it doesn’t, but thanks.
I don’t even know what’s inside myself.
It takes an HOUR to change a spark plug on my car. Which should to be done about once every 10 years. You can’t even see the cylinders, or spark plugs, or spark plug leads. There is no carburetor, or distributor, to adjust.
I think it’s sad that I don’t do car maintainance any more. I think it’s normal that my boys don’t know anything about it.
When I saw the thread title, I was wondering if the focus was engine cylinders or hard drive cylinders.
Dunno if running the wheels of some car or other in reverse would work. But rolling back odometers is still happening, allegedly.
This Google search might reveal it.
And unscrewing the cable to the speedometer/odometer in a '65 Chev (belonging to someone or other’s parents cough cough) stopped the mileage from piling up.
I have heard of rolling them back by using an electric drill to spin the numbers.
I do know it from family conversations, also had it in class in 8th and 11th grades, but I’m a '68 vintage. Current vintages don’t learn about that any more than they learn how to draft with an adjustable drawing pen on ink-spreading paper.
The requirements to get a driver’s license have been “harmonized” at the start of the year: several European countries now have the same requirements, the same tests (I’m not sure whether it is EU-wide or not, the reporting was during the Christmas season and pretty sloppy).
One of the things you’re asked to do is identify the different deposits in your car. I used to check levels in Dad’s cars, but if you asked me where the deposits are in my current car I’d have to look it up in the manual.
hello, the 70’s. We all fixed up our cars in the 70’s.
While I can understand kids not taking their engines apart they should have understood what the op was talking about.
I know the concept of cylinders in that I know that a 4-cylinder car isn’t going to have as much “oomph” as a 6-cylinder, and I’ve probably never driven an 8-cylinder. My old Taurus was a 4-cylinder, and I think my 2004 Escape is a 6-cylinder.
I don’t know how they work or how much they’d be to fix, or what it means for one to be broken, or if i should buy a car with a broken one.
I do know that I have a job where I use my brain to do stuff and that gets me money and I can give money to the mechanics down the street who use their brains to fix it for me if it breaks. Symbiosis.
but will you know if you’re getting screwed on the repair price of a johnson rod?
I think many people don’t know what a piston and cylinder is, and don’t know the basics of the internal combustion engine. I don’t think it matters too much, one doesn’t need to know, but it helps to know.
19, you say?
Perhaps some some of Pringles-based analogy…
I know what a cylinder is. I’ve changed my own oil. I took a small engine class in High School 30+ years ago, and took apart and reassembled our lawnmower.
I still won’t know if I’m getting screwed on the repair price of a johnson rod.
Other than a few poorly engineered examples, I don’t think there’s a car on the road that can chalk up reverse odometer miles. It’s a movie/comedy trope that has almost zero basis in fact.
You can replace the speedometer with one showing lower miles, use a drill to run the odo forward until it shows some desirable number of miles, or manually reset it. There are supposed to be mechanisms that will drop indicator flags if the gears are manually moved, but in some cases replacement flag pins were a standard item to have on hand.
It’s a lot harder in the era of CarFax and other vehicle databases. Not everything ends up in them, but pulling a CF report that shows service into the 100,000s tells you that Corolla doesn’t have 35k original miles.
Since almost all the cars on the road today have electronic odo I doubt any of them would turn backwards any many would continue to go forward (increase) regardless of the direction of travel.
I am not sure of the specific technology underlying electronic odometers. The earliest ones were actually mechanical counters with an electronic readout. I think some still are. In more sophisticated cars, the unit may be all-electronic but I believe there is a requirement that it not be resettable in any way, so they use a chip that sequentially burns out a link every recorded tenth of a mile. I don’t know which cars still use a mechanical input from the transmission and which have moved to an all-electronic sensor, driven, in all likelihood, from the ABS wheel sensors.
But all such would be immune to “backwards” counting.
Since even the least expensive cars have ABS it is simply a matter of a bit of programming and some wire to send a signal to everybody that needs road speed in the car (speedo/odo, ECM, trans, climate, radio, even the door locks on some cars)
This is much cheaper than additional sensors.
Yeah, I think so. Unless said kid is a motor-head, I’m not surprised he doesn’t know. I know what a cylinder is in terms of the geometric shape, I know that cars have them, but hell if I know what they’re for.
I’m not a mechanic. When I had a car, I had a good mechanic. I let him handle all the shit with my engine. (He was very good at explaining to me the pros and cons of fixing now vs. fixing later, and often recommended that some repairs weren’t worth the money, given the age of my car.)
I drive the car, I use the computer, I’m competent or better at both, but I still have an expert to handle things under the hood. I didn’t try to swap my hard drive by myself, either. I can retouch photos in PhotoShop like nobody’s business, though.
No, those of you who think you know everything about the items you owned are the easiest to scam, because you don’t know what you don’t know. Those of us who know we don’t know something will go and look up and learn about the situation when it happens, guaranteeing we have the most up to date information.
I realize back in ancient times keeping a lot of knowledge in your brain was useful, but, nowadays, smart people outsource their knowledge, maintaining only knowledge they need frequently and/or want. Just because it worked for you back then doesn’t mean it’s the most rational way to handle things now.
I do in fact know what a cylinder is, but only because I’ve been told that something had a bad cylinder and looked up what that meant. Yes, that reinforced the remnants of knowledge I’d had from various books and even a day of science class, but that knowledge would be even more sparse if I depended on that.
And, no, I’m not going to be scammed as I can and will look up the information. I have the more useful skill–the ability to spot bullshit. I know the reputable places to look up information and how to use critical thinking to deal with information from anywhere.
As for those of you who trust doctors: don’t. Doctors mostly go by their own experience over actual studies. They are often very reluctant to change tactics that have worked for them for years. Always research anything your doctor tells you. That’s how you don’t wind up scammed like those people who think they have a disorder when they don’t.
And you also don’t wind up housebound because a doctor has never heard of benzodiazepine withdrawal disorder, even though the national guidelines flat out say they are for short term use only. None of his patients reported it (as they probably didn’t know what it was and rationalized it as just worsening anxiety disorder), so he didn’t know about it.
Trusting mechanics is far more sane, by comparison. Worst case scenario, you lose a little money. Overly trust a doctor, and your life can be ruined.
I demand a surgeon who learned his stuff at Speedy Muffler.
Likely they know “of” it, but don’t have anything specific in mind. I also don’t blame them, as it’s not really important knowledge, for most casual people. The exception (for me, anyway), is that it’s a good idea to make yourself knowledgeable about something you’ll have to spend money on, and if not, consult an expert.
Otherwise, they just need to know that an engine runs properly or that it doesn’t, not necessarily how it works (in a general sense).
I don’t think it’s “wrong”, per say, but just the same, there are many things I couldn’t care less about, and certainly don’t possess intricate knowledge of.
And every internal combustion engine doesn’t have cylinders-- my other car has 0 (rotary).