I guess growing up around cars you just kinda take for granted everyone knows about cars. Lately I have began to take notice more and more how some people just aren't car guys/gals. I was begining to think it was this younger generation that is just entering the work force but Yesterday while my dad and I was at the junkyard we ran into another Father/son after cooling fans for a car as we were. The dad asked if we seen any '04 malibu's because they needed cooling fans. I told him a couple rows over they had a couple. He told us he seen them but they were '03's. I told him they should be the same but he was convinced it had to be a '04 to work. I figured maybe he knew something I didn't about them until he seen me taking fans from a Cadillac and asked if we had many problems with our Cadillac I was puzzled and told him we didn't have a Cadillac. His response was "Well what you taking fans off a Cadillac for?"I said "For my dad's '78 Malibu project!" He said " They won't fit...that isn't gonna work!":confused: so I thought this time before I spoke and said " Well it won't be the first time one of my idea's didn't work!" and walked away smiling. No sense in explaining somethings to some people.
Wow, no wonder the auto makers got into financial trouble. Every year, make and model all have unique individual parts. :banghead3::banghead3::banghead3:
Funny and you are so right. A few of the folks I work have come around to a female appreciating her old car.
You got it all backwards. If they aren't car people, they think all the parts are the same. "No we don't have a fender for a 67 Plymouth Belvedere, but we have a 69 Dodge Dart and the fender should be the same." I still remember hearing that line from a counter guy at a salvage yard even though it was more than 20 years ago.
For a car lover each car is a rolling, living, breathing piece of art. We are the minority. For the majority of folks, a car is an appliance. Even some cars are starting to look like appliances. The Nissan Cube and Scion Xb (or whatever it's called) look like washing machines. I bet less than half of the motoring public knows how to change a tire anymore. I was the kid who was cutting forks off of junk bicycles and bolting them on to my existing forks to make my bike a "chopper", complete with playing cards clipped to the rear and slapping through the spokes. I had to modify it to make it my own - rattle can spray paint jobs, motocross bicycle handlebars - whatever I could get my little mits on. Kids these days don't ride bikes like we did back then. It's not ingrained early about working on things, and today everything is thrown away when it stops working. That's why whenever a young person shows interest in any of my old cars, I give them the royal treatment and show them around as much as they'd like. Got to pass it on to the next gen to keep the passion alive.
I think it's our job to educate and inspire whenever we get the chance. I know people are drawn to my classics and that's a perfect opportunity. Who knows what kind of a seed your planting.. If you're fired up and come across motivated and friendly you can spread the automotive gospel brothers and sisters... yeaaasss! Ooth!
Now I'm going through withdrawels again. I can hear my tools calling out to me in the night from my closet...
I'm seeing a girl, she like me is a older person and has a 23 yearr old son. Decent kid. I don't have any kids of my own. He was just given a 86 Ford truck. Its a shortbed, its seen better days but isn't so fargone that it can't be roadworthy. The boy knowns nothing about cars. Showin him the power steering lines and pump, pointing out the hei distributor , water pump, the radiator , saying to him never to open it right after the truck was driven or it will shoot coolant and burn you. Hard to believe this kid knows absolutely nothing about how a car works or its pieces. I've never met a guy at his age who knows nothing about a car. He just stands there and takes what I tell him all in. Sort of working out I guess since I'm dating his mother. Maybe like a bonding thing.
My 17 year old son asked me why his car was over-heating. I took a look and told him because he was missing his drive belt. He asked me why that would affect his cooling... sigh. "Well son.. you remember that water pump we replaced a while back that moves by that pulley up front.. You remember what attaches to that pulley?".... "Ohhhhhh..." he says. sigh. There is something about the teenage years that just scares the pageeeeebers outta me.
I have to agree with 98.03 % of this. But I just realized something. Our oldest son, 53, works on his and his wife's cars and his mowers. The 47 year old son doesn't know a riding mower from a Ford pick up. Our daughter 41, is about like the 47 year old except she knows her new Ford Edge is a pick up truck ???? Yea, that's what she told me on the phone when she bragged about trading her last SUV on it. Actually the other looked the same and same color, white. While visiting this summer I asked her to show me the bed on her pick up. I pointed to her husbands Chevy and said it should look a little like that. I think she grinned and hit me! Our 23 year old is a real car guy and lived here in Florida with us till a few years ago. But I just realized, daughter's son, our 16 year old grandson, is a car guy. Already has a license and had a late model S-10 with 350 Chevy. He actually showed me under the hood and pointed at parts. Not sure he knows what the parts do but he knows they are there. Since we've been home his stepdad convinced Tyler an 8 MPG truck was not gonna get a kid to highschool from in the country every day. Traded for another S-10 4-cylinder. Yep, he called and told me all about it too. Car guys are born car guys, not trained. Another thing, yes, we all had bicycles and fixed them up. I really can't even remember seeing bicycles in central Ilinois or here lately. It's hard to use an I-Pod, I-pad, and cell phone while peddling.
