Have ya ever met a guy(kid) that don`t know how to change a tyre?

ive met loads that couldnt!!!but i recall one time, bout 15/17 years ago, i was real high and roamin around the shop lookin for a hammer for 30 mins.....walked in the house all mad when dad asked..whats wrong??? i replyed...i cant find the damn hammer i was using!! thats when pop replyed...you mean the one in your hand?????say no to drugs kids!!!!

 

Steevil: I met up with you to go wheeling in Waiparous once. The guy in that yellow YJ was there with you. I think he mentioned something about not knowing anything about vehicles, but that's a little rediculous.

When I got out of high school, I was managing a full service gas station.
We had someone working there that, even after me showing her 2 or 3 times how to check engine oil, pretty much just refused to do it.
I remember one particularily bad day, when it seemed like every braindead stoner pump jockey that worked there just mashed the till with their feet instead of actually pushing the right buttons, I was trying to balance the till in the back office (I'd been working for about 16 hours straight at this point) when this girl comes in and asks me if I could go and check some guys oil.
Well, I'd like to say I kept my cool, but that'd be a lie. I believe my exact words were "Are you fucking kidding me? You work at a full serve gas station for fuck's sake!!"

Well, that girl was my girlfriend at the time, and she's still with me, after all these years. Now we're in similar fields and she calls me at work every now and again for information. Whenever the words "See? We could work together." come from her mouth, I think about that incident and quietly say "I don't think so honey".

Point is:
1) Some people don't want to learn.
2) Don't work with your wife.

Kris

 

Well my Father (RIP) tought me how to do most everthing.. I can change my own tire .. in heels and a skirt I might add. I can change my own oil and breaks, I can even sweat a copper pipe. Patch dry wall, lots of stuff. My Mother also tought me to cook from scratch(not a box) just about anything you can think of, and tought me how to sew, I made the seat covers for the Merc. Mom can figgure out a way to get it done .. may not be the "right way" but it works. Just the way I was raised. Now my dautgher (17) is taking shop class in school not sure about what they teach.. but she is learning. I think she can cook some if she wants to.. but the sewing don't think that is gona happen.. not that I don't try she just don't want to. She knows enought to sew on a button and minor fixes .. enough that if she sparks an intrest she can learn and teach her self. Funny thing is she thinks it's the strangest thing when her step mother or friends mothrs can't do things that I do.

 

Me, too!

 

That is funny, funny, funny shit......God I love the Hamb.

 

The whole problem with this younger generation of kid having the mechanical inclination of lawn furniture is these fucking video games. My step son is 13 and this kid is mechanically clueless, I try to teach him things, but it just does not sink in. Here is a fine example of his stupidity, if I don’t want him playing video games I can simply unplug one of the wires from his Play Station and he will not play it, because he can not figure out how to make it work. He is on his fourth bike since I have been around him (6 years) because he can’t do simple maintenance. I have shown him 5 times how to change a tire, tighten the chain, tighten the head set, ect… And he still can not do any of it, and he will never tell me when his bike is having problems until it’s too late and something is broke to the point of complete failure. I am at my wits end with this kid, when I was his age I was building engines and doing fabrication work. But I did grow up in a scrap yard and have always been around machinery, tools and equipment. The bottom line is I never played these stupid fucking video games.

 

I think mechanics who work on Lawyer's, Accountant's*, Salesmen's and Doctor's cars should find out and charge them at the same rate they charge people for their services.

Or,

I think mechanics should go into other lines of work and only work on their own cars and only build hotrods and customs for themselves and the people who don't know how can just eat shit and die in the desert when they don't know how to change a flat tire on their Lexus.

Some times I think that all the people currently running the world would be the toilet scrubbers if the people who know how to keep the machinery of civilization running quit doing it except for themselves.

I started thinking that stuff after watching "Mad Max"

Those who can, do, those who can't die...

Good thing I don't always think that way, I guess...

ETA (*I meant the unscrupulous kind with the MBA-CEO title on their door just because they get to run the company because otherwise they would figure out how to steal it anyway.
Not denigrating all MBAs either, just the unscrupulous kind...)

 

I agree with DrJ on charging the lawyers doctors and such.

My dad and I rebuilt my first car from the ground up, thats how I learned alot. I really appreiciate him doing that for me. I plan on doing the exact same thing with all three of my Kids.

 

Speaking as an accountant, that sounds like a great idea. I could use a break on shop labour rates once in a while!

 

I was waiting out side one of my college classes and I over herd these guys talking about biodiesel. They said that a local radio station had someone come to the station and talk about biodiesel and how to make the stuff in your home…so these guys were actually going to go home and try and make the stuff. I asked them what they had planned on doing with it after they had made it. I felt kind of stupid asking the question, but his reply was “put it in my s-10.” I should have let the morons put the fuel (assuming they made it correctly) into their little four-cylinder gasoline truck and laughed when they complained about their mechanics bill.

 

UUUUUH no. We spell it tire unless you're in Quebec then it could be Pneu Tyre is the British spelling of it. Regardless changing it is the same except you get out of the other side of the car! Stu

 

and the school boards think kids only need to know how to use a computer.

this nation is getting dumber and dumber by the day.

 

Hey I for one am really happy there are people out there that have more money than brains .. they are the one that pay for our old car habbit...!

 

My wife and daughter both recently had to change flat tires ( for you canucks Tyres ) daughter is 17. I was not available to help them at the time.

 

I won't say that I know everything. I'll still do some dumb ass things once in a while, but I'll give the old man credit; he'd never just bail me out. Ran out of gas? Walk, dummy. Rounded of a bolt? Get some vice-grips. I'd ask for advice and at best, he'd give me a hand for a minute or two. "I won't do it for you, but I'll show you how to do it." I'm sure because of that, that I can MacGyver my way home.

On another note, my friends are some of the 1/4 car-tards. I don't feel safe in most of their cars. One day I saw my buddy sitting in his driveway making circles on the pavement with his hand. What the hell are you doing, I asked? Putting new brake pads on my girlfreinds car, but they're to thick. But insted of grinding or sanding them down, he was scraping the pads on the rough asphault because he was to cheap (or stupid) to get some sand paper! I tried to tell him that he needed to expand the caliper with a C clamp, but he insisted that he didn't need to. So where's the other set of pads? Oh, I'm only going to do the one side. (!!!) You must not love you're woman very much, I said, as I walked away.

 

Yep, That's the flip side of it.
That's why I said "Good thing I don't always think that way, I guess..."
I too have made a living fixing other people's cars too.
I also think if "We" are dong that service for "them" we really shouldn't complain or wonder why they can't or won't do it for themselves.

And car's are way more complex than the one's my Dad taught me to work on.

I have a "Motor's repair manual" that covers from '53 back to '35.
Everything seems to be in it, all the Carburetors, transmissions, distributors, steering gearboxes, engines, everything, for all those years, for all the American made cars, all in one book about 2" thick.
I bought the Factory repair manual for our Astro Van back in '88 and it came in the mail in a box big enough for a bowling ball bag and was in four volumes!
When We bought the '96 Civic HX I bought the factory book for that.
The Dealer service supplement for the CVTransmission said "Remove transmission, return to Japan for inspection and repair."
Some cars have sealed engines and transmissions now.
NO owner service even possible even if they wanted to!
Run flat tires...No spare to change anyway, that's the way the Saturn Sky and Pontiac version come.
I remember Dad taking all the tubes out of the TV and taking then to any grocery store in town and testing them and uying replacements to make the TV work for a few more months, till the next one burned out like any other "light bulbs" do.
Now if something electronic quits working, its usually obsolete anyway so we just buy a new one, and then try to figure out ow to "recycle" the old one since damn near anything that uses electricity is "toxic waste" now

 

That's one way to make it a challenge, try to change the tire in a short skirt and not put on a show. Then again, I suppose putting on enough of a show is how you get some dumb guy like me to stop and change it for you...

--------

I changed the brake pads on one of my girlfriend's cars, it needed them pretty bad.. the tool to expand calipers is like $6, lots easier than trying to press them in by hand. Her car, her parents really, I told her to buy the pads and buy me the tool and I'd do it.. saved them however much a shop would want. She's gone, but I still have the tool, used it when I changed the pads on my truck - come to think of it, the tool was more useful than she was.

My dad didn't really teach me a whole lot, I was tearing stuff apart from a young age, when I was like 14 or so we took apart an old '37 Buick that had been abandoned in a field with the fenders, hood and doors all gone off it. I can take almost anything apart, and once in a while I even put it back together.

 

Oh man. That reminds me of when I tried to ckeck to trans fluid on my Girlfreind's Pontiac grand Am. I'm looking and looking. Finaly I felt retarded and got out the "manual." There's no dipstick. NO DIPSTICK! WTF! "Return to dealer for maintenance."

 

The only thing worse than a mechanically inept person is a mechanically inept person that claims to be a "car guy".

One usually joins a car club for a variety of reasons but the single most important reason would be to recruite extra hands and knowledge when building a car.

Or in this case, being so pathetic that the other club members push you aside and do it for you.

It was the morning of the very first traditional car show and one of our members was MIA.

A few desperate phone calls to my cell revealed that he was in his garage trying to install dummy spot lights on his 1959 Ford.
A quick drive over to his garage revealed the true horror of his situation.

He had managed to drill 1½ holes for the pedestal and all forward progress ceased.

1, He placed them in the wrong spot.
2, He had drilled a hole in the cowl and vent piece rather than the fender or door pillar.

The vent cover is a separate piece covering the cowl which hovers about 1" from the body tub. Both now had screw holes.

The only logical choice was to duplicate the one side he had semi completed with the available tools he had.

A quick search of his tool chest revealed that he did in fact not own a single screw driver.

He did however have approximately 20 tubes of Door Ease.


I'm not really sure why you would attempt such a techinical feat without the required precision tools, luckily somebody did manage to dig up a screwdriver. (our tools were in our cars at the show).

The dummy spots were hastily installed and we were on our way.


It had taken him several hours what I accomplished in 15 minutes.
............................................................


The very same individual took three weeks to partially remove his transmission.

By this time, it was more of a chore to go to his garage because it usually ended in frustration at his sheer stupidity.

Nontheless, he is a club member and that's what we do.

He had managed to remove the linkages , drive-shaft, starter, tranny mount and all but one of the bell-housing bolts. He had struggled with this now for THREE WEEKS.

It was time for an intervention.

He could not figure out how to get to the last bolt. He enquired weather I owned a 4 Foot extension.

???wtf???

Upon my arrival, I quickly removed the offending bolt with a box wrench.

The tubular transmission crossmember had been welded in on one side after somebody had stripped the bolts out many years ago.

This took some head scratching but the solution was to insert a pry-bar in the unwelded side and force it down to leave enough room to slide the tranny out.

I enquired as to the whereabouts of the new, used tranny and he pointed to a greasy blob in the corner of his garage.

...now you would think three weeks is plenty of time to take it to the car wash and hose the damned thing off....

I enquired if he had a new clutch to install (now would be the time...)

He did not.

I made the mistake of asking him if he had bothered to check the fluid level.

He did not.

.......urge to kill rising......

Of course it was empty so I sent him on a fools errand to find gear oil at 10:30 at night.

Confidant that he would return empty handed, I scrapped most of the crud off the tranny and quickly installed it.

Upon his return (empty handed), he was amazed at the speed in which I installed his transmission.

It took him three weeks to partially remove the transmission, I had it in and out in less than an hour.

I have a million stories about this guy and often wonder if he has any business belonging to a car club....

 

I am one of the men raised by a single mother. I learned how to change a starter when I was about 12. My mother did not date, my father lived near by, but he has not changed a tire or washed his own car in 40years. My father is a sports nut, his father was a mechanic/machinest that built his own house.

I had lots of cool friends that had cool fathers. I was working on my bmx bike at a friends house, I was about 8. Russ's father Ken watched me struggle to remove a bolt. Ken told me "righty tighty, lefty loosey". I was back in California a few years ago. I stopped by the house they lived in and they were still there. I talked to Ken for awhile. I told him that I have spent my adult life working to make time and to build cars, and not a day went by that I did not think of him. He smiled real big, I am think it was a proud moment for him. I have come a long way.

It take all kinds of people. I have no less respect for my father because he does not fix or work on his own stuff. He does know how, or did at some point in his life. He never showed me how to do stuff like that. We talked about it a few years ago. He said that he was always to busy, and it made the quality of his life better to pay someone to do what he could not do well. I end up doing things that I should have done, just like most of us on the board.

Everyone places a level of importance on the time they have. Not everyone thinks that cars are important. I do not know many people like that, but I understand they do exist.

BTW my father had a real nice shaved/nosed/decked lowered 1950 ford. 3x2 lake pipes, all the cool stuff. This was in 1956-57 when he was a junior/senior in highschool. He found good paying work, and could afford to pay his friends that were good at the work he wanted done. He never was a car guy like the average gearhead here, but he had some very cool rides over the years.

My father makes fun of me, and calls me a redneck. At least once a month he calls me with some off the wall question about tire pressure, or light bulbs, or some common household shit. He will never say it but I know he has alot of resepct for the knowlage that I have earned the hard way.

 

WE DO NOT...................That is how they spell it in England

 

My wife father had her take all 4 tires off her car and put them back on before she was allowed to drive.He did not want him changing a flat to cut in to his drinking time.True story we all love Big Frank.

 

I've taught guys how to change tires before and I'm pretty dang proud of that. It is amazing how many guys go to auto tech (which I understand you are going there to learn) and know NOTHING about cars. It also amazes me in life how many people don't know how to balance a checkbook.

 

Having completed a community college Automotive Machinist course within the last couple of years (at age 60), I can assure you that, in my experience, most of the students are not there to learn. They are there to avoid a job, collect a government check, talk on their cell phones, have car stereo wars, and haul ass when it's time to clean up. Out of the 18-20 kids in my class, there were about four I would recomend to a potential employer, and one of them was one of the two females in the class.

 

If it were just that people, in general, were just car-tarded, it might be acceptable, but there are lots of them out there that don't know how to do anything but what they were taught in school.

I know a few people that don't know how to cook (eat out every night), don't know how to clean (they have a cleaning lady), or do their own laundry (dry cleaners), and don't even own a lawn mower (lawn service).

One in particular one takes her dog to doggie day care because she can't handle cleaning up an "accident."

This isn't a rich person, she's a teacher and her husband works at home.

I worked at Home Depot when I was younger, and I couldn't believe how many 40-60 year old men didn't know what to use to hang a picture on the wall.

When it rains (I'm in FL, no snow), I'm scared to think how many people behind the wheel have no idea how a car reacts, what to do in an emergency situation, how the condition of the tires, brakes and suspension will affect its performance.

As I see a 5 foot tall woman driving a 5 year old Suburban doing 60 in a 45, in the rain, with the cell phone held against her head, two kids bouncing up and down in the back, I realize "God protects the stupid."

 

I have two daughters, grown now, but i did teach them a few things when they lived at home. I thought it was funny when my younger daughter told me had jumped started a kids car at high school one day. The car she jumped was a Beemer/Lexus/MB thing driven by a local doctors son, who had no idea how to jump a car. She had her own jumper cables in her Dodge Shadow. She worked with me for a couple summers at the die shop i work at. I taught her how to mig weld, and run basic things like a drill press at work. She went off to college, at THE University of Michigan and became an engineer. In one of her "lab" calsses they were going to learn about welding; the teacher asked if anyone had any welding experience. My kid was the only one who had, and she was only one of two girls in the lab. My older daughter is restoring a victorian house she bought. She has about as many tools as i do, and she knows how to shingle, drywall, paint, do plumbing etc. Most of the guys I work with that are under 35 have no clue how to fix anything, but at least we can charge them good money to do it for them.

 

When penetrating oil and a torch won't do it, they do come in handy.

 

Aside from those of us that only look at non-running cars within 100 miles of home.

 

I brought home a 1932 5 window that was really rough rusted all around with no floor.I had it on a trailer and needed help taking it off, so I called over my neigbors sons to help me.One of them looked a at me and said "what the hell is this,it looks liks rusted junk." I wanted to slap him,but I started laughing. I said its a car. They lloked at my like I was crazy.One year later the car was finished then they asked me is this the car we helped you get off the trailer and I SAID YES. They almost shit on them selfs.I thought that was kinda funny

 

This thread RULES!

A true classic.
I'm going back through right now and reading it all.