When does a poster become a duct tape specialist, junior grease monkey, senior grease monkey, or long lost Magliozzi brother? I can’t seem to find it on the site, although I think it was posted here someplace at one time.
Don’t Know If One From The Morgan Garage Would Be Eligible For Advancement, he, he …
CSA
Obviously there are no qualifications except being able to type. When you get your badge, you get a congratulatory email with the number of posts made I guess. I like badges and medals but its not something I strive for.
Duct Tape Specialist: 100 comments
Junior Grease Monkey: 1,000 comments
Senior Grease Monkey: 5,000 comments
Long Lost Magliozzi Brother: 10,000 comments.
Looks like I’m less than 300 away from Senior GM, which means I should start spamming the forum with a bunch of random crap, right @cdaquila ? >:)
One of those badges and $2.00 will get you a cup of coffee at IHOP.
Qualifications for badges ?
Have lots of free time on your hand. 
$2.00… Plus tax, of course @Volvo.
“Don’t Know If One From The Morgan Garage Would Be Eligible For Advancement”
I always thought that MG stood for Morris Garage.
I learned something new today!
;-))
Oh, please, no, @shadowfax. I’ll just give you the badge!
Or you could just break all your posts into short phrases, so your body of work looks like ee cummings poetry. Not that I’m encouraging you or anything.
I found the original Car Talk forum 20 years ago and found that it kept my blood pressure down when I was forced to sit in the office waiting for something. The free cell game could be entertaining but those tough games would often pop up and throw my diastolic into tripple digits while hammering out solutions to the worlds problems on R&R always relieved some stress. I wonder how many hours I have spent throwing advice out here. I hope some of it was worthwhile.
@cdaquila
You’re getting into that grey area where only English majors and not car lackeys can follow.
Oh Yah! That’s It! I Wouldn’t Qualify As An MG Mechanic Either. Looks Like My Spelling Of Mechanic Is A Bit Off, Too. I Can’t Even Remember What I Had For Breakfast And I Eat The Exact Same Thing Every Morning, 7 Days A Week!
Thanks VDC,
CSA
Be aware that some of us have been accumulating time-in-grade for many years. Me, for instance.
@cdaquila
the car
is dying the
feet of an old man murder
the pedals
hush
mysteriously invisible mourners move
with prose faces and grinding,gears
The symbol of the car
motionless
with grieving wheels and
engine
mounts
against the margins of steep driveways
a pinto flintness ,the
feet of an old man murder
the pedals.
BADGES? We don’t need no steeenkeeeng BADGES!
A lot of OPs are of the Alexander Pope school of poetry.
I’m pretty sure Alexander Pope wrote that fools rush in where angels fear to (measure their) tread.
And @shadowfax…I can’t even begin to respond except to say I truly laughed out loud.
Happy New Year to you all.
Rod Knox writes
I hope some of [my advice] was worthwhile.
Your comments were worthwhile to me anyway. I thank you and all the regulars here for taking the effort to post your ideas. It’s amazing the various types of problems cars can acquire. The shape of the rivets for example. And what with the average age of cars on the road going up, I think it definitely is helpful to have a place to discuss car problems and speculate on possible solutions. It’s not the same as having a trusted mechanic working on your car in his shop of course, but a forum like this is way better than no help at all. Especially for us DIY’ers.
Thanks again to everybody, the posters, and the Car Talk staff. Happy New Years to everybody!
@Rod Knox$2.00… Plus tax, of course @Volvo.
If you don’t tip the waitress.
My qualification comes from driving crappy cars that need to be fixed along with my low IQ. I keep posting.