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History (1) more question, then I'm shutt'n up and HRP can have it

Discussion in 'The Hokey Ass Message Board' started by 34Larry, Aug 30, 2019.

  1. At 6. I took mom's Westbend alarm clock apart, and put it back together so that it would spin real fast. It was like making time fly. My mom didn't thank me.
    Bob
     
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  2. enjenjo
    Joined: Mar 2, 2001
    Posts: 2,689

    enjenjo
    Member
    from swanton oh

    Or, one of the kids with a Honda that puts out 500 hp normally aspirated. And he understands the computer he does it with.
     
  3. gene-koning
    Joined: Oct 28, 2016
    Posts: 4,040

    gene-koning
    Member

    My Dad's friends ran coupes at our local dirt track. From an early age, I got to tag along with dad when he went to the race car garage. The guys scrapped cars to fund their racing. Somewhere around 10 or 11 I must been driving them nuts, dad's friend took me out to the scrap yard and pointed at a motor laying on the ground. "Take this completely apart. If you need help with something, come and get us. When you think you have it all tore down, come and get me."
    So, I took it apart (so I thought) and went in to get him. "Your just getting started, you have to take all this stuff apart." and went back in. We did 3 or 4 rounds of him helping me (the head bolts were too tough, and the heads were too heavy for me, so he helped with those). Finally he told me I had it all apart, and "Now, put it all back together!" Him, my dad, and another guy stayed pretty close by as I "reassembled" that motor. When I had it mostly put back together, he asked if I thought it would run. I think the whole crew was involved at this point. They got it to crank, dumped a little gas into the carb, and it ran all of about 10 seconds before it locked up tight. "There you go," he said, "you've built your first motor. The next one we will be more careful with."

    I was hooked for life!
    I spent the next 3 summers riding my bike from one race car garage to another "helping". I was one of those kids that could follow directions, and grew pretty capable doing many things around a race car. I would often visit the guys that had a wreck the Sunday night before, most of the guys were pretty happy to see me show up on a Saturday morning. By the time I was 15, I knew a lot about cars and how they functioned. We couldn't get into High School shop class until we were in 10 grade. I was enrolled in the 1st semester class. That was the basic class. The final test for the 1st 1/2 of the semester was putting points and condenser in the distributor, then setting the gap with a feeler gauge and then setting the timing with a test light on a Chrysler flathead 6. I completed that test the 2nd day of class. The auto shop teacher was a great teacher, as soon as he knew I had some good basic knowledge, he was determined to teach me as much as I could absorb, and that was a lot!
    Shop class got me a job at one of the best auto repair gas stations in town. I started out pumping gas, but it didn't take very long before I was doing a few tuneups, the some brake jobs, then pretty much everything they did there. Between shop class and the gas station, I was doing a lot of motor and transmission swaps before I was 17.
    I was in the auto shop class for 3 years. Each year, there was a different teacher. The guy that was there the 1st year got offered a job setting up an auto program at a new teaching platform called Wyoming Tech. The 2nd and 3rd teachers had different processes, but I was able to learn a great deal from both of them as well. I learned a lot form the owner of the gas station, and from the full time mechanics that worked there.
    I graduated from High School in 1974. I stayed in or close to the automotive trades up through the mid-late 80s fuel injection Dealer tech time. About that time, other circumstances drug me a bit farther from the mechanical part of the auto trade and more routed into the structural end of car construction. These days, retirement is allowing me to do things I didn't have time to do before.

    If a guy really wants to learn something, there are amazing resources available to learn from, including this (and other) web sites. Gene
     
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  4. das858
    Joined: Jul 28, 2010
    Posts: 1,014

    das858
    Member

    I was handing my Dad tools and holding the trouble light from 8 years old , changing oil in the family's car by 12 , had a pretty good understanding of engines by 12 .
     
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  5. First time I REMEMBER helping Dad was the summer I was 12. By the time I was 18, I had overhauled a couple cars and that summer worked in a small 2 man garage/station. I could do 216 chevys in 8-10 hours, depending upon parts arrival. I guess I learned by osmosis. Still learning and am often surprised at learning something new. "Why did I not know that" often pops out

    Ben
     
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  6. Mr48chev
    Joined: Dec 28, 2007
    Posts: 33,861

    Mr48chev
    ALLIANCE MEMBER

    After about 4 years of reading hot rod and other car magazines I thought I knew a lot about working on cars but found out the first week or so of High School auto shop class when I was a 15 year old sophomore that I didn't know very much but I was a dedicated fast learner.
    After three years of High school auto mechanics classes I went to a two year trade school and had an apprenticeship lined up at Williams and Swanson in Renton Wa but got my draft notice at the same time my apprenticeship test results came back. Was said to have had the highest score on the test out of about 100 guys that took it that day even though I didn't put an answer on two pages of rewinding the armatures and fields on starters and generators.
    Went in the army got trained as a grunt got assigned to A troop 1/9 Cav in the blue platoon and after about 4 months transferred to the scout platoon flying as gunner/observer and ended up taking care of the scout squads generators that we got power to our hooches from. I did an out in the dirt valve job on a jeep too. I pulled the head with help from a couple others one of our pilots flew it to a maintenance unit that ground the valves and sent it back with the gaskets and I put it back together.
    I worked in several shops in Texas after I got out mostly doing front end alignment work and moved back to Washington were I tried another field that didn't work out and after working in two shops my brother told me that my old high school shop teacher had turned in his retirement notice the day before school started. Got hired and taught for 13 years. Among other things there about five of my former students are tire store managers. Several have owned their own shops and several have built their own cars as adults. Two still own the cars they had when they were in the classes and one owns a truck that he did a lot of work on in the class that he bought from the gent who we built it for last year.
     
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  7. deathrowdave
    Joined: May 27, 2014
    Posts: 3,518

    deathrowdave
    ALLIANCE MEMBER
    from NKy

    Age 12 or 13 HS shop class , then 2 years VoCa school auto mechanics, 2 years as a line mechanic , another 2 years VoCa welding , 35 years as Stationary Engineer .
     
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  8. My first old car at the age of 15 or 16 was a 1928 Twin ignition 6 cyl Nash sedan :cool:. Thats when i started swearing as well :eek::rolleyes:. ( rather late for an Aussie kid ):confused:
     
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  9. OLDSMAN
    Joined: Jul 20, 2006
    Posts: 2,422

    OLDSMAN
    BANNED

    When I was in grade school I helped a neighbor kid across the street put a late flathead in a 40 Ford pickup. He replaced the head gaskets for some reason. Then when I was in high school took auto mechanics (had a fantastic teacher), and rebuilt a 303 Olds engine that I put in a 50 Ford. I was a professional auto mechanic for over 40 years. It seems like only yesterday I started having my fun with old cars
     
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  10. clem
    Joined: Dec 20, 2006
    Posts: 4,188

    clem
    Member

    When I bought my first Ford flathead......... ( in my early forties )
    - prior to that none of my motors failed, so there was no need to understand how they worked.
    I was happy to accept the magic involved in pouring fuel in the tank and creating motion.
    Every thing else, brakes, suspension, Ackerman principles etc, I could comprehend, but motors, not at all.
     
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  11. jaw22w
    Joined: Mar 2, 2013
    Posts: 1,671

    jaw22w
    Member
    from Indiana

    That brought back a flood of memories! My first was also a washing machine motor. One horsepower as I recall. It had a kick starter on it. I was about 10 then. I
    ended up
    putting that little motor on my bicycle. Of course that started my search for more horsepower. It wasn't long before I had a 2-1/2 horse Kohler on the bike.
    Boy did I get in trouble with that thing! It would do 50 mph flat out. I was supposed to only ride it in the yard, but when Mom and Dad were at work, the whole town was fair game until the cops shut me down.
     
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  12. Johnny Gee
    Joined: Dec 3, 2009
    Posts: 12,602

    Johnny Gee
    Member
    from Downey, Ca

    At 16. It was sink or swim if I wanted my first car to keep going.
     
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  13. ned5049
    Joined: May 9, 2009
    Posts: 413

    ned5049
    Member

    Age 11. My older sister actually explained to me how an engine functioned. Her boyfriend and her were both heavy into cars. They had matching 47 Chevy coupes. Then lawnmower engine powered homemade go karts. Then 2 cycle West Bends which I modified with information from reading tech articles. Exciting times !
     
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  14. Mike51Merc
    Joined: Dec 5, 2008
    Posts: 3,856

    Mike51Merc
    Member

    [​IMG]
    My grandpa bought me one of these when I was 8 or so and we built it together on Sundays. At 10, I helped my grandpa rebuild a real engine. When I was 12 I got a Yamaha 80 that had a seized piston and my dad and I fixed it.

    By the time I was 15, my friends and I were doing engine and transmission swaps. At 16, body work and paint.
     
  15. 26Troadster
    Joined: Nov 20, 2010
    Posts: 787

    26Troadster
    Member

    as a young teen it was motorcycles and small engines into my later teens it was cars. i was a lucky one as my grandfather and uncle are gearheads. cut my teeth in a 35 chevy coupe with a 392 hemi and a 53 chevy truck with a 394 olds. never said i didn't mess thing up cause i did, i wiped out my first cam change by not lubing things and no break in. still learning and hope to learn more.
     
  16. brokedownbiker
    Joined: Jun 7, 2016
    Posts: 651

    brokedownbiker
    ALLIANCE MEMBER

    12-13 thanks to my best friend's dad. He was a master mechanic at the local Dodge dealer, had been doing it since he was a kid. He let us work on an old 46 Chevy truck he had- no body, no bed, just a bit of firewall and dash to support the column, a seat, and a gas tank. I learned to drive on that death-trap, hauling ass around the local logging roads. We constantly tinkered with it to keep it running with guidance when needed from his dad. Then my buddy scored a '67 Camaro and I helped him thru the building of that car. Another friend got a '65 Mustang from his older brother on the condition that he restore it (older brother would supply parts) at the auto shop at school. We went thru that car front to back, it was beautiful but no powerhouse (tiny 6-cylinder) and we got to drive it around all summer.
    By that time, I had saved up and scraped up enough to get a '64 Chevelle and I had a good handle on the workings of everything by that time; I rebuilt the engine and fixed that old roach up as best I could. I was hooked and still love wrenching.
    I just wish my body would cooperate.
     
  17. I learned from the sink or swim school of thought, my dad had absolutely no interest in cars other than for transportation.

    I was fortunate enough that my granddad who wasn't trained did have a knack for mechanical things and took me under his wing along with his teenage neighbor that helped me also.

    I was 14 years old the first time I removed a engine, rebuilt it with the help of my granddad's neighbor and reinstalled it, unfortunately that size 12 right foot was too much for the engine and I blew it up.

    The next engine turned out much better and the subsequent engines were better still, The last engine I rebuilt was a 327 and that was several years ago, the cost was actually a little more than a new crate engine. HRP
     
  18. I was about 11 when I watched Dad rebuild the little Continental engine in my 1/4 midget. The next time he let me take it apart. I wouldn't know shit today if Dad hadn't taught me all he knew about engines.
     
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  19. I got one of those for Christmas in 1984! I was ten years old and Dad helped me build it. Dad still helps with every Engine we build at the farm. My Grandad started Kirkwood Community College in Eastern Iowa and got me into a small engine class when I was 11 years old. This class was for 14 years old and older. After that everything just snowballed and I wound up restoring my 1950 Chevrolet 3100 when I was 14. At 16 I got a job working at the local school bus garage and I’ve been pushing wrenches ever since.


    Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
     
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  20. 56sedandelivery
    Joined: Nov 21, 2006
    Posts: 6,695

    56sedandelivery
    Member Emeritus

    I was born into a career military family; my Father was USAF for over 30 years, and an outdoors-man; hunter, fisherman, camper, and I was NOT! We also had nothing in common, and i always said i was born into the wrong family; forget about being taught anything mechanical as he did't have it. I still have calluses and thickened skull bone from years of headbutting between us; he passed in 83 and I'm almost 68 now. All through high school (66-69) I worked at a Standard-Chevron Dealership. I learned a lot, but mostly, it taught me I did't want to work on other peoples cars for a living; sure, friends and family's cars, but not peoples cars I did't even know. But, what it did teach me was, I wanted to work on/with people; hence a career in healthcare. Street cars, drag cars, all that followed over the years. NO foreign cars, NO "modern" stuff, and NOTHING that required a computer to work on. As they say, old school all the way!!! All the way. I am Butch/56sedandelivery.
     
    Last edited: Aug 31, 2019
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  21. sunbeam
    Joined: Oct 22, 2010
    Posts: 6,213

    sunbeam
    Member

    Turned a wrench of two in the auto shop at McConnel to.
     
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  22. stuart in mn
    Joined: Nov 22, 2007
    Posts: 2,406

    stuart in mn
    Member

    Small engine class in 8th grade. I took apart and reassembled a horizontal shaft Briggs and Stratton engine off an old lawn mower. Rather than a pull start, it had a neat ratchet handle, and when I was done it would start first pull every time. :)
     
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  23. rockable
    Joined: Dec 21, 2009
    Posts: 4,429

    rockable
    ALLIANCE MEMBER

    My cousin and I took his go kart engine apart before we were 10. Also took lawn mower motors apart at early age. Living on the farm, we had to make our own entertainment. :)

    At about 14, I took shop class at school and learned more. Later, in college, I taught small engines, welding and general shop lab while working on my Master's degree. Pretty much been a gearhead all my life.
     
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  24. Bandit Billy
    Joined: Sep 16, 2014
    Posts: 12,286

    Bandit Billy
    ALLIANCE MEMBER

    I'm 58 now, I figure if I work real hard at it I can have this car thing figured out in 5 - 10 years max.
     
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  25. X-cpe
    Joined: Mar 9, 2018
    Posts: 1,958

    X-cpe

    Huge missing link in today's education of mechanics. When I first started teaching that was their introduction to being in the workforce and getting rewarded for good performance in a realm that was not school. Yet they were being educated. Getting to work, ready to work, on time. Performing assigned tasks and taking care of what needed to be done without being told. How to deal with customers (good and bad). Salesmanship because you got a bonus for selling wipers, filters, etc. Taking care of money and making change. Competence out front led to opportunities in the bays. Competence there led to increasingly more complex responsibilities. Most students went on from there but a few made the place they started their career.
    Sometimes it was the school of hard knocks. In the late 60's an older friend opened an ARCO station in Johnstown, PA. He told me in his first six months he hired 21 kids and fired 13 of them.
     
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  26. At 16 I bought my first car (a '40 Ford coupe) and messed around with it. Now, at 76, I'm still clueless!!
     
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  27. DAHEMIKOTA
    Joined: Aug 12, 2006
    Posts: 132

    DAHEMIKOTA
    Member
    from Tenn

    At age nine I rebuilt the engine in my grandfathers 39 Plymouth pickup truck
     
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  28. Deuces
    Joined: Nov 3, 2009
    Posts: 23,753

    Deuces

    You could still find those on eBay... Revell now owns the old Renwal tooling.... ;)
     
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  29. No, Indy car mechanics....very anal.....
     
  30. Started at 15 and still learning at 60. "If you got up this and didn't learn anything all day, then why did you get up." BigO
     

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