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fandomhigh2016-09-20 12:30 am
vdistinctive) wrote in fandomhigh2016-09-20 12:30 am
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Shop, Tuesday, period 3
There were no work tables in shop class today. Nor were there any of the usual standing power tools. Instead, there were three identical Honda Civics parked in the middle of the large room, surrounded by tire irons, jacks, assorted bottles of fluids, cables, and three big yellow boxes.
"Right," Eliot said. He was wearing a pair of grey coveralls and already had a line of grease on his cheekbone. "So we've covered some of the basics of wood and metal, and we'll keep switching off through the semester, so if you had fun with either of those, don't worry, we'll be getting back to 'em. Today we're going to do some basics in my personal favorite kind of shop: Auto Shop." He patted one of the Civics on the hood. "For those who might not be familiar: these are cars. Also called 'automobiles'. They're like carriages, only instead of being dragged around by horses or oxen or whatever you use in your world, they're powered internally by fire and gears. They go a lot faster and farther than your average animal and don't really need to sleep, so in my world, we're rather partial to them. This particular model is your basic, average car. Not a lot of frills and whistles, but functional and reliable. So long as you treat 'em right." He grinned a little evilly. "These three have not been treated right. None of them will run. It's up to you all to work out why and get 'em mobile again."
He opened the garage door on the end of the room, the one that had last week opened onto a junkyard. Today, it revealed an oval test track, just down a small hill from the garage.
"Your job is to start the car and get it moving well enough to do a full loop around the track without breaking down again. Now there's three cars and more'n three of you all, so I'd suggest getting together in teams. Preferably ones where at least one of ya knows how to drive, but hell, this place is full of safeties. If you run yourself into a tree, it's probably not gonna hurt."
He wouldn't actually let anyone run themselves into a tree. If Hyacinthe, for example, were to get behind the wheel, he'd be getting at least a quick lecture on how the steering and brakes work before Eliot would let him drive off.
"Each car's got its manual in the glove compartment." Eliot showed the students were the manual sat in the compartment. "And all the tools you need to at least get the car to a proper mechanic are in this garage. So let's see what you all can do, yeah?"
"Right," Eliot said. He was wearing a pair of grey coveralls and already had a line of grease on his cheekbone. "So we've covered some of the basics of wood and metal, and we'll keep switching off through the semester, so if you had fun with either of those, don't worry, we'll be getting back to 'em. Today we're going to do some basics in my personal favorite kind of shop: Auto Shop." He patted one of the Civics on the hood. "For those who might not be familiar: these are cars. Also called 'automobiles'. They're like carriages, only instead of being dragged around by horses or oxen or whatever you use in your world, they're powered internally by fire and gears. They go a lot faster and farther than your average animal and don't really need to sleep, so in my world, we're rather partial to them. This particular model is your basic, average car. Not a lot of frills and whistles, but functional and reliable. So long as you treat 'em right." He grinned a little evilly. "These three have not been treated right. None of them will run. It's up to you all to work out why and get 'em mobile again."
He opened the garage door on the end of the room, the one that had last week opened onto a junkyard. Today, it revealed an oval test track, just down a small hill from the garage.
"Your job is to start the car and get it moving well enough to do a full loop around the track without breaking down again. Now there's three cars and more'n three of you all, so I'd suggest getting together in teams. Preferably ones where at least one of ya knows how to drive, but hell, this place is full of safeties. If you run yourself into a tree, it's probably not gonna hurt."
He wouldn't actually let anyone run themselves into a tree. If Hyacinthe, for example, were to get behind the wheel, he'd be getting at least a quick lecture on how the steering and brakes work before Eliot would let him drive off.
"Each car's got its manual in the glove compartment." Eliot showed the students were the manual sat in the compartment. "And all the tools you need to at least get the car to a proper mechanic are in this garage. So let's see what you all can do, yeah?"
Sign in
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Listen to the lecture
Still, Eliot was putting a fair amount of faith into those Danger Shop safeties here.
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Get up and running
The second car's engine refuses to even pretend to start up. Turning the ignition key just gets you sad clicking noises. The radio and the dashboard lights all turn on fine, but if left on for longer than a minute or two, fade out. That there is a dying battery, yessiree. There are cables if you want to give it a jump -- assuming you can get the folks from one of the other cars to let you hook up to theirs. There are replacement batteries, but they're tucked into a cabinet under a pile of spare tires and hubcaps. Basic jumpstart gets you a C. Finding the spare batteries gets you an A. Clutch start the fucker and you'll be Eliot's favorite student/team of the week.
The third car cranks and groans, but refuses to turn over. It's cranky as hell. All the other systems appear to be working fine, so at least you can have some music playing while you figure out why the damn thing won't go. Also, the interior smells funny. There are literally no spark plugs in this car. They're in a box behind the cabinet with the spare batteries in it. Install the spark plugs and this puppy'll work just fine. You know, aside from the smell. Did someone leave a half-eaten big mac in the back seat? Why are the floorboards sticky? Dammit, Hardison!
None of the cars have properly inflated tires. A flat on that track will cost you! They do have full sized spares in their trunks at least. Along with all sorts of moddable other ridiculous things. Maybe there's a box full of rubber duckies in one. Maybe there's a couple million dollars in that firestone spare. No car bombs, though.
Not until at least the second car-focused class.
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... Yes, he was still making it a competition. He just knew he'd lose.
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Ada pulled the dipstick back out and squinted at the level, making a face. "Think Spencer's got any jacks around here?" she asked, looking around. "Oil level's low, an' I'd rather just change it out completely than top-off old oil."
Ada, it's a pretend car. Stop treating it like your scooter.
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He glanced over his shoulder. "Found one," he said, pottering over there to snag it.
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She was going to need a new oil filter, gasket, oil, wrenches, jack-stands and chocks... and probably safety glasses just so Mr. Spencer didn't get huffy.
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He sank into the driver's seat.
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She headed over to the third car and started poking around -- her omni-tool had no diagnostics programs for something this ancient, so she had to actually peer under the hood and that was fine with her, honestly. Manual labor was pretty satisfying sometimes.
Talk to Eliot
OOC
A week later, while they were performing routine maintenance on it, the car caught fire. Like, burnt-out-the-entire-thing, the-only-surviving-bits-were-the-frame-and-half-a-banana-slurpee fire.
As far as I know that wasn't the spark plugs' fault. Also, apparently banana slurpees cannot even be killed by fire.
I was also once involved in a low-speed car chase through residential neighborhoods when I was in high school, but that's another story entirely.
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He wound up having to explain to the insurance company how he could have damage on the left side of the car when he'd been hit from the right. (He wound up having to send them a picture)
Anyway, he gets a new car, same type. It goes fine for a few months... and then the automatic transmission starts randomly erroring whenever he's in a traffic jam. Always at the worst possible moment. The first time it happened, we were on a two-lane highway coming back from the airport... and it just stopped, jamming up the whole thing. Another time, when he had me drive it because he was scared to, it wound up randomly stopping in the middle of a highway onramp in front of a traffic light.
Yeah.
It works fine now. Allegedly. I call it the Death Car.
Meanwhile my super-simple, cheap-ass car has literally only had one problem in the ten years I've had it, and that turned out to be because the mechanics hadn't screwed the fuel line back on tightly enough.
/car woes
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And for extra fun times, this weekend at a stop light I watched the needle on my fuel gauge happily wobble back and forth across the full spectrum of the gauge before settling back down again at a quarter tank. This is new. Usually it just decides I have literally no gas in the car when I start it up and then eventually admits that actually I have plenty.
(It also tried to ruin my birthday vacation this year by claiming not to have enough coolant. ALSO IT TAKES A MAGICAL SPECIAL KIND OF COOLANT THAT I LITERALLY COULD NOT BUY WHILE ON VACATION, AND PUTTING NORMAL COOLANT IN IT WILL DESTROY THE ENGINE. Yep.)