COMBINED CARS + MOTORCYCLES SUPER MEGA :awesome: THREAD

Goodwood Road & Racing.

 

So, for those of you who work with cars and the like, and feel like sharing, what can you say about your personal experiences in the field? With my store closing down I was thinking of going back to school, and one of the things I was considering was a trade program from one of a few schools in the area that offer it. I've always loved machines of all kinds, but for one reason or another I never gave it any consideration as a potential career path in the past.

 

Everyone I know has shit hanging from their mirror, so I wanted to hang something meaningful from mine.

Spoiler

 

I enjoy working on cars and bikes and such on my own for me. In the business I actually am a customer service rep so I don't get to do any hands-on work but I will tell you this from my experience - DO NOT get suckered into being a service rep. If you're going to go into the field and truly want to be working on equipment, make sure you stick with that.

Now, as far as tech experience. To begin with you'll most likely start out on hourly salary, doing simple jobs - oil changes, tires, maybe brakes. When you get enough experience you'll move into flat rate pay. At this point you'll make a certain amount per hour, but the job you're doing will determine how many hours you get paid for. Say you're assigned to replace a water pump on a certain vehicle. There is a labor manual that states that job should take about 2.2 hours, so that's what the shop will pay you - whether you can finish in that amount of time or not. That's what they will charge the customer for as well. So if you do a few of those and get good at it, say you can do it in 1.5 hours and get paid for 2.2. Then you can move on to another job and hopefully do the same thing with whatever rate that job calls for.

Sometimes you get one that you're unfamiliar with or is all rusted and things just break instead of coming apart and it costs you extra time over the book rate. Well, in most cases them's the breaks. You get it done as quickly as you can while still getting it right and move on, hoping you can get a gravy job like stated above to make up for the lost time. It usually works out and if you've got a good shop foreman (the person that assigns the jobs) they will try to make sure everybody averages out and they make as many hours as possible.

You will spend A LOT of money on tools. They are your lifeblood and have gotten more specialized over the years. It's not uncommon to find a tech with $20-30k tied up in tools (or more, sometimes much more) and working to pay them off. But if you don't have the right tools or can borrow them in most cases you'll fall way behind in trying to make up time on flat rate jobs.

These observations are strictly from the automotive/motorcycle field. I have no experience with say manufacturing machinery or industrial maintenance so I can't speak to those jobs but I imagine they are probably similar.

 

meadingfull even.

 

It was meadingempty. :btears:

 

http://imgur.com/a/wyTBU




(Sorry bout the size) So I got my hands on this today. It's a 1938 Russian Ural with side car. Rebuilt/Restored with new bits for the broke shit. It isn't all original but it isn't one of the newer reproductions (although I think he said that is where he sourced parts). As killbox pointed out, check out the picture of the rear. Notice the powershaft running the the sidecar. Its a goddamn 2wd bike...russian trike....something. It was cool to see.

 

Ah Ural, reverse engineering BMW WW2 bikes and copying them for the last 70 years.

Yep, selectable 2WD and many of them have a reverse gear as well depending on model. I can't remember for sure if the Gear-Up had reverse or not. The Brembo caliper shows that it's a later model, probably around 2004/2005.

EDIT: The later model spares can't be used on the front because of the disc brake but will work on the rear or the sidecar. The earlier models with drum front brake could use the spare anywhere.

 

The whole front end is new, I didn't think to take a pic of the pic of the original condition but there wasnt a lot of front end left. under a lot of all that new shit is a core of old as fuck....something. But yeah, front is is alllll new.

Edit: He told us he put the ski (not in pics but hanging on wall) last winter and drove it to town in the snow. Only thing that would make it off his farm. After driving that road...yeah i believe him.

 

That spotlight on the sidecar is on what was originally a machine gun mount.

 

So after going to the international auto show in Orlando a few things to note.


The fiat spider shares the Miata chassis

Comes base with a differential unit, Miata club model or higher needed for differential

You can buy a race spec and fully ready to race Miata from the factory from Mazda

Spider has the much better engine, this is the same engine in the abarth 500 that can easily get to 220 hp and 240 tq with around 1700 dollars in aftermarket parts.

If you want leather seats you are stuck with a auto transmission

Is built in the Miata factory in Japan but has a lot of Italian built equipment

Ford finally brought the focus RS over here with all wheel drive, 350 hp and tq out of a 2.3l turbo engine.

Problems? Around 36k starting and it's still a four door sedan mascurading as a hatchback.

Real Hatchbacks only have two doors.

New Ford Mustang no longer has a live rear axle so it now handles a hundred times better.


No idx concept or production model from Nissan even though they said would be doing a 2016 release version of it.

Everything from Nissan seems bland same with Chevrolet.

New scion iM and iA? Seemed nice.

Chrysler 200 also nice car compared to the other options

Dodge Dart II is a pig at around 3300 pounds for such a small car.

 

US Government is currently trying push laws through for gas companies to add more ethanol in gas mixtures by 2017. Some are trying to push for E15 it seems but around 10 to slightly over 10 seems to be where it might end.

If it does hit E15 mandatory by 2017. About 90% or more of cars on the road will not be able to use E15 because of how corrosive it will be to the entire gas system in the car. Only a few makes are even E15 capable right now. Using E15 will also void warranties so any damage will not be covered.

10% is already killing small engines right now just talk to anyone in the lawn care business. I also had issues with my Yamaha R6 when I had it.

The huge subsidiary for corn by the government will go away in 2016 so we will see what happens then.

 

At least half of my motorcycle/atv business is dealing with fuel system problems due to ethanol. Even though I'd lose money I'd rather see that shit out of my fuel.

I prefer to drink corn, not burn it in engines.

 

They're trying to claim anything that is E10 compatible is E15 compatible, which is total bullshit. E10 vehicles don't really run all that well on E10, much less 5% more ethanol. Corn ethanol for fuel is one of the stupidest ideas ever. It's just special interests run amok. And it's costing us shit-tons of money in food costs because it's inflating the price of corn. The only people I know that like ethanol gas are the ones running E85 in aircooled engines. You can run higher compression ratios with lower head temps with E85. Shitty fuel mileage though.

 

Despite the government's claims it actually takes more energy to burn ethanol than does gasoline. Engines can be specifically tuned to work with high ethanol mixtures and get good power delivery but as said before the efficiency (ie fuel mileage) goes down since more product has to be consumed to work correctly.

It's like the nitrogen in tires deal - sure at some point it does what they claim, but only in specific instances like super high speed racing. Has no effect on everyday passenger cars.

 

I've heard people say their mileage goes down 10% with E10, which shows how badly it fucks with the injection system, since ethanol only has 10% less BTUs, so theoretically your mileage should only go down 1%. And yes, I'm extremely familiar with what it does to carbed engines. And if you want to have a LOT of fun, let a carbed engine set up long enough for all the fuel in the bowl to evaporate...

 

Around this time each year I get about 8-10 ATVs per week that have done exactly that.

"It ran fine when I parked it!"
"When was that?"
"Last year after hunting season, around February".

 

So 500 Abarths now come in light blue, light grey, and yellow.

Would have loved a yellow or light blue rainbow dash colored Abarth