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From: Marty Weiss <martweiss@comcast.net>
Subject: Re: [Phys-L] Car repair
How many of you who claim it's easy to fix your car ever experienced the
days of going to the junk yard (acres and acres of old cars piled ten feet
high and arranged in row after row by make and model) and rummaging through
a hundred Chevys for a gear shift assembly, stripping it off with your tool
kit, back to the shop office to pay for it, and home to assemble it onto
your car ??... those days are long gone.
I am not backing down from what I said earlier... you younger guys have
lost the thrill of tearing a motor down and reassembling it in your own
garage, or doing a transmission yourself (with help from your friends)...
days long gone never to return.
The smell of grease and the nights when your wives or moms wouldn't let
you in the house because your jeans were dirty and your nails were black
from the grease and dirt. Yes, those were the days of drag racing your car
on the quarter mile and running down the highway like a Springsteen song.
We did that even into our twenties. Then after your race you went home and
adjusted the things that hindered your racing ability.
A neat story here: in college we had an education methods class. The
assignment was to do some sort of project for science suitable to show a
middle or high school freshman physical science class and demonstrate it
for our own class. We all did molecules or double helices... some did more
elaborate things for physics or chemistry. Well, one of our mates forgot
the assignment. He showed up and was shocked to see he had forgotten to do
anything. So, a half hour before class he went to the parking lot and took
the alternator off his Ford. He wrapped it in a towel, quickly wrote up an
explanation of how it worked, ran that off on the xerox machine, came into
class and proceeded to explain the technicalities of a alternator. When
class was over he put the thing right back on his car and drove home.
THAT'S what I mean by doing work on your car that you can't do now.