Self-taught bike mechanic

[fossyant]

Park tools magnetic part plates are good .....the magnet will stick the car to it.....

 

[gbb]

Ive had a good example today of how it can go wrong for people who 'think' they know how to do things but actually dont 'think' at all

Some of the guys will watch me clean and service a machine...and part of it is done exceedingly carefully with a pressure washer..taking care to cover all the electronics.

'I can do that' they think when just cleaning the machines...and even tho i've told them not to...and one guy blew a £600 box of electronics...
Do they learn. No
Do they carry on oblivious, despite previous fcukups...Yes

Yesterday, one guy took it on himself to clean all the machines. This mornings tally out of 10 machines on startup...
1 with a blown box of electronics (£350)
1 with a blown thermal head (£130)
1 that keeps tripping out. Narrowed it down to blown heaters (maybe £250)
1 that started ok, then smoke poured out. Transformers gone (maybe £120). Even then, ive got to find out what caused the transformer to go, probable short somewhere.
1 that just refuses to even start up....havnt even got to that one yet.

Around £1000 worth of damage ,1 hours loss of production, hours of my time putting it all right.....i think he's got it now.

The thing is, he's typical of many of the immigrant labour personell we have. They come from a 'must be able to fix it yourself' background...their mentality is not to be afraid of having a go, because back home, they have to .
So, they all think they know how to do it...but its the same with all nationalities...many dont engage the gray matter before proceeding.

 

[Black Sheep]

I got that from my Dad. He used to be able to dismantle things that didn't work, work out how they should work, and work out how to make them work again. He was incredibly patient and very organised. I once went up into the garage to find him sitting amongst what appeared to be a huge pile of complicated car parts. When I asked he showed me that he had dismantled the automatic gearbox from his Renault 30, and that all the parts were sitting on numbered sheets of paper, and on each sheet of paper were drawings he had made showing what they had looked like before he had removed them. Blew my mind.

I remember my dad's head being under the bonnet of our cars quite often, its something that comes through the family.

my favorite story about my grandad (dad's dad) is of my dad finding him with his capri half in the garage, boot lid removed attempting to rig up a pulley to lift a 1/4 scale traction engine boiler out of the boot.

my other grandad was an engineer who spent his retirement working for my uncle at his garage.

no wonder i'm not scared to remove, get re-corred and replace a car's radiator based on assumption and making it up as i go along!

 

[grhm]

Anyway, the kid came to collect the bike tonight, and is happy as Larry. I have learnt all sorts of new skills................. and swearwords, .........and Cubester has earnt enough money to buy himself a new pair of 661 kneepads.

Sorry, you've spent god knows how long sorting out this kids bike and Cubester has earnt enough money. How that work then?

I've got got some jobs that need doing. Can you do them for me? I'l make it woth my while.

 

[Cubist]

Sorry, you've spent god knows how long sorting out this kids bike and Cubester has earnt enough money. How that work then?

I've got got some jobs that need doing. Can you do them for me? I'l make it woth my while.

No, no, no....I got Cubester's old bike up and running again so that he could sell it to his mate whose bike fell apart after I gave it some emergency repairs cos it was crap.

I told Cubester to ask the kid for 30 quid for his old bike, and then told him I had spent a fiver on new cables for his old one. He promptly upped his price to his mate to 35 quid and paid me for the cables. At least one of us has business acumen....