Hard to watch what we grew up with fade away

[dieselguy]

I was at our local SeaDoo dealer the other day getting engine oil and filter for the 2016 boating season. The owner that has had the place for years mentioned in passing that they were no longer doing any carb work on 2 strokes????? Kit prices have skyrocketed and people don't use Stabil or run the fuel out of the carbs like they should. I asked what was new about that and his answer was two fold. One ... cleaning, rebuilding, and tuning carbs takes time away from the mechanic to work on the newer stuff requiring more electronic diagnostic expertise. Two ... employing a mechanic with carb experience is becoming harder to come by. Times are a changing, but mechanically I find it all a bit concerning and sad. Of course there are other businesses that work on carbs, but his example will be followed by others. There's an insane number of carbureted engines still in use by many of us. Just thinking ... In my teen days, we always rode around with a spare set of points and condenser in our glovebox should the engine not fire. Today ... cars don't even have a distributor to put points in ... Ha!

[BB_TX]

I guess maybe carbs have become more complex? In my (very) younger days I used to order carb rebuild kits from the Sears catalogue and rebuild even a four barrel card in a relative short time. And points, plugs, and condenser were a regular event.

[mlh]

Onan don't even make carburetor kits any more. They sell carburetors. For an Onan 4000 watt generator $280.
Lynwood

[pkbridges77]

Diesel guy, I remember encountering this about 4 years ago at Ace hardware looking to repair a Weedeater carburetor. They just said, "it's not worth it." They are building them not to last (especially with Ethanol fuel) and it's just more trouble and costly than it's worth to repair. I didn't really grow up with this throw-away mentality, and it's a hard adjustment for me. Guess that's why I'm now sorting through boxes and boxes of junk that I thought I needed at one time.

[sambam]

Yeah, I miss the days of changing the jets in my Holley double-pumper for more fuel, replacing points and condenser, timing the motor. I stumbled over my timing light the other day and was thinking, wow. Probably never use it again.

[richfaa]

We got to go with the times. The point about running the fuel out of the carb is a good one we do that with our Portable generator every time we are done using it. We rebuilt many a carb in our day and we are now kind of glad we do not use them any more.y

[DQDick]

The times are a changing, but the biggest change for me is the lack of folks with the skills to do the work. That leaves us with a throwaway world since no one can fix anything.

[mlh]

Lots of stuf you can't fix. Appliances come to mind. They have electronic boards and after a few years they aren't made any more. Washing machines have plastic gears that won't last. Stuff like that makes them cheep to make and that is what people won't but they are not worth fixing. Give the average person the choice between machined gears and headlights on a lawnmower and I will bet they take headlights. How many worthless bells and whistles can you put on something.
Lynwood

[pkbridges77]

Ever try to replace a door handle on a refrigerator now? If you can find a good appliance parts store, the handle is the better part of $200 and for another $200'you can get the whole refrigerator. our best appliance part store is very similar to the old fashioned general store. They don't have a computer and keep everything on a ledger pad. I think the most technology they use is microfiche, but all that doesn't help,with the prices.

[sambam]

I fried the motherboard of our flatscreen Panasonic (don't ask), and it's a plasma. I tried to get it fixed but, guess what? They don't make plasma anymore. Too expensive to fix, they say. So now, a beautiful 46" television that was perfect 1 minute, is junk the next because some knucklehead (me) made a mistake. We ARE a throwaway society. I hate it. I've always been a do-it-yourself-er, but I have my limitations and fixing motherboards on a plasma tv is beyond them. So off to Best Buy. Did I say I hate it?

[Dam Worker]

Dieselguy I remember those days. Really don't want to go back to that technology. I remember getting a kit for electronic ignition on my Buick 225 pudgier that I had stuffed into a Chevy luv to get better performance and reliability. Now I have great reliability and just change the plugs every so often. Yeah I still have fond memories but then I realize I would rather have the better technology.
I would like to have my old Road Runner back but I would not want to drive it very far. LOL

Tom Marty

[WaltBennett]

It's not that things are 'going away', it's that assemblies vs. parts prices have drastically changed. It costs far less to get a whole new carb for one of my chain saws, hedge trimmer or blower than to get the parts and pay (or do) the work to rebuild something. Manufacturers also don't make many spare circuit boards for things like TVs, DVD players and other things that have unbelievably low failure rates compared to twenty years back. I spent over forty years doing component level electronic equipment repair and know how time consuming isolating, troubleshooting, and repairing something can be. Today, with laptop prices around $400 - $600 new for something decent, why even think about replacing a mother board. A good replacement 42" TV can be as low as that as well. A good tech will have to charge at least a couple of hundred for their time & expertise to take something apart, find out what went wrong, obtain the correct whatever, and repair it. That's not mentioning having the right tools. (Try getting a plumber to replace a sink and see how much their labor will be!)

I just bought a new point and shoot camera. My 6 year old one was had a bit too much wear and tear (cost $250 new). The new one was just a current model of the older and cost me $230 delivered. This thing will fit in my shirt pocket, take movies as well as stills and in a gazillion different ways. I'm still trying to digest the users guide (the pertinent part is about 3/4" thick!), and recently found that it even has five different music selections it can add to movie backgrounds! The thing is both a mechanical and electronic wonder - but if I drop it and it breaks, I won't cry much if I've got to buy a new one.

In my lifetime, in electronics we've progressed from discrete vacuum tubes to discrete transistors to solid state devices that have whole computers in one tiny chip (as in cell phones). The same is true in just about everything humans make today. Just science and progress, that's all.

[DQDick]

That's all fine and good, but where do we put all the stuff we throw away. At some point someone (our grand kids?) are going to have to seriously deal with the problem.

[CORattler]

Recycle?
We may not be able to recycle 100% but every little bit helps.

quote:Originally posted by DQDick

That's all fine and good, but where do we put all the stuff we throw away. At some point someone (our grand kids?) are going to have to seriously deal with the problem.

[pkbridges77]

There are a few things left that bring great pleasure for the mechanically-minded:

[bigskyjimmy]

Cool ride Paul,My Gramps had one and we would ride in Parades and I would help him tinker with it such good memories As far as the Carb tuning I have ran into that with my Scooters trying to get rebuilt kits ,jets etc... but the heck with it when I can just Go to E Bay and buy a new Carb for the Scooter for 25-30 bucks when one goes bad and call it good and back on the road I go

[richfaa]

I am with Walt Bennett also having spent my entire working life in Electronics. Stuff last longer is more reliable, less expensive to replace. As a Electronic Tech I went from replacing vacuum tubes, resistors, capacitors, etc, actually repairing things to being a board changer. A pace kit that could repair multi level circuit boards cost thousands of $$$ and a three week school to learn how to use it. It was not unusual for me to spend hours on one CKT board in diagnosing and repair. It was less expensive to just replace the board with a new one.

[WaltBennett]

A little story as an example. In '64, I was working midnight shift at Kincheloe AFB (now Chippewa County International Airport) in Michigan's UP. Had one of many drawers of electronics fail in the system I maintained. Replaced said drawer and put it on a tester. Found the core memory unit had failed (a whopping 256 bytes of storage in the size of a coffee mug can). Replaced that, ran the tests again and all was good. Wrote up all the correct paperwork. Thought I'd done everything right until my NCOIC (boss) came in the next morning and after seeing what I'd done started reading me the riot act. Seems that little tin can cost more than his brand new Chevrolet - around $3,800 - and he was upset that I'd just done my job without asking his permission!

Just think about how much memory one can buy today for $3,800.

[richfaa]

This was the first system we had in fact I built one for my personal use it was around 1985.Compaire that with todays systems and todays prices....... The IBM Personal Computer ("PC") was not as powerful as many of the other personal computers it was competing against at the time of its release. The simplest configuration has only 16K on-board RAM and uses an audio cassette to load and save data - the floppy drive was optional, and a hard drive was not supported.

A basic system for home use attaches to an audio tape cassette player and a television set (that means no floppy drives or video monitor) sold for approximately $1,565. PC-DOS, the operating system, was not available on cassette, so this basic system is only capable of running the Microsoft BASIC programming language, which is built-in and included with every PC.

A more typical system for home or school with a memory of 64K bytes, a single diskette drive and its own display, was priced around $3,000.

An expanded system for business with color graphics, two diskette drives, and a printer cost about $4,500.

[mlh]

On the other hand guys 40 years ago did you ever think you would be commutating with hundreds of people all over the US on a telephone by way of a tower miles away. And you could ask it almost any question and it could find the answer and lead you to any address in the country. I don't think I won't to go back to changing spark plugs and besides my business would NOT survive.
Lynwood