"Tim Streater" wrote in message
.. .
In article ,
simon mitchelmore wrote:

You are not alone and I, too, am worried for our future.

Its wider than the Millennials (although they are worst); in our road I
appear
to be the only one who lifts a car bonnet and definitely the only one who
uses
car ramps. I get looks of disbelief as dog walkers walk past and I'm under
my
car.

I'd say cars are too complex to do much of that any more.

You'd be wrong. Its actually much easier now when
the OBD2 tells you which sensor has failed and the
maintenance manual tells you how to change it.

I used to
tinker with my Mini 50 years ago and mostly made a mess of it, so I
gave up. Can you even buy workshop manuals for today's cars?

Yep, and get them for free too.

Don't you
need a computer to check everything?

Nope, just a dirt cheap OBD2 thing now.

The garage will have one but
would the right kit be available to an end-user?

Yep, for peanuts too.

A friend, a GasSafe engineer, summed it up nicely saying in the past he'd
explain what he'd done to fix their central heating but he doesn't bother
now
because many don't know what a boiler is, or want to know, frightening
really.

Teachers should replace 'Meja' studies with Meccano and how to bodge
electrical appliances with insulating tape.

Certainly Meccano, but in my case it was more my brother (then in the
Navy) bringing back some surplus kit like soldering iron and solder,
relays, small lead-acid accumulators, etc. Then I found our old 3-valve
Ministry of Supply wartime radio in the loft and, by soldering a grid
wire back on, and replacing the broken selenium (?) diode with an OA81,
managed to get that working again, enough to listen to Radio Luxembourg
anyway.

--
The truth of the matter is that we Scots have always been more divided
amongst
ourselves than pitted against the English. Scottish history before the
Union of
Parliaments is a gloomy, violent tale of murders, feuds, and tribal
revenge.
Only after the Act of Union did Highlanders and Lowlanders, Picts and
Celts,
begin to recognise one another as fellow citizens.

Tam Dalyell