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Learning mechanics


Same as doing jigsaw puzzles.
This is a really interesting observation. A manual for assembling a jigsaw puzzle would not help anyone assemble a jigsaw puzzle. It sounds obvious, but little tidbits like this in academia can be super-useful for making your point clear. This may be one of the best examples I've heard to support that the physical context of learning is never to be ignored. (And yet, it is being ignored in classrooms everywhere.)

Everyone is giving me great and useful info. Thanks and keep it coming! :yahoo:
 
The Marshfield Centre Garage was a 100 yards from my house. I saved up 5$ from my paper route and bought a very tired 53 Ford. I was 10 yrs old. I had to put on a lot of parts to get it running. When it ran, I taught myself to drive it on the dirt roads of a farm. I've been working on my own cars ever since. I dont know how much longer that I can find cars I can / want to work on. My daily drivers are 25 yrs old. :D

You may have to do what I did to my '89/'36 Ranger......reverse engine-eer it!
 
EDIT: I envy these guys like DG that know carbs. Wish i would have learned more on them.

Never too late to learn, just a handfull of parts to convert to carburation. :icon_twisted:

My dad is a mechanic, I pretty much got started about as soon as I could. I have a pic from when I was about 2 helping him (mainly keeping the light in his face I imagine :D) put a new deck on his hay barge.

In seventh grade dad got me a 1947 Allis Chalmers C for $100 I really learned on, it took two pickup loads and a trailer to bring it home because the last guy tore it clear down to nothing. We got the engine freed up, went through the carb and put it back together. I really wish I would have had a digital camera to record the process. I remember one bracket neither of us could figure out so we scoured books (mid 90's) until we saw it was for the steering arm support (and it still looks goofy there)

I like to work on stuff but I wouldn't call myself a mechanic, I spend too much time figuring things out (not always that have to do with the problem) to do it for a living. You might say I am easily distracted.
 
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Well everything i've learned has been in my driveway in that teenage wrenching phase ( seeing as im still a senior in high school) but most of the experience comes from simply going balls deep to a point where i absolutely have to get it back together or i dont have a running a vehichle. If i have 27 bolts all of different sizes i know i can put it back together some how even if it takes me a long time, this has taught me not only the one right way to do things but also all the other wrong ways you can do it. Ben Franklin once said something along the lines of, In his quest to make the lightbulb he discovered thousands of way not to make it. Thats my learning process and the best way i know how to do it, i use my manuals but for the most part its so convoluded i end up just figuring it out my self really. Hope that helped.

didn't edison invent the light bulb?
 
I took a small engine repair class in junior high school that taught me a lot about basic engine stuff - 4 stroke, 2 stroke, what TDC was etc. After that, I learned by having an old car and a really, really good shop manual. I do virtually all of my own wrenching unless it involves specialty tools I don't have. I don't really trust anybody to work on my cars though.
 
I'm the same as brownie mobile, I'm a Junior in high school and will go all out on a project to the point of if it doesn't get fixed, I'm not going to school 2moro. I will start a project around dinner and eventually end up missing dinner and having a small snack b4 bed. As always you learn from your mistakes. One time I had to have a mechanic that specializes in fixing fleet rangers help me put stuff back together. Now as I advance in learning aout the rangers and friends trucks, I'm sure to label stuff, and put them in order if I have to. I think I keep going back because it is the self satisfaction of knowing that your keeping your fun running, and not having people with less knowledge than me trying to fix something that I can fix cheaper and do a more quality job at it. I love tinkering with things and seeing what it does.
 
I started working on my own vehicles when I was 16 and my Dad helped me. I had spent many hours watching him change motors or work on just about everything on his own vehicles and he told me "learn to fix your own cars and you will save a bundle".

Well, skip forward about 30 years and there I was with a Ranger. I bought my first Ranger as a project to do as others have said and get into the zone. I was a care giver for a blind alcoholic who did his best to get on my nerves whenever he could. When I went into the garage and started working he wanted to be there but I put my foot down on his toes and told him this is my time and my space...go! When I worked on the Ranger uninterrupted for a few hours it was like a cleansing.

I learned mostly from TRS what I did to my Ranger and it is all your fault(s). lol. I also bought manuals and spoke with a few people who helped me. It then became all about saving money and the feeling of accomplishments as I took on more and more difficult projects.

There is nothing quite like a cold beer (or a cool one) after you've completed fixing something and you know it works.

As for the best way to learn, there are those who learn best by hands-on and those who learn by studying. I like to do both but I rarely attempt anything without reading as much on it as I can before starting.

I love solving problems and am proactive about fixing something before it gets to the point of having it break down.
 
I also don't trust mechanics. They're salesman and I don't blame them, if they don't get me to have them fix something else, they won't put food on their table. But, I'll leave their efforts for someone who hasn't the vocational capacity to fix their own vehicle. The only thing I've brought my truck to a mechanic for was an alignment after I lifted it.

I really don't want to buy anything I can't fix, that's why I bought another 94 Ranger.

EDIT: I've had a few of those times where I did skip school and call out of work to fix my truck. One time when my fan cracked in the 2.3, I was in the hallway on the phone with a junkyard. Some lady walked up to me and said to get off the phone as I finished my conversation, and then asked me what class I was in. I told her "That call was for parts for my truck, if I don't get those parts, I won't be attending that class." After that she got the point to go shove it somewhere she'd rather not, and walked away.
 
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I learned something about mechanics tonight. I also learned that I am a dumb a$$. Finally I learned that when I put my new front axle in and "fixed" the steering wheel I somehow managed to put it back together a whole turn to the left off center.
 
I learned something about mechanics tonight. I also learned that I am a dumb a$$. Finally I learned that when I put my new front axle in and "fixed" the steering wheel I somehow managed to put it back together a whole turn to the left off center.

$4it happens. We won't think any less of you. :icon_thumby:
 
Fixing stuff , doing stuff myself . Slow ,faltering progress until the AHAA moment happens and you finally figure out how it goes together. Everything you have done in the past is something to build the present on .
The more you do, the more you can do. If it worked once for you , it can work for you again further down the road. :icon_thumby:


After a 1/2 century of carbs and points and 6 volt systems. Just give me Bosch fuel injection. I can trouble shoot it with a meter . But mostly, it doesnt need to fixed. Ford EFI is very similar to Bosch. My 94 runs good enough so that I just changed the oil and filters. I took a plug out of each side . They both looked really good. I think they were Autolite coppers. Wires look like they were done with the plugs. If it aint broke it , it isnt gonna get replaced.
 
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I first learned how to turn a wrench on a bicycle as a pre-teen. Bought a 73 Vega for $75.00 and learned how to change oil and plugs as an early teen. By the time I was 17 I could (read that as HAD to) swap engines in my 73 Gran Torino. My dad and brothers were all mechanically inclined and handed down a wealth of information about cars, etc. Although I took shop class in high school, nothing taught me more than laying on my back under a vehicle, leaning over the radiator, or listening to someone who knew what they were doing when they offered advice.
Old Turkish proverb... You will learn most from newest books and oldest teachers.. How true that is even today?

Good luck with your class!
 
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I did that with my current Ranger...I replaced the power steering with a manual box and when I put it back together I thought it was aligned...it is, however, turned about 45* to the right...meant to fix it but I realized that I would have to pull the shaft off the box to do that and, try as I might, I could not get it to budge...

I have to sit up and look over the steering wheel to check my speed if I'm going over 70 Km/hr...
 

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