What have you learned in your old age that you feel should be taught to high school students?

That would be a pretty short course.

"Any and all powers granted under a Power of Attorney end with the death of the grantor. Class dismissed."

Very good ! A + . John T.

Again it comes down to essentials and accidentals. An internal combustion engine needs a fuel delivery system. In that sense nothing has changed between carburetors and fuel injection.

You could argue that the Ram-Air FI on the '57 Corvette shows not much has changed. While innovative, it was also finicky and a lot of them wound up collecting dust when the owner went back to carburetors. FI itself goes back to WWII. Carburetted planes don't do well flying upside down as the Brits learned when going up against Messerschmidts with the early Spitfires.

I think Chevy dropped FI after six years or so before revisiting it sometime later. In any case I never played with FI. The Toyota and V-Strom both are injected and they just work.

Ignition systems are similar. When I bought my first Toyota in 2007 I assumed the plug wires were hidden under the plastic shroud on the engine. Not so. There are individual coils on each plug fired by the computer. I assume the plugs bear a resemblance to those used by my '51 Chevy but I've had no reason to snoop.

Like you I have a timing light and dwell meter in my museum. The timing light is still applicable to the '86 F-150 but even it had a Hall sensor driven electronic ignition. True, I did have CD ignition in my '60 Plymouth but I built it myself.

So essentially nothing has changed. However the technology has changed considerably and is much more reliable but when things don't work it gets interesting. On my '55 Harley the ignition system was simple, points, manual spark advance, coil, wires, and plugs. Harleys traditionally were wasted spark systems, so no rotor. It worked or it didn't.

On my '98 Sportster, it was more like sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. After going through the usual troubleshooting steps I went for a novel approach, a can of freeze spray from Radio Shack. The culprit was the Hall sensor on the end of the crankshaft. It would get hot at times and fail open. When it cooled it worked again. That skill came from debugging circuit boards, not working on cars.

The onboard computer can also help. I bought a used car in 2005 that was seriously underpriced and at first I didn't know why. I initially chalked it up to being a used Toyota on a Ford dealer's lot but I soon discovered that the automatic climate control didn't work. All of the manual controls worked, but who wants that.

Toy dealer quoted me $3400 plus labor to r&r the control unit, so I passed. Internet to the rescue - there's a diag feature in all or most of the computer-controlled vehicles that tells you what's wrong.* In my case, it said the cabin temp sensor was not responding. I reached up under the dash to disconnect the sensor so I could remove it for testing, but I found that it was simply disconnected. That was all it needed.

In my humble opinion, almost nothing has changed in our lifetimes. Nothing fundamental anyway.

For example what generates the electrical power on those bikes?

I've seen friends rebuild a rice-burner "alternator" whose field (B) current was simply a ring of magnets connected to the engine crankshaft.

The magnets spun at engine speed inside a three-wire set of static coils.

Two coils were connected when the handlebar light switch was off (in the days when there was a handlebar light switch anyway), three coils otherwise.

A voltage regulator hung on the three-wire output.

In essence, that's the same concept today (although with coils replacing the [B] magnet) on most of our gasoline powered vehicles even today, is it not?

Those rice burners were only missing the battery charge "sense" logic.

Actually the permanent magnets may have spun _outside_ the static coils. I forget which - but the concept is the same either way - is it not?

That's an interesting take on the biggest change being the loss of leaded fuel. But didn't valve seats have to change in order to compensate for it?

Multiple microcontrollers on a CAN bus? A modern car is a textbook example of distributed processing. By multiple I mean 50 to over 100 in luxury cars. EV's need even more.

The price that's being paid is a global chip shortfall that's impacting car production. It doesn't help that the industry has been consolidating:

Profits also factor in. When I was closer to hardware design the mantra was 'Don't use Motorala'. There was absolutely nothing wrong with Motorola's microprocessors and some were very attractive. However Motorola's roots are in the automotive and radio industry. Design in a

Then there is the stuff that existed but didn't work too well. The idea was there but not the technology. GM had the Autronic Eye headlight dimmer one the '52 Cadillac. They messed around with it for six or seven years but it was too erratic and they dropped it. Ford and Chrysler took a shot with similar results. The dimmer system on my Toyota is good enough that it dims the lights right about the time I would manually do so, even when overtaking a vehicle.

I won't say replacing the serpentine belt on a Geo is difficult but it is a bit tight. I had the 4 cylinder; maybe the 3 cylinder was roomier.

Interestingly, the home built airplane people love that engine. Light, dependable, and cheap.

I liked the Geo enough that I looked at a Suzuki, but that was about the time Suzuki automotive was going down the toilet. I've got a couple of Suzuki bikes and that division is still going strong.

left handed? Oddly for a person of my generation I never owned a VW and only ever drove on about 50 yards to get it clear of a loading dock. The closest I came was an Audi.

I always wanted one. The concept appealed to me. Simple, cheap and you could mix and match pieces and parts over a number of years when American cars were changing every year. The New Beetle missed the cheap part.

Changing the fuel pump in my '86 F150 was easy :) However now I have fuel up to the carb but it's no go again. I think the float is sticking but I'll deal with that in the spring.

Takes all the fun out of it. I keep the old pickup around to have something to fiddle with. I've even thought about converting it back to points.

Left handed. Not lug nuts but lug bolts. always a PITA to get the first one in.

My Toyota has a spin on. I can reach down from the top to unscrew it. (because when I put a new one on I don't bust a vein tightening it). Sometimes I can get the new one started from the top too. I like Swix filters because the threads are innies, so to speak.

Walmart is my store of last resort that I may go into once a year. HF is a block from where I work so I can examine the crap directly. I bought an electric impact wrench to rebuild the forks. It worked and also saved the day when The Amazing Hulk at the tire store put the lug nuts on when I bought new tires. I got my money's worth.

A pancake compressor blew the guts out of the regulator on the second use, but I replumbed it and it's still going.

I don't expect much out of their stuff so I'm not disappointed. The drill bits suck but then so do the ones at Lowes or Home Depot.

Fortunately I've got enough Craftsman tools to last this lifetime but I do miss Sears for that reason. K-Mart was carrying the line but they tore that down and build a Cabellas.

I see a Mac truck around town. They used to be pretty good but I don't know how they are now.

Okay, I'll confess I don't know what that's all about:

SPAN#sl0 {animation: 10s linear infinite ten -4s; } SPAN#sl1 {animation: 10s linear infinite ten -3s; } SPAN#sl2 {animation: 10s linear infinite ten -2s; } SPAN#sl3 {animation: 10s linear infinite ten -1s; } SPAN#sl4 {animation: 10s linear infinite ten 0s; } SPAN#sl5 {animation: 10s linear infinite ten 1s; } SPAN#sl6 {animation: 10s linear infinite ten 2s; } SPAN#sl7 {animation: 10s linear infinite ten 3s; }

etc.

News flash: If you made it work, it wasn't impossible.

I've seen it - and actually managed to nab a few but usually get there too late - as some lucky SOB is loading the stuff into his trunk or truck.

Just like I got myTektronics 465 with DM44 for $75 and a 10 amp powerstat (in case) for $5.00 and an Eico decade resistance box for $2.00. At the same garage sale I picked up boxes of hunfreds of new capacitors and resistoes and transistors and diodes and bridge rectifiers and other handy components for $2 a box (those M&M Meats

Love the top mounted cartridge filter in the 3.3 Kia. Comes with the o-rings AND a new oil plug washer in the box.

A heck of a lot easier to change than the old cartridges on 283 Chevies or BMC A engines!!!!