Technicians and mechanics

[S Mac]

Yeah, features that aren't used is an understatement, many off them frivolous in my book.
Reminds me of a customer that wanted me look at his instrument cluster. I turned the key on, Gary Don said "What's it mean", says I, don't know, I don't speak French.
They get pushing buttons and get all balled up.

 

[Tomme boy]

The new def feature and componets are a very good example of the govt screwing up a good thing. And it actually makes more pollution in the end from having to make all of the components over the life of the vehicle. The environmental of the production costs and 30% or more fuel usage out weighs the cleaner air the vehicle gets out of it. But hey, the govt only cares it has cleaner air.

The replacement cost on these 8 foot long catalytic BS converters is crazy. And they have a very high failure rate. The construction industry is really pissed off over having them on all the heavy equipment. And of course the engineers are designing these to have the exact amount of capacity it can handle. So when conditions are harden they don't work and break down because of they can't clean themselves enough when the machines go into degeneration to clean the core of carbon. The American products were always built to have WAY more capacity than the machines could handle. That's why we beat out every other company and country in the world. Now we are doing things just like the rest of the world by sharpening everything.

Ask @I show much these things cost.

 

[358156 hp]

DPFs, Diesel Particulate Filters. There is also a Cat ahead of them now. We see a lot of them get stolen and sold for their precious metals. We recently had a Ram 5500 with a 6.7 towed into the shop. Somebody tried to steal the DPF and got interrupted. I crawled under ithe truck to start a parts list for my estimate. Every bolt and hanger had been removed, no pipes were cut. The wiring pigtails for the sensors were all neatly cut. I realized this was no ordinary theft attempt, the thief was trying to steal the entire exhaust system with emissions components. My conclusion was that somebody needed a complete system for their own truck, but couldn't figure out how to get the tailpipe off as an assembly. Still not a cheap repair.

 

[Jeff H]

.........There was nothing wrong with mechanical controls on washing machines and dryers, stoves and tools and appliances.....................

Except that if everyone wasn't replacing $1k appliances every few years, a lot of people would be out of work.

I proudly took the ribbing I got a couple summers ago when I spent $20 to replace a capacitor and a fuse on a 30+ year-old microwave, which I happen to like because it has TWO knobs; a clock-spring timer and a "high/low" - no touch-pad, no LCD, no "board." Which is why it's lasted so long.

Everyone told me that I "could just buy a new one for $60!"

Anyone's welcome to check my math, but that sounds a lot like three times what it cost to fix the old one, and the old one looks as good or better than any new one out there.

 

[Tomme boy]

We have one of these in the building we use for lunch and hutchering during deer hunting season. 1940's model

 

[RicinYakima]

However, the price is over 6 weeks wages for a working man.

 

[Bret4207]

We have one of these in the building we use for lunch and hutchering during deer hunting season. 1940's model

View attachment 22638

Yup, and no one read the instructions that said you had to take the TV dinner out of the aluminum pan!

 

[Bret4207]

2 things- DEF, diesel, etc, For the life of me I cannot grasp why we can't get vehicles with the small, efficient European/Japanese diesels in them here. I would LOVE to have a Toyota or a Jeep with a little 3 cyl diesel. I have a lot "friends" I correspond with in places like NZ, England, Norway and it's all small diesels there. Makes zero sense to me.

The difference between "technicians" and "mechanics", purely in my own opinion based on my personal experience. We finaly got all the bits and pieces together to rebuild the rear diff on Gord ATV. Most of the products are from "The Land of Almost Right". I have measured things over, and over and over again. I've pressed things, I've shimmed things and I've used enough Dykem to inlet 100 Model 70's! There is enough variance between the bearings, gear set and housing (all new) to make it impossible to have acceptable backlash without the backside of the ring gear rubbing hard on the cover of the housing. If I shim it so the housing doesn't rub, the flange of the housing can't possibly seat. IME a "Tech" would state the obvious- "We need OEM parts because these Chinese parts aren't made right." True, but that's $12-1500.00. A "Mechanic" would say what I said, "Well crap. How re we going to make this work?" and proceed from there!

 

[Rick H]

Corrected version below.

 

[Rick H]

I cannot grasp why we can't get vehicles with the small, efficient European/Japanese diesels in them here. I would LOVE to have a Toyota or a Jeep with a little 3 cyl. diesel.

Bret, we can't get the small European diesels here because they are too dirty. They cannot pass our emission tests. VW and another manufacturer got in big trouble for programming theirs to cheat when doing emission tests and ignore the settings so they would still get adequate performance when actually driven on the highways and byways.

"In April 2017, a US federal judge ordered Volkswagen to pay a $2.8 billion criminal fine for "rigging diesel-powered vehicles to cheat on government emissions tests". The "unprecedented" plea deal formalized the punishment which Volkswagen had agreed to. Winterkorn was charged in the United States with fraud and conspiracy on 3 May 2018."

 

[Bret4207]

I understand that Rick, what I don't understand is the unrealistic mandates I suppose. You'd think what was good enough for o-so-enlightened-Europe would be good enough for here. Yeah, in the truly huge urban areas I can the air quality issue. But in the other 99% of the country it's simply stupid. Once again we shoot ourselves in the foot to cater to a squeaky wheel!

 

[Ian]

Bret, either a tech or a mechanic can make the decision to break out the carbide burr and clearance the housing, it just depends on what the customer is willing to risk to save a buck. I "Southern Engineer" things all the time with full disclosure and customer permission.

 

[Rick H]

A long story about US style emission controls. My brother was the maintenance supervisor for Great Lakes Steel, Zug island. Yes, I know they are now bankrupt and closed. In the late 80's and early 90's they contracted with a German company to purchase the latest and greatest coke oven plant in operation on the entire planet.

The new coke oven was shipped over and installed over a period of 2 years and opened to great fanfare....it was the cleanest coke processing center in the world. The EPA fined the company $56,000 per day because it wasn't clean enough. It was newer and cleaner than the ones in Germany, but still failed. You see in Germany they measure the pollution at ground level some feet from the smokestack and they build 600' smokestacks so any breeze at all carries it further away than the measuring place. In the USA we measure at the top of the stack.
During the process coal is converted into coke (which is used to provide the carbon to turn iron ore into steel) and coke gas which was used to power a DTE electrical power generation plant. Coke gas is the clean coal technology as opposed to the old coal fired plants, yes as clean as natural gas.

So the EPA fined the company daily for making coke, a necessary component for making steel from ore. That was a gut punch along with the turndown in steel demand that Great Lakes Steel couldn't survive. US Steel bought out Great Lakes, and sold off the coke oven to DTE (Detroit Edison) and purchased the coke needed for the steel making from them, instead of producing it themselves and selling the gas to DTE. It turns out that DTE is NOT fined by the EPA because it is a public utility and they have different rules. Same plant, same amount of pollution, but our government felt the need to punish manufacturing to the tune of $56000 per day for doing exactly the same thing to the environment as the power company.

 

[Ian]

I could tell a similar story about a major panel plant in CA being shut down circa 2008 because formaldehyde emission limits were arbitrarily lowered well below the ability of any known technology to mitigate. The panel business went overseas where there is virtually no regulation and the global output of formaldehyde jumped up many times what it was under the previous regs.

There's also a really good reason Caterpillar moved overseas and no longer makes OTR engines.

 

[358156 hp]

I understand that Rick, what I don't understand is the unrealistic mandates I suppose. You'd think what was good enough for o-so-enlightened-Europe would be good enough for here. Yeah, in the truly huge urban areas I can the air quality issue. But in the other 99% of the country it's simply stupid. Once again we shoot ourselves in the foot to cater to a squeaky wheel!

Read this, it'll give you a better idea of what goes on behind the scenes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax

 

[L Ross]

Bret, either a tech or a mechanic can make the decision to break out the carbide burr and clearance the housing, it just depends on what the customer is willing to risk to save a buck. I "Southern Engineer" things all the time with full disclosure and customer permission.

I speak that language.

 

[Bret4207]

Bret, either a tech or a mechanic can make the decision to break out the carbide burr and clearance the housing, it just depends on what the customer is willing to risk to save a buck. I "Southern Engineer" things all the time with full disclosure and customer permission.

I suppose it's the "Tomato-Tomahto" thing, I don't find the title "mechanic" at all derogatory, you do. This mechanic knows the housing can't be "clearanced" as you put it. There's a hardened steel insert on the cover piece to keep the ring gear from rubbing into the aluminum casting. Nope, it's time for the old Atlas lathe to be abused again as I grind the backside of the ring gear with my toolpost grinder, which look suspiciously like my 4 1/2" angle grinder being held by me with my wrist braced on the compound! Make do mechanicing at it's finest.