How far would you go to fix an old appliance?

Back in 1973, Richard Nixon was president, Vietnam divided the nation, and I was in high school. It also was around the time I developed a serious interest in baking, and convinced my parents to buy a stand mixer.

I had my eye on a workhorse KitchenAid K5-A, then made by the Hobart Corp., and sold mainly through restaurant-supply stores. So I dragged my father from our home in Yonkers, N.Y., to  out to Brooklyn, where he plunked down $130 for the KitchenAid (shown above). For 41 years the mixer didn't miss a beat. It churned through everything from brioche to bagel batter and never needed servicing.

Until last September, that is, when the mixer overheated and unceremoniously conked out. While I had certainly gotten my money's worth, I was reluctant to say good-bye to my countertop companion.

Find out what to do when product repairs go wrong. And check our buying guide and Ratings (which include KitchenAid models) for mixers.

Deciding whether to fix a broken product or spring for a new one often feels like an expensive guess. In fact, we at Consumer Reports say that it doesn't always make financial sense to keep old electronics or appliances going as long as possible.

But it's hard to put a price on sentiment. There was something about the mixer that transcended dollars and cents. It was a 300-watt motorized bridge to my youth, and I had hopes of passing it on to my son, a professionally trained chef who developed his own affinity for the mixer.

Sentiment aside, there were practical obstacles. I contacted KitchenAid customer service via live chat, and was abruptly informed that the company offers neither repairs nor stocks parts for ancient mixers. She suggested I try authorized service centers, which also turned out to be a dead end. Local independent shops expressed little interest either.

But before calling it quits, I began searching out so-called vintage-appliance-repair websites, leaving a trail of phone and e-mail messages to shops across the country. One responded. Richard Nelson of NelsonEzy.com, in Casselberry, Fla. Nelson has built a business repairing and refurbishing iconic kitchen appliances like Sunbeam Mixmasters, Waring blenders, Hamilton Beach milkshake makers and, of course, KitchenAid mixers.

After describing the problem, Nelson was confident it was fixable, so I prepaid the flat $150 repair charge, which included return freight. It cost me another $40 to ship the unwieldy 32-lb. mass of metal to Florida. That $190 was almost as much as the price of a new, entry-level KitchenAid.

Weeks past. Then months. About 100 days, to be precise. Nelson apologized for the delay, saying he'd been swamped with work. I guess there's no shortage of consumers who want to hold onto the past or simply feel that they just don't make ‘em like they used to.

I asked what the problem was with the mixer. Nelson said it was a minor glitch: The brush springs needed replacement because they lost their springiness. They lacked the necessary tension for the motor brushes to make adequate electrical contact. Nelson also cleaned and polished the armature contacts and speed controls, removed and replaced all the old grease, and completely lubricated the unit. Overall, he said, "the mixer is in great condition." 

I'm happy to say it's back to work and running as smoothly as ever.

I was proud I'd taken such good care of it all these years, and am confident the mixer has enough life left in it to give my son another 40 years to make his own baked good—and memories.

—Tod Marks