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Post by lesleysm2 on Sept 9, 2023 22:26:11 GMT
I'd like to be a medical bookseller again
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Post by geoffr on Sept 10, 2023 6:42:15 GMT
He must be improving, some of them even work!  |
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Post by Bipolar on Sept 10, 2023 14:32:43 GMT
BMW is working on building a self driving car. I wonder if the signal lights will work?
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Post by geoffr on Sept 10, 2023 14:36:45 GMT
BMW is working on building a self driving car. I wonder if the signal lights will work? Good question, does one seldom see indicators flashing on a BMW because the driver doesn’t select them or because they are selected but don’t work? If the latter, how does the car pass its annual MoT? |
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Post by willien on Sept 10, 2023 15:43:04 GMT
BMW is working on building a self driving car. I wonder if the signal lights will work? Good question, does one seldom see indicators flashing on a BMW because the driver doesn’t select them or because they are selected but don’t work? If the latter, how does the car pass its annual MoT? The cars pass MOTs... not all of the drivers would. |
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Post by Bipolar on Sept 10, 2023 16:55:51 GMT
Getting back on subject I spent over forty years as a mechanic repairing trucks and heavy machinery. I always liked the challenge of solving an electrical or air system or hydraulic problem. A lot of the job was heavy physical labour which certainly helped keep me in shape over the years. If I were to do it again I would probably try to get into the electrical field, communications or an electrician.
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Post by andy on Sept 10, 2023 17:37:03 GMT
Getting back on subject I spent over forty years as a mechanic repairing trucks and heavy machinery. I always liked the challenge of solving an electrical or air system or hydraulic problem. A lot of the job was heavy physical labour which certainly helped keep me in shape over the years. If I were to do it again I would probably try to get into the electrical field, communications or an electrician. The other mechanic at our bike shop came from a background of repairing heavy machinery and picked up fixing bicycles very quickly. Don't think he had ever replaced a gear cable before I showed him but he instantly understood once he saw the parts involved and how they interacted. About the only other thing I needed to teach him was a more delicate touch with much smaller nuts and bolts than he was used to.....you really shouldn't need a big hammer to fix a bike! Not bad for a 71 year old learning something new  . |
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Post by mick on Sept 11, 2023 8:30:59 GMT
My manual dexterity is pretty poor. A primary school teacher once said, "give him a ruler and a pencil and he couldn't draw a straight line". However, I'm quite good at disassembling and reassembling mechanical things.
As a youngster, I used to love stripping my bike to "ball bearing level" and putting it back together again. One time I replaced the stem I think it's called - the bit that goes down the front tube and holds the handlebars. At last, the point! I overtightened the 'bolt', that thing with the expanding nut, that fastens the stem into the tube. On the test ride, going quite fast downhill, the bolt broke and the handlebars came off in my hand. I had a pretty bad crash.
The crash was witnessed by the father of a friend and the report was, "Mick crashed on his bike. Something seemed to distract him".
Mick
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Post by andy on Sept 11, 2023 9:23:58 GMT
My manual dexterity is pretty poor. A primary school teacher once said, "give him a ruler and a pencil and he couldn't draw a straight line". However, I'm quite good at disassembling and reassembling mechanical things. As a youngster, I used to love stripping my bike to "ball bearing level" and putting it back together again. One time I replaced the stem I think it's called - the bit that goes down the front tube and holds the handlebars. At last, the point! I overtightened the 'bolt', that thing with the expanding nut, that fastens the stem into the tube. On the test ride, going quite fast downhill, the bolt broke and the handlebars came off in my hand. I had a pretty bad crash. The crash was witnessed by the father of a friend and the report was, "Mick crashed on his bike. Something seemed to distract him". Mick I learned the hard way to not overtighten the expanding wedge of a quill stem too as I fell down some steps and snapped the stem so it was only the bolt holding it together. The correct torque for that bolt is enough to stop it moving under normal circumstances but not so much that it won't move in a crash. Also snapped one of the dropouts on the fork in that crash so it was an expensive lesson. |
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Post by gray1720 on Sept 11, 2023 11:38:47 GMT
Getting back on subject I spent over forty years as a mechanic repairing trucks and heavy machinery. I always liked the challenge of solving an electrical or air system or hydraulic problem. A lot of the job was heavy physical labour which certainly helped keep me in shape over the years. If I were to do it again I would probably try to get into the electrical field, communications or an electrician. The other mechanic at our bike shop came from a background of repairing heavy machinery and picked up fixing bicycles very quickly. Don't think he had ever replaced a gear cable before I showed him but he instantly understood once he saw the parts involved and how they interacted. About the only other thing I needed to teach him was a more delicate touch with much smaller nuts and bolts than he was used to.....you really shouldn't need a big hammer to fix a bike! Not bad for a 71 year old learning something new . My Dad left school at 14, went to work on the farm, dodging Doodlebugs. He could read and count well enough to follow the cricket reports on the paper and oh boy could he reconstruct a match in his head from the scorebook. In his 70s he got involved in a local archaeology project and much like your chap above found that once it had been explained to him how a worked flint showed all the traces of how it had been made, he became an absolute whizz at spotting them on the soil surface and picking them out from the vast quantities of flint in the boulder clay. |
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Post by JohnY on Sept 11, 2023 12:19:20 GMT
It wouldn't be good for me to learn about flint tools and how they were worked. I like making things and ...
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Post by mick on Sept 11, 2023 14:01:22 GMT
As the thread drifted to parents I'll continue. My father also left school at 14 and went into the gun trade. As he became more interested in girls, he realized that the stains on his neck and collar (from carrying the oiled gun barrels) were doing him no favours. He left guns and went into typewriter repair.
He was not an academic man and came from the old school of , "measure thrice, cut once and still get it wrong". However give him a bit of metal and some simple tools and he could knock up a facsimile of the most intricate typewriter part.
The only time he made any real money was when word processors began to replace typewriters and there were diehards who wanted their machines kept working. My father was pretty well the only guy in the region who could do that.
Mick
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Post by Bipolar on Sept 11, 2023 19:25:47 GMT
I met a man a few years ago that was a cash register mechanic. From when they were mechanical adding machines.
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