"Oh!... so that's how that works...." thread

[Jim Ratto]

how many times when you were just getting your hands dirty at first on these cars did you think "how in the hell am I going to get this to work?" while fumbling with some greasy part, cut fingers, clenched fist, red face.... etc?

I'd always fudge up generator pulleys when I was first "wrenching" (make that "wrecking") on my VW. No matter what I did they would self disintegrate in a day or so. They'd rub the generator or alternator face, making a mess of gunmetal-grey shavings all over motor, or the centers of the halves would round out. Finally, after two plus years of batlling the issue, I got it to work, after finding out you needed at least 10 shims .... I can thank my old boss Jerry for teaching me that one.

Getting carburetors running right... there was a challenge, not only for me, but my family at home too when I was a kid. Seemed like a nightly thing, go out warm up car, start turning stuff, "if I just turn it another half a turn...maybe..." cough cough cough, hack, eyes streaming. My parents would get so pissed, my mom would hang clean laundry that needed to be ironed in the garage and after my "tune ups" the clothes would all reek like a muffler. It took years of fooling around and reading and experimenting to finally "get it."

Keyways on cranks... either getting 'em in or out.... I'd always wreck them. They be peened over, nicked, dinged... until I stopped using the wrong tools and bought a nice soft nylon hammer.... in fact one guy gave me a nickname of "Ballpeen Ratto" up until then. 

[Sam K]

I tend to learn to learn things the hard way as well. One of my least favorite when I was about sixteen and I was installing an adjustable beam in my bug. I spent hours fighting with and mangling the tie rod ends and ball joints before my dad walks out and says "they make a tool for that, you know. It's called a pickle fork." Information that would have been useful several hours earlier.

On another more recent occasion, my fiance and I were driving somewhere and we pulled up next to really nice older Porsche 911 at a light. It had "gasburner" wheels on it and I told her that I would love to get a set of them for my bug and she says they must call them gasburners because they look like burners on a gas stove. In all the years that I've lusted after a set of those wheels, I never thought about the reason behind the name.