Why is blogging so hard?

Man, it seems like the whole blogging thing is just a breeze for so many people. I'm not one of them.

I have studied free material, paid hefty money for classes, tried just pushing through. Yet here I am finally working on an update weeks later. 

As I write this I'm sitting in the area of "Gate C11 at the PDX airport in Portland Oregon waiting for my last leg home. 

The last day and a half was spent working in a committee helping to plan "The Rental Show 2017" which will be held in Orlando Florida. An event put on by the American Rental Association, it is consistantly touted as one of the top 100 shows in the nation for size. I can tell you my first trip there back in 2010 was an eye opener to say the least.

ARA headquarters is in Moline Ill.. Like I'm sure many places across the USA this community sitting alongside the Mississippi River was a great place to visit. It is also home to John Deere and has some pretty cool museums displaying equipment clean back to the birth of the company. 

This takes me to another mechanic tip. Advancements in technology can leave a person who is new to the field feeling overwhelmed. Where ever possible take the time to study where it all originated from. Looking at the high tech components in a lot of today's equipment can be mesmerizing. When fuel injection was becoming mainstream I remember thinking, "What is going on inside that magic black box"? Turns out it is just doing some math and deciding how long the injector stays open. 

Literally, that's it. 

It is going to open the same number of times every time the motor makes two revolutions, so the only thing to control was how long it stays open when it does open. It figures this out by knowing air temperature, engine temp., RPM's, throttle position, manifold pressure, and some various specific to manufacture parameters, but it is just doing math and controlling how long..

That's just when it is in open loop! Once it goes closed loop the "black box" adjusts how long the injector stays open based on feedback from the O2 sensor. As long as no weird feedback is coming back from the other sensors, it bases its decisionn purely based on O2 feedback. 

Seperate the fuel injection out from the other functions like ignition timing, transmission shift points and torque converter lockup, or the host of other computer controlled functions. Look at each individually and it gets a lot simpler. 

The coolest thing about all of this as it applies to the equipment rental profession? 

We're seeing now what the heavy equipment industry and automotive industry got to work the kinks out of over the past several years.

Small engine fuel injection, tier 4 diesel emission equipment and more are proven technologies. We get the benefit of more power, better fuel efficiency and long lasting engines thanks to them pioneering the way for us. 

When I started this blog I had every intention on doing it daily, are there any volunteers out there that want to be my accountability partner? 

Tim Allen

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

Secret repair guy concept revealed.

Looking back, I've had my hands on a lot of different pieces of equipment over the years. More often than not I had to figure out how to repair it on my own.

*Auto mechanic - check

*Mower mechanic - check

*Wiring repair - check

The list could go on for pages....

I still remember the first time I was asked, "Tim, how do you know how to work on so many different kind of things?" In truth, I'd never really thought about it.

So I answered truthfully. I don't. 

You see what appears to be so many different things to most folks are a hand full to me.

Let me explain.

Pretty much any powered equipment is driven by one of two things; an internal combustion engine whose foundational principals haven't changed for over 100 years, or an electrical motor that really has about 3 different varieties. Yup that's it, two power sources. 

At the other end of what ever it is you're trying to fix there is something that is either going up and down, or turning in circles. 

Tires on the car? Turning. 

Floor sander? Turning or going back and forth depending on the sander. 

Power washer or paint pump? Pistons going back and forth pushing the water or paint. 

OK, you get the point.

So what is in the middle connecting these two?

If it isn't connected directly you have either a belt, gears, or some sort of hydraulic pump and motor to transfer liquid movement/pressure. That's it.

I work on two power sources, three ways of transmitting the power, and one of two things should be happening if everything is working OK. 

Not really all that much too it when you look at it that way. 

Tim Allen