has anyone other than me strived and put their heart and soul into trying to learn new thinks about cars through reading and hands on experience,only to over time lose have of the stuff they use to know?i see there is a lot of people with a ton of automotive knowledge in this forum.my question is how do you retain information youve read,or did somethings hands on and not forget it 6 months down the line?

 

Maybe you should have spent more time studying spelling and punctuation?

 

I've been a mechanic for 25 years. When I went to school they still taught points ignition systems. Although I can't remember how to set the dwell, I know what it is. In 1990 I moved from doing automotive to heavy duty. I work mostly on large trucks and diesels. Although the new trucks are computer controlled like a car is, they're easier to work on and there's less models to understand. I still learn or work on something new every few days. Other days it's the same repairs I've done for the last few days but on different vehicles.

I also have a lot of manuals for reference. Not just the cheap Chilton and Haynes ones you buy from the local auto parts stores. Most of the information I want to know isn't in those manuals. They're mostly designed for the backyard mechanic to do simple repairs. You'll learn more from experience than from a book. The books are only good for reference and specs.

 

Excuse me, God-like person; next time you walk on water or raise the dead how about taking some pictures for all us "unpurfect" people to see? (And now, the obligatory smiley face to make my comments harmless.)

And Mr lovescamaros25, I know exactly how ya feel. I've been messing with cars for years, have a library of all kinds of "long hair" high falutin' scientific and technical lit, and gen'l live, breath, and eat automotive stuff. Yet, I feel I can't even hold a wet candle to people like Bret, Chuck, Mindgame, and other heavy hitters around here. Injuneer impresses me as well, but since I know him on a personal and social level, I do know that he puts his pants on one leg at a time just like me. I'm not looking for a round of tears in my beer now, just trying to make a point: Maybe not everyone is meant to play on a higher plane, including myself. I'm going to be taking a battery of tests to see if there is anything holding me back, such as an attention problem or chemical imbalance. Hey, I may be unstable, but there may be other reasons I cannot retain things! Or maybe I just smoked too much crack back in the day. "The day," meaning yesterday.

 

Let he who is blameless cast the first stone. <-smugg smiley

 

I am with the mighty Unstable one!

Then again no one ever claimed my mind was more then simple

 

UB,

You think some of us even wear pants!!!! Boxers here baby, nothing like a computer and sitting in your boxers.

Anyways to answer the question how does anyone retain this knowledge? We do it all day long and we are extremely interested in it. If I told people the simple things I forgot how to do exactly, like quadradic equations? Hell I came up with a short cut for those in HS that I swear that teacher uses to this day, but if I could do one right now I would be impressed. The last actual instutional learning I did was about screenplays and semiotics, hardly something that relates to engines.

Think about it, since most of us are men here, look at women. Of all the things you know and have learned about women and you getting as close to them as possible how many things have you forgotten? Not that many, compared to that whole Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species thing. Think about it, can you even fill in the blanks on humans there? Nope, but you can remember what you said to the last girl you got a phone number from, hell even the first one.

Two quick tricks to understanding this stuff.....

1. There is a system, just like the old video games were not random enough and you could take the Detroit Lions and go 16-0 and win the superbowl in Madden 92. It had a simple system that you could learn and read. Engines are all similar in the same ways. They all have to do the same physical things, and they do most of them the same way. Understand the theories and the rest teaches itself.

I would have to say my father did a impressive job of this in comparing the BMW F1 motor to a Nextel Cup motor in the Feb 2004 Racecar Engineering mag. Understanding that those two motors are as alike as they are different is the key.

2. Passion and interest. Those two things are paramount. This even comes from someone who has the attention span of a knat. If it's boring to you, you will remember jack squat.

Now if it was a perfect world there would be a college that would teach you engine/automotive stuff and the teacher would look like Hedi Klum. I don't know about you but you could teach me anything in that environment and I would probably pay attention.

Now considering this, who wouldn't like to sit around w/ Randy Dorton, Chuck, or Mario Thiessen (BMW's F1 guy, I hope I got that right) for lunch or for even a few months learning little things here and there. I know I would.

Bret

 

Yeah, I'm sorry that I was giving the guy a hard time. I had trouble reading what he was trying to say.



Many schools still teach points ignition systems

 

I never got one reply about that idea

 

Everyone is different when it comes to remembering things. Some people can remember every detail of almost every experience they ever had. Not me, but sometimes I wish I could.

Some people remember isolated facts like baseball stats. Some remember bits of many subjects; I relate to that.

I found out a long while ago that if I understood HOW something worked, I could then gather facts, experiences and data about it and they would stick in my brain, and I could recall them later because I knew how they were related to the whole concept. Engines are a good example. IMO, the more basics you understand, the more each bit of info means.

One of my teachers taught us to derive any formula we needed from more basic ones. Because I'm not good at remembering stuff like that, I still derive when I need the information.

Try to figure out how you remember things best. It may be repetition, so when you learn something new, repeat it to yourself or write it down. You could put all those notes in a loose-leaf binder and read them over every so often. That might help.

It may help to try to explain the new thing to someone else. That works for me. Yeah, I know, it's often boring for them! If you are explaining to someone who really knows the subject, they might help you if your explanation isn't quite right. That might help make it stick.

As UB said, don't feel badly about yourself because others know (or think they know) more than you. Knowing where to find information can be more important that actually remembering it yourself. Keeping your own reference books or shop manuals or internet sites gives you a good start.

I applaud you desires. Keep at it.

My $.02

 

That right there says ALOT. Many times it is not Knowing what you need BUT knowing WHERE to find it

I can build a late model transmission from memory. Some with well over 1,000 moving parts. I still grab a book when I need critical diagnostic Information. This stuff can change from year to year and on some units month to month. Just knowing where to find what I need makes all the differance in the world!

 

You're seeing most of these people in their element. That makes all the world of difference.

We all have strengths and weeknesses. My strengths are in remembering little details, numbers, formulas, stuff that most people could care less about. I always use word associations to remember stuff. For example, I still remember the entry code to my buddy's old Town Car (this was ~1985)... 05574. I remember it by associating 55 with a common speed limit and 74 as the year I graduated high school. The zero just gets thrown in at the beginning. I know it's weird, but that's how I remember everything. Well, that and telling myself, "Self... you need to put this in your long term memory banks!". A desire to remember is as important as having good memory in the first place.

Back to strengths... if you ask me a sports stat, I lose. Ask me something about world history, computers, science, cars, literature, classical/jazz/rock music, commodities, options, investing in general and I'll blow your socks off. But you ask me about the parts in the 700r4 that Ellis probably knows like the back of his hand, and I'm lost. Same with alot of subject matter. Some things are just not an area of interest for me at this time. I say that, because I've found that as I age, I become interested in things I never thought I'd care about. Go figure.

I think everyone at some time in their life has to find their way of learning things. Preferably before they get to college, lol. I have a group of ladies and gentlemen I work with every day and I know each ones strengths and weaknesses. I've also learned how to get points across to each of them.... some are visual, some hands-on, some are audio learners, everyone's different. So you have to learn what works for you.

Best of luck to you.

-Mindgame

 

You know to be honest I try to learn some thing new everyday.

When I am in a job where that is not happening things get boring for me.

One of the things I love about what I do is there is new stuff coming out every day. The bad part? I am the one most are learning from and I some times feel I do not get to learn enough. It can be very distressing at times that is for sure.

Oh well maybe things will change soon...I hope

 

Well most guys on here I presume started young, I had the "bug" for some reason. remembering riding to the dragstrip at age 5 or so in my Dads mid 60's Vette and the race fuel burning my eyes out of the sidepipes, maybe that did it. Even very young my Mom would get PISSED because I would take stuff apart to see just how it worked. Or try to use things not how they were inteneded to be used just to see if it would work that way. I learn most of my really technical brain damage, why does it work that way questions from my Dad. The rest I read and try to apply. I keep all magazines with good stuff in them. I also went to a "Tech" school, but looking back it was nice to have the degree, but would have learned more quicker in some type of apprenticeship program.
Really this type of stuff is quickly becoming a lost art, very few young people want to invest the time to learn or money for the tools it takes to work on todays modern performance engine. Dealerships around here are screaming for good techs, good performance shops are getting fewer, the GOOD ones. Most dealers dont repair any major components, they put in new assemblies, only making the knowledge base smaller.

David

 

like mindgame, i like using word associations to remember things. when i was in my early teens my dad played alot of poker, sometimes staying gone for a couple days straight. i remember helping him one night doing word associations. i would take a deck of cards and show them to him one at a time for about 2-3 seconds each. then when i was done he could call off all 52 cards in the exact order i showed him. VERY impressive, to me atleast!...lol