Allen A Day's Work: Crankin' 'em out...

I know, I'm not very diligent about my blogging lately...and even that's an understatement. But I completed a task this morning that I thought might be worth sharing. Perhaps somebody can learn something from it.

See that cute boy on the right? (Ok, so the picture is a little grainy, but he's still cute!) Well, he asked pretty please for his bubble blower in the bathtub this morning. It has been broken for a couple of weeks now, even though it was pretty new - Uncle Branden and Aunt Pam and Hayden gave it to the twins for Christmas, and they loved it for the first few weeks, and then it all of a sudden quit blowing bubbles and would only sing. He has asked for it every bath time. Finally this morning I decided to prioritize things (dirty laundry and breakfast got moved down a notch) and tear it apart to see if I could fix it.

Here is the before picture.

Here is a picture during. I pulled out about a hundred screws from the back of the thing to get it apart, and then had to pull about a hundred more out of the little motor housing (pretty technical term, eh?) which is the white box you see here. I opened that box up a bunch of times, putting the gears together, turning things, making sure everything lined up, no teeth were broken, no little rods had slipped out of place, nothing was catching. I was certain of it. I put the big cover on and took it off a couple of times to make sure everything was lining up there also. Everything fit into place. Nothing was loose. Nothing stripped. Switch worked fine. No loose wires. I put it back together - every screw in place to make it watertight as it was before. Turned it on. Same as before - music was fine, but the bubble wheel would not turn! AArgh.