(first posed 1/31/2018) I never really took auto shop in high school. It wasn’t offered at my school, but I found a way around that…
A couple of my friends attended a different but nearby high school that did offer it, and in Grade 13 I had a spare first period when they had auto shop, so I started unofficially attending some of their classes.
The auto shop teacher looked a lot like Fred Flintstone in a blue shop coat, and he was close enough to retirement that he didn’t care. My first day he was taking attendance, looked at me, looked at his list, looked at me, looked at the list… then continued like nothing happened. He never said anything to me, and I was too shy in those days to say anything to him.
I was a good student, I was quiet and listened, I read the material and watched the old Chrysler Master Tech recordings and film strips that were still being used in 1985 when this happened. In fact, we used to have a great time using the “Tech” voice when insulting each other in class.
What I did not do was tear apart my own car in the shop, since “my” 1972 Matador was a daily driver and belonged to my Dad. So I tried to help the other guys with their projects, and watched and learned as much as possible. Here are some stories of the cars I encountered during my brief auto shop career, with internet pictures as close as I could find:
An unlikely hero, a green 1971 Chevy Impala, was the success story of high school auto shop. It had been purchased for $150 and needed a lot of help. The fellow who owned it very diligently made the necessary mechanical repairs and got it back on the road with some help from a slightly under the table safety check. It was done by a mechanic friend of his father, one of these “here’s your paperwork, you need a muffler, a ball joint and fix those rust holes” deals but the work did get done.
Once he’d accumulated some more money he rebuilt the 350 small block on his own at school, and added a Holley carb, a hotter GM cam, Edelbrock Performer intake and headers. The 350 looked a little lost in that cavernous engine bay but at least there was lots of room to work around it.
It turned out to be a very strong running and durable engine, and propelled the Impala down the quarter mile in 15.7 seconds (with a 2.73:1 open rear). Thanks to the tall gearing and powerful engine this car was also capable of burying its 120mph speedometer, which I witnessed on several occasions. Yes it was thrilling at the time but it makes my blood run cold now to think what could have happened.
Luckily nothing happened, and later that motor got transplanted into a Rally Nova with an M21 4-speed. What a handful to drive, but it was still going strong 4 or 5 years later when he sold it after college.
If the Impala was the winner of the bunch then the 1970 Chevy Camaro was the loser. It had been painted yellow with black stripes, and although it looked far better than the Impala it was in not in good shape.
Its venerable small block was equipped with the usual speed parts but quickly came apart, never to go back together. The rear subframe was completely rotten with rust, and the owner was trying to repair it by pounding sheet metal over the outside and brazing it on. The brazing wasn’t sticking very well to the rust, I saw the teacher inspect the workmanship, shake his head and move on, again without saying anything. The Camaro’s owner soon acquired the nickname “The Torch“.
One of the guys somehow got wind of an honest to goodness 1970 Pontiac GTO stashed in a backyard in the old part of the city. I went along the night he brought it home, it barely scraped between the two houses with the side mirrors removed. We flat towed it back and although it was a bit rough looking it was in quite good condition for a 15-year-old salt belt car.
It had a 400/auto and although I recall him collecting parts enthusiastically and working on the engine at school, I don’t recall much reassembly. Years later he had a ’69 GTO with a four speed for his daily driver while he continued to work on the ’70. I lost contact with him after college, so I don’t know if the GTO ever got finished. But while he was in high school his parts chaser was…
An orange 1977 AMC Gremlin X. Everybody hated this car, which I think was his mother’s. For us lanky teenage boys it was torture to squeeze into the tiny back seat, and it was slow. It was a six cylinder/3-speed manual, and the floor mounted shifter was so worn out, it was a struggle to get any gear with it. I went to drive it once and couldn’t get it to move, so I was banished to the back seat. As bad as it was, the Gremlin gamely stood up to the abuse (both verbal and physical) that was heaped upon it.
I didn’t see the 1969 Mercury Cougar XR7 in the shop much, because it ran and was in good condition. Given what happened to most of the cars that came into the school shop it was probably a wise policy to steer clear of the bays.
Sometimes we would work on stuff at night, because there were evening classes and the night school instructor would let us in. He told us about a day student who had previously owned some hopelessly rusty pile, and did not disconnect the battery when he removed the carburetor one day. In the evening the night school instructor came in and seeing the keys in the ignition tried to move it to make some space. It actually started enough to pump fuel all over the place and set itself on fire.
Luckily it didn’t burn the building down, and the car owner got an insurance check which paid for an actual nice car. Who knows if it was true or not, but it’s a good story and as a result I always remembered to disconnect the battery when making fuel system repairs.
At any rate, my final semester of high school flew by and the knowledge I’d accumulated formed another piece in the puzzle of my automotive education. The next fall I was off to university, where nobody had an interesting car. Wealthy students drove new Honda Accords and starving students (like me) walked or took the bus.
Do you have a memorable high school auto shop experience?
Ahh the cars – even in provincial 1980s Australia – treated like junk, but gold now !
My shop teacher in1969 had a deal with the local scrapyard. Every student got a take out engine delivered to their home to work on. Mine was a 331 caddy and since i had no engine stand or work shop i disassembled it in my family’s drive way. My 3/8 ratchet set wasn’t up to the head bolts so i didn’t get veryfar. After the firstsnow my parents paid to have it hauled away beforethe oil ruined the ashaft
I was fortunate to attend a High School that did have an a fully equipped auto shop, also a wood shop and a metal shop. In the ’70s educators and people who determine school budgets and priorities still saw the trades as a viable option for young people and supported these programs.
I took 2 periods of advanced Auto Shop for most of the 5 years of High School, which was about 8 hours of instruction/shop time each week. One year my spare period coincided with the girls class so I helped out there as well. Some of the young ladies were quite grateful for the help and I enjoyed that class the most of all!
We had our share of small fires, and a runaway engine caused by someone jamming a throttle open for a compression test and then neglecting to unjam it once they replaced the plugs and wires and hooked everything back up. Lots of rusty junk got dodgy repair jobs with such popular techniques as using soup cans to repair leaky exhaust pipes. Various types of damage from botched repair jobs along with occasional fender benders weren’t unknown but I don’t recall anyone getting too upset.
A Chevrolet V-8 mounted on a small frame with a radiator was used for a number of projects that required a running engine, since not every student owned a car. This test engine was subjected to lots of things requiring extended cranking like compression tests, fuel pump tests etc. and eventually (we realized later) accumulated quite a lot of gasoline in the crankcase. An oil pan explosion resulted, sufficient in force to bulge both the pan and valve covers. Very loud in a confined space, and it produced quite a bit of excitement for a few minutes.
Most of the cars resembled the ones described in the post, though we did have a few success stories. I remember a ’69 Cougar XR-7 convertible that was so rusty the pad for the hoist punched a hole in it as an example of one that went away on a hook at the end of the school year and was never seen again.
There were, unfortunately, several nasty injuries over those years but we all survived.
We even had a paint spray booth and small area for body work, and generous after school access thanks to a great bunch of instructors. Being a typical teenager I didn’t realize just how fortunate I was to have access to all this, even then not all schools had facilities and programs like that. What I learned there served me well in the trades for several decades afterward. It was the only class I ever got an “A” in!
Our school called it metal shop. I would have taken the course, no questions asked if it wasn’t detrimental to my safety in high school as an out and known “fag”. The guys who took those courses hated my guts (because I was actually on good terms with most of their girlfriends). I’ve always been a gear head, so that was a somewhat difficult situation to wrap my head around at the time. I was just Chris then, yet I knew being the smallest kid in the class, who liked guys, wouldn’t end well. Wood shop was the same problem. So I got out of my comfort zone and took classes like yearbook and art history. It helped me to become much more well rounded and I now also have decades old friends as a result. I just can’t build squat, lol.
My son took wood shop in his first year of high school, he found the experience marred by some of his fellow students so he never took any more tech courses.
He can’t build squat either, but told me “Dad, I’m going to be an Accountant, I’ll PAY people to do that stuff”. Which is fine, he is his own guy.
You mentioned “Grade 13” in high school. Is that unique to Ontario, which has a “pre-university” year in high school?
Grade 13 on Wikipedia
Grade 13 ……. A.K.A. community college in the US.
pretty fancy pompadour in the b/w photo.
Sure, why not recycle that 10-W-30 in the auto shop ……
Speaking of Canadianisms in the sphere of education, I’ve always wondered why we in the U.S. use ordinal numbers to refer to grades (“10th grade”), while Canadians use cardinal numbers (“grade 10”).
No one – not even my Canadian ex-sister-in-law, who has taught in both countries – has ever been able to explain the reason to me.
I feel the same way about the use of American terms like freshman and sophormore. What’s that all about?
What? A sophormore? You mean grade 10?
High school goes by quickly, no time for extra syllables.
One might as well ask why Canadians say “eavestrough” while Americans say “gutter”, Canadians say “washroom” while Americans say “restroom”, Canadians say “Garberator” while Americans say “garbage disposal”, Canadians say “laneway” while Americans say “alley”, Canadians say “parkade” while Americans say “parking garage”, Canadians [used to] say “ABM” while Americans say “ATM”, Canadians say “Kraft Dinner” (or “KD”) while Americans say “macaroni & cheese”, Canadians say “ASA” (short for acetyl salicylic acid) while Americans say “aspirin”, and so on. It doesn’t have a “why” beyond Canada being a different country with different culture and different products, trademarks, advertisements, customs, and evolution of language.
One of the questions border guards sometimes ask little kids is “What grade are you in?” They’re listening to see whether the kid says “Grade 3” or “3rd grade”, which can be useful in determining whether the parents are telling the truth about country of residence.
Kraft Dinner is an upper midwest thing as well, in my own experience.
Daniel, it’s interesting that you mention the Canadian border guards and their questions for kids. This summer I visited Canada for the first time, and my wife and I happened to drive separate cars across the border, each with one of our kids (long story as to why). She got through fine, but with me… well, I learned that a man traveling alone with an 8-year-old girl is sort of a red flag for border guards.
The border guard (who was very polite, by the way) asked my daughter lots of questions – among them – like you mentioned – was what grade she was in. The guard also asked “Are you on holiday?” My daughter had no idea what that meant, because we always use the term “vacation” rather than “holiday.” This resulted in a few tense moments, but ultimately everything turned out fine – plus my daughter can now say that she was interrogated by a border guard!
I went to grade 13 in the US. That’s because I failed grade 12 and had to do it over. Back then I referred to it as “the five year plan”!
Given the environment in our wood shop (heck, our whole school), I think your risk assessment was right on point. I stayed the hell in and, fortunately, was bigger and able to grow a beard in high school, which is how I managed to survive wood shop (and school broadly). To this day I can’t figure out how, but even the seniors knew who I was when I was a freshman. No one ever messed with me, but those who were smaller and seemed slightly gay had a very very bad time of it.
And now? I have a residential builder’s license and refurbish houses as a hobby. Actually, I kinda want to get back into making furniture, but I don’t have the space for a full-on shop.
But I can’t think of one person from my shop classes I’d ever care to see again.
I’m probably one of few guys you will ever meet who will say the were right to come out in high school. It weeded out people to avoid real quick, which was a huge advantage growing up. Hence how I knew to avoid metal shop. I never held ill will, I just went on with my life. Funny thing is, years and years later some of those guys who really disliked me showed up at several parties either my friends or I held as dates. Every single one apologized to me for the resentment they held against me then. Never expected it, and was always appreciative that people can change. As I always say, life is too short.
I took a tour of my old high school a few years ago and found that all shop classes had been discontinued. It appeared that the school administrators made the executive decision that the world no longer needed mechanics, carpenters, plumbers, or electricians.
Sadly, a lot of schools that even would be otherwise so inclined are discontinuing shop classes because of the costs of insurance. One could make a commentary about the state of society vis-a-vis risk acceptance and our present exceptionally low stomach for risk, but that’s for over a beer at the bar.
And yet I see billboards here seeking electricians, mechanics and plumbers. There’s a growing serious shortage of workers with these types of skills.
It’s happening all over the country. Young people aren’t getting into the trades much anymore, after a couple decades of being told “you need to go to college if you want to be anything in life.” We’ve seen construction and rehab costs going up and up and up here because of the dearth of skilled tradespeople. I’ve honestly toyed with the idea of putting my woodworking skills to work doing architectural restoration, since we have so many old homes with ornate detailing being rehabbed these days.
Worse still, Michigan’s licensure scheme for trades basically forces someone to start from Day One so they can get to journeyman level and even be eligible to apply. A career change into the trades becomes a big step backwards if one was making any real money because they have to start at apprenticeship again.
The dearth of tradespeople has been a growing problem for years, and we’re in real trouble if we don’t get it figured out soon.
They’re trying. You can earn around 50 credits towards an AS degree for certain Trade apprenticeship programs here in Iowa.
I’m surprised that the pay and Bennie’s alone don’t attract more kids. I get calls several times a week to do travelling work. The last one was $30/hour, 50+ hours/week and a $100 per diem to run pipe in Denver.
Heck, a Journeyman plumber in Chicago is $49/hour right now!
Chances are it wasn’t just an executive decision, it was based on consumer demand and/or the lack of teachers with the skills and desires to teach those classes.
Here is how it went down at our local HS. The school had a wood and metal shop adjacent to each other, as well as an auto shop. The teacher that had taught both the wood and metal shop retired. Try as they might the school was unable to find a single teacher that was willing and capable of teaching both. So they hired a teacher with the ability to teach wood shop. That was popular enough that they managed to fill a full day of classes for that teacher.
However about 5 years ago there just weren’t enough students that signed up for wood shop so the teacher was offered a “1/2 contract” that meant teaching 3 classes per day and a massive pay cut. He quickly decided that it wasn’t worth it and up and quit part way through the first quarter. They were able to find a subsitute to finish out that quarter but after that wood shop classes were gone. Most of the two rooms were turned into science classrooms. Part of it was walled off and became the Robotics shop, mainly for the team at the school but it also allowed the starting of Robotics classes.
Fast forward a few years and the levy passed to build a new HS and with the new larger school a switch to a 4 yr HS instead of a 3yr. With that the teacher that had taught shop class at the Jr HS, that included both wood and metal, was moved to the HS and shop area was included for that, the robotics classes and team, as well as for set building for drama classes.
I was afraid that Auto Shop was going to go away as well. Two years before the new school was scheduled to open the long time Auto Shop teacher retired. I thought that was the end of the program. However they did manage to find a enthusiastic young teacher to come in and really step up the program, and a auto shop was included in the new school. There is another local school built just 3 years ago that also received wood, metal and auto shops and all 3 programs are surviving so far.
I encouraged my sons to do whatever they wanted to do when they grew up and made it clear that the trades were a lucrative choice, despite manual labor being a dirty words in the 1990’s right through to today.
Son #1 is a Master Certified Auto Tech. Son #2 is a Journeyman Commercial Electrician. Both are happy with their respective choices and I still advocate trades of any kind as hard but rewarding work.
See “Shop Class as Soul Craft” by Matthew B. Crawford – he bought into the full-on college experience up to and including a PhD, found fulfillment lacking, and left academia to open a motorcycle repair shop. He provides a treatise on the value of hands-on work, and an indictment of the US education system for its elimination of shop class.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6261332-shop-class-as-soulcraft
That one’s a good read, I have a copy and it’s a keeper.
I don’t 100% agree with Mr Crawford as he looks at it a bit black and white because of his own extreme experience: Academic totally removed from practical work to motorcycle repair. There are more moderate paths (I’m an engineer involved in technically interesting work but rarely get my hands dirty, but I enjoy fixing things at home)
There is actually a plumber in my neighborhood who has a PhD in Engineering. I think he likes his trade because it’s a form of problem solving, which is what engineering is all about. He also gives a lot of advice on preventitive measures and can explain why things go wrong in an “academic manner.”
Not to mention he makes a heck of a lot more coin than if he was a professor.
Our HS had all of the shops, including Home Economics. Seriously, it was in the same segregated part of the building as the “shops”.
I didn’t have my own car during most of high school, so I helped my buddies work on theirs instead. Once, a friend of mine had this beat to death 1965 Biscayne sedan that was in constant need of repairs. Most 15 year old cars were piles of rust by this time, so this car that actually ran and wasn’t full of rust holes was something of a miracle.
One day, my buddy Scott realized that the spot the car always left when parked was brake fluid. He decided to change out the hard line that ran from the master cylinder to the rear brake cylinders. I don’t recall the exact circumstances, but we were unattended in the auto shop. Most of the time it wasn’t a big deal, but technically I think faculty needed to be there. Regardless, neither one of us wanted to crawl under the Chevy to pull out the brake line. We decided that taking one of those huge old hydraulic bumper jacks and lifting the side of the car was a great idea.
Until we actually did it. Once we got it up in the air, we realized it was too low for us to work comfortably. So we thought we’d raise the jack even higher, until… Whoops! the car rolls over onto it’s side and then it’s roof.
We had to wait until the next day for some help to roll the car over back on it’s wheels. But, while it was upside down, we took advantage of the situation and changed out the brake line…
This being a family-friendly website, I won’t ask you to repeat the string of words that must have come out of your mouths as that Chevy rolled over. And I admire the attitude of “well, as long as its upside down, we might as well do that stuff on the bottom.”
When I was working for a VW dealership in Santa Monica, we had a body shop that would have the mechanical repairs done in the shop, an old German mechanic named Hans had a Beetle on his lift, it was missing hood and front fenders, when he removed the front axle beam assembly the car flipped over backwards onto the worktables behind it. Later one of the other techs had an old Beetle roof rack that he mounted shopping cart wheels to, and gave it to Hans as landing gear for the next Beetle he worked on. Hans had a good sense of humor, luckily.
My high school memories of auto shop combine bits of near all the preceding comments…even cjiguy’s.
Of course, when I was in high school NONE of the cars pictured had rolled into a new car showroom, much less were used cars. But I do remember a 56 Chevy convertible that was “rebuilt” by the auto shop class. It entered the shop spaces in late September a rusty and crusty hulk, but by May it was a decent approximation of a 5-6 year old car.
My school also had a metal and wood shop, but from what I have heard from siblings who sent their children to the same school all the shops have been discontinued to free up funding for a vastly expanded sports program that now includes girls and boys teams. (When I attended high school girls played no team sports, just those impromptu games in physical education.)
I really would have liked to take auto shop, but in my high school guys working towards attending college were discouraged from the idea. And to make matters worse, my parents were strongly against the idea. I guess if I had thought of it I could have made the argument that my attending the classes would have helped to reduce the costs of my father’s auto repairs?
In 1984, I accumulated so many credits and compulsory courses toward the graduation so I had a few elective courses. For that, I took the auto shop during my senior year at the high school. My teacher was named Mr Burpee (yes, really!) who also moonlighted as bus driver.
When I brought my car, a 1971 Alfa Romeo 1750A Berlina, many of students had never seen an Italian car up close and personal. They didn’t realise we could have disc brake at each corner rather than in the front as in many American cars. They had never seen double overhead cams and double two-barrel side draught carburettors. Mr Burpee had never seen the Golden Lodge spark plugs with four electrodes for better and more even ignition.
They loved the sweet sound of exhaust headers and low resistance silencer. Whenever I drove the car in or out of the garage, they prodded me to rev the engine. It got too much distracting that the PE teachers who had classes across the hallway complained.
One student who was only girl in the auto shop brought her late 1970s Camaro (couldn’t remember what year). Her boyfriend was an engineering student at the university and had built the digital gauges using many 7-segment LED panels from Radio Shack like KITT. Despite its futuristic and cool effect, the bright sun rendered them useless.
So my school never offered auto shop per se, nor did we have metal shop (deemed to dangerous for insurance purposes). We had a partnership with the local vocational tech center, wherein students could opt out of some high school classes to do vocational ed at the tech center. But, anyone who was “college bound” was pretty much barred from doing it because it wasn’t just “shop class.” It was full-on vocational education.
We did have wood shop, though, and I ended up doing three years of it (first two years, we had seven periods, so it was no problem. Third year we went to six periods, so I had to convince the counselors to let me out of physics.). Learned a ton, and made several pieces of furniture I still have and are still rock-solid 20 years later. I refurbish old houses as a hobby and occasionally putter with some other woodworking. I’d love to get back into full-on furniture making, but I don’t have the room or money to set up a full-on woodshop.
The funny thing is, I had no interest in auto or engine mechanics back then. My dad, for years, ran a small engine shop out of a shed in our back yard for extra money. Pretty much every night, he’d get home at 6, eat dinner, then go wrench until 11, shower, go to bed, and be up and on his way to work by 6 a.m.. I could have learned an absolute ton if I’d had any interest in it at all. Dad was good enough he wound up running the service department at one of the local powersports shops before opening his own (sadly he’s a much better wrench than businessperson).
I kinda kick myself for not taking advantage of it now, and not just for learning about engines. But what do kids know?
I went to a large high school. It had an auto shop program, but like some others, as a college-bound kid I was pretty much told to keep away from that stuff. In Jr. High (grades 7-9 in my school system) I did take one semester each of wood shop, metal shop and drafting. The shop teacher wasn’t much of a teacher, or maybe his “sink or swim” method made him the best kind of teacher, I still don’t know.
I had 2 or 3 friends that formed a sort of automotive mutual-aid society when we were in high school so we always had help working on our cars. I also had a couple of adult mentors who were always ready with advice and the occasional tool. Our cars were much like those you saw in shop class and we did both mechanical and body repairs. Often successfully.
I would have really benefitted from a class that involved an engine teardown as until YouTube I had never seen that process done and sort of considered my engines as “black boxes”.
My Dad got his Doctorate in Education, and wrote his dissertation on Vocational Education. He was hired on to oversee construction of and then direct the Voc Ed wing of the high school I attended from 1976-79. We had all the major trades represented, including Home Economics and Nursing. I took wood shop (meh) and drafting (which I loved), but not auto shop.
However, with unfettered access to everything (since Dad had the keys!), I do remember wrenching on the family ’68 Country Squire LTD (390/4bbl) and Dad’s ’69 F-100 (240/auto) on weekends.
I also took Driver’s Ed at this school and shortly after I got my license, Dad and I got hit by a drunk driver in our ’71 Vega, which Dad offered to the auto shop as a body repair project the following Autumn. They reskinned the driver’s door and rear quarter panel, then reshot the whole car in Mediterranean Blue. I remember there also being a mid-70s Beetle in the shop being stripped and repainted about the same time.
Dad took a new job in 1979 at a standalone Voc Ed school in South Carolina, so I had to start my Senior year of HS not knowing anyone. The Vega became my car at this time, but despite Dad having rebuilt the engine at around 60K miles, it was already blowing oil in prodigious quantities again at around 85K (check the gas and fill up the oil, Tony!).
By this time, Dad had acquired a ’73 Kammback for his DD and had rebuilt its engine with sleeves – it ran good and didn’t burn oil at all. Early in the school year, it was involved in an accident that necessitated replacing the front clip. Dad offered its engine for my ’71, so over Christmas break, I drove both cars up and swapped engines, then returned home. It was my first major car repair project, and having a well-equipped shop made it fairly easy.
I took drafting again, not auto shop, as I was planning on going into the Architecture program at Georgia Tech upon graduation. But since Dad always did all his own auto repair and maintenance, I feel like I still got an education on it anyway. I only wish I had chosen to spend *more* time working with him over the years.
One of our local high schools still maintains a vocational program. A client once mentioned that her son was looking for a project in his auto body class there. I offered my 61 Thunderbird, which needed some dents pulled, some rust fixed and a paint job. The teacher approved it (“That’s not really what we do here, but if the kid is motivated to do it I will OK it”) and I delivered the car at the appropriate time. The kid did a nice job and turned what had been a 100 yarder into a 20 footer.
…Funny. Our Autobody tech teacher looked just like Barney Rubble. Calling him Mr. Rubble made him kinda mad.
I wish I had, as like Jim said, the mysteries of an engine rebuild would not be unraveled for some time, and even now, I still struggle with the lack of hands on familiarity with such an undertaking.
Needles to say, Loyola HS in Towson did not have anything remotely resembling any school classes. Hey, but we had seven(!) periods of Latin per week in 9th grade. I’d have vastly preferred being in auto shop class.
And I don’t seem to remember Towson HS having a proper auto shop either. They had other “shops”, but by that time it was a bit too late for me, as I had mostly checked out of school.
I started working in a gas station just before I turned 16, and that’s where I got good at the basic things, like oil changes and brake adjustments. But I would have really liked to participate in an engine rebuild.
Paul,
I took Latin in high school, too. I went to a Catholic school up until 10th grade, then switched to a public school with French, Spanish, German, and Latin as language electives. I took Spanish because it seemed much closer to Latin, and why not build on previous knowledge?
It took me a long time, and a lot of reading of car magazines before I felt confident enough to just identify the various parts of an engine. I have set the points and plugs on a couple of old cars, and replaced a few parts on cars, but doubt that I would ever attempt to rebuild an engine….unless my life depended on it.
BTW, Latin/Spanish came in quite handy on my travels overseas in the Navy.
A wonderful account of something I was never able to experience.
My graduating class in high school was 43; I was salutatorian. Given the modesty of enrollment, and with my being college bound, there were simply too many scheduling conflicts for me to take either wood / metal shop or auto body (which was taught at the old high school 8 miles away). I wasn’t along with that dilemma and the scheduling conflict really worked to draw an unspoken divide in the students.
In some regards, I think part of me has tried to make up for lost time. With all the work I’ve done on my cars, as well as all the work I’m currently doing on my house, my skills aren’t lying dormant. That’s a plus.
And, while I entertained the idea of overhauling the engine in the Galaxie several years ago, I decided that was more than I was willing to tackle. One of these days…
I thought about it when the VW engine got rebuilt too. But I figured the chances of me getting it 100% right and leak free the first time were next to zero, and the thought of having to pull the engine twice put me over the edge.
Probably a good decision because my engine was REALLY bad. That being said I still may have to pull it again, I’m not happy with the cam and it’s non-bearings (40hp VW cam has no separate bearings, runs in the block).
The possibility of pulling it a second time is not an exciting one. I feel for you, although my repetitive problem is a much easier water pump. However, it’s remarkably complex to change for sitting right on front of the engine.
40HP engines have cam bearings in the later versions, unless yours is known to be an early block it’ll take the standard 1600 cam bearings. the block is slightly different on the top to indicate this at a glance .
-Nate
This was a fascinating time-travel read, even though I never took Auto Shop as such. I attended a big 1960s-70s suburban high school, so plenty of vocational offerings. This Seventh grade shop was wood; 8th was sheet metal; 9th grade drafting. I was still intending on engineering, not music, in HS, so took load of math (modest success only) and also Machine Shop. It still amazes me that 16-year-old me was operating a big lathe, surface grinder, and the like. I was the fish out of water in Machine Shop; the rest of the guys wanted to rebuild engines and the like, while I was the one geek heading to college. I don’t remember too much mistreatment; I think I was just benignly tolerated. Plus, I was unremarkable (see punch and scribe, made then, that I still own), so no one had a reason to be jealous. Teacher was a pretty gentle, non-prehistoric soul, and looked out for me a bit, I’ve come to realize….
[My FoMoCo father attended a 1930s-40s all-male Technical high school, and I’m amazed by the expectations. His old HS newspaper—letterpressed by the students themselves, complete with photo work—is available online; mighty impressive!]
Pretty cool of your friends auto shop teacher to let you attend, fat chance of that ever happening today. I have a couple of pretty interesting auto shop memories.
Had a ’65 Westfaila VW Bus in my first year of auto shop, I was the only one that had a VW in our class. This was in 1973 and most of the students had GM cars, mostly Chevy’s. Most of the class disassembled 327 Chevys and rebuilt them, my teacher let me rebuild the 1500 cc Bus engine. I built it up to a 1835 cc engine in that class, and when finished it ran well. So well that one day I wound out the engine and dumped the clutch, getting not a burn out but instead the reduction gears tucked the swing axles under, the rear end hopped up and with a loud bang, the bus snapped a rear axle. This happened around the corner from auto shop so we pushed it into the shop.
After getting the gear pullers needed and a good VW shop manual, I eventually pulled the reduction gears and axle tube, pulled the snapped axle and broken pieces out of the ring gear, and installed a new axle. That was quite a job, and the stench of the hypoid gear oil was almost impossible to wash out of hair and skin.
As my teacher inspected my work, I started to remove the fill plug for the reduction gears. My teacher stopped me, told me when I filled the transaxle the oil will flow through the axle tube. I rightly asked, then why are their fill and drain plugs on the reduction cases? He just looked at me like I was nuts, so I took his word for this and didn’t fill the boxes. In his defense, he was pretty much a 100% Chevy guy, and did a convincing job of acting like he knew what he was talking about.
After a few days, the rear end began to hum, I figured I did something wrong in reassembly and decided to just drive it. A couple of weeks later me and a few friends decided to drive up Angeles Crest Highway late at night to the snow up at Wrightwood.
As we neared the campground and were in the snow the transaxle began to make loud banging noises, so I decided to turn around and head back down the hill, it was about 2:00 AM and we were the only ones up there. As I headed down the hill the right rear wheel locked up, there was a berm of snow built up from the plows on the side of the road so I moved to the berm with the locked wheel and we continued slowly down the hill. After a couple more miles the left wheel also locked up, at which point we slid across the highway into a big bank of snow in a turnout left by the snow plows.
We got out of the Bus, and after walking about a mile we spotted a Mercedes 240D on a campground road, spinning it’s tires hopelessly on a frozen road low point. We walked down to the car, a guy and his girlfriend were in the car, and we offered to push him out if we could get a ride into town. We were lucky, the stuck 240D was the only car we saw after the Bus was stuck.
Next day an expensive tow to auto shop, I pulled the reduction gear covers with my auto shop teacher assisting, there was no oil in the boxes and the gears were ground to dust. He looked at me sheepishly and said, “I guess you were right”. That’s probably the reason I got A’s in auto shop that year. I would up selling the rebuilt engine out of the bus, and junked it. Teacher was thrilled that I replaced it with my Dad’s old ’65 C10 after he bought a new ’74 Duster stripper. My teacher helped me rebuild the Chevy’s 3 speed manual transmission, and it worked well when we were finished. In fact, I rebuilt the 3 speed a couple of times, I was not kind to that old truck, I had a supply of junkyard lower control arms that I was always replacing after bashing them in driving off road in places I had no business driving a 2WD truck in.
Story number 2, same teacher, following year. My Mom worked in the district superintendent’s office, and one day she brought him home, he asked me if I could do a valve job on his ’65 Mustang 289 in his garage at home, and I agreed. I pulled the heads, took them to a machine shop to rebuild and surface them, and got the engine back together. It ran, but poorly and was leaking coolant. His house was only a few miles from auto shop, so I finally drove it in to have my teacher help me out.
When he saw the Mustang, he looked pissed and asked me who’s car this was. I told him, he started swearing. Turns out he had turned down the superintendents request to have our auto shop repair the car, I didn’t get the whole story but I think the teacher had worked on it in the past and things must not have gone well. He did figure out the problem (intake manifold gasket had slipped out of place when I bolted it on), and we got it fixed. I got a stern warning from my teacher to never bring this car to auto shop again!
At the end of my senior year, he (and the other auto shop teacher) did find a VW dealership looking for a trainee mechanic, and I got my first full time job at Plunkett VW in Sunland, 1 week after graduation. Turns out they were actually looking for a parts department trainee/delivery driver. That started a 30 year career in the automotive parts business. Thanks Mr.P, and also Mr.R, the other auto shop teacher who was also involved in setting me up with a Plunkett VW interview.
Paul, when I went to edit this long post it came up marked as spam. This has happened before and I’ve lost my posts. I hope this doesn’t happen now!
It’s gone. Can it be found, or do I need to rewrite it?
It’s there now. I’m not sure why it got caught in the spam filter.
That’s one of those comments that should get photos added and be it’s own article. 🙂
Thanks Doug. It was a great question for me to ask about HS auto shop experiences. I have a 17mm wrench with my schools name etched on it, found it after I graduated HS. Still gets used from time to time.
Thanks, Paul.
My high school didn’t have shop class. But in 1989, I took a vocational course offered at a local community college. It was intended for training people in the mechanic’s trade, so the information and equipment was modern and up to date for the time
It was sponsored by GM so there were many new 3.1 and 3.8 V6 engines to work on, with the odd Iron Duke/ Tech IV engine. No V8’s, not even a ubiquitous 305, so maybe we weren’t supposed to learn how to fix their trucks?
The service garage had a brand new, never licensed loaded 1989 Oldsmobile Toronado for training. It was perpetually being serviced, disassembled/reassembled in various ways, all day every day by students, even though it had about 10 miles on the odo, all of that accumulated simply driving it in and out of the shop daily.
The machine shop was very well equipped, and loaded with equipment mostly from the 1950’s. I got to use specialized machine-tools I never saw in the trade. Students were encouraged to work on their own projects after hours. Not wanting to miss an opportunity, I rebuilt the heads off my 302-equipped Mustang.
They had a swimming pool-sized caustic soda strip tank, that could hold many engine blocks at once. One student was rebuilding his own Quadra-Jet carburetor. He disassembled it and left it to soak in the stripper overnight. He was astonished to find his carb had disappeared the next morning, leaving just a handful of screws, washers and rods. The aluminum body had completely dissolved.
My high school never had an auto shop that I know of; I don’t know where it would have gone in the building. The Guilford County schools segregated a lot of their higher-level vocational classes off into what were essentially magnet schools; any student could technically have taken the classes but you had to have a way to get yourself there and back to your “home” school which made it rather impractical for most students.
It did, at one point in time, have a wood shop, perhaps even when I was a freshman. If so, no one I knew had the class. Pretty sure it wasn’t offered after that. The room and the machines were still there when I was a junior, but they disappeared in a renovation after that. Drafting was definitely offered, and I took two years of that course as I thought it might come in handy for my intended career in architecture. (Which sadly never materialized…) I was kind of an oddity there as most of the guys were not on the college prep track, but other than some good-natured ribbing it wasn’t a big deal.
What was kind of a big deal was how the school treated the program. The intro course taught traditional paper-and-pencil “by hand” drafting (I think my year was the last one for that skill). The second level we learned AutoCAD, loaded onto Windows 3.11 machines from a pile of floppies. Or at least that’s how we started. Late in the first semester, the renovation that I talked about regarding the wood shop reached the drafting room. They took away our computers and desks and temporarily parked us in the room next door, which had been the wood shop until its demise. This room, it should be noted, didn’t even have desks–just a ragtag group of chairs scavenged from elsewhere. We were told that they’d have the old drafting room redone and the computers back in place when we came back from winter break.
I think you can see where this is heading. The room wasn’t ready in January. Or February. I think they finished the drywall and flooring sometime mid-semester, maybe March? We never did get the computers back, or even the desks for that matter. The teacher basically threw his hands in the air and gave up, so the second semester of Drafting II turned into a non-class. The value of vocational education, ladies and gentlemen.
My high school didn’t have an auto shop class, during freshman and sophomore year I took what was a sort of general trade class, which had wood craft, metal casting and welding, electronics and even broadcasting. I LOVED those classes, but we didn’t get anywhere near cars in them.
In junior and senior year we went to a different campus without any classes like these, instead there was a program where we’d be bussed to the Technology Center of Dupage and that was effectively our auto shop (it also offered culinary, cosmetology, IT and machining classes). It was very lab based though, more like the kind of education you get at vocational schools. There were lots of 90s/early00s cars of various makes but we could only start them and shut them off for certain diagnostic work, never EVER move them. We disassembled/reassembled engines – Northstars I might add!!! as well as changing tires and electrical diagnostics. Very easy class to slack off in I might add, we basically got handed a checklist of things to practice on and get tested, so one could really slack off(especially in cars with tinted rear windows, ahem) in between.
Wood shop was actually a mandatory two quarter course in 8th grade though, and was actually pretty old school, in fact the class disappeared with the retirement of the teacher the same year. Loved that class, we could make anything we wanted, and I was a natural at it, coming from a long family line of carpenters, and being a mandatory class I really noticeably shined above my peers for a change.
I have zero hours’ experience with auto shop class, but I loved reading this. Nicely done, Doug.
“I read the material and watched the old Chrysler Master Tech recordings and film strips that were still being used in 1985 when this happened. In fact, we used to have a great time using the “Tech” voice when insulting each other in class.”
The first time I heard the voice of “Tech” (on YouTube), I didn’t realize it was supposed to be coming from the mascot who resembled Mr. Bingle, the Christmas mascot used by a number of local department stores in the U.S. I thought that one of the mechanics in the filmstrip had a 20-pack-a-day habit, and drank his breaktast neat.
If you like listening to “Tech”, this is the place for you.
http://www.imperialclub.com/Repair/Lit/Films/index64.htm#1966
OHMYGAWD this is an absolute riot! Three packs a day and a bottled breakfast indeed!
Also took me a minute to remember what the “BEEP” was every time the image changed!
My high school didn’t have an auto shop but we could apply to go to the area vocational center that had many different programs including auto, welding, electronics, and various other courses for boys and girls. I was lucky enough to be accepted my junior and senior year. Besides taking up almost the whole morning it was just fun going to the classes, since it was a 30 min bus trip each way and there was enough time that our driver would sometimes stop at McDonalds or Burger King on the way home, we could also get driving passes if we had a good enough excuse and take our cars there which was always fun. We had something similar happen with a 72 Chevelle that was missing it’s carburetor, one of the guys tried to move it and it ran (very badly) on the gas squirting out of the fuel line into the intake for a minute or so until the owner yelled to shut it off. The incident that I will never forget happened when our instructor told me to go get the school superintendent’s late 70s Ford “Leisure Van” so we could do some work on it. Our shop was on a hillside and you had to drive down a ramp to get in, it was winter and was pretty slick from the snow we had a few days before so I was barely moving but the ramp was icey and once I started sliding there was nothing I could do but hang on. I tried to steer it through the open door but the van had other ideas and slammed into one of the steel posts that were on either side of the door, caving in the front and shoving the radiator into the fan. I’ll never forget the looks on the faces of the instructor and the rest of the guys as I slid down the ramp. The superintendent was very understanding about the whole thing but he never had us work on his vehicles again after that.
We had wood and metal shop classes but no auto shop when I was in HS in 1997-2001. I first learned auto shop existed watching the early 80s movie “Sixteen Candles” with my friends (the Brat Pack movies were popular with our set along with the new movies of the time like “Fight Club”, especially when the girls were present as it was still relatable and most of them liked rom coms), when Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall were sitting in the Olds Eighty Eight shop car. All of us guys thought, to a man, that we’d much rather do that than wood shop. Shop and or home ec were still required at our school. Both had been required in middle school.
I know it would have helped me. I had a 1987 Crown Victoria at the time that I would have loved to learn how to do simple things on. My dad tried to show me a few things, but the 302 had a somewhat challenging layout compared to later GM cars I owned.
Which leads me to believe that’s why shop disappeared. How are you going to teach kids in 60 min periods for one semester on a school budget to work on today’s heavily electronic and computerized cars. Even those of 20 years ago were more complicated than my 70s classics have been.
One thing that is becoming more common in High Schools are alternating days. In my kids school they had Blue days and Gold days, since those were the school colors. One day they would go to periods 1-3 and the other would be 4-6. I know of a number of other schools that do the same thing including the school that I coach at.
There are a couple of advantages, for one on any given day they can only have a maximum of 3 homework assignments due or 3 quizzes/tests. For hands on things like art, shop, science you get a lot more hands on time because that 50 min class you end up with only 35-40 min of working time. With the 1hr 45min class you can end up with a full hour and a half to get into the project. Of course on the other hand that class/teacher that you really don’t like can get brutal.
Back at my school while we did all classes every day auto shop was a double class for seniors.
At my local school they have the auto shop class that is focused on those that see it as a career and a basics class where they learn the practical aspects like changing light bulbs, tires, inspecting brakes, oil changes and the basics of how for example an engine works.
I was cool not doing valve jobs or transmission rebuilds, but wanted to learn the intermediate level stuff and some stuff that was really beginner level but very hard to do on my particular car. My dad taught me how to change and rotate tires, jump start, battery, windshield wipers, and fluids, but the layout of the engine compartment made it tough to get to the next level of spark plugs, belts and hoses, etc for a total beginner. The engine (302 Windsor) was EFI and not the air cleaner on top of carb layout he knew from days gone by. You couldn’t even see the plugs when you opened the hood, which makes it much more daunting for a newb. I remember he showed me how to gap the plugs, looked under the hood and said “I can’t even see them from here, there’s no room, I’m not going to mess with this.” I was disappointed, but understood. So I didn’t end up learning any of that stuff until 10 years later on my 77 Buick Electra with the help of the shop manual and YouTube. And I got up the nerve to try only because my parents weren’t paying my repair bills anymore and because there was so much space in there that I could see everything…Dad came out and watched (I was doing it at home) and said “that’s more like it” He was right, but if I’d had a teacher in h.s. with a bit more know how, I think I might have had the confidence or mindset to learn on the Ford instead of waiting for a pre 80s car.
Yes, some cars are a little more daunting than others. I remember being surprised at the difficulty of some tasks on the Ford 5.0 in my son’s 89 Grand Marquis. Ford seemed to have a genius for running cooling lines and hoses through some of the most interesting places. I was sure glad that I learned how to do that stuff on 1960s iron instead. Even my 77 New Yorker with its 440 was nasty for doing plugs (3 of the 8 were best accessed from under the car per the shop manual).
There was an auto shop at the Howard County MD Vo-tech school but I did not take it.
I did take auto repair at Lincoln Tech (Class of 1999) and worked in the field for almost 6 years before I got tired of dealing with salesman(I worked in dealerships) and customers and went to college and got a desk job involving computers.
It was fun at Lincoln Tech. They had a 1987 GMC S-15 with about 500 miles on it that was a gift from GM that had never been registered. It was there to be practiced on and haul old parts to the dumpster in the back of the school.
They also had a few Northstar engines on racks to be taken apart and worked on. The Northstar was only a few years old at that time so it was big news still.
This Lincoln tech had a program with Maryland that took donated cars and fixed them up to be given to a needy family. One of the cars donated in 1999 was a 1983 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme that had a bad transmission (hydrojunk THM-200). The trans was repaired and the car given out. They also had a Sterling 827 that had been donated the same year that looked like it came out of a dealership as it was in excellent condition.
In the end though, I had to get out when I discovered that after a long day working on other folks cars, I did not even want to look at another car and actually paid a fellow tech to work on my car as I did not want to screw with it after working for 8-12hrs on other cars. Working in the auto industry was destroying my interest in cars.
In the early 80s my high school still had an auto shop and wood shop but the metal shop had been turned over to the art department. This was slightly surprising in an affluent suburb heavily focused on Ivy League schools. Then again we also had an indoor rifle range and a shooting team at the time.
I never took auto shop in high school, although I do remember the centerpiece of the shop was the teacher’s 351 Windsor powered E-Type coupe. The student parking lot was also varied with the typical fare of Camaros, Corollas and Beetles livened up by a Citroen Mehari, a Renault 15, until it perished in anelectrical fire, a VW Thing and occasional appearances by a Rolls Royce.
I eventually got my auto repair, auto body and small engine classes via the school district’s vocational ed program that ran night classes.
Where the heck did you go to high school, that you could sneak into a class at a school that you didn’t even attend??
I skipped the 8th grade and went directly from 7th to Cherry Creek High School in Southeast suburban Denver—very rich, very ritzy, and very large, with over 3,000 students. Smack in the centroid of the sprawling campus was “IA”, the Industrial Arts building which housed a large cafeteria, the photography classroom and darkroom, a couple of extra-large regular classrooms, a large metal shop, and a large auto shop.
And when I say “large”, I mean it. The metal shop had a full complement of big, well-kept power tools, metal brakes, lathes, saws, blasting cabinets, grinding and polishing wheels, a goodly variety of welding equipment (arc, gas, spot), a foundry, and ample space for it all. The auto shop had five or six double-width overhead doors, at least two hydraulic four-point vehicle lifts, an alignment-style drive-on hoist (don’t recall if it was actually an alignment table), compressed air throughout, a brake lathe, a sandblaster, a big multi-oscilliscope engine analyzer, an outside vehicle “impound” yard, and a tool room very well equipped with high-quality hand and power tools, testing and diagnostic equipment, and parts and service manuals. All built and equipped in the early or mid ’70s when metal shop and auto shop were still very much a thing. Trawling through old yearbooks revealed that the shop teacher, Dale Schultz, was also installed about that same time.
As CCHS was a public school, the student body weren’t exclusively grossly overprivileged 1% types—money and daddy bought them a new Audi or Bimmer for their 16th birthday, etc—but they made up a large chunk of it, and those two shops were about the only respite from them. In shop classes we got the greasers, the stoners, the fuсkups flunking everything except Smoking Area, the kids from the wrong side of the tracks, the hard-luck cases…and me, an underaged, paunchy, cloistered, hopelessly nerdy goody-goody-two-shoes, dweeby little knowitall dork with glasses, a giant vocabulary, and a quick mouth. Oh, and I was closeted, too. Fortunately I knew enough about cars to garner just enough respect to temper what would otherwise have been a cooperative, it-takes-a-village campaign to stomp the everlovin’ crap outta me on a regular basis.
The vehicular population in the auto shop was a mix of cars donated by students’ families—a ’72 or ’73 Torino, a ’79 Malibu, and a ’77 LeSabre, amongst others; those donated by automakers—a new-never-sold ’86 Dodge B-van that had fallen off the train en route to the dealer, for instance; the motley, mottled crew of students’ own jalopies (’68 or ’69 Cougar, ’65 Chev, ’57 D-100…); and a rotating assortment of students’ parents’ cars brought in for cheap and educational repair work that otherwise would’ve been handled by a repair shop. No guarantees. Oh, and Mr. Schultz brought in a variety of his own cars: an ’84ish VW Quantum wagon, an ’82ish Olds Cutlass coupe with the 267 V8, a ‘seventysomething GMC or Chev 4-door long-bed pickup.
There wasn’t a whole lot of formal instruction; matter of fact, thinking back I don’t recall any instances wherein we sat in the classroom, learned about a particular procedure or automotive system, then went out to the shop to practice whatever it was. There was an exam or two, probably to meet minimum requirements for calling it a class, but overall I guess the feeling was that only dead-enders and losers with no real potential took auto shop, so why bother wasting any effort beyond stopping them killing anybody or burning down the school? Mostly it was just semi-supervised horsing around with cars.
And there was a fair amount of horsing around. In the metal shop we’d put a coin in the spot welder, switch it on til the coin was incandescent, then release it into a waiting bowl of water—just for shiggles. Similarly pointless monkeyshines in the auto shop: put an exhaust hose on the Malibu, start it, and see how close the other end of the hose could be brought to the air cleaner snorkel before the engine would die. Watch what happens if the windshield washer tank of the Torino is filled with transmission fluid and the washer hose line connected to a vacuum port, then the engine started and the screenwasher button pushed. Stupid stuff like that. Mr. Schultz would holler at us if it got too far out of hand, but mostly he was pretty easygoing. Had a cash account with the local NAPA, where the counterstaff were friendly enough to let us kids have the same discount if we mentioned we were in Schultz’s class.
My folks and I had gone to that NAPA and picked up a intermediate pipe, muffler, and tailpipe for their ’84 Chev Caprice. Some days after, my sister—three years older than I, and in possession of a driving licence—drove us to school in the Caprice and parked at the auto shop. Started the R&R, but a class period was 50 minutes, and it needed more time. No worries; by the end of the day one of the other auto shop classes had finished up the install and the car had been lowered back down to the ground. Time to get it out of the service bay. Sister nowhere to be found, nor Mr. Schultz or anyone else.
I did find the wife of one of the other IA-building teachers—I think she herself was a secretary somewhere at the school—who obligingly unlocked the shop door and let me in. I might’ve been only 14, and I might not have had a licence, but I knew the principles involved, and really, how hard could it be to back the car out of a double-width bay, straight out into the parking space directly across from the door? She didn’t ask how old I was or if I had a licence. I started up the car just fine, carefully looked over my shoulder, pulled the column shifter into Reverse, and WHOAHHH the car, running on the fast idle cam, chirped its tires on the industrial-epoxy floor and scooted rearwards in a hurry toward the open door. I nailed the brakes—more tire screeching—put the car back in Park, and sheepishly asked Mrs Whatzername if she could please back the car out for me. And, um, please don’t tell my parents I’d tried to drive it. She kindly agreed.
Another time that same Caprice was in for something or other—maybe plugs, wires, cap, and rotor—and I came back to it at the end of the day to find green coolant leaking, drip-drip-drip, from the radiator petcock. Somehow or other I got it in my head that one of the wrong-side-of-tracks kids had opened it, the one who smoked GPCs and had the mangy ’65 Chev. Maybe he did and maybe he didn’t, but he angrily denied it and things almost came to a fistfight, which I would have lost completely and spectacularly.
There were gleefully scornful rumours thrown around the whole school that two students were gay. One was a bleachy-blond looking guy always wearing sunglasses. The other was a besideburned ginger with a workout body, a halogen smile—the brightest kind we had back then—and a purple ’65 Valiant V100 2-door with a 170 slant-6 engine (but I don’t remember any details), who also hung around the auto shop. By then I had a ’65 Valiant as well, and we exchanged a couple of words every now and then, but I viciously stomped down any clever ideas about striking up an actual conversation, let alone even the shadow of the notion of a crush; far too dangerous.
One of the physics teachers, an American with a French last name, was an insufferably self-impressed wannabe Brit replete with all the affectations, who fancied himself an ace race driver and god’s gift to women of all ages—including the girls in his classes, towards whom he behaved very badly that I saw (and I’m not surprised if worse that I didn’t see). He was frequently in the impound yard stealing parts off the traindropped ’86 B-van to use on his own ’77.
My folks’ cars eventually wound up in the impound yard. The ’84 Caprice wound up blowing massive amounts of oil out the tailpipe, and the ’80 Stinkoln Clown Car’s probable oil pump failure was the last in a long and diverse list of failures. Both of those cars will be described in lurid detail when it’s my turn for duty in the COAL mines.
My last year at CCHS the auto shop and the metal shop were officially decommissioned. There was a secret-bid auction for the metal shop equipment, and most of the auto shop equipment just went away. I’d been pestering Mr. Schultz to let me have the (new, heavy-duty) starter off the traindropped van; he stalled and stalled, but on the last day of school he said “that asshole Mr. [physics teacher] told me he wants the starter off that van; if you can go get it and make it disappear in the next 20 minutes, you can have it.” Into my backpack it went; I understand Mr. Physics was upset. »tsk« Oh dear. Somebody who might have borne some resemblance to me might also have liberated some parts and service manuals from the tool room, but I wouldn’t know anything about that. The tools had disappeared seemingly within minutes of the decommissioning announcement. IA was extensively remodelled, and computer rooms took the place of the former shops.
Dateline 1972 Warren, Michigan: A brand new Auto Shop building opens in the southwest corner of the Warren Senior High School parking lot, just up Mound Road from the General Motors Technical Center. It’s completely outfitted with the latest shop equipment and a full complement of Snap-On tools. Twelve bays, one single-post hoist for cars and one twin-post for trucks. Sporting an AMMCO Brake Lathe, AMMCO brake shoe grinder, Coats 2020 tire changer, John Bean Visualiner optical dynamic wheel balancer, a HUGE rolling Snap-On engine analyzer, and anything else a modern auto repair facility would have. The prerequisite to attending Auto Shop 1 was a passing grade in the Power Mechanics class next door, rebuilding at least two small engines exactly to factory published specs and running them for an hour each without failure in two semesters. Fast forward to 1978 and Auto Shop 2, 1st and 2nd hour. I’ve completely rebuilt the TorqueFlite 727 transmission in my 1968 Plymouth Fury III. After filling it with the required 10 quarts or so of new Dexron fluid, the transmission starts emitting a loud ticking sound. Quickly shutting down the engine, I begin the process of re(removing) the transmission. Early on in this process, the trans pan slips in my hand, tilts towards me, and proceeds to spill copious amounts of Dexron all over me. I run to the big round shop sink and wash my hair once with GOJO, then twice with powdered hand soap, but it’s too late – my blond hair has been temporarily dyed pink. Good times, good times…
Boy, did this story bring back memories! I took auto shop in the last two years of HS, 1963, 64. My dad had a friend who owned a 56 or 57 Lincoln Continental MK ll. One day he asked my dad if I could take it into the shop an tun er up! Most of the guys had never even seen one of these and the instructor had never been under the hood of one. He was very impressed with the build quality of it.
Needless to say, it was the hit of the school year!
DougD what a great trip down memory lane. Although I attended an old school, built in the ’30’s the Industrial Ed building was built in the 70’s and reasonably well equipped. I took Auto Mechanics in Grade 11 and 12, and it was a riot. We had a great instructor, and for whatever reason our shop seemed to be free of the usual mess of half finished or never-to-be finished projects. I was just recounting the story of undercoating the box of my 72 Ford with multiple aerosol cans of asphalt undercoat which caused a short lived evacuation of the building due to the terrible fumes (and of course, no respirators or safety glasses used, ever)
Lots of good times, some actual productive work and the occasional “Parts Run” to NAPA or Canadian Tire across town which necessitated a stop at Timmies for a coffee and donuts, of course.
My son, now 22 also took it in high school and while the shop was beautiful, as the school was built in 2010 the interest and drive of many of the students wasn’t there as it was in my day (early 90s)
Thank you for this – great read and I see it’s bringing back a lot of memories.
Since I went to parochial schools there was never an auto shop class. We just learned on our own. I do know they still have them since my son mentioned that his high school has an auto shop class but he prefers music and the band.
Right now we have an off campus auto shop class going on board the USS Hornet. We had a teenager visit and was so taken with the planes that he wanted to volunteer so he could work on them. Once he was approved, others heard from him, and also wanted to volunteer. We ended up with 5 guys and 1 girl between 15-18 working on the T-28 Trojan prepping it for new paint. They are now cleaning up the cockpit and measuring for all the external markings.
There is another group of three working on, what I think, is a Continental F162 flat head four used in a small tug. This group is one guy and two girls and the girls are Chinese. They got the pistons out last week along with the crankshaft. I have had the head hot tanked and dropped off the crank at the machinist today. Meanwhile they are cleaning the block so I can load it for the machinist. When back, Tom and I will show them how to put it back together. Being a flat head four it is pretty simple. At the same time the very quiet Chinese girl was also being shown how to drive the large tug that move aircraft. She got to move a helicopter a little bit. These kids never miss a Saturday.
In September 1981, I was seated one morning in the instructional area of the auto shop department at Perth Collegiate, in Perth, Ontario. And I was taking Tetracycline antibiotics at the time, for minor acne. As I reached in my shirt pocket, to take my next scheduled dose, the capsule fell on the hardwood floor. The orange and yellow drug made a couple audible clicks on the floor, as it bounced a few times. Rolling towards Mr. Onion, who was delivering a lesson, a few metres away from me. Of course, he heard and saw, the capsule hit the floor. But he didn’t know the source of the drug. As he said to the full class, ‘This is where drugs belong!’. As he tossed my medicine in the waste basket. One of the lasting memories, from my one and only high school auto shop experience.
I attended a private high school which had started as an “industrial arts” school though it had a mostly normal college preparatory curriculum when I started in 1969. However it still required one semester each of wood shop, sheet metal shop, electric shop and machine shop over the first two years. There was also an elective auto shop but I had no car in high school and I think only a few guys took it; the shop work took place in a back corner of the machine shop and I don’t think there was room for a car, just an engine stand or two and some parts washers and workbenches.
Last summer I attended an alumni day at the school, 50 years after I graduated. The shops are still there and mandatory. There was some impressive new CNC equipment, but a few machines from my time were still there, including at least one Bridgeport milling machine and a power hacksaw that probably dated back to WW2. The saw may have been close to 100 years old.
No such luck for me. We had no auto shop, building trades, home ec, art, stringed instruments in band, or any sport besides basketball. This was also before the freedom of choice school policy, so even if you could find your own transportation, you would still have to pay tuition to attend a school other than your normal district.
But one thing we did have was a small woodshop. And the teacher was pretty cool. Basically as long as you didn’t screw off, you got an A. But having an engineering mind I drew my own plans and built some cool things. Speaker stands, enclosures, file cabinet, guitar stand, also made some tools to redo the fretboard on one guitar. Teacher had built a guitar so I learned from him and built my own too. Even went back after I graduated and borrowed some tools he made.
By my senior year I was technically disqualified for more shop since they said no more than 4 years of it. But since our school had next to nothing offered and I was already at the top 75% of my class, they made a category called independent shop so I could take it. And I could skip the yearly safety training. Good thing because even with this shop class, 3 of my 7 periods were study halls. This was also before you were allowed to leave early for work, get early college credits, etc.
So I learned everything about cars on my own. Every time it needed work, I’d read up on how to do the job, buy tools, and do it. Eventually I got to where I could do an engine swap.
Our Auto Shop class had us building a dune buggy out of a VW for our auto shop instructor. He had it an dull gray – with touches to make it look like a military vehicle. Fenders out of sheet metal that were riveted on, with “No Step” stenciled on them.
One thing that stands out in my mind, is that some student or students stole a brand new air impact wrench. The instructor was going to have every student pay a couple dollars each for its replacement – which I thought was totally absurd. Guess what? the wrench was returned..
The Straub Twin were having a buddy in shop class doing something to their Datsun 510 sedan. The guy caught it on the lift backing it out, disconnecting the exhaust – the loudness now made one of The Twins think they had a hot rod.
Driving by the school these days has the shop building (single story; auto shop, machine shop, and print shop) gone – replaced by a multiple story academics building.
You should be able to attend a tech school your final 3 years of high school so a person could graduate with a trade already started.
I wasted 3 years of high school attending classes for nothing gained. Then went to a trade school for two years and probably spent a 1/3 of that time in classes unrelated to why I was there. The usual line was, this course will count towards a bachelors degree if you attend college. My family was dead broke, college was not happening and thank God they weren’t handing out college loans like candy on Halloween.