something you don’t see much of these days. although there are a few kids around here doing it. lot of dirt bike/ATV action. the old guys with money are the ones working on old cars around here. there might be a few guys doing work at home
but there are a few shops around altoona that seem to do a fair bit of resto work
Face it…if it doesn’t have a keyboard-mouse-monitor (and be accessible from their i-phone), the younger generation can’t be bothered……….
I lost count of how many times I’ve seen a auto parts employee installing a battery or wipers for some lost in a fog millennial.
Don’t know how many times I’ve briefly assisted said auto-parts employee with those quickie installations, especially wipers!
Good times create soft men who create hard times that create strong men who creat good times. We are in the fourth turning which leads to hard times.
How else are they gonna learn to hold the flashlight steady and learn all the mechanic’s special language?
I can relate, used to hang over the fender watching my dad work on the ’57 Chebbie station wagon, and later over the back seat of a Corvair Greenbrier “van”. Cut my teeth on small engine repair, model airplane engines (and radio control) and worked my way to larger congtroal systems and engines. Radio repair, TV repair, HO train controls (automated my HO layout), model rocketry, you name it. I wasn’t into sports, being a sickly kid every summer, I was into SCIENCE and ELECTRONICS and later MECHANICS! Got into computers in High School when mainframes were becoming available to just about everybody, then grew up with them – programming and designing digital circuits when they got affordable!
And yet, and yet, my only son is a Cable Guy in Illinois and that’s about as technical as he gets – he just ain’t interested. My Middle Daughtersaurus is my Tool Girl but she doesn’t have the aptitude. My other two girls are… Standard Issue Daughters, One Each. Sigh. The M.D. gets the tools when I die, don’t know who’s gonna et the Electronics stuff. Some of it is antiques, quite valuable but to my family it’s junk.
And so Life goes.
Sad
My old man had 3 different MGs, guess who got “lie on the floor underneath” duty as a kid? Not complaining, learned a lot about tools, cars and my old man….
my kid grew up with the same thing. I had the MGs and others. always working on them or cars that others owned
my kid couldn’t care less about any of it. I tried to get him in to it a couple of times, he just wanted to be ANYWHERE ELSE. so, oh well.
and then he complains about spending 400 bucks to get his starter replaced.
I made a bit of money back in those days working on brit cars in the driveway. I just asked what the robber shops in town wanted and do it for half.
got to the point I could swap out the clutch on a MG or TR
in 12 hours or less. used to throw in a tune up just to make sure it ran alright. wife at the time stop bitching after she saw the cash coming in.
@Busted … during my weekend web reading, I ran across a story of a 17 yr old high school student who’s created a carburetor rebuilding business. I can’t recall / find where I read this story, but its out there somewhere in web-net-land.
You package up your gunked-up dirty old carb and ship it to this young lady. Yes, young LADY. She does her thing and sends it back.
All hope is not lost
There is a website for guys that like old cars they way they have always been modified to go faster. Hotrods. Traditional hotrods. A blast from the past. Doing it the way its always been done. The website has been terribly polluted by some young guys with modern cars and old cars that traditionally never were used as hotrods but the website is worth a look, specially for the many many young guys who like to work on old cars and update them for current use.
For those of you who think all youngsters are worthless and only like modern cars, the websites forum has about a quarter of a million members. go to: https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/
something you don’t see much of these days. although there are a few kids around here doing it. lot of dirt bike/ATV action. the old guys with money are the ones working on old cars around here. there might be a few guys doing work at home
but there are a few shops around altoona that seem to do a fair bit of resto work
Face it…if it doesn’t have a keyboard-mouse-monitor (and be accessible from their i-phone), the younger generation can’t be bothered……….
I lost count of how many times I’ve seen a auto parts employee installing a battery or wipers for some lost in a fog millennial.
Don’t know how many times I’ve briefly assisted said auto-parts employee with those quickie installations, especially wipers!
Good times create soft men who create hard times that create strong men who creat good times. We are in the fourth turning which leads to hard times.
How else are they gonna learn to hold the flashlight steady and learn all the mechanic’s special language?
I can relate, used to hang over the fender watching my dad work on the ’57 Chebbie station wagon, and later over the back seat of a Corvair Greenbrier “van”. Cut my teeth on small engine repair, model airplane engines (and radio control) and worked my way to larger congtroal systems and engines. Radio repair, TV repair, HO train controls (automated my HO layout), model rocketry, you name it. I wasn’t into sports, being a sickly kid every summer, I was into SCIENCE and ELECTRONICS and later MECHANICS! Got into computers in High School when mainframes were becoming available to just about everybody, then grew up with them – programming and designing digital circuits when they got affordable!
And yet, and yet, my only son is a Cable Guy in Illinois and that’s about as technical as he gets – he just ain’t interested. My Middle Daughtersaurus is my Tool Girl but she doesn’t have the aptitude. My other two girls are… Standard Issue Daughters, One Each. Sigh. The M.D. gets the tools when I die, don’t know who’s gonna et the Electronics stuff. Some of it is antiques, quite valuable but to my family it’s junk.
And so Life goes.
Sad
My old man had 3 different MGs, guess who got “lie on the floor underneath” duty as a kid? Not complaining, learned a lot about tools, cars and my old man….
my kid grew up with the same thing. I had the MGs and others. always working on them or cars that others owned
my kid couldn’t care less about any of it. I tried to get him in to it a couple of times, he just wanted to be ANYWHERE ELSE. so, oh well.
and then he complains about spending 400 bucks to get his starter replaced.
I made a bit of money back in those days working on brit cars in the driveway. I just asked what the robber shops in town wanted and do it for half.
got to the point I could swap out the clutch on a MG or TR
in 12 hours or less. used to throw in a tune up just to make sure it ran alright. wife at the time stop bitching after she saw the cash coming in.
@Busted … during my weekend web reading, I ran across a story of a 17 yr old high school student who’s created a carburetor rebuilding business. I can’t recall / find where I read this story, but its out there somewhere in web-net-land.
You package up your gunked-up dirty old carb and ship it to this young lady. Yes, young LADY. She does her thing and sends it back.
All hope is not lost
There is a website for guys that like old cars they way they have always been modified to go faster. Hotrods. Traditional hotrods. A blast from the past. Doing it the way its always been done. The website has been terribly polluted by some young guys with modern cars and old cars that traditionally never were used as hotrods but the website is worth a look, specially for the many many young guys who like to work on old cars and update them for current use.
For those of you who think all youngsters are worthless and only like modern cars, the websites forum has about a quarter of a million members. go to:
https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/