Years after my time at Emily Griffith I learned through another Emily Griffith student that our esteemed leader, Brad, was prone to throbbing migraine headaches which would keep him bed-bound for a solid day. But at the time, I just assumed that he had witnessed enough stupidity in a session that his tolerance was maximized and he needed some time away from the mayhem. The days when he was gone were days when a lenient and uninformed substitute would take his place and the lackadaisical approach of the other students to normal activities transformed to pure sloth. All the rules were broken (people parked in the shop instead of at the meters outside, pocketed tools from the rental area, smoked even more dope and departed from the garage hours before class was to end). The teacher who took his place was nice enough: an inquisitive fellow from one of the other shops in the school, but he had no idea what to make of the ragtag group of individuals who purported to be learning something about cars. He himself knew less than we did, which was not good.
On these days, there was an unusually abusive streak of insults leveled at Charlie, to the point where he would hole himself up in a room somewhere with a book or often just leave. Charlie's short stint with David's group had ended badly. David admitted that even he, who seemingly could tolerate any type of grating personality flaw, struggled to assist in Charlie's education.
"So what was the problem?" I asked David one afternoon as we sat gathered in the lunch area.
"I don't know man. He just didn't seem to want to listen. I mean, I was going really slow trying to explain how to get a strut out the car. Not a big deal right? But every time I would show him how to use a tool or where to put it, that dude just wigged out. I tried man, really I did. I just couldn't get him to cooperate and everybody else in the group took off."
The following week I came in to find my group partner John chatting with his girlfriend on the cell phone and everyone else milling around the shop aimlessly, and knew right away that Brad was not going to be around.
"Brad sick today?" I asked John when he reached a point with his girlfriend where she was still talking but he had stopped listening.
"No, he had a little accident," John said, has voice low so as not to alert his girlfriend of the break he was taking from her rambling, "I guess he was climbing up a latter to fix one of the lifts and he left a hammer on the highest step. When he came down he forgot to take the hammer off the ladder and when he closed the thing up, the hammer came right down on his head." John muttered a few more words to his girlfriend. "I guess he's luck he isn't dead."
In the far corner of the shop I could actually see Brad with one of the school administrators. I could tell, even from a distance, that Brad's perfectly rounded pompodour was marred; a fluffy triangle of normal hair poking out like a couch cushion that had been punctured.
When he was done with the administrator he came over to me, his eyes with the faraway look of Dorothy dreaming of Oz.
"I need you to do me a favor," he said, "I need you to help Charlie to get those CV axles out of the Malibu today. I know you have experience working with teenagers and Charlie just needs some help. I would really appreciate your assistance with this because he really is having a tough time with the other people in the class. Could you do that for me?"
Even though I was transfixed by Brad's hair I pulled myself out of my daze long enough to hear what he had said. I actually felt honored that Brad would ask me for this favor and that he understood my abilities enough to seek my assistance.
"Sure," I said with little or no understanding of what I was in for.
Monday, April 4, 2011
Monday, February 21, 2011
These Are A Few Of My Favorite Springs
The suspension of a car is a simple system when compared to the those things related to the drivetrain, and because of this steering just gets lumped in with it in tests and diagnostics. When most people think of suspension a picture of a shock comes to mind: a sausage shaped piece of metal that is bolted on somewhere between a wheel and the frame of a vehicle. When air shocks and struts became standard on cars, the terminology began confusing owners and students alike. Throw a random name like McPhearson Strut out there and a sizeable portion of shade-tree mechanics threw in the towel on performing their own repairs due to terminilogical complexity. The truth is that the shock hasn't evolved all that much through the years. By itself it can be described sa an oil filled cannister that is contained by a couple of rubber seals. When the car goes over a bump (more unused terminology here) it jounces and rebounds...or goes up and down. The oil inside the shock has a finite ability to compress and this is what keeps the car from chattering down the street, the absorbsion of a road's hills and valleys into the cannister and away from the frame.
The simple shock still exists en masse with trucks and SUVs that are weighty and require regular shock replacement. But suspension is more than just shocks. There are control arms and drag links, sway bars and ball joints. However, the recipe does not get any more complex. These items absorb impact at the wheel, behind the wheel or simply keep the wheel on the ground.
Steering is more complex, especially with its ever-evolving engineering. It seems hard to believe, but there are still many newer cars that do not have power steering, an advancement that changed drivers from a handful of decent parallel-parkers to a whole contigent. Most cars do have this feature and this system's expansive conflagration of squirrely pressure and return lines, coolers and filters, racks and linkage, pumps and pulleys make it a fantastic money-maker for repair shops across the land. The adoption of drive by wire or computer-controlled power steering will expand this repair work well beyond the scope of any at-home mechanic with a Craftsman set of wrenches and a clean garage with a couple of floor jacks.
Although not as quickly as the internet or cell phones, the automotive world is expanding at a rapid pace and the heavy tome we were instructed to buy when our class began had already become outdated. We were trying as hard as we could to understand things that were not that hard to grasp. Meanwhile, outside our doors, the world moved on in such a way that the small slice of students that would actually complete their courses would be eating the dust of improvements that had come and gone.
The simple shock still exists en masse with trucks and SUVs that are weighty and require regular shock replacement. But suspension is more than just shocks. There are control arms and drag links, sway bars and ball joints. However, the recipe does not get any more complex. These items absorb impact at the wheel, behind the wheel or simply keep the wheel on the ground.
Steering is more complex, especially with its ever-evolving engineering. It seems hard to believe, but there are still many newer cars that do not have power steering, an advancement that changed drivers from a handful of decent parallel-parkers to a whole contigent. Most cars do have this feature and this system's expansive conflagration of squirrely pressure and return lines, coolers and filters, racks and linkage, pumps and pulleys make it a fantastic money-maker for repair shops across the land. The adoption of drive by wire or computer-controlled power steering will expand this repair work well beyond the scope of any at-home mechanic with a Craftsman set of wrenches and a clean garage with a couple of floor jacks.
Although not as quickly as the internet or cell phones, the automotive world is expanding at a rapid pace and the heavy tome we were instructed to buy when our class began had already become outdated. We were trying as hard as we could to understand things that were not that hard to grasp. Meanwhile, outside our doors, the world moved on in such a way that the small slice of students that would actually complete their courses would be eating the dust of improvements that had come and gone.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Charlie
Whereas the learning was slow with engine repair, and the absurdly high number of students who struggled with education in general, in steering and suspension we ground to a halt. The thin rope Brad had woven between education and experience was fraying and then unraveling before his eyes and he became dejected and removed. The addition of a teenage girl to the class wiped clean a whole week of learning as Brad's lessons were constantly interrupted either by petty remarks of the young men surrounding this girl and trying desperately to impress her, or by her own attempts to draw attention to herself by emphatically raising her hand and asking the most inane questions. She dressed provocatively and could at any moment be scanning the class for potential boyfriends while Brad's feeble lecture continued.
Her expulsion from the class a week after it began, and its ultimate affect on the class, paled in comparison to the addition of Charlie. Invited to join class despite some serious mental disability he had, the derision he received from some of the younger members of the group was immediate and ruthless. He, too, would raise his hand often to ask Brad obtuse questions, but lacking the endowments of our former Miss Teen USA, his interrogations were met with abject disdain from the pot-smoking contingent of our class. At first those around him would snicker and talk under their breath, but as the class wore on, his emboldened torturers would begin to shout for him to "shut up" and "get the f*&% out of here" and call him "retard".
Brad, for whatever reason, failed to put a stop to the mayhem. He may have been addressing the issues behind closed doors, but it was an option which was bearing no fruit. Charlie did get adopted into David's group, which helped put a protective barrier between himself and his detractors, but whenever he strayed from his pack the wolves would attack.
One afternoon in the garage I was aware of a high-pitched altercation in the garage adjascent to the the thin-walled lunch area. Rounding the corner I found Charlie surrounded by the ganja gangsters. They were shouting something at him and as he would back away from his abuser, another would approach from behind and push him back into the square formed around him like a boxing ring. Charlie was not a small dude. Even hunched he appeared to be around six-foot three and underneath the baggy clothes he wore it was hard to determine what strengths lay hidden. He donned a scraggly beard and his eyes were intense even while obscured under the brim of the ball-cap he wore daily. He was becoming observably agitated and the crimson color rising in his cheeks foretold of an explosion. None of us knowing Charlie's history, it was hard to say what would happen when the limit was reached and the reactor went into the red. The episode was making me nervous and I approached the group to say something, but as quickly as it had begun, it ended. The foursome who needled at Charlie dispersed into the blackened depths of the garage and Charlie was left breathing heavily and with a faraway feeling about him. I noticed Brad and a group of students entering the garage and though they had not noticed what had happened, they had influenced the premature departure of the evil-doers.
"Are you okay?" I asked Charlie. He did not look at me, but kept his eyes pinned to the shadowy recesses of the bays where the wolves awaited him.
"They better leave me alone or..."
"Or what?" I asked after a time.
"They better just leave me alone," he spurted and then darted off himself. But, they didn't and things just seemed grow more intense with each passing day.
Her expulsion from the class a week after it began, and its ultimate affect on the class, paled in comparison to the addition of Charlie. Invited to join class despite some serious mental disability he had, the derision he received from some of the younger members of the group was immediate and ruthless. He, too, would raise his hand often to ask Brad obtuse questions, but lacking the endowments of our former Miss Teen USA, his interrogations were met with abject disdain from the pot-smoking contingent of our class. At first those around him would snicker and talk under their breath, but as the class wore on, his emboldened torturers would begin to shout for him to "shut up" and "get the f*&% out of here" and call him "retard".
Brad, for whatever reason, failed to put a stop to the mayhem. He may have been addressing the issues behind closed doors, but it was an option which was bearing no fruit. Charlie did get adopted into David's group, which helped put a protective barrier between himself and his detractors, but whenever he strayed from his pack the wolves would attack.
One afternoon in the garage I was aware of a high-pitched altercation in the garage adjascent to the the thin-walled lunch area. Rounding the corner I found Charlie surrounded by the ganja gangsters. They were shouting something at him and as he would back away from his abuser, another would approach from behind and push him back into the square formed around him like a boxing ring. Charlie was not a small dude. Even hunched he appeared to be around six-foot three and underneath the baggy clothes he wore it was hard to determine what strengths lay hidden. He donned a scraggly beard and his eyes were intense even while obscured under the brim of the ball-cap he wore daily. He was becoming observably agitated and the crimson color rising in his cheeks foretold of an explosion. None of us knowing Charlie's history, it was hard to say what would happen when the limit was reached and the reactor went into the red. The episode was making me nervous and I approached the group to say something, but as quickly as it had begun, it ended. The foursome who needled at Charlie dispersed into the blackened depths of the garage and Charlie was left breathing heavily and with a faraway feeling about him. I noticed Brad and a group of students entering the garage and though they had not noticed what had happened, they had influenced the premature departure of the evil-doers.
"Are you okay?" I asked Charlie. He did not look at me, but kept his eyes pinned to the shadowy recesses of the bays where the wolves awaited him.
"They better leave me alone or..."
"Or what?" I asked after a time.
"They better just leave me alone," he spurted and then darted off himself. But, they didn't and things just seemed grow more intense with each passing day.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Steering and Suspension
By some strange act of God, we made it through Engine Repair with no blood spilled, bones broken or overly concerning lacerations to become the lore of future class introductions for Brad. And, although the class has become a slimmed down version of its original form, even some of the drug-addled teenagers had wheedled their way under the bar and into the next session of steering and suspension.
Had I been released at exactly that moment to some shop where I was required to remove, overhaul and replace an engine, then trouble would have arisen. The true art of car repair, and I did consider it an art, was one built by constant repetition of repair work perpetuated most often by young men and women under the tutelage of parents and neighbors; and who never spent a dime on formal education in their early years. The single removal of an engine would never give me more than a passing knowledge of the intricacies required to become a skilled technician.
At the time, though, this did not cast any dispersion onto the goal I had set for myself of completing the two years required to pass the class and get my ASE certifications. Steering and suspension, I assumed, would be a logical continuation of work started by those who had worm holed their way past the introductory session of engine repair. Instead, the doors of welcome were flung open and the seats were refilled with a whole new set of eager students. There were no objections raised by the first-session crew who had been given the insightful, but ultimately fruitless introduction about safety and rules, when it was omitted from the beginning of session two; and no inquisition by new students about these procedures when they were thrust into the fold. There was only a passing reference made by Brad about taking cues from the first session veterans concerning the direction that was to be taken. So, by this method, the new students were to become as nonplussed as we were, in the realm of safety glasses, steel-toed shoes, long pants or any other protective bits of clothing that might have saved them some skin or appendage. Brad must have concluded that the dirt and grime of the work we were performing to be inspiration enough to seek clothing appropriate for the work to be completed.
I felt initially disenchanted by the intrusion of new faces into a configuration that was just starting to feel comfortable. I understood that the school had to make money, and could not do so with a class pared down to a few groups of four people, many of whom were not funding the automotive repair class directly. But, after a couple of weeks the addition a many faces also helped with the everyday drama that arose with fresh personalities.
By far the most interesting group to gestate from the incubated warmth of the upstairs classroom was one led by a member of an O.G. engine repair student named David, who had recently been released from duty in the armed services, and was trying to find work as a B-level technician in a shop to pay the bills. He did not seem to have charted much of path beyond this and was not worried about any outcome save for gainful employment. He was, hands down, the nicest person who I would meet in the mixed bag that made up my classmates. Always smiling and laughing about something and greeting me, I had invited him to become a part of our group. Yet, he seemed to have a loyalty to those with whom he had begun the session. When he did switch groups for the second session, it was for a group whose needs were much greater than ours for him.
In steering and suspension this was an older woman who seemed completely out of place in our midst. Her age and disposition, kind and determined, did not carry the normal attributes associated with mechanical repair. She and David found a bond, I believe, in being some of the few African-Americans remaining in the class. But David's group did not divide by race. They also adopted a quiet Hispanic youth who mostly shrugged and smiled when interrogated about anything, and more importantly, a mentally challenged, mid-twenties man who would literally and figuratively put a wrench into the entire workings.
Had I been released at exactly that moment to some shop where I was required to remove, overhaul and replace an engine, then trouble would have arisen. The true art of car repair, and I did consider it an art, was one built by constant repetition of repair work perpetuated most often by young men and women under the tutelage of parents and neighbors; and who never spent a dime on formal education in their early years. The single removal of an engine would never give me more than a passing knowledge of the intricacies required to become a skilled technician.
At the time, though, this did not cast any dispersion onto the goal I had set for myself of completing the two years required to pass the class and get my ASE certifications. Steering and suspension, I assumed, would be a logical continuation of work started by those who had worm holed their way past the introductory session of engine repair. Instead, the doors of welcome were flung open and the seats were refilled with a whole new set of eager students. There were no objections raised by the first-session crew who had been given the insightful, but ultimately fruitless introduction about safety and rules, when it was omitted from the beginning of session two; and no inquisition by new students about these procedures when they were thrust into the fold. There was only a passing reference made by Brad about taking cues from the first session veterans concerning the direction that was to be taken. So, by this method, the new students were to become as nonplussed as we were, in the realm of safety glasses, steel-toed shoes, long pants or any other protective bits of clothing that might have saved them some skin or appendage. Brad must have concluded that the dirt and grime of the work we were performing to be inspiration enough to seek clothing appropriate for the work to be completed.
I felt initially disenchanted by the intrusion of new faces into a configuration that was just starting to feel comfortable. I understood that the school had to make money, and could not do so with a class pared down to a few groups of four people, many of whom were not funding the automotive repair class directly. But, after a couple of weeks the addition a many faces also helped with the everyday drama that arose with fresh personalities.
By far the most interesting group to gestate from the incubated warmth of the upstairs classroom was one led by a member of an O.G. engine repair student named David, who had recently been released from duty in the armed services, and was trying to find work as a B-level technician in a shop to pay the bills. He did not seem to have charted much of path beyond this and was not worried about any outcome save for gainful employment. He was, hands down, the nicest person who I would meet in the mixed bag that made up my classmates. Always smiling and laughing about something and greeting me, I had invited him to become a part of our group. Yet, he seemed to have a loyalty to those with whom he had begun the session. When he did switch groups for the second session, it was for a group whose needs were much greater than ours for him.
In steering and suspension this was an older woman who seemed completely out of place in our midst. Her age and disposition, kind and determined, did not carry the normal attributes associated with mechanical repair. She and David found a bond, I believe, in being some of the few African-Americans remaining in the class. But David's group did not divide by race. They also adopted a quiet Hispanic youth who mostly shrugged and smiled when interrogated about anything, and more importantly, a mentally challenged, mid-twenties man who would literally and figuratively put a wrench into the entire workings.
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