So, the real question is, where do students go today to get a proper education in the trade? Or, as it sounds from your comments, they're basically screwed for the most part when it comes to a practical education.
More and more, I hear this these days. The "old guys" are retiring or dying off and there's no one to replace them. It's no wonder our society is going down the tubes.
I agree, and feel that it's probably a combination of both.
Ditto here, though I took the auto air conditioning and automatic transmission courses, too. I graduated from UTI in '72. I never taught or managed service centers, though.
UTI courses were short of a year in length. Mine took longer because I wimped out and went home after an emergency appendectomy. I have always regretted that decision. By going easier on myself, I extended my increased my pain level by allowing adhesions to form and be pulled out again and again.
Wow, not much time in the workflow! I moved in and out of automotive work as jobs dried up. One Ford dealership, which I really enjoyed, was dissolved/closed.
I saw that from the mechanic's viewpoint. New guys out of school didn't seem to have anywhere near the depth of training or motivation that we had way back in our first years. Few seemed to have been raised with any kind of physics or mechanical knowledge, or the curiosity which I have always enjoyed. Maybe that's the key, curiosity. Kids nowadays are hammered by technology and don't have to search much to find answers to questions. Perhaps it was the added knowledge we gained searching long and hard which made the difference for us.
We never had auto shop in school, so I went to a tech school. They kept pretty much current to industry in equipment levels. I haven't been back to UTI since then, so I don't know if they still do that.
Sad.
DOE and school boards--FEH! I think the only question they ask is "How cheaply can we put together a class which will teach the kids enough to get them hired?" They apparently have no interest in grooming the kids for a career after giving them a fully rounded education. It's as if they absolutely do not care about kids. Ethics-free departments of education, anyone?
Sad.
They'd replace the front tires and then try to figure out why it still pulled.
I didn't have those in school, but got a Hunter A-111 4-wheel computerized alignment system to play with at the body and frame shop in the '80s. They were fun, but you still had to pay close attention to installing the wheel sensors.
As cars got newer (so to speak) more and more of the electronics was routed under the dash. In the body shop, I got to do more than my fair share of dashboard R&R and underdash wiring repair/replacement. Controls weren't always easy to get to. I wonder how those types of jobs are being handled now. It takes a dedicated person to remember all the screw and clip placements on a dash, and remember the exact sequence of dis/reassembly.
As schools get leaner, so do teachers. Larger and larger threads of continuity are being lost each generation. I'm all for progress, but not at the cost of losing important skills and knowledge.
-- Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air. -- John Quincy Adams
About 20 years ago, I had the job of interfacing a fancy German computer controlled roll grinding machine to a PC for printing various reports. This was for an aluminum rolling mill. BTW, rolls are seldom straight. All sorts of gentle curves are ground into them depending on the desired end result.
The grinding machine was awesome, and awesomely expensive. I was impressed. I asked the roll shop manager how much better it was than the manual lathes they were using. I was informed (bitterly) that they were actually not quite as good. It was just that all the old machinists were retiring and they couldn't find replacements. Nobody wanted to be a machinist anymore!
I also remember about 40 years ago working on an automated cloth cutting machine for the garment industry. That's a little more complicated than it sounds. For example, some types of cloth have grain, just like wood, and garments need to be cut to take that into account.
Same result. Almost as good as an experienced cutter, but those were in short supply. Since most of the garment industry has moved overseas, the problem has likely become obsolete in the US.
If my senior memory was better, I could probably come up with one or two other examples but you get the idea.
That's all well and good --== IF ==-- you're breeding people to perform that sole function. The rest of society will break down around it. :-/
-- Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air. -- John Quincy Adams
There was probably an abrupt change in air pressure (if air at high relative humidity expands, its density goes down BUT the relative humidity goes up). The result is that your ambient air in the shop was instantly supersaturated, and the first nucleation site it found was on the iron. Once the water film was established, the whole wet surface was a fast growing dewdrop. Getting a dewdrop started (from near-zero diameter), is energetically hard because of the surface tension that acts to diminish the dewdrop diameter and return moisture to the surrounding air. Waxing the iron makes the nucleation sites hydrophobic, thus the dewdrop has to create the whole spherical surface against surface tension.
There needn't be any important temperature change involved, in condensation.
FWIW, the community I live in, if I displayed photos, most people would classify as "suburban". I can walk 10 minutes in one direction and I'm on a tobacco farm. I can walk 10 minutes the other way and I'm on a dairy farm. In 2 hours driving I can be in one of the largest cities in the world. So how do you classify the locality?
"rural residential" comes to mind. AKA "smalltown america". Lots of "blink twice and you miss it" "towns" in America. Unincorporated villages. Whistle stops, rural crossroads communities, former stage stops, etc. And they are as common in the north east as they are in the midwest heartland.
Protected by zoning! : )
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