Repair Stories

10 Repairs the iFixit Team Accomplished This Year

Fix What You Love” isn’t just our holiday sale, it’s a year-round aspiration. We want to encourage you to fix the things you already have and love so they continue to bring you happiness, and hopefully some comfort at the end of this crazy year.

We were inspired, in part, by our own colleagues. Earlier this year, we created a channel on our company Slack dedicated to sharing the repairs we did at home. As you can imagine, we’ve seen plenty of laptop battery and phone screen replacements, but many iFixiters fixed their cars, surfboards, pinball machines, and even their homes!  Sharing our repair projects brought us together even while we’re all working from home. It gives us a chance to replicate the praise, encouragement, and hard-earned experience we’d normally pass around in the hallways of our office.

In case you’re looking for ideas for how to use your Pro Tech Toolkit next, or you just like to look at repair pictures (same), here are some of our favorite iFixit repairs from 2020:

Jamie, Shipping Specialist:

“Yesterday I helped replace a shattered Pixel screen for Sam (the SLO Bread Bike baker/deliverer). Pixel 3a screen: $117. Fresh bread to share with friends: priceless.”

Luke, Head of Operations

“I replaced a cracked and leaking fuel spout on my 1986 jet ski. 34 years later and you can still get Made in Japan OEM parts from the manufacturer!”

Cesar, Shipping Specialist

“I fixed my growing light, the usb connector broke. I soldered it and applied plastic weld. Boom! Ready to go. My Ficus seems to love the extra light!”

Hayden, Supply Chain Specialist

“I cracked one of my surfboards pretty badly into the foam. I taped off the area and sanded it really well. Then I filled it with sanding resin to fill the crack, sanded that, and prepped it for some fiberglass. I laid down some glass and let it dry before another round of sanding. My final coat was just some more sanding resin and I used 100, 240, and 320 grade wet sandpaper to blend everything together.”

Todd, Head of Marketing

“I fixed the sound issue!!!  It was a setting that I needed to fix.  Root of the problem is actually the battery back-up needs repair.  Every time I power it down, it goes back to the default settings.  So now I have to fix the battery which requires soldering and I don’t like that… “ (Note: Todd is an avid pinball repair enthusiast, complete with multi-step projects always in progress)

Hillary, CFO

“Today’s job: new rear brake pads for the Prius. Thank you, iFixit, for the handy guide.”

Kevin, Editorial Writer

“Sunday apartment-life fix: swap the door direction on the dryer…I downloaded the manual, used my Pro Tech for the T20/T25 screws, and parsed the instructions as someone who works at a repair manual company (B-, wording could use some help). Cork helped.”

Daryl, Site Reliability Engineer

“Fresh laptop battery. Too easy.”

Craig, Head of Tech Writing

“I inherited a used PS4 controller that’s seen better days. Bought replacement joystick covers on eBay (iFixit was sold out) and gave everything a deep clean. It’s good as new!”

Andrew, Software Developer

“I did my first two iPhone repairs recently: a battery replacement on an iPhone 6S and a screen swap on an iPhone SE”