@aircooled : Looking back I wish I went to a more high tech HS. I’m happily a victim of the public school system, but I took so much more through life from my Auto Shop and Welding classes than most of the others combined.
Not long after I graduated, the Auto Shop classes at my HS were cancelled and the huge eight bay work shop became the maintenance area for the school equipment. I’m convinced no more than 5% of the kids at that school know the actual definition of “checking the oil”.
Then again, the “old” cars my friends and I worked on in the 80’s were pure muscle from the mid-50’s through the mid-70’s. We could do pretty much anything to them with a good set of tools and just enough knowledge to be dangerous. I can’t tell you how many of us ripped the Quadrajets off our SBCs to replace them with leaky Holley double pumpers. Maybe that’s why the smell of unburied fuel in the exhaust always takes me back.
I’ll just go ahead and say it: “these kids today don’t understand”!
I apologize in advance for spinning this thread off course if it happens. I still want to learn and I’m excited to have the opportunity to glean some information from you if you get enough interest...which sounds pretty likely!
I’ll say it again (because it’s such a fun word): Stoichiometry!