Rethinking "Made in China"

Au Contraire - they make VERY reliable cars. You can rely on them to make trouble when they are most needed.

That said, one of the least troublesome cars I ever owned - and the price was definitely right on top of it all, was a 1972 Vauxhaul Viva HC - sold in Canada as the Pontiac Firenza. I bought it for $250 in

1979 when it was traded for a new Lada It took the typical British "fondling it's nuts" on a semi-regular basis, but the only breakdown I suffered with it was when the timing belt broke heading south out of Sydney Nova Scotia - fixed at the side of the road - and the regulator died the next day just North of Halifax.
Reply to
clare
Loading thread data ...

Reliable???????????? To a point. But I worked a LOT on the few that were running around my home town in the late 60s and early 70s. And for years after too.

I drove a 1949 Beetle - it didn't have enough power to hurt itself - or even get out of it's own way - and it DID last a long time, with regular and periodic infusions of sweat, cursing, and parts.

We had TWO 1500 squarebacks die on us in one week-long holiday and we never did get to our destination.

Reply to
clare

How about roughly the top 10%?????????

Reply to
clare

I had a '75 Fiat 128 L Sport Coupe. Got it for nothing in 1978 after it sat at a dealership for 2 years to have the engine replaced under warranty, and the dealer went broke. The guy gave it to me for installing the brand new- never run engine in his X19.

I put an aircraft generator and 8 golfcart batteries in it and it was more reliable than any other 128 I ran across - and even it was no heck.

Reply to
clare

The Canadian Aerospace industry evaporated overnight, and NASA and the US companies snatched up the best aerospace workers as part of the deal.

Reply to
clare

Shhhhh! Don't let the current administration or its minions know about that school, they'll claim it's not fair and find some way to destroy it. Good going for your son and the parents who raised such a fine young man, I know you're proud. I wish more school systems would separate the wheat from the chaff. The chaff doesn't necessarily have to be thrown away, perhaps a boot camp or two could turn it into something useful.

TDD

Reply to
The Daring Dufas

Did it have Lucas electrics?

TDD

Reply to
The Daring Dufas

"Leon" wrote in message news:Fb6dnWe5UN5TDrfWnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@giganews.com...

I would agree with you if it was workable but, unfortunately, its not. There would be many people that could not afford it thus not sending their kids to school. This is for k true 12. If college is what you meant, I completely agree with you. Yes, far fewer people would go to college but a college degree would mean something. I attended two colleges. The first one was private. It was quite good. No restrictions from government control, instructors were hired for their knowledge and experience. When hiring, they put no stock whatsoever in a teaching degree. All instructors had experience in the fields that they were teaching,rather than just reading about it. Students were there to learn, not just to spend time. This was maintained by strict policies If you were a troublemaker or in any way interfering with others abilities to get the education they were paying for, you would be expelled, If you could not maintain a reasonable grade average, you would be given the chance to either transfer to something you could handle or you would be asked to leave. They would not tolerate an underachiever dragging the rest of the students down. You were given every opportunity to excel. A fair amount of their funding was in the form of donations from local business that saw it as an investment in future employees. No donations were excepted with conditions attached. Kept everyone honest. The second one was a government funded local college that was considered one of the best in the area. If that was the best, I would hate to see the worst. Very few of the instructors were top rate. In one class, people would come to me instead of the instructor as I new more about the subject than he did. Trouble makers were tolerated and failing grades were upgraded to passing to ensure that the student would continue to go there as their government funding was attached to body count rather than academic achievement. There was, of course, students that came from other government programs, such as vocational rehabilitation, that were virtually granted a diploma.

Reply to
CW

I got badly rear ended in my bug (64) and the seat did exactly what Ralph Nader said it would do - broke loose from the tracks.

Reply to
LDosser

PGE recently replaced our analog meter with a digital one. So far it does not 'phone home' to me and I only look at it when taking out the trash, but the odd thing is my usage dropped by about ten percent since they put it in. No changes at all in appliances or usage. I'm becoming very suspicious that a faulty analog meter or reader's eyeballs have been charging me an extra ten percent for years.

Reply to
LDosser

I'd suspect a faulty meter over being misread. While a meter is easily misread it is usually corrected on the following read. If you are seeing longer term less usage it sounds like the old meter was not being nice to you.

My meter comunicated with the thermostat and then through the modem to give the power company the information. The meter readers would give that meter the strangest looks as it was not readabel IIRC, the modem was the link to my billing.

Reply to
Leon

--------------------------------- On the bright side, lawyers fly too.

The old V-tail is a good airplane but you can't overcome perception so the went conventional.

During the airline strike in the mid 60s, had to get from Cleveland to San Angelo, TX.

Almost an impossible task, but there was a solution.

Had a tech service guy who was rebuilding a "Banana" while keeping it in flying condition.

He became our airline.

Had a grass strip beside his house to allow him to keep the plane at home while he worked on it.

The plane had seen service in Alaska and thus had the big Lycoming engine in it according to the tech.

Cleveland to Memphis to Dallas to San Angelo.

Made for an interesting and very long Sunday.

Arrived in San Angelo to be greeted by newspaper headlines announcing that race riots had broken out in Cleveland on Saturday night.

Some very interesting tales to tell about that trip.

Among other things, learned about Omnis and how to use them.

Lew

Reply to
Lew Hodgett

Heh, I find myself playing "spot the car" in the US, having grown up on the other side of the Pond. Saw my first X1/9 on US soil last year, one "proper" Mini so far (not the crappy modern BMW version), a 2CV a couple of months ago... quite a few VW bugs, of course. A few MG Midgets (but with the shitty rubber bumpers that they were forced to have in the US)

I've had a major hankering after a first-generation Celica for a few months... I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing!

I really want a Jensen FF, but that's waiting until I win the lottery ;)

cheers

Jules

Reply to
Jules

Yep. If universal education is felt to be a worthwhile goal, give out vouchers.

Oh, and before you shrug off John Silber as a disgruntled ex-employee, you might check his Wikipedia entry. I just did and I see I made a mistake: He was president of Boston University, not College.

Reply to
HeyBub

I give up.

Lew

Reply to
Lew Hodgett

"hot" water heater? I only need a "water heater". ;!) Iknow, I know, it reheats relatively hot water, but would a hot water heater work if it were full of cold water?

Reply to
Leon

Not sure what you mean by "asking how to do", however in some districts teachers are forbidden to actually teach subject matter--they are constrained when a kid asks a question to "facilitate" the kid looking it up for himself and disciplinary action will be taken against them if they actually get caught answering the question.

I don't understand what you think cigarettes have to do with anything. As for restrictions, it's not just "restrictions", its a whole mass of bureaucrat-mandated bullshit.

However the teachers are not the cause. They don't make the decisions. They don't make the policies.

You could staff the schools with a who's who of American leadership and they wouldn't be any better than they are now because they'd be operating under the same rules.

When there's something wrong with a huge organization, it's not the peons at the bottom who are causing it.

And this is symptomatic of the problem. Every parent knows that the schools are broken, but the one that their little darling went to was an exception.

So the teachers at that school weren't any better than the ones in the other schools, they just made the problem kids somebody else's problem. So do you think that those same teachers would have done nearly as well at one of the other schools?

And from that you conclude that the _teachers_ at those other schools are the problem?

And this is because the teachers were so brilliant you think.

And all of this you attribute to the excellence of the teachers and not to the district policies that allowed the school to cherry-pick students?

Reply to
J. Clarke

I don't know which generation was which year, but when I came to the US from Australia at the end of 1977, I saw Celicas that looked considerably different from - and inferior to -- the ones I had been seeing in Australia for the past year or two. The internals might have been the same, but I much preferred the styling of the Australian ones.

Perce

Reply to
Percival P. Cassidy

FWIW, I have a friend who has a PhD in education, and is retired, not fired, so one can't claim that he is "disgruntled", who shares the opinion that the flaws in the system are inherent in the educational philosophy currently being taught in the colleges of education, and in the poltical tendency to require the schools to provide more and more social functions that are not rightly part of education.

Reply to
J. Clarke

It is my vague recollection that the V-tail was one of the early civilian planes to have a flush riveted wing and was very "clean." As a result, an inattentive pilot would be flying along and get into a very shallow dive. Before he got any shuddering, noise or other indication of speed, he would have far exceeded the "do not exceed" speed of the airframe. Eventually, he'd notice that he was going like a bat out of h*ll, and would pull back instinctively on the stick. The wings would be instantly overloaded and he'd look up to see them fluttering away.

This is just a recollection from my own flying lesson days, and I can't say that I can vouch for the source.

Reply to
Nonny

HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.