fromPep Boys and

Our education system seems to promote that there is an instant answer to every question. Starting in the lower elementary school, testing begins with statewide exams with multiple choice questions. This pattern continues through junior high and high school where more standardized multiple choice tests are given. This prepares students for college where the students will often be in large lecture classes and tested with multiple choice examinations.
These students go out in the world thinking that there is a simple answer to every question.
I remember an experience I had in junior high school. I was sitting in study hall reading a Popular Science magazine. There was an electronic quiz in the issue that would have the solution in the next issue. The problem was this:. An engineer needs a 16.5 ohm resistor. The only resistors available are four ten ohm resistors. Can the resistors be connected in such a way to make 16.5 ohms?
I puzzled over the problem and then went to the teacher who was monitoring the study hall. She said she wasn’t certain how to solve the problem. She took me down to the high school physics teacher. He explained the formulas for series and parallel resistance. He showed me when resistors were in parallel, there were more paths for the current to flow, thus there was less resistance. He then showed me that when two resistors were connected in series, the current flow had more resistance to overcome.
However, he didn’t work the problem for me. On the way back to the study hall, the teacher who was monitoring the study hall said, “You work out the problem and show me the solution”.
Without going into the formulae, the solution is to first connect two of the ten ohm resistors in series which gives 20 ohms. Then connect a 10 ohm resistor in parallel with the 20 ohm resistance which gives 6.6 ohms. Finally, connect the last 10 ohm resistor in series with the 6.6 ohm resistance and thus there is 16.6 ohm resistance which is close to the 16.5 ohm needed in the circuit. To me, having me solve the problem was real teaching on the part of the teacher monitoring the study hall and the physics teacher.
Twelve years ago, I thought about this problem and wondered what I could do if I had an infinite supply of 1 ohm resistors. A colleague and I played with the problem and were able to prove we could construct any positive rational number using series and parallel combinations of resistors and published our proof.
My teachers in my little country school didn’t brush me off, nor did they give me the solution to the problem. They gave me just enough for me to work out the solution and followed through to make me want to solve the problem.
Life isn’t about selecting the correct answer on a multiple choice question; life is finding a solution to a real problem.

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I try not to get into the practice of wishing people didn’t come here because sometimes useful discussions come out of these seemingly simple questions.

But I maintain, particularly with the question referenced above about tires, that sometimes there are very valid reasons to ask strangers, especially ones likely to have a strong interest in the topic. I’m going to have to buy new winter tires coming up. I wore out the ones the seller included with my car when I bought it. My parents never bought dedicated snow tires, my siblings haven’t, and most of my friends were carless city dwellers. I’m a reasonably smart person, and I can Google, but it helps to have someone give some dimension to what I read in reviews. I’ll probably go to the well-recommended tire shop and ask, but I don’t want to sound like a complete idiot and I’d hate to waste money. If I were new here and scrolled down and saw there were a bunch of people who’d know something, I’d think you might have some opinions. So, in short, not everybody is asking you to do the thinking for them, but it can help to learn to differentiate the quality of multiple sources.

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Michelin Alpins
 Fantastic tires! Blizzaks, also fantastic! Firestone winter tires, low price, very grippy but the noisiest winter tires I’ve ever owned (version 2 is out, might be better) Any of the 3 on my wife’s Saab made it as good if not better than any of my 4WD’s with all seasons.

But it has been 10 years since I needed any!

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I will 2nd the blizzak ws80’s. I bought them for my daughter when she went to school in Vermont. she said when other people were getting stuck she drove right through it.

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grew up in the 40s and 50s. No TV until I was 12. Most of the information I had was from a 1920s World Book encyclopedia.

When I started school, I corrected the teacher when she said there were 9 planets. The world book was clear their were 8.

Who knew I would eventually be right?:smiley:

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I haven’t gotten out much over the last year or so but noticed a couple things last night. Ran into three young ladies (16-19 my guess). Perky, friendly, helpful, like they were so happy to be out and about with people and not locked up. The other thing I couldn’t help but notice was the dresses have gotten much shorter over the last year and they are wearing dresses. I can’t remember if that’s a good sign or a bad sign anymore.

When I was a kid if I needed a part for my small engine there was a place I went that dealt in motors and stuff. I was amazed that the if I had the model number the guy would pull out the book with the parts diagram in it and we’d find the part and they usually had it. I’ve always been a fanatic about collecting parts lists, diagrams, and repair information for much of my stuff,

After working my dad’s old chain saw pretty hard last week I noticed the sprocket could use replacing. Pretty old and none of the sites I tried had much of anything for parts. I went back in the file and found the part number, plugged that in and bingo, found the part available on my first try. So download the diagrams and parts list before they get to old and not on line anymore because it can make finding parts a lot easier.

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Why? Its because they are frustrated and PO’d that they’ve been sold a bill of goods. It’s because expectations are greater than ever. They’ve been told that cars built more recently are safer and better than they used to be. They have airbags, antilock brakes and traction control. They are used to free safety recalls, but don’t understand that recalls are ONLY for safety. Add in the facts that cars built in the last 15 years cost more to buy than ever before, have have electronic controls, sensors, and features that cost more than ever to fix, and are no longer able to be repaired by a shade tree mechanic.

Add in the facts that cars are more expensive to own (even after adjusting for inflation), they have to have a car to survive, income has been stagnant for 40 years, and most of the nation has no decent mass transit.

Most people can’t afford a new car, and they can’t afford to get an older one repaired, and they can’t do it themselves.

They are PO’d.

Well you make a lot of generalities that may or may not broadly apply to other locales. I’m sure you could say “some” but I can’t necessarily agree that it is predominant. Just depends on who you hang with and their background and culture. One thing that might be interesting is to know the family history of these kids that have been lied to. I know there are lots of things my wife would not think of or think important if I were not around.

Could she say the same about you?

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On the other hand, on a ten hour road trip I did not speak to my girlfriend. She doesn’t like to be interrupted.

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There is still a LOT of stuff that a shade tree mechanic can fix in his driveway

You are coming across as very negative, btw

I agree with some of your points, but for the most part, I believe you’re making a conscious effort to see things in the worst possible light

That’s how I read your post

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 and it’s also a fact that the electronic features on modern cars are usually very durable and tend to not need repairs.

Yes, in theory, all of those “do-dads” are expensive to fix but I’ve never had to repair the airbags, traction control, ABS, automatic stability control, on-board GPS, or anything else of an electronic nature, and that includes cars that are 10 or more years old, with 120k miles–or more–on the odometer.

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That’s a good sign. A very good sign. Definitely!! :slight_smile:

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unless its your daughter.

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You are right about that and I speak from experience/ :grin:

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I recently noted that I bought a new car in 1972 for $5,250 which was approximately one third of my annual income at the time. I bought a different new car in 1975 for $6,600 which was approximately one third of my annual income at that time. And on and on since then. My wife’s 2019 Hyundai Elantra had a price of $21,500, which would be less than one third her annual income if she were still working. And that little Hyundai is a lot more car for the money, safer, more reliable, longer lasting. So please tell us again what people are P.O.'d about?

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People are so PO’d because they either haven’t lived through, don’t think about or don’t want to know about the reality of the “Good Old Days”.
The reality of life in the US during the 1950’s and into the 1960’s is closer to what we’d now consider to be the 3rd World than any Golden Age.

Today we have cars that last 10 years with minimal maintenance, A/C practially everywhere, air that doesn’t stink or turn the clothesline black with soot, work condition improvements that were unimaginable and medical care that can prevent, cure or replace practically anything so our expectations have dramatically grown.

That’s a good thing because that’s progress but as an Old Fart it sometimes ticks me off that some people don’t bother to appreciate how darned good we have it here today.

And I’d like to offer a great deal of thanks to everyone to got us to where we are today, taking us from Party Lines to Video Phones and are currently developing self driving, pollution free cars and a KITA to the whinners who do absolutely nothing but complain.

PS, my first car was a Vega, no A/C, no power anything and by 3 years, 50,000 miles it was rusting, the plastic parts has changed color and the motor was burning more oil than gas. Good Old Days, Humbug!!!

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The one thing about the “Good Old Days” for me was that I was able to repair more things on my vehicles and things around the house. It seems to me that there were more mechanics like the Gus Wilson, proprietor of the Model Garage in Popular Science than there are today. For instance, at one time I had a 1990 Ford Aerostar. The engine was not running on all 6 cylinders. It was still under warranty, so I took it to the Ford dealer. I got a call from the service manager informing me that there was something wrong with my Aerostar, but they didn’t know what to do because the computer couldn’t tell them what was wrong. I suggested that they pull each plug wire and replace it until they found the one that didn’t make any difference in the way the engine ran. I was told that they could only do the repairs under warranty if the computer told them what was wrong. I then told them to pull each plug wire as I suggested and if that didn’t pinpoint the problem, I would pay for one hour of labor. Half an hour later, the service manager called and said my Aerostar was fixed. When I picked it up, the service manager showed me the spark plug that caused the problem. Part of the ceramic.firing tip.hsd broken off. He assured me it was fixed. I said, “I’ll be back with the same problem”. I reasoned that coolant was leaking into the cylinder and when the coolant hit the hot spark plug, the ceramic around the firing tip had cracked. I was right. The problem happened again and on pulling the cylinder head, a hairline crack was found in the cylinder head. The engine was replaced under the warranty. Now I work with computers. I program computers. I tell the computer what to do. While the computer can be a good diagnostic tool, the results must be backed up.with reasoning.
In the “Good Old Days” I did many repairs to.my vehicles and household appliances. My vacuum tube voltmeter helped me run down problems in my television, radio, and high fidelity equipment. My Husky 3/8" drive socket set got me through auto.repairs. I overhauled the two stroke engine on my LawnBoy lawn mower.
Now I don’t want to go back to the “Good Old Days”. I wouldn’t trade the reliability of my Toyota Sienna for the simplicity of the 1950.Chevrolet pickup I once owned. My flat screen color television never has given me any problem where I was often replacing a tube or running down a problem in my old Philco black and white television. However, I had to do more thinking in the “Good Old Days”. I didn’t have to depend on a computer to.tell me what to do.

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+1, on all counts!

That reminds me of a customer, back in my gas jockey days. A guy drove in with his 4 or 5 year old Corvair, and he told me to “fill the oil and check the gas”. Before I could try to correct him, he repeated it and said–“yes, that’s exactly what I meant”.

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Yup!
When I was a kid, the first color TVs that were introduced cost ~$1,000, and the picture quality was awful. That $1,000 from back in The Good Old Days would equal almost $10,000 today. And, of course, that TV from The Good Old Days would have required frequent tube replacement, and–ultimately–after 5 years or so–the very pricey picture tube would have to be replaced.

For less than $1,000 in 2021 money, I can now buy a flat screen TV with superb image quality, and a screen size that is more than 10 times the size of the screen of that '50s TV. And, the likelihood that it will ever need repair is minimal.

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