todays youth (long post)

Just wanted to post this to let you-all know that all of today's young folks are not I phone addicts and video game morons.
My neighbor's son is college age and after a couple of years of electrical engineering he decided that it just wasn't for him.
His dad and him had a 4 bay metal shop building built on their property and eventually installed a 2 post lift.
The kid has a natural talent with mechanical stuff. He has worked over several old motorcycles and cars for himself and others.
Let me tell you about his biggest project:
About 6 months ago he spotted a 99 Ford 250 diesel truck sitting at the edge of a field. He stopped and asked and the owner said that it was a 7.3 diesel work truck and the motor was dead. There was 390k miles showing on the odometer and other than the engine, the truck was in very good shape. It was a 2 wheel drive extended cab basic work truck with a manual trans and had been used as a heavy equipment service truck in a previous life. The owner had run it about 80k miles before it died.
The kid offered the guy $1500.00 for the truck, thinking he would have to find another motor for it and had been informed of the cost, but figured even at that he could flip the thing for a profit.
(Good so far, will get better...)
After hauling her back to the shop, a group of us older guys helped with the examination and diagnosis. This is what we found:
Bad clutch
Diesel fuel in coolant tank
Miscellaneous tears and damage to interior as you would expect in a vehicle with that history.
The young man went on the web and did research for a few days re the coolant contamination issue. He learned that this most likely was caused by bad injector cups (a brass device about the size of a shot glass that seals the injector to the head)
He found a source for the seals plus a rental source for the removal an installation tools. Then the fun began.
He began by removing everything from under the hood that he could possibly remove, removed the valve covers glow plugs and injectors and using the special tools removed the seals and replaced them. He replaced the injectors after having them cleaned and tested together with a new set of glow plugs.
He then replaced the water pump, all hoses, thermostat and reservoir. He cleaned out the system with a mild solution of Calgon dishwasher powder and hot water, rinsed several times with water and replaced the coolant as FOMOCO directs. No more diesel fuel in coolant and motor runs strong. Got her up on the lift and replaced the clutch and pressure plate.
Visits to salvage yards resulted in new seats and trim and even a stock radio.
Point is, for a total of around 4000.00 he has a 99 powerstroke that runs like a watch and he has already driven out to the midwest a couple of times and is learning the Millwright trade. All of the knowledge for the truck build that he needed was gotten from friends and the good old interweb.
Need more kids like that!

It's fun to watch old TV shows and listen to the jokes about kids. In an old Jack Benny show,he said the only thing kids did was turn the dial to change channels on TV. All they'd ever be able to do in life is squeeze orange juice.

I agree. I've run into a heckuva lot of great kids out there.

But, it's an ongoing complaint. Even Socrates complained that the current teenagers were obnoxious and disrespectful to their elders.

We all know its not all young people but its the majority of them thats just plan lazy.Its amazing what you can do if you just try.. But tell the young man good job and keep at it.

There is so much negative comments aboot youth.
One cannot blame them, a lot have no parental guidance and a lot of the public school system is an indoctrination into accepting a socialistic system.
Study the writings of Marx, Lennin, Stalin and other commies and you can see what is happening to this country.
I hope the almighty waits for a little while before he destroys this abdominal system.

Big deal! Anyone can squeeze those cans if you thaw them out a little!

Ya but,can you crush them against your forehead?

And bruise the orange juice? What are you thinking?!

With mechanical talent, what in God's name is he taking ELECTRICAL engineering for? That's enough to ruin anyone's aspirations for a degree.

(quoted from post at 12:39:39 03/20/15) With mechanical talent, what in God's name is he taking ELECTRICAL engineering for? That's enough to ruin anyone's aspirations for a degree.

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No joke! I'm 33 with mechanical engineering degree. It took me two tries to pass electric circuits (for non-EE's). I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I have above average mechanical aptitude (compared to other classmates and work peers). No freaking way could I ever get an EE degree. I'm working as an EE now and know I'm not going to last long in this position, bores the heck out of me.

Let ME tell you something that is NO JOKE! I took
2 years of Mechanical engineering before I dropped
out (An un-diagnosed learning disability). I
flunked EE 101 (required sub-course) 3 times. I
became an NAISE certified mechanic for 26 years
and strangely enough one of my specialties was
electrical diagnosis. I changed careers into the
engineering department of a medical products
manufacturer. The head of engineering was an EE
and his reasoning was that 'he was doing alright
so it made sense to hire more EEs'. I worked with
maybe a dozen EEs that I wouldn't trust to wire a
light switch. The guy I always went to to design
reliable electronic circuits for me was a navy
trained radar technician.

Dad bought a used Cockshutt SP combine, with a supposedly stuck engine. I started getting it ready to pull the engine. Disconnected the battery cable (noticed a bad ground connection) then went to pull the starter.

Starter was stuck and jammed in the ring gear. Used a couple pry bars to work the starter out. The engine turned over with a crank! Put starter back in, cleaned and reconnected battery cables and the engine started right up. That starter never stuck again as long as we had the combine.

Im with you guys!! I am a civil engineering graduate and the hardest classes i took was electrical engineering and just barely passed them---however i was tops in my office designing control circuits for drawbridges---i guess it was just more practical and logical.

Try studying nuclear engineering, as I had to at one point in the Marine Corps.

There's a reason you can transpose two letters and it become "unclear engineering".

I have an ECE degree (electrical an computer) grew up in the woods and fields and couldn't stand living in a cubicle just like Dilbert. So quit and became a carpenter/builder and have done quite well. At that time most of the people in the engineering department also smoked, I don't, and I never felt worse in my life.