine of my old Mercury truck.

After vehicles began to be computerized, automakers moved manuals online and began charging high subscription fees instead of selling affordable printed books.

They limited access to diagnostic software and coding tools required to reset modules or program new parts.

This effectively locked out do-it-yourself owners and independent repair shops unless they paid steep fees to access manuals and software, which sometimes cost thousands of dollars per year.

The same thing happened to farmers.

They used to repair their own equipment until John Deere and other manufacturers began embedding proprietary software and requiring specialized diagnostic tools, locking out farmers and independent shops.

And even if a farmer could mechanically fix a tractor, it often required software resets or codes that only authorized dealers could perform.

Farmers stared “hacking” their own John Deere tractors with Ukrainian software to bypass restrictions.

Around 2012, farmers across the U.S. and Canada raised alarms. They argued that dealer monopolies increased costs and created downtime during harvests when equipment failure could be devastating.

Governments have been slow in reacting but the right to repair is gaining traction.

In 2024, the Canadian government passed Bill C-244 which allowed circumvention of digital locks for diagnostic, access to maintenance and repair manuals.

Do-it-yourself help is limited in Kamloops. The Kamloops Repair Café is held about four times a year. You can repair small electrical items, clothing, bicycles, and some wooden furniture for repair.

David Charbonneau is a retired TRU electronics instructor who hosts a blog at http://www.eyeviewkamloops.wordpress.com.