Miscellaneous > Garage Gripes

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62131:
There's gratification in fixing something. Most people just replace it or have someone else doit,

sixball:
My father was the most mechanically proficient person I have ever known. He was also, to a point, the most peaceful person I have ever known. My single goal in life was to be like him when I grew up. He was a farmer, rancher, mechanic, journeyman machinist, well driller, a shop foreman at Douglas Aircraft, an inventor, an alcoholic, and the best dad a kid could have. The alcoholic trait is the only one I've come close to achieving.

Once when he was running a shop at a grain elevator at Ralph's/Ogg Switch between Canyon & Happy Texas a pair of old farmer brothers were hauling their wheat to the elevator in a teens/early twenties chain drive Oldsmobile truck. After having a hard time getting a load from their farm they stoped by the shop to see if my dad could repair the drive gears & chain on one side of the rear end. After a lot of discussion about the truck, the lack of machine tools in the shop and a couple of unflattering comments of their perceptions of my dad's abilities one of the brothers said, Do you really think you can fix it? It was like a bolt of lightning struck him. My dad turned to go back into he shop and back to what he was working on before they had interrupted. He said in a tone I had never heard before & in a way to let it be known the conversation was over, "If someone can design and build that piece of shi#! surely to God I can fix it." It took most of a week and as far as I know it was still running when the old guys quit farming. That is the shop where Dad & I rebuilt my Cushman sometimes using a lathe he built from a brake lathe and a piece of railroad rail.  admire folks who FIX stuff! Thanks Sammons!

sammons:
Thanks for the kind words Sixball. I've always tried repairing my own stuff. I'm sure you and a lot of hands on cars guy's do the same. I always figured that if the repair man charged more than i was making....i'd try myself. Now days i have time but no money. Takes me forever, 10 minutes on 45 mins off these days.

Both sides of my family started out farming/ranching. They had to repair their equipment the most economical way. Both grandads moved on to otherthings both were very good at mechanics. Moms dad went to collage and got a mechanical enginering degree. Worked for Mayrath, then Chevy garage as a mechanic then back to engineering for WW cattle shut co. Spent a lot of time with him, my other had moved to California.

Mechanics use to repair your components, generator/ alternator bushings/bearings, brushes. Same with starters and waterpump seals. Rebuild master cylinders and wheel seals etc. Sometime in the 70s everyone seemed to just go to the parts house and get rebuilt units. Pretty soon it bacame hard to find a lot of repair parts.  Now mechanics just start throwing parts at it till they stumble on to the fix.🙄

sixball:
You are right. When I retired from teaching I got a part time job at CarQuest. It was a small store and there was still a lot of farming/ranching here. the store stocked brushes, bushings, points, rectifiers......all sorts of stuff to fix things. By the time I left a few years later mom of it was gone. I took a lot of the old books with me. A lot is still out there it's just tough to find a counter person who will look for it.

62131:
We have all the modern parts stores here Auto Zone, Orielly's, etc. but there's one locally owned parts house that you can go in there and say I need a sbc chevy fuel pump he walks back and brings it out, hardly ever uses a computer to look up a part, might use a book, And the part is correct   

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