On Friday, January 17, 2014 4:26:35 PM UTC-5, wrote:
On Fri, 17 Jan 2014 15:07:45 -0500, Stormin Mormon

wrote:



On 1/17/2014 2:39 PM, wrote:

On Fri, 17 Jan 2014 14:22:48 -0500, Stormin Mormon

So, what happens if he does use lamp cord?



I suspect he didn't know about strain reliefs

(Romex connectors), and that's why he didn't

use them.

People who don't know enough to use romex clamps shouldn't be

playing with electrical wiring Sorry if that sounds harsh -but it's a

safety thing. Kinda like guys who don't know the difference between

brake fluid and washer fluid (or trans fluid) shouldn't work on

brakes.



And, how does one learn the trade?



About twenty years ago, I met a man who had just

brought a rifle home home from the gun store.

AK-47 clone, IIRC. He was having trouble inserting

the magazine. I laid out some cartridges on the bed,

and pushed them together, banana style. See... the

curve goes THIS way.....

You learn the trade by being taught - either in a formal setting

like a trade school, or by mentorship - as in an apprenticeship.

Or by asking the right questions of someone who DOES know - and knows

enough to know what you need to know, and to tell you when you are

over your head..

Some things are common sense - like the curve of an AK mag - while

other things are less so - like, for instance, the REQUIREMENT that

all non metallic sheithed cable be firmly attached to all boxes and

devices - and BX cable has anti-shorts inserted between the wires and

the metal sheathing - and that you only put one wire under a screw

contact, and that all metal objects in an electrical installation are

GROUNDED, and all those more arcane things.


And that there is a difference, chemically, between brake fluid and

power steering fluid, and antifreeze - and that they cannot be

interchanged without causing potentially VERY DANGEROUS damage. - even

though 2 out of 3 smell similar, 2 out of 3 feel similar, and all 3

CAN look similar. You won't live long enough to make all the mistakes

required to learn everything from your own mistakes - and it is

possible you will kill quite a few others before you finally purge the

gene pool of your own brand of ignorance.



You wouldn't believe some of the stuff I've seen as repairs, and even

construction, on vehicles being driven on public highways by their

proud owners/builders - vehicles that I've had to call "the law" about

to have them taken off the road when they wouldn't listen to me when I

told them they were unsafe.(scrutineering at rod shows)


In my view there are two parts to this. The first is to learn basic
electricity concepts, voltage, current, resistance, how current flows
in circuits, etc. That is essential, even if you're just trying to
debug something that is already there that isn't working.

Once you understand that, the other aspect is how to make it code
compliant. If you're going to put in something simple, like a new light fixture,
one place to look is how the existing work was done, assuming it's
relatively new construction. If you look at some other metal boxes,
you'd see that they use cable clamps and are grounded. You would hope
that just considering a romex going into a hole in a metal box with
no clamp would give one pause that it doesn't seem right and they
would ask someone, even at HD, how it's supposed to be done.

There are plenty of books at HD, bookstores, etc that cover both
aspects. And there are online resources too. I just googled
"install new metal box" and there are pages of hits with photos,
videos, instructions, etc.

Interesting that you've brought up cars. When I need to diagnose or
replace something, unless it's obvious, the first thing I do now is
to use google. It's amazing what is out there. For example, my
vintage MB 300SD was making a little rattling sound near the dashboard.
I figured out it was actually coming from the automatic tranny shift
lever and that by just pulling it back a tad, it stopped. I also
noticed that it had some play in it that I hadn't noticed before.

So, I just did some googling for MB 300SD transmission rattle, and
in just a few minutes I found what it almost surely is. There are
3 plastic bushings connecting the lever to the tranny and over time,
they eventually crack and start to fall apart, leading to exactly
the symptoms I have. A few mins more googling lead me to a company
that has a kit for $40 that includes the bushings, two special tools
to put them in and instructions. It sounds like the tools are almost essential, because it has to be done from under the car, reaching up into between the tranny and tranny tunnel. If I started going in blind,
I'd probably waste hours trying to figure out what it was, how to
do it, etc.

That's just one example. In other cases, a little googling lead
to several videos people made of how to do the car repair. As I've
said many times, google is your friend....