#MemoirsOfAnIndependentAutoRepairShopOwner

The next stories I’m going to relate weren’t actually borne from performance-oriented driving impressions I might have otherwise gathered and formulated based on my British Car wheel time. Therefore, I couldn’t rightly include them in my last entry. Worthy of recall they are, nevertheless—especially because they are firsts that I haven’t since repeated, fortunately.

In my last entry, I tried to convey the wonderfulness that was, and is part and parcel to the British Car driving experience, which I was able to enjoy through my “wrenching connections”. For me, if I had to describe this experience in one word, it would have to be “unique”; and when it comes to motorized transport, unique is ALWAYS worth doing at least once.

The experiences I related in the last entry, as far as I’m concerned, are worth doing often and on as regular a basis as possible. In this entry, on the other hand, I’m going to relate some British Car driving experiences that define the darker side of the term.

One would think that with all the head scratching, added expense and needless difficulty involved, anyone who persisted in their own repair and maintenance efforts (professional or otherwise) on such flawed contraptions —which I will continue to document in this series on my experiences with automobiles British— must be running as low on vital fluids as the vehicles themselves typically were!

But we’re not talking about the repeating of the same procedure and expecting a different result, in this case. The experienced British Car mechanic understood that the oil leaks would persist, the electrics would continue to be perform intermittently and the driveability would literally change with the weather. To expect otherwise WOULD have been a sign of insanity!

“We don’t need mechanics…we need MAGICIANS!”

In a heavy accent loaded with London grit, that was the response of the proprietor of the local—and at that point in time, quite vital—independent British Car garage, when I approached him to inquire as to whether he was in the market for hired help.

Not even twenty years of age, with a whopping one-year’s worth of experience servicing used cars for a BMC/Jaguar/Toyota dealership, just up the Pacific Coast Highway, I was still in the process of formulating an opinion as to what it took to make a success of wrenching (or should I call that “spannering?”) on things British.

This article is the second in a series wherein— after thrashing manufacturers for doing their worst—I do a quasi de facto “equal time” summary of ten automotive mechanical technologies I believe are their best efforts, to date.

To review the guidelines I’m holding to in assembling this list: these are technologies that are pretty well universally accepted and are currently being used by the majority of auto manufacturers. They also have been popularized and proliferated during my automotive repair career. I’m covering them more-or-less in the order that they have achieved that status.

IT’S NOW BIN TIME!

Now that I’ve gotten the memory-bile of “Notorious Technologies”— implemented during my ever-progressing automotive maintenance and repair career — somewhat further out of my system, now seems as good a time as any to reflect on some of the technological “bright spots” I’ve come to be acquainted with and appreciate during that same period. Some of these highlights were coming into widespread acceptance way back in the early days of my High School Auto Shop training, while others came considerably later.

In any event, these technologies not only gained widespread acceptance among auto manufacturers then, but they are all still being used by these manufacturers today, a couple of them in a considerably evolved format.

I’ll be listing them in their order of appearance on the scene.

This is the fourth—and for the time being, final—submission in this Series, the format of which I described in the introductory remarks of Part One. The two egregious commissions covered in this article have less to do with technology, per se, and more to do with tactic. To re-emphasize an important ground rule I will not violate in this series, I’ll remind the reader that I won’t be pondering the reasons WHY these encroachments have been and continue to be committed against both technician and consumer alike. With BIN FOUR fully laden, it’s now time to UNLOAD!!

Third in a series, the format of which I described in t he introductory remarks of Part One, this article will focus on specific modern technologies—not at all egregious in themselves—that have, in my opinion, been applied and utilized in a most egregious fashion in the modern automobile. One is a direct continuation from Part Two, although covering a new area. The other one is a component technology within one of the technological areas criticized in Part Two. Tally Ho—to THE BIN we go!!

Second in a Series, the format of which I described in the introductory remarks of Part One, this article will focus on specific modern technologies—not at all egregious in themselves—that have, in my opinion, been applied and utilized in a most egregious fashion in the modern automobile. Boldly going where no one ought to go, ON TO THE BIN!!

Not wanting to let the proverbial grass grow under my feet, I figured now was as good a time as any to proceed with the “rant” threatened of while in the midst of my “Of Honda’s and Miracles” piece. While I was contemplating said rant, it also seemed like a good time to make a quasi-collection of additional rage against other automotive technologies that, over the years, I’ve found to be considerably more than a useless nuisance.

In the interests of clarity and brevity, I limited the scope to designs currently being used by virtually ALL auto manufacturers. I may, in the future, if overcome by intense feelings of either abstract nostalgia or acute vindictiveness, single out certain “rogue” designs from the past and present. I will leave all of the Why’s and Wherefores to Conspiracy Theorists. Now…TO THE BIN!

When I spun the engine on the early ‘80’s Honda Accord, the telltale sound of the starter motor wheeling the engine around with no compression-resistance was not what I wanted to hear.

It’s not that I didn’t expect it.