Features "Experts" that tell you what is "wrong" with your item

When dad was alive he'd call from time to time and say something like "I can't figure out how to get this carb back together right will you come over and help me", and inevitably, every time, I'd come and be righting whatever wrong it was that he couldn't figure out, and he'd say "you're doing it wrong"....

 

There's one at every car show or cruise-in. That guy who knows more about your car than you do!

 

I cringe every time I hear the word “expert”. During my 30 year plus career as an engineer, I’ve heard that word thrown around countless times, but in reality only met less than 5 folks that I would consider an “expert” in their field.

 

At least one!

 

Used to encounter people like that at car shows. One day someone came up to me and told me how I really screwed up my car and advised me on what I needed to do to fix it, concluding that if I fixed everything, next year he would vote for my car.

 

My favorite was many years back a bunch of us were sitting behind our cars at a local car show. This guy comes up and begins to list off everything that he feels is illegal on each of our cars. Someone asks if he has a car at the show and he then quickly moves on. As I'm walking through the swap meet I see this know it all clown leaving the spectators parking lot in a rusted out 90s mini van.

 

I had my '66 F100 at a show once, and some guy told me the cylinder heads on its 352 FE engine were on upside down. There wasn't any way to respond to that so I just walked away.

 

It's usually the know it all experts that can't do any of it.I also like to ask for their phone number so next time i do something they can tell me how I need to do it.

 

Experts built the ***anic; an amateur built the Ark.

 

told Ziggster in early post about so called experts. Expert broke down is " ex is a has been, and spurt is a drip under pressure" so that makes you a has been drip under pressure.

 

Lol, for sure. I posted this in another thread last summer, but I'll tell it again.

Last summer I was at the local joint having a few beers with my buddies. I went out to smoke and my shoebox was parked right there. Another guy out there smoking wanted to make conversation and said "man whoever owns that car is an idiot". I said yeah? Why's that. He went on and on about everything that he found offensive about my car, right down to color choice. His final comment was "and those fake lake pipes are stupid" and I said oh the lake pipes are real. Want me to start it up so you can hear it?

His eyes got real big and he didn't say another word. My other buddy told me he later jumped into his corolla and left....

 

CL***IC !

 

One of the most important lessons I learned from my father was this.

The ability to keep my mouth shut.

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When I was 10 years old, I was at that point where I knew everything there was to know about everything.
It would just drive me crazy to hear someone say something that I knew was wrong, so I had to go out of my way to educate the person and prove to them they were inaccurate in their statement!

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My dad took me aside one day after seeing his chance to educate me !

He said, look, first of all, its impossible for you to know everything about everything, so get used to that, second of all, no one on this earth truly gives a **** about what you think you know!

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Now the real fun is, when you get enough self discipline, to keep your mouth shut, when you hear or see a person saying something that you know is wrong, or watching them doing something the wrong way, its more fun to watch them fail because of their non accurate information or the ability to put the part together the correct way!

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Once that concept took hold in my young mind, then things did get to be a lot more fun!
My dad was pretty smart about such matters!

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About 1980, our small town car club held informal car shows in the parking lot of a bank. Some members would drop off their car and leave for the day. A couple of us would watch over their cars - sort of a low level security patrol.

Two mid-twenties guys wandered through. By dress and actions, I "cl***ified" them as unemployed construction day laborers. They proceeded to loudly criticize most of the cars on display (my 1932/33/34 channeled hot rod probably deserved the comments...). They eventually climbed into a derelict 18 year old Mercury Comet and drove off. The paint was severely sun scorched, oil smoke curled from the exhaust, and the dangling headliner fabric blocked the rear view mirror.

Russ

 

Odd, that sounds like my wife!

 

It still puzzles me how some folks get to be so hard-wired in their thinking. Somewhere along the way they learn one way to do something. From that they start thinking that their way is the only way to do any job. And the learning process comes to a screeching halt.

To a large degree I think it's due to how they learn to do certain things. A lot of the time we're instructed to always do certain things in one certain way. In many cases that seems to work OK. But sometimes we'd be better off in the long run if we first learned "why" certain things are done, and not just the "how".

The main problem seems to be that this approach takes a bit more time but it provides a much better understanding of why things work the way they do. Next time a stranger tells you "how" you should do something his way, ask him to explain "why" his method is the best. The silence may be deafening.

 

Way back in my youth, I stuffed a 327 into a 62 CJ5. The experts all said I’d destroy the transmission or transfer case, or the axles. 3-327s later, I proved them wrong. I blew up three 327s instead! Hey, but I knew better…

 

Me too... got me beat up a lot.

 

Many years ago (early 1980s), I entered my '64 GTO in a car show and overheard one of the old fart judges grumbling about my "little chrome air cleaners and chrome valve covers " that were both factory issue.

 

It’s called Verbal Diarrhea!

 

My first cruise night in the 31 pickup at an A&W back in 1987 (I was 25). So local rodder came up and started cutting down my truck that my split wishbones and my 40 brakes were dangerous.

 

Can you all be sure that you always know the difference between good and bad information...???
There have been many times here that I have seen excellent advice totally ignored. Maybe the mantle of "expert" is not one we should ***ign to ourselves, but should rather be decided by others. There are self-proclaimed experts everywhere, but few deserve the name. The Dunning-Kruger effect is widespread...... (Google is your friend. Never stop learning.)

 

When I was still working I had pictures of my cars on the wall. A truck driver came in one day and said something about my 56 Chevy. I said it's a 57, he said, no, it's a 56. I told him I 'd had it since 77, I know what year my car is.

 

That explains why so many of them have bad breath!

 

A few of the guys I’m friends with at the Saturday morning gathering park together and watch the spectators look at ours and others cars. When one of them is telling his buddy all about my car…..one of my friends will say “there’s another guy who knows more about your 56 Victoria than you do”….. always cracks me up!

 

I've gotten lots of questions on paint. You have to maintain the thought that processes, equipment, technique, and material choices are almost as different as fingerprints. I won't advise unless I've done it multiple times successfully. If I don't know I say, "I don't know..." and might offer an avenue to explore. What chaps my *** is the guy who asks then tells me I'm wrong. Then why dafuq you asking me if you already know, right? I have what might be a character flaw in that I don't want to be wrong. To that end, know your **** or use your 5th amendment.

When you get challenged by someone who presents as sincere but then argues any of it, that tells you something. They're looking for the answer THEY WANT, vs the right info. Some jadrool asked me what he had to do to paint a steering box. I said degrease it real well and paint it, job done. "What if its rusty?" Seal up the steering shaft and wire brush it. "But I want to sandblast it." Then it must be dis***embled, which also opens the opportunity to check and replace bearings or other parts as needed. "I don't need to rebuild it." Don't blast it, it will end up with sand inside. He walked away in a bit of a huff. Next day he was blasting it, and I didn't see any loose parts. Brain went "Uh oh..." because I knew. Later that day he decides to puff up and show off his freshly painted steering box. "Well professor, check this out, whatcha think?" I grabbed the shaft, felt all the sandblast grit, even had some clumps coming out the bottom where the horn wire came out. "I think you'll be rebuilding after all." He was pissed. Really pissed at me, which I didn't get at all. I asked, "Who told you that was a good idea?" "Lee said it should be fine if I stuck a rag in there, so why isn't it?" "I dunno, ask Lee."

The moment a question becomes a contest, game over. These days I just reply "Wow, thanks, didn't know that." when I hear dumb **** about stuff. Why argue, why correct, no margin in it, and why just give away what took me a lifetime to learn for some knuckle-dragging mouth breather who thinks he knows it all? Ignorance is bliss, so why ruin their happiness

 

My Dad once told me, “Better to be silent and be thought of as a fool, than to speak and leave no doubt”. It was probably in my tween years when I knew everything. But it stuck. We both had a tendency to say things that people take the wrong way so I tend to keep quiet.
I usually don’t have much to say at car events, you never know who you’re talking to or who’s nearby. Just a polite, “Hi, how’re you doing? Enjoying the show?” Will do. Don’t want to seem stuck-up or snobby but not eager to engage either.
I took my Austin g***er to Bakersfield for display in the Grove. The CHRR draws people from around the world and this group of British gentleman walked around the car muttering a****st themselves. Finally, one came up and started telling me all of the things that were not original on my Austin. ?? So I politely told him, “It’s an old American race car, no one gives a sh!t if it’s original or not, least of all, me” His friends laughed and they moved on. I might have been too blunt, it just came out….

 

God gave us 2 ears but only 1 mouth for a reason.

 

And I hate to admit how many years it took me to use them in that prescribed ratio. lol