why cant people do quality work?

I have been working on my wiring from my dash back to my tail lights for the past 4-5 days here and there because I have been busy. Sadly the more I do the worse it gets. I am almost done but wow what ****py work. When they changed the tail lights they took form the factory harness and used a wire vamp (little clamp with old and new wire, not **** style) Then the wires changes colors and they spliced it and tied the two ends together and wrapping it in electrical tape. Then where that wire connects to the light its tied and wrapped with tape. No wonder I was having so many issues with my tail lights. That is only part of it. Thankfully it had a spare body harness and I am replacing the old one and soldering my wires. I mean wow how lazy are people.

 

I had a guy come in my motorcycle shop, headlight was flickering/intermittent. He said he just rewired it, so of course that raised questions. He had loosely twisted the wires together and pinched masking tape over the 'joint'. Maybe some people just don't know.

 

Tell me about it man, just got done working on an O/T Vette that had half the harness wired with household wire nuts. Some people just don't care if the jobs done right or not

 

You ought to so see some of the rigged up stuff we see in the truck repair business. Some of the **** will scare the hell out of you, especially if you had been on the same road around some of those trucks.

 

Because it's not their's.... then sometimes that's just the way they work cause they don't take any pride in what they do, they just want the money for it!

 

A good friend of mine works as a welder for a large car carrier company. He told me that every carrier in the road is full of cobbed bird**** welds. He said he has seen many new trailers with only a few thousand miles on them come thru the shop with cracks all over them. Maybe DMV should worry more about the stuff that matters and not if my motorcycle has a horn or not.

 

good point pet****.................

 

I honestly think at times it's not that people don't care about the ****ty work they are doing. I think some of them don't have a clue that it's NOT the way to do it.

 

I usually rip out other's wiring handy work and start over. That way I know ALL connections are soldered, water tight, and SOLID. Makes trouble shooting easier later.

 

I prefer duct tape!! but seriously, spme people just don't know any better.

 

maybe they are first timers. Hell i still have no idea what i'm doing most of the time ,but try to make it work with what i know. I either look it up or ask,but it's never perfect. experience goes a long ways.

 

I don't think they know any better. When I look at some of the work I did when I was a teenager....uggghh. But at the time I didn't know any better.

 

Yeah, they're usually very proud of the job they've done.

 

Pretty much sums it up..... The definition of "quality" is what has changed. A lot of people actually believe the work they do is as as high a level of quality as there is. They just don't see the possibility that a higher level of quality exists beyond their own skill level.
As an example... It's fairly common to hear somebody say something like "that can't be fixed..." When in fact it's a basic "fix".... What the guy is really saying is that "I can't fix it because it's over my skill level".....

They just don't know that there is knowledge out there that they don't have....

Rich

 

When I was a kid;

I didn't know what **** splicers were
I didn't know what shrink sleeve was
My soldering gun was an old railroad spike
Twisting wires together and taping them was as good as I knew to do.

If my car got me to school and back home, a little runnin' around on weekends my wiring was good!

Solder and shrinksleeve all connections.

 

When I was 14 I wired a car using red wire, as in every wire in the car was red. Glad I never had to track any gremlins.......Guess I can be proud it worked when I was done.

I also remember my dad telling me that "just because we're out of electrical tape, doesn't mean you can use masking tape, dummy!" Walks away shaking his head.....

 

Not to do with wiring, but keeping within the spirit of the ***le of this thread, I have to relate an experience I had.

A friend of mine showed up at the house one day to show me his new aquisition, a '56 "Effie" Ford pickup and related to me that he had just laid down 35,000 bones for this piece. I'll have to admit that it had eyeball. Nice powder blue paint, matching leather interior, BBC with 8-71, two-fours and stainless braided everywhere I looked. He asked if I wanted to drive it and I said sure.

Never was I so disappointed in my life. The shop had cobbled up a Volare front clip and failed to build in enough positive caster to make the steering wheel return to neutral after a turn. Every turn required manual effort to return the wheel. What a pleasure to drive!!!!!! My friend said he had the truck into a front end shop, but the front end didn't have enough adjustment to correct the defect.

Now, I don't know whether the shop that built it tilted the clip forward to make it work in the truck and thus eliminated the possibility of getting any positive caster in the front end or what, but it was sure a bear to drive. Can you imagine laying out that much cash for a truck and having to deal with that on every turn?

I didn't ask who built the truck, but I could visualize the company name in my mind....."Joe's Pest Control and Clip Swap Company"

I didn't say anything about him squandering his money on a piece of **** or anything like that, but he must have sensed it from my reactions. Haven't seen him since and that was 10 years ago.

That's why I refuse to buy anything that has been altered from bone stock in any way. If I want it altered, I'll do it myself.

 

I have seen one big name wire company that uses all black wire with tiny print to tell you where each wire should go. Dam hard to read standing on your head under the dash!

 

Dont forget about the fact that even the people who do know better still lay down shoddy work,i run into this daily.when called on it they reply i dont get paid enough money to worry about it!!!!wich leads me to my point...............when you pay peanuts you get monkeys!

 

Wireing shops get a bad rep on cost vs time anyway. Wiring takes time to do it RIGHT, plain and simple. Most customers don't want the bill for 6 hours because the guy had to take out half of the interior to run that new wire blah,blah,blah. They would rather get charged $30 and all of the sudden the lights work.

 

Keep in mind too, that some people have best intentions...they just don't know any better.

 

I just had a 1937 Pontiac coupe dropped off at the shop that had been "started" on. It was literally in boxes, so I ***embled it to see what I had, NOT GOOD! The frame has a Nova stub welded on, with the fenders on the tires hit the front of the fender! This car was built by a guy who "Has built alot of rods."

 

Wouldn't you get elephants?

 

Ok this brings up a rant, I was shopping for car alarms,found one at best buy that had the features i wanted, asked the clerk to ring it up for me, uh uh, can't sell it to you, we have to install it here,i'm not allowed to sell you the alarm to take home. at this point i'm like WTF? I asked for the manager,same answer. they want me to leave my car there and let Acne boy,probably just out of diapers, take my car apart and install something that i prefer to install myself. I told the manager what he could do with his alarm, would involve removal by a proctologist, and left, i will never go back in that place. fast forward, we buy a 98 civic,I know off topic, the alarm starts acting screwy, i pull the underdash panels and holy s---. the alarm module falls out,the remote start falls out,and a mess of wiring that looks like helen keller wired it,falls out. I figure this is some sort of hack job, then i find a tag under the dash that tells me,if this alarm needs serviced to contact my nearest best buy. I should have known. I still haven't had time to fix it,it's our daily driver, and it's such a mess i'm going to have to yank the dash. real fun on an airbag car.

 

I know what you mean, I worked in a truck body shop for over five years. Some of the trucks we did I had to take down the road to the lot we pressure washed and sand blasted them. Some times that 3 mile drive was unnerving trying to keep the truck between the lines. The scary thing was we'd patch the bodies up and the owners would pick them up and head out to one of the coasts with them.

Talk about bad wiring, I worked on a beat up COE tractor one time, the right front corner needed to be replaced so I tore off the wrecked sheet metal and replaced it. The light wiring under the panel was mess, a combination of different wire twisted together, including two conductor lamp cord. Well, got it all together, rewired the lights with new wire. The owner comes for the truck but a day or two later the boss calls me into the office and starts chewing my *** because the customer called and his headlights are all f***ed up and he's bringing it back and since I was the one who worked on it I had to repair it on my own dime. The truck comes back in, I jump in and turn on the lights, guess what? The light on the other side are the ones all f***ed up. I go in the office and bring the boss out to show him. All he does is grunt, "Just fix it", no apology for chewing my *** for over a half hour, nice, really nice.

 

when i was taking apart our model a project i came across extension cord that had been used for part of the wiring, still with the orange sleeve on some sections........ some of the floor was patched with what looked like sheet metal off of a shipping container............. I wasn't too happy about either of those finds

 

My best friend (the guy I often call my big brother) built a 29 A roadster in the early 70's and the guy who wired it for him (rod shop) used all red wire because he got a real good deal on it. That was a royal pain in the **** to trouble shoot the tail lights on on the side of the road at night.

I can't begin to count the number of basket of snakes trailer hookups I have cut out of cars and trucks in the past 40 years because the owner was having tail, stop or turn light problems. In too many times it was something left over from a previous owner or someone hooking up a Uhaul with their wires.

I have to agee though that 90 percent of the time it is done because the guy doing it doesn't know better or doesn't care.

 

Always quote double on a basket case. We had a sign, I'm sure you've all seen...

shop rate $65
If you watch $75
If you help $85
If you worked on it first $100.

seemed to cover ****s. also don't forget the PITA charge!

 

ha ha i didnt think of that but your probably right!

 

In my line of work as a professional tattoo artist, every shop in the country thinks they do the very best. Alot of artists out there think they are the king of tattooing. I have seen horrible work even get trophies at shows and end up in magazines because the simple truth is some people just don't know what quality is. There are great artists in this industry and alot who should be taxi drivers instead.
The average person wants Walmart price and expect Chip Foose quality.



Example

BAD TATTOO



GOOD TATTOO