Can someone help me with the hood tach location on a 69 trans am hood, I made a templete from the original 67 ram air hood I have but it won't work on the trans am hood, scoops are in the way
I hope the owner thinks that the black hood and trunk lid look good because I certainly don't. But since it is a "restoration" that must be the way it cam from the factory.
I can share a bright spot, at least in my own life. My oldest is now a civil engineer. He has been doing well for the last few years at the firm where he was hired, before he graduated college. He has also been working with me since he was about ten years old weekends and summers, at our family construction company. He has been with me on additions, custom homes and commercial projects. When he was hired by his company he was told that one of the reasons they chose him was his hands on job site experience. He says that day to day he uses the things he learned actually working on our jobs more than the things he learned in school. Especially problem solving. He still helps me on weekends, and I have to say it I enjoy working with him immensely. I even understand one or two of the things he says when talking about his job. LOL
The thing that I resent most is that today's Mechanical Engineers or any BSME for that matter is quickly promoted to Senior Engineer in a year or two and senior manager with 3-4 years experience, Director 6 years,- WTF!. Thats is BS!!! Took me over 10 years to be a senior ME, gotta have the experience first, man has the world changed!
This is due to the younger generation having no interest in these classic fields. We cannot find any well educated engineering grad students that have a grasp of common sense or willing to put in the work to figure it out. They all seem to want top of the line pay for below average skills. I'd say we weed through about 10-15 rejects to find one 'reasonably skilled' grad worth hiring. Then we need to fight off the competition for the next ten years to keep them from being stolen. Youngsters seem to want to go into computer stuff and animation. Or sit on their butts in Mom's basement. Can you tell I had a bad day?
Well said, keep teaching them respect like we were thought. And I agree, manufacturing is and has been in serious trouble. I'm in the same line of work as you. The thing that I resent most is that today's Mechanical Engineers or any BSME for that matter is quickly promoted to Senior Engineer in a year or two and senior manager with 3-4 years experience, Director 6 years,- WTF!. Thats is BS!!! Took me over 10 years to be a senior ME, gotta have the experience first, man has the world changed!
There are bright spots… Recently attend the wedding of a life long friend’s daughter. She has a PHD in physical therapy and her new husband is a freshly minted lawyer. Truly overachievers. Their group of friends are also over achievers. Super nice, smart group of kids. Really fun to be around. Tells me it is possible with the right push and desire so I guess there is hope but this group of kids are rare for sure. Surely not representative of my everyday experience in manufacturing.
Amen to that, Dennis. I own an MSP (Managed Service Provider) so I am around all the tech gadgets all day. I live an breathe technology for 45-50 hours a week. I don't do on call anymore, and once I leave the office on Friday, the cell phone gets silenced and pretty much left on a table. My customers often say, "I'd love to see the inside of your house, I bet it is so cool! How is it all tied together and automated?" That makes me laugh, as at home, I am a Luddite. I have a crappy, bottom of the line wireless router, and the slowest internet offered. Nothing in my house is tied to the internet. I've read all the terms of service and privacy policy... I don't agree.
At work, when I interview someone, I make the write... yes write, steps out to solve basic problems. No resources. If they write the letter "u" instead of you, interview over.
I know every generation thinks the younger generations are exponentially dumber, but I really have never seen anything like the complete ignorance of our "educated" kids coming out of government schools. I guess the best term is functionally illiterate.
Lol, yeah, we’re in serious trouble. I run a CNC machine shop and tool design group. The freshly minted mechanical engineers are very smart but you have to surgically remove their phone or they don’t get anything done. The young, entry level shop guys fall into two buckets, useless untrainable, really not bright people who think they know everything because they watched a YT video or bright but struggle with work ethic problems. Most exhibit social skill issues. Shop personality is old school. We take no crap. Strict rule of no phones on the floor. Strict attendance policy. We spend a lot of time helping those with desire to succeed do so. Proud to say we have several entry level guys that have stayed with us for 7-10 years and learned a trade they can now rely on. They have grown into responsible citizens, homes, families, nice living and are now a roll models for current entry level guys. Sadly, for every person that makes it, many do not. The churn is exhausting and I’ve never seen the incoming talent as bad as it is today. Parents, schools are failing these kids. While we can hire, we cannot replace the talent retiring fast enough. My peers in manufacturing all say the same thing. Manufacturing in this country is in serious trouble. I’m so glad to be at the end of my career.
What I find really disturbing is how dumb and easily suckered we've become while some great information is available readily on the internet, but people won't use it. .
We have had to go back and teach feet, inches, fractions, metric, etc etc, it takes time away from learning the trade, the state recognized the problem and instead of addressing it they mandated a certain amount of time and content of math for us to cover or we'd be in violation,
Ha, I was just discussing feet, inches, and fractions with my youngest daughter yesterday. I told her that when I was in fourth or fifth grade (think 1973?) we were all taught the metric system because "US Government will require a change away from feet and inches" in the US "within a couple of years". Giggle, remember how well that all worked out?
I remember back then working in the construction industry that for a short time things were described in metric terms. I don't remember just what the numbers were but if you measured the metric piece of wall paneling it was 4' x 8'. On top of that just a few years earlier I bought a '65 Triumph motorcycle and had to learn the wentworth system for hand tools.
It's worth the money just for the block & crank. Only issue you may have is having the correct engine mounts locations on the block, there are adapter plates that solve that problem. Listen to engine run, if seems fine, clean it up & put it in! If and/or when it goes belly up, perfect bottom end to build. Lots of quality parts out there now, can build a nice stout 455 for not a ton of money. You might get lucky & have it run strong for a good time. Buy it!
All I can say is go over to PY under parts for sale and search for 326 and count how many got top dollar for a complete engine. Parts yes but the block nobody appears to want.
Thank you all for the great info, defiantly appreciated!
I got the 455 the other day and, it barely turns 90 degrees then stops. I pulled the plugs and cylinders 2 & 4 had rust on the plugs so I'm soaking all the cylinders with MMO and wd40. Hoping it comes around! I didn't get a chance to pull the heads yet but, the casting on them says "5" and that it, i can't find any info out there that in '74 they used a "5" casting number, the secondary casting is 16, any ideas on what heads these may be? I'll get pics soon.
My plans for the 455 is to at least get it up and running and run it for a few years until i can afford to have it gone through and put some better parts into it.
I am definitely going to keep the 350 around until i know for sure the 455 is a runner, good idea unconn86hgiv!
What I find really disturbing is how dumb and easily suckered we've become while some great information is available readily on the internet, but people won't use it.
With very little effort anyone could be an Einstein now with what is available, but people and kids go to garbage, for example look at a link on youtube on how X gets done by an expert, it will have 400 views, then look at man falls down stairs and gets run over by car on YT and it has millions of views, that and boobies, anything on a 4th grade level or less gets more attention. I taught HVACR post HS for 20 years, in 2004-5 we saw a huge drop off, people had HS diploma's but knew nothing, what's an inch? a 1/4"???? we had just gotten the first HSer's that went 4 years under NCLB, which makes schools pass people. But they're quick with the dumb phone internet search and they find whatever and share it. It became madness because it was next to impossible to police. In HVACR there is a distributor in cooling and refrigeration that spreads the refrigerant evenly into the evaporator, it's brass with copper lines, a question on a test asked about it, one of our students googled it and then shared it with the class, so everyone answered the same thing, that it delivered the spark to the plugs through the rotor to the wires, since they all had the exact same very wrong answer we were able to track it down, but they don't want to try, they want it instant and now, then they go back to spending hours looking at people showing off, committing crimes, boobies, and people wiping out.
We have had to go back and teach feet, inches, fractions, metric, etc etc, it takes time away from learning the trade, the state recognized the problem and instead of addressing it they mandated a certain amount of time and content of math for us to cover or we'd be in violation,
Ha, I was just discussing feet, inches, and fractions with my youngest daughter yesterday. I told her that when I was in fourth or fifth grade (think 1973?) we were all taught the metric system because "US Government will require a change away from feet and inches" in the US "within a couple of years". Giggle, remember how well that all worked out?
What I find really disturbing is how dumb and easily suckered we've become while some great information is available readily on the internet, but people won't use it.
With very little effort anyone could be an Einstein now with what is available, but people and kids go to garbage, for example look at a link on youtube on how X gets done by an expert, it will have 400 views, then look at man falls down stairs and gets run over by car on YT and it has millions of views, that and boobies, anything on a 4th grade level or less gets more attention. I taught HVACR post HS for 20 years, in 2004-5 we saw a huge drop off, people had HS diploma's but knew nothing, what's an inch? a 1/4"???? we had just gotten the first HSer's that went 4 years under NCLB, which makes schools pass people. But they're quick with the dumb phone internet search and they find whatever and share it. It became madness because it was next to impossible to police. In HVACR there is a distributor in cooling and refrigeration that spreads the refrigerant evenly into the evaporator, it's brass with copper lines, a question on a test asked about it, one of our students googled it and then shared it with the class, so everyone answered the same thing, that it delivered the spark to the plugs through the rotor to the wires, since they all had the exact same very wrong answer we were able to track it down, but they don't want to try, they want it instant and now, then they go back to spending hours looking at people showing off, committing crimes, boobies, and people wiping out.
We have had to go back and teach feet, inches, fractions, metric, etc etc, it takes time away from learning the trade, the state recognized the problem and instead of addressing it they mandated a certain amount of time and content of math for us to cover or we'd be in violation,
I’m loving this thread, haven’t been on for a while and just thought I’d check in, this discussion hit close to home. My youngest ( just graduated college) and I just had an (argument) sorry, discussion over my assertion that first hand knowledge would always be superior learning things second hand. He told me about how he could read about more things than I could ever experience. Well, you can’t argue with that but when I told him that anything written would first have to be experienced by someone firsthand, he told me that I needed to get out more.! I could not help myself, it had to be said! “You mean,” I asked, “get out more and experience things first hand”? I then reminded him, “I HAVE been out more, forty years more.” I guess these type of replies are what eared me my “A-hole” status with him. In any case he did not reply.
Why would you need to know anything or figure it out when all the "information" you will ever need is sitting in your pocket. I am trying to teach my kids to figure things out without the use of the internet. Rebuilding a 327 SBC at the moment with my oldest and he thought I was nuts when I pulled out a book on rebuilding a Chevy Smallblock and started taking notes. "Why don't you find a video on that". Seriously...
All the crap schools teach them with does nothing but shorten attention spans and reinforce lack of attention to detail. I am very concerned for a lot of things, hell.. I can't even find a kid who can understand the concept of how a clutch works.... let alone trying to explain how a torque converter works.
It saddens me greatly to see such a rapid decline in a mere 30 years.
Yeah it's pretty sad, we've become a failed society, of course if I didn't respect my elders my dad straightened me out, these days, every one knows everything, I won't go into the why's but we've become a society by design that holds opinion over all else.
The Pontiac history and the Goat and Firebird seem to be pretty complicated and took me a while to figure them out and I still find new info and stories, thankfully I have this site and all my old HP Pontiac magazines with some great tech info and of course Nunzi, amazes me how complicated the Firebird first gen info is, I wonder if it's because DeLorean was a complicated man with a vision to make Pontiac huge in sales so he could move up, he was a real Maverick and seemed to like to break the GM rules, let's face it the 67 400 bird does not meet the rules, bent throttle linkage or not.
Before I banned FB I hung out on the Firebird and GTO pages. Someone would need some help with something and 4 or 5 dumbasses would answer with the wrong information. I’d provide the correct answer then 4 or 5 more dumbasses would chime in again. I felt sorry for the poor schlub that needed help.
