Mechanic secrets part II?

Looking back on my most recent post, well, I f I did my job well you'll never have a chance to suffer through reading that first draft. 

Back to my story though. 

Recently I talked about how pretty much every mechanized piece of equipment has just two sources of power, 3 ways to transfer that power and only two actions on the far end, turning or going up and down. 

I didn't always realize this, most of it came to me during my high school years though.

Have you ever seen a '69 Ford Thunderbird? 429 Ford big block, C6 transsmission, and what I later learned was a Ford 9 3/8" rear end, but that's a tale for another day. Have I mentioned I'm an adrenaline junky? Well that's kind of hard on cars.

My junior year, the motor in that car made some rather ugly noises and lost power. I didn't come from a wealthy family, so that meant I had to fix it myself. 

I remember the evening before thinking about what must be thousands of moving parts, after all there's a lot of space in there. I'd studied the theory of a four stroke, worked on some lawn mower engines, This was different. It made a lot more power and was a lot bigger.

The following day I learned my fears were way over blown! As I disassembled this thing I had my first MAJOR dose of just how screwed up fear can be. That motor was a simple, very predictable working piece of art. 

All of the sudden I started paying attention in physics class, it all started coming to me. These "rules of physics" didn't mean some complicated voodoo, just some simple facts I needed to know to be successful as a mechanic. 

Keep this in mind as you take on mechanical repairs.

There is a method to the madness in everything mechanical. Rules like what is in motion wants to stay in motion, what is at rest wants to stay at rest. Fulcrums and leverage. An object moving in a straight line tends to want to keep moving in a straight line. 

I later learned that how the electrical systems work is really similar in the fact that if you understand the rules electricity has to follow, it isn't too complicated to figure most problems out. 

Got any thoughts to share? Lemme know, leave a comment below.

Tim Allen