Fiona's Letters TAFE Motor Mechanic Training Course for Girls Week Fourteen Hello again, Things are really starting to wind down now and, on average, there are only 3 or 4 of us turning up every day. Three of us are the die-hard regulars and then perhaps an extra or two will make a cameo appearance for half or all day. As suspected, because numbers dropped and the original lesson structures were for the full contingent of 16 people, we have gotten through the work a lot faster than anticipated. On Tuesday we did a little car servicing and worked on a classmate's Ford F100 that needed the brake fluid to be changed and the lines bled to push the old fluid out and get rid of any air. It wasn't as straightforward as it should have been since 2 of the bleeder nipples were metric sizes and the others imperial. The metric ones must have been replacements for broken ones but we still gave the car's owner a hard time about having odd-sized nipples - as you do. We're hoping to do some more work on servicing this week and get a little more practical experience in before the course finishes. On Thursday we got to use the bearing presses and remove and replace bearings from rear axle ends. These had ball-bearing races in them and we had to make sure the bearing was put back on with the balls towards the correct end of the axle. The aforementioned owner of the F100 accidentally put hers back on with her balls facing the wrong way around so not only was suffering from odd-sized nipples but inverted balls as well. She had a tough week.......... The presses were easy to operate and can exert anywhere from 8kgs of pressure up to 100kgs, depending on the size of the press. The bearings we practised with, like most bearings, were tolerance fit, meaning that the difference between their inner diameter and the outer diameter of the shaft they are being pressed onto is only 1000ths of an inch. But there is no way you could push these on or remove by hand. In some instances, the bearings need to be heated up so they expand to allow them to be fitted and then when they cool down again they are secure. Riveting stuff - no pun intended! On Friday we put some of our multimeter testing skills to good use and fixed faulty headlights on one of the TAFE cars. The wiring diagram we had was hard to decipher and made more sense after we'd fixed the problem. Oh, well, we can't be good at everything but at least the job was done before home time. OK, until next week, behave! Cheers, Fiona xx ;) Go to first page - Index - Next page

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