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fandomhigh2016-09-20 12:30 am
vdistinctive) wrote in fandomhigh2016-09-20 12:30 am
Entry tags:
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?"
Re: OOC
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
Re: OOC
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.)