Mike Holmen

Most autoshops are starter joints for newbie to machanical. After they learn what a wrench is they find a better job like oil field, heavy duty stuff or industrial stuff.

Lil Dog

Heheheh.. And most good automotive techs/mechanics become Gas Compression mechanics, at least thats the ones I work with. AutoTAP (EFILive) is the alternative to the OEM computer link systems and works pretty good from what I have seen.

JHansen

Amen to that J-although around here, the local screw compression shops pretty much raided the ag dealers for manpower.

This statement is probably going to upset a few-rest assured it is not directed at anyone on here specifically, just a general rant. Having a trade certification doesn't mean that you automatically know what you're doing. I am a journeyman partsperson-even though I haven't worked in the trade for 15 years I can still generally look stuff up faster upside down in the catalog (if I can actually convince them to pull the paper versions out ) than the guy on the other side of the counter reading them right-side up. Pretty much gotten to the point anymore that I do my own research and take my own part #'s in-even to the guys I know are sharp.

Between 8 years of slinging parts, and many more than that of either hanging out in shops, supplying shops, or having friends and relatives running shops, I've seen a lot of journeyman guys that ranged from awesome to flat out incompetent. I can think of a couple that come to mind that probably should have been removed from the gene pool so they didn't pass on anything to the rest of society . In that whole time, I can think of only a handful that I would actually hire if I was the guy running the shop.

Don't think that I'm picking on the mechanical trade either. In the 8 years I've been operating out here, there's only a handful of guys I've worked with or gotten to know that I would hire if I was running the show. I've seen guys with 15 years of experience and a steam ticket that can't figure out the concept of how a well actually works. Can't figure out how come some out here haven't killed either themselves or somebody working with them yet.

Jason

cLAYH

Yep I hear you on that one, got two guys at work that I don't think should have tickets.

One is our parts guy, get this, he recently challenged his interprovincial tests. He had 20years experience as a parts person in the militarty. He FAILED the exam by 2% but because the whole class did badly that semester they graded on a curve and he JUST squeaked by. They guy cann't do anything without having to check with me 3 times on it. I gave you the part number just order the bleeping thing!

The other is an englishman that came over 20years ago and got his equilvancy at that time. He had a fit last month and started punching the dash cause he had to replace a switch. He pulled the old one without noting which wires went where and couldn't figure out what wire did what. I told him twice to go get his multimeter before getting PO'd and walking out of the shop. Two days later the truck ends up in my bay, switch not working right, off was on and on was off, switch was working backwards.

He had the positive lead from the battery and the load line going to the beacon on one pole and a ground wire on the other. The was an auto resetting breaker. Thats right he powered the beacon all the time and then grounded the circuit to pop the breaker to make it go out. Thats when I realized just what an idiot he is.

Thundercraft

Taken from their website:
Precautions
ESSO XD-3 EXTRA is manufactured from high
quality petroleum and synthetic base stocks
depending on the grade,...

Taken from the MSDS:
Contains:
Base oil severely refined...


Sounds more like a blend of group III & group IV and not a straight PAO oil.

20 gals or 20 litres?

Dr. Evil

You may be forgetting that there are different grades and flavours of XD-3 extra. They have other grades like 15W40 and 10W30 (and probably a few more) that are all petroleum.

I tend to believe the 0W40 stuff is full group IV syn.

1-5-3-6-2-4

Exactly. xd3 5w-40 synthetic is group III. the DX3 0w-40 is pao IV.