But think of the things that the host would get mended
👏 👏
😆
In contrast, when I used to race karts the best natural driver was my mate's girlfriend Jane. Stunningly quick but with no mechanical sympathy. She used to ring every last ounce out of the engine and brakes, had no fear and had great control (she never crashed the same way twice).
a car drove past my house with the exhaust hanging off. Hanging on by one bracket and dragging on the road making a hell of a racket. Neither of us could quite believe the driver hadn’t noticed.
Didn't notice, didn't care.... 🤷🏻♂️
A worryingly high percentage of cars on the road would fail even a basic MOT because the absolute limit of most people's knowledge/experience with cars is to fill them with fuel occasionally. Maybe the windscreen washer bottle too.
But then people ride bikes like that too - have a look at the average commuter bike being locked up at a station with its rusty chain, 4 working gears, half inflated/bald tyres...
Visiting a relative in sheltered accommodation I found:
Wrong sized toilet seat poorly fitted
Kitchen tap with hot and cold reversed and mixer 90 degrees off centre
Just. No.
It’s also uncooth and abrasive behaviour
It's spelled 'uncouth', FWIW. And it's not, it's a ratchet, it's what it's made for.
Every door has been slammed open so dents are left in walls by the handles.
Door stops are your friend here. Doesn't excuse the damage but will mitigate it.
People manoeuvring their car and going lock to lock while completely stationary. I can’t watch/listen to it and have to walk away. Even worse on gravelly surfaces.. horrific!
But at least the gravel is giving it something to slide on.
But think of the things that the host would get mended
Done that 😂
There used to be a chap in our local riding group, a big, strong laddie, joiner to trade.
Not much subtlety in bike care; would rarely ask how much to tighten things up when doing maintenance.
The standing joke was always: 'up until it breaks, then back half a turn..'
Cable actuated hydraulic handbrake also found on a number of Citroen or Renault models iirc. People didn’t read the manual and cars rolled.
I had a Citroen with that handbrake, the problem was that it operated (separate) callipers on the rear discs, and when they cooled, the car rolled... Citroen's 'solution' was to remove all the teeth from the ratchet except the last one.
Consequentially my wife didn't have the strength to take the handbrake off as it was already at the limit of its travel.
But back to the subject, IME folk with zero mechanical sympathy are usually fundamentally lazy and often have no real understanding of costs (fix vs replace).
I agree that I can cope with someone who doesn't understand, we all have different skills.
I really struggle with some family members who are basically unaware or, worse, actively resistant to seek help or sort basics. I've a close family member whom I'm taking headlight bulbs to over Christmas - as one headlight has been out since July when I last visited and MOT is due in February. She's a community nurse....
Sometimes if feel there is hope. On my way bike from picking up Jnr from a day of Tri training - an hours drive, I was educating Jnr to what I thought was a recent introduction of transmission whine in my car. He was quite attentive to the sound and I was thinking this was a great father/son moment. <br /><br />
Until I looked around and he’d fallen asleep with his forehead on the window.
A riding mate of mine consistently sends mine shut like he’s pitching in the friggin World Series! 😳
A locksmith I used to work with, many moons ago slammed the barn doors of an Escort van so hard, the rear window smashed. That was amusing.
One of my current colleagues slammed a Transit custom barn door so hard it bent the door.
I really struggle with some family members who are basically unaware or, worse, actively resistant...
Our son. I've shown him engine fluids, tyres, etc a few times and he learnt the basics for his driving test. He'll do his competently if I go outside to do mine but won't move if it's a solo effort.
The other one that winds me up is broken works vehicles that are obviously broken and are left for the next user to fix. There's a workshop 100m away with technicians and stuff, park it there instead and walk 100m
And breathe!
People manoeuvring their car and going lock to lock while completely stationary. I can’t watch/listen to it and have to walk away.
My current car can park itself - and does exactly the above when reverse parking - it goes from lock to lock whilst stationary, and quite quickly. I guess BMW don’t have to pay for tyres.
My current car can park itself – and does exactly the above when reverse parking – it goes from lock to lock whilst stationary, and quite quickly. I guess BMW don’t have to pay for tyres.
Really? My old Golf (2010) with autopark definitely needed movement to start turning the wheels. Bit of a shocker from BMW there - the strain of low pro tyres on all those steering and suspension bits must be extraordinary.
I’m in the camp of being not mechanically minded and absolutely hopeless at DIY and jobs around the house.
The challenge for me is not that I don't want to be able to do a lot of things as I can't always afford to get stuff professionally fixed (bikes, DIY et al), its the sheer terror of, if I do have a go and it goes wrong, how the hell do you fix that problem, or how much will it cost to fix! Seriously not good for folks with anxiety issues to begin with.
just to check - are there "people" on here who haven't converted their handbrake to fly-off ?
eww
This is another of those threads and I’ve been guilty of it myself, which rails against the world because ‘not everyone is like me’. To have mechanical sympathy you have to have at least a basic interest in engineering and a curiosity about how mechanical things work. I do, and possibly a majority of people on a cycling forum do, but lots of people (most?) don’t.
Amen 🙃
I had a Citroen with that handbrake, the problem was that it operated (separate) callipers on the rear discs, and when they cooled, the car rolled…
Happened to me, parked on a hill, not in gear (my cock-up) though handbraked to the moon, as the brakes cooled, it rolled, ended up on its roof about 100 yards down the hill in someone's drive-way, I heard it crash along with all the neighbours, and we all rushed to the car, one chap on looking in through the driver's window exclaimed "where's the driver?" when I said "standing behind you" there was much confusion.
That's how an economy exists, everyone contributes in their own way. Some people diagnose and fix mechanical issues with cars, some people fix mechanical issues with humans. What sort of world would it be if we all acted like robots that stopped everything and adjusted their 'insert example here'.
Would you like to be a rounded enough individual to be able to exist as a one man band, doing everything yourself? I'm not and I really appreciate that mechanic that can do a job for me, freeing up time so I can do 'insert example here.'
A little while back someone on here was running a community eBike hire, the users were regularly destroying drivetrains by incompetent use of the gears and motor. There were no consequences for the people that did this, which I’m sure is in the spirit of the programme, and they were looking to upgrade the bikes to make it less likely.
I’m confused what your complaint is here… …it sounds like the original bikes failed to take into account the usability requirements of the target demographic. A lot of the complaints of, frankly middle aged grumpy old men, on this thread are actually design failures rather than lack of mechanical sympathy.
I’ve a close family member whom I’m taking headlight bulbs to over Christmas – as one headlight has been out since July when I last visited and MOT is due in February. She’s a community nurse….
They'll just replace it during the MOT and charge her for the bulb.
I'm on a couple of VW Transporter pages on FB and they're constantly full of questions like "this warning light came on shortly after starting a 400 mile drive - I ignored it and completed my journey, is it something to worry about?" and "all this rust - is there something I can just cover it up with so I can't see it anymore?".
My wife slams doors and it drives me nuts, the force she uses to shut a car door is enough that I sometimes go and check it hasn't opened the opposite door.
Maybe we could empathise with their cluelessness and whatever reason that prevented them from making effort to learn?
Maybe they don't care about the same things you care about so they have no interest to learn rather than not bothering to learn. I most likely care about stuff you don't care about, so what.
Some people wash their cars every week, I was mine probably twice a year simply because it is not a priority for me and my time
The thing that drives me insane are the folks for whom every nut and bolt is a test of their masculinity and strength
Once picked up a kids bike from a guy. It had a cut down seat post and we couldn't work out the size. He quickly whipped out a set of vernier calipers and measured it up. I professed how impressive it was to have these kicking about and he told me he was an engineer by trade.
Every single bolt on that bloody bike was done up so tight it hurt!
There is a huge difference between not having mechanical sympathy and /or skills and driving cars with flat tyres and no headlights
They’ll just replace it during the MOT and charge her for the bulb.
*whoosh*
It's supposed to be safe and road legal ALL THE TIME not just for the bloody test 🙂
Really gives me the shivers sometimes. Seems a lot of people don’t have a clue how their treatment of mechanical stuff is causing harm, probably because they don’t have the slightest idea of how it works.
just stop watching Just Rolled In on utube 😉
and driving cars with flat tyres
from what I read on here most people seem to enjoy riding their bikes with flat tyres.
I don't lend tools out. Had people borrow them indefinitely and it was a right job getting it back, then lent a wet tile cutter to my neice with strict instructions to change the water evey couple of cuts (tile debris in water can damage the blade and reduces the neatness of the cut). Came back with a totally knackered blade - no offer to replace it. I'd managed to tile a whole bathroom without damaging the blade.
Quite recently I was at the gym and a bolt had worked loose on a seat. I spoke to an instructor and he came over with an allen key and tried to fit and tighten it. However, he had the long shaft in the hex bolt and was trying to lever it by holding the shorter end. His mind was completely blown when I pointed it that he could swap it around and have move leverage. I mean, as an adult, how could you possibly not work that one out?
But my real pet hate is people who turn the steering wheel on a car when the vehicle is stationary.
Seatbelts - how does the wife manage to take off her seatbelt in such a way that when it smashes into the window it sounds like someone is trying to carjack us with a hammer?
I'm cursed with mechanical sympathy. Wish I could switch it off but just can't help noticing/fretting about things. Can be quite distressing at times.
IME folk with no mechanical sympathy are a bunch of gibers, censurers, backbiters, pickpockets, highwaymen, housebreakers, attorneys, bawds, buffoons, gamesters, politicians, wits, splenetics, tedious talkers, controvertists, ravishers, murderers, robbers, virtuosos, scoundrels raised from the dust upon the merit of their vices, nobility thrown into it on account of their virtues; lords, fiddlers, judges and dancing-masters all.
Hang the lot of them!
I’ve had to stand and watch a lad using a ratchet spanner incorrectly.
No , you didn’t need to remove it every 90 degrees of rotation and reposition it , it’s on a ratchet that lets it freely rotate one way but not the other
Working in Tech Support. "Can you just log in for me?" Pick up the mouse, click on the username box, type in their name (assuming they can remember it), back to the mouse, click the password box, type password, mouse again down to OK, meanwhile I'm standing there quietly growing a beard.
I get that if you don't know then you don't know and that's absolutely fine. But I've shown these people time and again how things like Tab and Enter work and they go "oh, that's great!" and then carry on regardless. It's like they don't trust it or something.
I often see cars in front of me edging forwards a bit, then rolling back, rinse and repeat a dozen times.
And invariably, when the lights do change it'll take them an age to actually set off.
The mechanic has a list for what people call the various parts of their bike. Winners so far include “the wheel with teeth” and “the uppy downy forks”.
Again, from Tech Support. The number of people who think the monitor is "the computer" and the PC itself is "the hard drive" is just astounding.
vacuum cleaner needs to be emptied? Yes just like etc…
When we moved in together we ended up with two vacuum cleaners so gave one to The Girl. A few months on my partner casually says something about how they haven't hoovered in weeks because they can't. "What about the cleaner we gave them?" I ask. "Oh, it doesn't work." Well, OK, why is this news? Get it back here an I'll have a look at it.
Got it home, emptied it, it works again.
But think of the things that the host would get mended
I'm terrible for this. I'm the sort of guy who will book into a hotel room and have the sink in bits because the stupidly over-designed but under-engineered plug isn't working properly.
That's another one for Disproportionally Cross actually, assuming I haven't already. What was wrong with plugs on a chain? Talk about solutions looking for a problem, fishing about in grubby water to open the plug after I've already dried my hands once is totally an improvement.
People who get into a stone cold vehicle and rag it within seconds of turning the key
Then they wonder why their car is always breaking down.......
And bus drivers . Do they go to a special place to learn how to drive badly. Accelerate , accelerate , accelerate , oh hang on , there's the same person at the same bus stop at the same time as the last 100 days but by Christ , where did they jump out from. And slam on the brakes.
They’ll just replace it during the MOT and charge her for the bulb.
Indeed, that is what they are waiting on. Obviously you also do an annual service then, so that and MOT will pick up anything dangerous you have been driving with for the last 11 months....
I do understand that no everyone is interested in these things.
But I *cannot* understand why you are happy for a car to be dangerous (a bulb let's face it is probably the tip of the iceberg on a 15 year old Yaris...) which you use year round, in all weathers, in the dark, for your work, and are paid 45p a mile to use...The same car in the past has had all sorts wear out, and yet it can take months or even the wait for the annual MOT and service before they get someone to attend to it.
Again, from Tech Support. The number of people who think the monitor is “the computer” and the PC itself is “the hard drive” is just astounding.
I became a sort of default "tech support" for the team I worked in in a previous role. IT loved me because it immediately dropped their call rate down to manageable figures. That one small team of about 6 people (comprised mostly of middle aged women) were responsible for over half the calls to Tech Support out of a company of 60(ish) people.
It was staggering how little they knew about computers and how little they cared about actually doing anything about it. It was routine for my boss to spend half a day searching for something or trying to format a document before giving it to me and I'd do it in 15 minutes.
Collectively, there must be millions of hours work time lost annually due to general computer ineptitude.
OH's car (our only real car at the moment) is now 20 years old. There's no reason it couldn't go on a lot longer, but she has zero mechanical sympathy for it. I've pointed out that the cost of replacing the clutch will be more than it's worth, but she still insists on never using the handbrake as some sort of matter of principal.
Same with checking the oil. We know it burns a bit, so maybe check and top it up before the engine starts to sound like a bag of spanners?
In her mind "it's an old car it won't last forever" is disconnected from the reality that if it breaks terminally we'll end up spending £10k on a replacement (that won't be as easy to service on the drive). And that 90% of the "old car" faults are down to her not looking after it.
I'd be less annoyed but it's not just a "her car" thing:
a) I leant her mine (much bigger) for an IKEA trip when her sister moved house and it came back with an MPG figure lower than I'd ever seen!
b) She's already decided that the "new" car will be hers and I have to keep this one running for muddy bikes so all these built up issues will be mine to deal with while she thrashes the new shiny car 😂
Working in Tech Support. “Can you just log in for me?” Pick up the mouse, click on the username box, type in their name (assuming they can remember it), back to the mouse, click the password box, type password, mouse again down to OK, meanwhile I’m standing there quietly growing a beard
😂😂😂
I know this one as my partner does it and I used to teach CAD to students of all ages and ability.
It's... painful.
People who don’t flush cut cable ties, animals.
Don't do that, it'll block your toilet. Really, some people, no mechanical sympathy 🙄
😉
And bus drivers . Do they go to a special place to learn how to drive badly. Accelerate , accelerate , accelerate , oh hang on , there’s the same person at the same bus stop at the same time as the last 100 days but by Christ , where did they jump out from. And slam on the brakes.
I had the misfortune to have to use the bus to pick my car up from the garage a few weeks ago. Now the Cardiff Bus drivers don't have the best reputation at the best of times so the first part of my journey was all as expected, jerky and no avoidance of potholes despite it being a route they use 10's of times each day. But the second part was a while different level. This was on one of the new Electric buses that are meant to be smoother and more comfortable but not with this driver. He would stab that the throttle leaving every stop rather than feed it in gently. Braking was fine initially but as you got down to waking pace he would just stamp on the pedal (no engine braking caused that apparently...). Throttle manipulation was non-existent when in the move either. You could just tell he refused to adapt his driving from what he had done with the diesel auto boxes where the drivetrain smoothed everything out for him, they mask a lot of mechanical abuse. Thankfully it was only a 25 minute ride but it was enough for me to never want to use a bus again and to also feel sorry for the bus itself having to survive being treated like that all day, every day.
Collectively, there must be millions of hours work time lost annually due to general computer ineptitude.
I think these broadly fall into two camps.
Type 1: They just don't know. This is wholly understandable and I reject absolutely the notion that they're somehow "idiots." We wouldn't hand someone a car or a guitar or something, go "off you go" and expect them to be able to use it. So why do we expect this with computers? I will go to the ends of the Earth to help these people.
Type 2: They don't want to know. Worse, they're actively hostile to knowing. They wear their ignorance as a badge of honour, they're proud of it presumably because they think they're above such things. I've told this tale before but I once heard "oh, I don't know anything about this 'computer' shit." Well, a) thanks for calling my career and most of my life "shit" and b) you're an Accountant, using Excel is literally your day job. I don't know the first thing about using Excel really, but give me a couple of minutes and I can probably work out what you're trying to do. And you're going to ask me the same question again in a fortnight aren't you, because for all that you boast about being a technophobe you've spent the entire time I've been here worrying at your phone. Type 2s can get in the ****ing sea, they were the bane of my existence.
But I *cannot* understand why you are happy for a car to be dangerous (a bulb let’s face it is probably the tip of the iceberg on a 15 year old Yaris…) which you use year round, in all weathers, in the dark, for your work, and are paid 45p a mile to use…The same car in the past has had all sorts wear out, and yet it can take months or even the wait for the annual MOT and service before they get someone to attend to it.
Are YOU not part of the problem here? You are buying the bulbs and going to do it for her - why would she bother learning to do it herself when you'll sort it. Obviously the cops are also part of the problem if they ignore people driving round with a bulb out (or is it a full beam not working - as they may never see that - and if the car is mostly used in town then the driver might not really either!). Presumably if maintenance was actually a massive factor in road accidents - insurance would be more expensive for vehicles with previous MOT advisories, insurance would want to see or discount based on service history, gov would consider making 6 month MOTs for some types of high risk vehicle (perhaps those which scraped through!). I think we are at risk of projecting our expectations (based on stuff that we learned, which may or may not be actually right - like the handbrake) on to others, and there might be a bit of patriarchal judgement involved!
