The Art Of Jerry-Rigging

First off I was a little apprehensive about using the term at all because I thought I heard once that it was racist but a little research shows that the term is a bastardization (my apologies to bastards) of the term jury-rigging which of course is self-explanatory. So now that I have that weight off of my shoulders I'd like to share with you something that I believe to be MacGyveresque... my newly repaired washing machine! As you can see in the picture above the lid has a plastic tab which protrudes into the hole below it and pushes a switch so that the machine will operate. This is obviously a safety feature that keeps the soap, foam and water from spitting all over the place by shutting down the machine when the lid is open.

Somehow, over time, the switch stopped working properly and had to be pushed further down to operate correctly. For the last year or so my wife put the back end of a metal measuring spoon down the hole to engage the switch whether or not the lid was open... but it worked until today. So after all this time I finally got off my fat duff and took a look to see what I could do. If you look closely I used packaging tape to secure a nail to the plastic tab effectively making it about a half inch longer and it is now pushing the switch down far enough to engage. I'm sure at some point the switch will fail completely but for now it's working great and I've channeled my inner MacGyver.

I'd love to hear what you've successfully jerry-rigged. Let me know in the comment section at the bottom of this page.