The poor state of manuals today

The worse manuals I ever saw were for audio equipment from the 70’s. Some were just straight word for word translations from Japanese to English which was basically useless.

Example - Button Left push on.

In the early 70s Japanese bicycles were coming on strong. One innovation was ratcheting shift levers, which could be set to require less force to move than the standard friction levers, yet would hold their position once shifted.

The instructions described them, as I recall, as “saying tick-tock tick-tock at the time of the gear selection.”

On the other hand, how well do US-based companies do to make their products desirable, and manuals understood, in non-English speaking countries? I have a hunch, not so good.

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I REALLY dislike those assembly pictograms that are devoid of any text. Like you, I have a good mechanical aptitude and I frequently find that just using my own logic for assembly is more useful than trying to follow pictograms that don’t make a whole lot of sense.

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They’re doing this with computer parts now too. Friend of mine is building her first desktop. The instructions to mount the heat sink to the chip are laughable. Just vague arrows and no real explanation of what part is what. And then the dink that drew the pictures drew a hand holding the heat sink, and drew it so large that you can’t see what you’re supposed to clip the heat sink to because the hand blocks that part of the board.

She ended up video-conferencing with me so that I could watch what was happening and talk her through it.

Ii remember those very clearly. They came out with “push-push” shifters and, in the '80s, “push-pull” shifters. Shimano made (and probably still does) some 80% of all the bicycle components in the world, from the cheap stuff on the dime store bikes to the highest-end stuff. Campagiano (I cannot remember the correct spelling) was the only other manufacturer of the high end stuff. My road bike had the Shimano that it came with. My mountain bike I made myself, and I had it loaded with Deore LX and XT. Deore XT was the top of the line in offroad gear. had 24/36/48 chainrings (old style) and only an XT would work with that wide a spread. I used and preferred “push-push” shifters to “push-pull”, so I pulled the ones from my old bike and used those.

Ah, sweet memories! But I admit, I had to go and look at my bike to remember the shifter designations. It was perhaps 25 years ago or more. I just discovered when I spun my crank to look at the shifters that my bottom bracket needs new bearings too.

Wal-Mart takes back bikes that customers have scrambled and damaged and I have bought them cheap and reassembled them and ridden them until something expensive failed then pulled out another. At one time I had 2 on standby. I have seen botched up work on every component, the most common has been the pedals being cross threaded when they were incorrectly installed left and right. I have become curious and look over bikes whenever I see them in a store and many have damaged pedals on the rack so the store’s assembly person can’t always get it right. I wonder how and why anyone would try to force a right hand male thread into a left hand female but they do. BTW, an old pedal can be dressed down and notched and used to chase the crank threads and with a good shot of lock tite the repair is reliable.

And for sure the owners manuals on the Wal-Mart bikes are laughable. They are in 4 languages and the French is about as insightful as the English in offering anything meaningful for avoiding or correcting a problem except visiting a professional. I have looked closely at tire/tube repair out of curiosity to see if any mention of talcum is made as a lubricant for the tube but never seen it. I wonder if the better bikes made in Japan or China have their tubes installed without talcum? And if so how long do the last before chaffing a hole at the schrader valve.or a spoke stud?

@Ben_T_Spanner, I have “tootled my horn trumpet” on 6x6 multi-fuelers to get the attention of drivers in the small Hondas and Subarus 50 years ago in Japan and when they held their lane in the mistaken intention of passing me they got surprised and with the exhaust at bumper level on some of the trucks those little cars got a good shot of black smoke.Was your Honda able to reach 60 mph?

Some people are directionaly challenged and don’t know their left from their right. All of my wife’s sisters fit that category, so all the BILs sort of laugh and say “no your other right”. Then again left and right hand threads might be something new to folks that never worked on cars some years ago with the left and right hand threads on the wheel studs. L means left and R means right. Still you’d think a supervisor would at least provide some meager direction to the assembly kids. Oh never mind, the supervisor is a kid too.

A few days ago, I installed a set of new rotors on a vehicle at work

All of the wheel studs had a prominent “R” stamped on the end

:thinking:

The local dump where I used to live had racks where people could leave their used/abused bikes. I used to select some to take home, strip them down, paint one of the frames and mix the parts to create one good bike, and then give it to a needy kid. I really enjoyed that.

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Or one of the instructions in the manual for a Chinese metal lathe…

“Please to use care not insert face into work piece”. :wink:

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My local dump, actually land fill facility, specifically prohibits the removal of anything as a legally punishable criminal act. I can’t find the reg. on their website but I know I have seen the signs when I was last there.

That’s dumb. Our transfer station actually has a spot to put things for exchange. Drop something off, or take something.

I read this article about a guy in the Bronx that would go to the dumps/scrap yards for old bikes. He would fix them up and every spring he would give them to local poor kids. He was retired and had a nice little shop. He’d spend a lot of his own money too, but he didn’t care. This was his hobby. Did it for a few decades. Each spring he’d have several dozen bikes to give away. They were all in almost new condition. A couple of the local bike shops complained, but couldn’t do anything about it.

When he was in his 80’s he was honored by one of the Town council members. The town council member received one of his bikes when he was a boy some 30 years earlier.

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I agree it is pretty dumb but that’s the way it is here.

Got a Chinese wristwatch with those tiny directions and illustrations. Put it on my copier and blew it up to fill an 8-1/2" x 11" sheet. Much better now.

That’s beyond dumb. Our dump had a building constructed wherein there were tables and areas for people to place things they no longer wanted. Appliances, vacuum cleaners, sports equipment, bicycles, clothing, etc. etc. specifically for others to pick up. We residents would, when we’d drop off our stuff, rummage through what was there, and often take something home. I’ve gotten three or four vacuum cleaners that needed belts, some sports equipment, and of course other miscellaneous stuff. This is much, much, much better than recycling! Used things are repurposed, repaired and reused, and in my case of the bikes repaired and donated to needy kids. And there’s an amazing amount of used stuff that can be repaired and reused and/or repurposed. And a lot of people who need such stuff.

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Why would you want to enlarge your wristwatch?
Surely the enlarged image of your watch does not actually keep time.
:thinking:

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Wow, is it smelly living at a dump? :rofl:
I do hazardous waste collection, people will bring in a new design gas can with gas in it, and say this I don’t want this back, I am going to find and old fashioned one, many people just want to dispose of old gas and save the can. We could line up the old fashioned ones if allowed, along with partial and unused cans of spray paint, water seal, oil base paints, driveway sealer, car batteries some guy could get a core charge on, soaps cleansers drano, fertilizer, bug spray, new caulk tubes unused propane cylanders, laquer thinner, turpentine, polyurethane varnish, stain etc. etc. ,whatever was in the cabinet or basement when they moved in, or parents moving out etc. Favorite hazerdous waste joke joke, “What do I do with draino?” pour it down the sink? If we could set up a take what you like would save us money on disposal. Too much liability I imagine

Our people repurpose paint which is nice for those people that don’t care if they get a can of brown paint that’s been mixed from five different cans and will never match anything. Next trip I’ve got a full can of good quality paint that reminded me too much of baby diapers the first square foot I painted. They’d need a huge building though if they were going take everyone else’s stuff they don’t want. Man I’ve got two exercise machines that I paid dearly for, couches, bedroom set, furniture, slot machine, desk, etc. At least a truckload. St. Vincent Depaul takes some stuff but not everything. I delivered a trailer load of furniture to the Salvation Army a couple years ago and their whole warehouse was filled to the brim, floor to ceiling.

I wouldn’t mind if someone did a free warehouse to deliver all this stuff to but I think for the government to get involved-especially for appliances, it’s a loser and I’d vote no on using tax money for it. I still favor burning this stuff. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes, no landfill problem.