Zero Mechanical Ability

[68 Ford Stepside]

There are some people I have known for over thirty years that had zero mechanical ability thirty years ago & still today have none. They have messed up & destroyed more car & truck parts than ought to be allowed. They are not dumb or stupid by a long shot. They just don't have any mechanical ability what so ever. They don't have the touch, the feel, or the common sense it takes to tackle mechanical jobs. Still yet they refuse to give up. The stupid part is they refuse to ask questions before they attempt to do the job. They only ask questions after they have destroyed a part.

Like the guy who puts new standard crankshaft bearings in an engine that has a .010 crankshaft in it & then wonders why he has low oil pressure & a bearing rattle when it is first started. Or the guy who has cross threaded countless spark plugs. Or the guy who wrings off water pump bolts over tightening them. I could go on for pages, but you get the picture.At some point it is time for these guys to admit they are never going to be mechanics. They need to stick to what they do best & pay someone to repair their rides.

Not to say they didn't try, but after thirty years the writing should be plainly on the wall. Have A Great Ford Day!

[sargentrs]

What gets me is the general lack of knowledge of the young people these days. Maybe it's because our generation grew up changing our own oil, our own flats, doing our own tune ups and Industrial Arts or Small Engines were standard electives in high school. A few months back, one our kids had a 5.0 Mustang that was having some issues with the engine overheating or something like that and he asked "Could it be the battery?" The very basics of automotive mechanics, or any internal combustion engine, are totally ignored by today's generation. While I admit that diagnosing fuel injected, computerized vehicles totally eludes me, the basic concept of "fuel, fire and air = combustion" is second nature to me while unheard of in today's generation. I get a little ray of hope every time I hear somebody under the age of 30 talk about a small block or a big block without using the word "liter" in the conversation. Not only mechanics but the concept of finance and budgeting is foreign nature to them. Not only can they not replace their own battery, they don't even have the money to buy one when they need to even though they make over $15/hr. I sincerely feel for our country, and us old people, knowing that 20 years from now, we'll be gone and our children will be on their own without a clue how to survive.

[wildcard]

I know the feeling. I have tried to teach my daughter a little about the older vehicles. She's probably the biggest car nut in the family. Told her fiancee he had to learn about cars if he wanted to hang with her and her daddy. She is the only one in the family besides me that has ever replaced and set the points in my truck.
I had a young cocky mechanic once open my door and ask where the hood release was. I wouldn't let him even look at after that.

[68 Ford Stepside]

I know the feeling. I have tried to teach my daughter a little about the older vehicles. She's probably the biggest car nut in the family. Told her fiancee he had to learn about cars if he wanted to hang with her and her daddy. She is the only one in the family besides me that has ever replaced and set the points in my truck.
I had a young cocky mechanic once open my door and ask where the hood release was. I wouldn't let him even look at after that.

Hood Release, Thanks for the laugh, I really needed a laugh this morning.

[eggman918]

I think for a large part it is lack of opportunity to learn coupled with the increasing complexity of most vehicles that they have come in contact with.
Having been disabled for over 10 years and having 2 daughters I have had MANY boys/young men come through my shop and mast are enthusiastic about learning how,
however about half are nearly unteachable not for lack of intelligence but due to "knowing it already"....to learn you first must realize what you dont know or there is no room on the hard drive
I think this condition is innate to boys/young men and then reinforced by the "self esteem" movement currently in place in our schools.That being said it is really cool to see the pride that a kid who built his ride has when he gets a complement on it and says "I built it"
PS both my daughters do their own vehicle maintenance their husband/boyfriend are their gofers....I didn't marry a helpless female and I refuse to raise any

[abe]

I had a young cocky mechanic once open my door and ask where the hood release was. I wouldn't let him even look at after that.

In the 70's I had a 57 Chevy and my brother and I co-owned a 56 Chevy. Back then we still had full serve gas stations. I would get a kick watching the young attendents try to figure out where the gas filler was! And those cars weren't that old then were they?

[HIO Silver]

Many born after 1990 or so have really, really weak research skills and lack deductive reasoning... many are intellectually lazy due to the apparent availability of information on the web. Even then, I can't tell you how many VIN questions have been asked or they request the answer to why their vehicle isn't running right without ever opening the hood or doing a visual inspection. Some youngster over in FTE asked where to add oil. YIKES. Sure there are exceptions but that's the sad part... they are the exceptions.

This country's future is in trouble when compared to countries like China and India who send their young adults over here to earn degrees in engineering, medicine, chemistry, and computer technology. In contrast, our school systems are turning out uncompetitive dolts who would rather spend time on Facebook, Twitter, or other time-killing and unproductive endeavors.

Kudos to you eggman918.

[Ranchero50]

I work with guys like that, call them 'social' mechanics because they end up talking someone else into doing the work for them...

[wildcard]

I had a young cocky mechanic once open my door and ask where the hood release was. I wouldn't let him even look at after that.

In the 70's I had a 57 Chevy and my brother and I co-owned a 56 Chevy. Back then we still had full serve gas stations. I would get a kick watching the young attendents try to figure out where the gas filler was! And those cars weren't that old then were they?

You know abe, that would be funny if it didn't bring back a memory from Midland, Texas many years ago..

[ToughOldFord]

I took my '63 Plymouth to a shop many years ago. Some of you remember the 'three on the tree' column shifters. Young guy opens the door and stops "I don't get it, it's an automatic, but it has a clutch?"

I don't go to shops anymore except for exhaust systems and windshields, I'm not equipped for those. But it makes no sense to me to pay someone more than I make to work on my car who knows less about my car than I do.


And don't EVER take anything with a manual choke to a shop and leave it. They WILL flood the sh*t out of it and kill the battery trying to start it.

[ToughOldFord]

And to touch on what some of you have mentioned, the heads of America's youngsters are majorly being messed up with all of the social engineering that goes on in the schools today. If you have excess energy, you are ADD and need to be doped up. You can't use that energy in the field, well, 'cause you can't have recess anymore. If you do play any sports you can't take score. If someone is being a bully you can't sock them in the gut and tell them to leave you the hell alone, you have to engage in 'conflict resolution'. It's okay for a teacher to teach a second grader how to put a condom on a cucumber, but if a second grader tells his teacher she's 'cute' he gets expelled. Drawing a picture of your big brother in the marines will get you expelled as well.

Remember the things we had growing up that helped make us what we are today? Being fascinated by a Radiometer and wondering how it worked. Building a balsa-wood airplane and putting a COX engine on it and making it fly? And watching it crash. Remember the old trick of wrapping a wire around a nail and hooking it up to a 9 volt battery, making an electromagnet? Speaking of magnet, how about learning about magnetizing metals with a magnet? Before your folks know what was happening everything in the house was magnetic. How about erector-sets and Radio Shack's electronic project kits? Or making a go cart/soap box racer?

But we don't make men out of boys in America anymore, we make zombie-shooting X-Box stars. We have replaced John Wayne with Desperate Housewives. So I guess we get what we deserve.

</dismount soapbox>

BTW, thanks for making me feel old.

[68 Ford Stepside]

It's bad enough to be old, but being old & sick is terrible. You need to post more often. I really enjoyed your soapbox speech. Climb up on that soapbox anytime you need to vent off lifes pressures. Good Job!

[averagef250]

It's no different than it used to be. You have less interest in adapting the older you get. There are plenty of mechanically inclined people out there, more than there used to be because there are just more people.

Something that irritates me is people that have no business being in a trade yet have the paper that says they're supposed to be good at it. One of my customers is an ME. He has no concept of GD&T, regularly designs parts that can't be built, none of his stuff should be built the way he thinks it should be and to top it off he now teaches at a university. Very few schools teach anything worthwhile today. You pay, You pass seems to be the norm today.

I find that almost all people who are very gifted with mechanical things are almost always socially deficient in some way. The non mechanical types are usually the opposite. Recently read a study that made a solid connection with math/mechanical ability and the genes that cause certain kinds of autism. Interesting stuff when you really think about it.

[eggman918]

Here in Kern county Ca. a county whose major industries are oil, Ag and aerospace there is ONLY one high school with any kind of shop program left and that is the FFA farm mechanics program
and that is a terrible disservice to our kids and to our society as a whole.In SO.Cal.where I grew up in the '70's we still had proper industrial arts programs and they were extensive enough for me to be
hired on at Rockwell Int. as a class B lathe operator in '80 just in time for the push to get the first shuttle in the air,there I learned the skills from the Men that built Mercury,Gemini and Apollo.They have served me well to this day,if I were a kid today they would have drugged to make me conform to there idea of "normal" and set me on a course for collage and it would not have ended up well for me or society as a whole.As it is I was able to be happy and somewhat successful and wake a positive contribution to society.We are all made differently and it is necessary for society that we find what we are good at and are given the chance to develop and hopefully succeed if not excel at it.The current trend that collage is the path for everyone is setup more to benefit the collages and those that finance the students than the students themselves,also the social indoctrination that starts in grade school is intensified in collage at the perfect time in a persons life for maximum effectiveness.I may be living
in the past and am not enlightened enough to see the benefits to this But I dont think so.I will now turn the soap box over to someone else

[ToughOldFord]

Thanks alot 68 Ford, I appreciate that!

Eggman, well said! I'm glad I grew up when I did, it would SUCK to be a youngster today!