He didn't croak while I was in his class.
He passed away during a summer...
And he was a really nice guy.

 

Good for you luv4ford!! I have a feeling that not too many of today's high school students know how to work on cars. How many schools even have auto shop classes?

 

we had auto shop at my highschool .. i never actually was registered for the class but i went there almost every day and sometimes the whole morning we would be down there and skip all the other classes. we all basically just used it to fix up our own cars, and every once in a while the teacher would bring in his car to get the brakes done, oil change, etc... it sure beat layin in my driveway to get the work done. as mentioned before 90% of the kids in the class had absolutely no clue what anything was or how to turn a wrench, they all sat around and watched me and my friends that were in the class work on our cars .. we would have them hold wrenches and get us stuff

-Jason

 

I finally was able to get into the auto 1 class at my school. We just finished the first quarter today, and so far, we've done tool id (i made a 100 on that test), safety (another 100 on that test), changed the oil and greased up and rotated the tires on my truck, changed the oil in the teachers car, and just finished changing a clutch in a '92 Ranger STX, all of this in a Level 1 class.

My auto teacher started off as a Ford dealer mechanic in the late 70's, then went to a GM dealer in the mid 80's, cause he said that he made a lot more money, cause of more cars to work on, then opened a shop of his own after that, then started teaching at the school I go to, still does, and teaches the automotive program at the local community college at night. By the way, he has 4 Ford trucks, an Oldsmobile car and a Harley.

Small engine repair is incorporated into our Ag Engineering 2 program, which I finished last year, I hate that the state took Ag Engineering 3 away, they replaced it with Ag Advanced Studies, basically a class that has absolutely no relevance to what I learned in the Ag Engineering Series of Classes. But it still makes me eligible for FFA, and so I'm happy with it.

 

You get out of things like that what you put into them.

I still remember the advice and tech stuff I learned at Wheaton H S, J F Kennedy H S, and NORWOOD H S in the seventies -

What to look for and pay special attention to on brake repairs, what NOT to do to power steering gear boxes, proper care and feeding of automatic transmissions, and the details of what goes on inside of complicated assemblies including the five basic systems of a carburator.

I'm so glad I took those courses, even though I thought at the time that I could figure it all out for myself!

Those were golden days that I wish I could live again today. Maybe I will somehow, by teaching others, I don't know.

 

Uuuuhhhhh......I got woodshop.

 

We had an auto class up at my high school. I never joined though, I'm one of the lazy ones that goes to the dealership for all the work

 

I took auto shop...plenty of idiots there, unfortunately.

I was one of the ONLY TWO STUDENTS who could drive a manual transmission. Good thing, since my Fairmont was a 4-speed. Except for me & the other clutch jockey (who drove a beautiful 1973 Scout II), everyone was into ricers. Yuck.

 

We don't have autoshop, woodshop.. or really anything for that matter. Kind of sucks, I would of taken it, but I've learned a lot from friends and family, probably more than I would learn in autoshop.

 

MY Auto Shop is a total joke, many cars have been wrecked there. The going joke is never bring your car there, it will never come out! Me and my buddies are about the only ones who know anything about working on cars there. The Teacher promises that the class will be better this year, and because the class is such a joke, many of the kids are not taking it (Mostly the dummies anyways! LOL)

I hope it gets better.
We also have Wood Shop, electrical class is now gone, same with metal shop.

 

my shop class was great....we cut the roof off my teachers dodge shadow to make it into a removable hard top.....ya know that doesn't work very good on unibodies. then i kinda forgot to hook the coolant line up to his the turbo on there....ooops...my bad.

 

No my class is the worst! I have idiots in my class also but we don't do anything other then eat candy, drink pop, and talk about banging girls. Most of the time we take open book test and the idoits will fail the damn thing. You get all the time u need and every answer is in the book. We do very little hands on work and learn very little. We had a kid last with a 91 berretta and he said he engine was locked up. He bought a new crate motor. one of the kids who knew something ended up turning the crank and we said its not locked up but the kid ended up putting the crate motor in anyway. Probally spent $2000 when he might have needed a starter. I watched another kid spray brake cleaner into another kids car and so i don't like to do much over there. I won't even change my oil there.

 

same here in iowa auto classes in the high schools are a joke, i attend the local community college that is ranked one of the highest in the state, we are at mid semester, about 95% of students are high school grads, some time i wonder how they graduated. we started in electrical and after 2 months they still don't know diddly. they stand around waiting for someone to do it for them, and then you get into those that have mommy and daddy day for everything, have a 8,000.00 box and another 6,000.00 in tools and don't know how to use or know what they are for, it makes me sick, i'm 25 now and started working on cars when i was 14, i started by reading repair manuals and how it works kinda stuff, that really helps with college, maybe thats
why i'm top of my class

 

I got to see first hand destruction of high school auto class right in the middle... 1987 West Morris Central NJ ! work on your own stuff...it was great in school till they killed the good stuff!!

 

I feel sorry for you guys. We have an incredible auto program. Our instructor is maxed out in ASE certs and is a great guy and absolute auto whiz. We have guys go to national VICA, Ford nationals, GNYADA ahows and others. Because of that, we have been fortunate to get lots of funding from the big three and snap-on. Seniors who go on to the local tech school get 6 collge credits. Todays lab project was a fuel filter in a freinds 1991 Toyota corrola. Took 3 hours and required dissasembly of the air intake, filterbox, EVAP can, and wheel. I never want to do that again!!