Mechanical aptitude!

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GeorgeH

GeorgeH

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I'm sure there are few out there that have shown some mechanical aptitude at a very early age. What did you get into as a youngin when you got ahold of some tools?
Dad showed me what a screwdriver was when I was 4. If it had a screw, I was on it! I still hear mom yelling about the table tipping over with dinner on it on three legs. Then they took the tools away :wack:

Let hear some stories
 
As a toddler I was known to take stuff apart. As I got older, the stuff got bigger and more complicated, Eventually I learned that I was not good with electronics, like tvs.
As a teenager, I had to learn to put stuff back together, so I could use it again.
When I got old enough to get a driver's liscence, Dad said if I broke his stuff, I had to fix it. So I learned how to fix all the stuff I broke. Eventually I had saved enough money to buy my own stuff, to break, and to fix. And so it went, for another 46 years. Buy stuff, break it, fix it......repeat.
I was 62 last summer. Ima kinda getting tired of fixing stuff tho.....
 
Bout the same, but outside with my Dad crawling around under tractors and trucks holding the tools.
 
Setting on plywood floor cleaning engine parts in a wash tube half full of gasoline
 
This is the result of one of my first failed experiments.

jgtw7k.jpg


I was maybe 4-5? years old at the most, perhaps less, so this was around 1952-3. Took me a long time to finally realize what this photo "was."

I had asked my Dad, I'm sure, "how do those headlights work?" and he told me some BS about

"There's a little man inside there with a lantern."

So I snuck out there and broke out one of those headlights with my toy carpenter's hammer, and immediately got caught, spanked, and put to bed. And, I did not GET to see the little man, so I tried it AGAIN a second time. Now I don't know if this is experiment 1 or no2, but I'm sure what's going on, here, is Dad has driven the old AA Ford dump out to "Grampa's" to look for a spare lens. If you look closely, you can see one lens is broken.

My Grampa, here would have been about 53, and Dad would have been about 30. As you can see, I do not appear to be very happy here

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I also remember at about the same age, my Dad was doing something out back in the old shed. Such spark plugs as those used in the Model A? or T? Ford came apart

118226.jpg


My dad had loosened one up for me to play with. I was clamping it in and out of the vise, and taking a Crescent wrench and taking it apart, then putting it back together. "I was on a roll." But I started tightening it back up, and then loosening it. The wrench (and I) slipped, I fell back down on the ground, with my hand extended, to catch me, and sliced the palm of my hand open on the "handy" double bit axe in the corner.

Off to the doctor!!! and the emergency room!!! screaming and yelling!!! to get stitches.
 
When I was about 5 years old, I got my first taste of ripping something apart to see if I could fix it.

My Grandma used to come stay with us quite often for a week or two at a time and we had this rocking chair with a little music box that attached to the rocker, and she really liked that little box. When you rocked it would play a little tune.

So one day it quite working and I asked for some tools so I could fix it. My Mom assured me it probably wasn't "fixable", so no harm no foul.

Well, I sat there in the middle of the hallway and took that suspicious little creature apart, cleaned it, deduced what I thought was wrong with it and corrected the problem. I put it all back together and put it back on the rocker.

Voila, it played it's little tune again much to the amazement of my parents. From then on out they would provide me with tools and "things" to take apart and put back together..
 
My dad was a business manager by day. He has always doing some thing around the house on weekends. Painting, fixing, or building stuff. I just grew up around tools. I went to special vocational high school. Got a regular High School Diploma and was ready to take one off the FAA aircraft mechanics tests. Went back in the adult class for one more school year and took the other one.
 
Lol, in the previous century....
For a couple bucks some kids use to go around with stencil kits and paint house numbers on the curbs, shovel snow, paper routes, and store runs.
It was bikes and lawnmowers for me.
If you didn't keep your bike "adjusted" and rolling you were walking. Adjust the seat, straighten the handle bars, repair an inner tube, etc.
But a lot of us also use to take the old man's gas mower out and make a couple bucks cutting grass in the neighbor hood. My dad was OK with me doing that until the recoil spring broke on me. He was into electronic stuff (Hallicrafters) more than mechanical. As I recall the fix was a matter of making new cutouts in the spring end to secure it. Not a big deal except for getting the tension right to pull the cord back in completely. Took me several attempts but I finally got it. I guess was 8 or 9 around then. Started from there. Pulling the plug cleaning it up. Pulling the head off to "clean out" the carbon just to do it. Changing oil.
 
Clamping Briggs & Stratton engines to the picnic table and seeing if they ran any better on Glow fuel with nitro. Welding up and regrinding the cams with a stick welder and bench grinder... Relieving the head with a drill... "milling" the head with a farrier file...
 
Daves69 said:
Lol, in the previous century....
For a couple bucks some kids use to go around with stencil kits and paint house numbers on the curbs, shovel snow, paper routes, and store runs.
It was bikes and lawnmowers for me.
If you didn't keep your bike "adjusted" and rolling you were walking. Adjust the seat, straighten the handle bars, repair an inner tube, etc.
But a lot of us also use to take the old man's gas mower out and make a couple bucks cutting grass in the neighbor hood. My dad was OK with me doing that until the recoil spring broke on me. He was into electronic stuff (Hallicrafters) more than mechanical. As I recall the fix was a matter of making new cutouts in the spring end to secure it. Not a big deal except for getting the tension right to pull the cord back in completely. Took me several attempts but I finally got it. I guess was 8 or 9 around then. Started from there. Pulling the plug cleaning it up. Pulling the head off to "clean out" the carbon just to do it. Changing oil.
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I got my first 2 wheeler when I was seven, Santa brought me a brand new Huffy! Lol Mom made me put it in the garage where bikes belong. Day after xmas, I was out in the garage, and Mom poked her head out when she realized I was mia. She said " I don't know why I paid for assembly" I was crushed. She just blew the santa gig. lol I had dismantled it down to just about a bare frame to grease wheel, neck, and crank bearings.
 
Here's a OPPOSITE story, lol, the story of "not" mechanical inclined, "but trying."

My two cousins, Doug and Dayton, were very close in age, and their folks invaribly got the two boys the same gifts for Christmas or birthdays. So I went down to their house one day, and here they were.......

had all their Dad's tools.........which was not much.......and both bikes torn apart on the grass

SOMEONE who knows? had convinced them that the sprockets with "skip tooth" were "speed sprockets" because they had less teeth:

phansproket.jpg


as opposed to the alleged 'speed sprocket'

$_35.JPG


So there they were, hacksaw, vise grips, files, chisels, mangleing BOTH the sprockets on BOTH the bikes attempting to remove every other tooth. Yeh. NOT
 
GeorgeH said:
.............. She said " I don't know why I paid for assembly" I was crushed. She just blew the santa gig. lol I had dismantled it down to just about a bare frame to grease wheel, neck, and crank bearings.
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Ha! Yeah, you had to finish the assembly. They came in a box if you ordered from Sears cat. Handle bars, seat, pedals, etc.
 
Daves69 said:
Ha! Yeah, you had to finish the assembly. They came in a box if you ordered from Sears cat. Handle bars, seat, pedals, etc.
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Up until that point I was under the impression the elves did the assembly! Lol I guess she had the store do it.
 
The first remotely mechanical thing I ever was going down into the basement at my grandfather's house where there was a big pile of random pieces of pipe. I then started trying to find ones that would screw together and kept at it for a while, creating quite the piece of modern art. I was about 3 or 4.

When I was 7 I got a bike in a box from Sears, muddled through getting that done, didn't work real good at first, figured out about making adjustments so everything was lined up and turned freely. As I remember the left hand thread on one of the peddles confounded me for a while.
 
My dad drag raced, built 4x4 trucks, and wrenched on Harleys all through the '70s, '80s, and '90s. I was born in '77. Because of my dad, I have been in love with cars, trucks, and motorcycles my whole life. When I was born, my dad had a '63 Polara 500 with a 426 Ramcharger in it that he street raced. He has pictures of him holding me over top of the Carter 3447 carbs on the cross ram intake, when I was a few months old. He drove a red '69 383 Road Runner for an everyday car, and my mom drove a Citron Yella '71 Charger R/T 440 for an everyday car, so there was no hope for me.:D

In the '80s, my dad bracket raced a funny car with a 440 in it, so I was always hanging around and helping him work on it. In the '90s, he did a lot of work on Harleys, and since I was older, I could help out a lot more. We built a custom '73 Triumph for my first motorcycle while I was in high school, and I bought my Swinger in high school, which he taught me a lot about. I still own both of them.

On the other hand, I have a brother who is 3 years younger than me, and he doesn't know which end of a screwdriver to use on a screw.:D
 
As a kid 6 or 7yrs old, I was always in the garage. I loved to learn how things work (still do). I would take the push mower we had and tear down the engine. My dad would usually come in after it was apart and proceed to chew my ***, because now he had to put it back together. Well he finally had enough of that and the next time he caught me he told me I had to put it back together with no left over parts and "it better run". Well a couple of left over bolts on the work bench and my dad made me tear it apart again to figure out where they go.

After noticing that I enjoyed working on mechanical things, he decided to really start getting into projects with me. He would explain how and why things worked and would barter or find fun toys (dirt bikes, go carts, etc...) for us to work on.
 
When I was about 6 years old I got a Sears Briggs and Stratton mini-bike. Then a Honda 50, a Honda 70, and finally a Yamaha 125.

I was always tinkering with them and learned very early not to leave dad's tools laying out in the yard. My *** hurt the first time he found a tool rusting on the ground, lol.
 
straightlinespeed said:
As a kid 6 or 7yrs old, I was always in the garage. I loved to learn how things work (still do). I would take the push mower we had and tear down the engine. My dad would usually come in after it was apart and proceed to chew my ***, because now he had to put it back together. Well he finally had enough of that and the next time he caught me he told me I had to put it back together with no left over parts and "it better run". Well a couple of left over bolts on the work bench and my dad made me tear it apart again to figure out where they go.

After noticing that I enjoyed working on mechanical things, he decided to really start getting into projects with me. He would explain how and why things worked and would barter or find fun toys (dirt bikes, go carts, etc...) for us to work on.
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My Dad tried to foster it too, we had a boat with twin crusaders in it, and he sent me into the bildge to do the oil and tune up stuff, and talked me through it. I was 7-8 at the time. Then he came home with a 12 ft'er in need of some work. Glasswork, paint, impeller, plugs. Recoil cord ( what a mess lol). Took my fist ride in it came back, and he made a comment how I had a nice looking lil boat and turned trash into treasure. lol I didnt really understand at the time. I was mad as hell when he sold it a few years later , and a week later a 20 ft wellcraft showed up. And it begins again lol
 
My very earliest mechanical memory.. 3 or 4 years old so about 1960. Steel pedal car. Couldn't raise the hood. So when imagination says half of a red brick is the battery, It's tied to the car from underneath with a piece of lamp cord. How I knew a car should have a battery, attached with wire, a mystery to all.
 
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