Yes, the things we were allowed to do at school.... the staff would go to jail for it now!
I remember motor mechanics lessons, We, the school, were donated an old car. Standard 8 or bull nose morris type of thing. Old fashioned even then as monocoque design and sub frames were taking over. The idea was to teach rudimentary car maintenance and simple repairs. When Our teachers discovered just how poor the bodywork was, it was decided that we would strip the body off and use it as a training aid and teaching tool so we could understand how a car worked and all the tech and engineering principles that go into designing one. So we all got on with that for a term. Stripping of the body, cleaning off what was to be kept and eventually it was deemed the right time to section the engine, gearbox and differential so that the internal mechanisms could be seen working.
Some of us had agreed to do this during the summer holidays by giving up one of our sailing days. Well, when we arrived on the first day to start the work the teachers decided it would be a good ides to see if we could get it running in order to flush the engine better of oil and water before we started removing the main components. We were told it ran by the person who donated the car so back on went the rad and hoses, topped up with water and checked other fluids etc. Of course it was still a rusty old lump and the clutch had stuck so some in gear violence took place until we managed to free it off! Then followed a few more rudimentary checks, distributor sorted and aligned correctly for timing, plugs cleaned and a dynamo drive belt fitted.
Would you believe it, it fired first turn of the key! A few such remarks as "blimy, better than my dad's car that". could be heard rippling through those there. One of the teachers then jumped into the one remaining seat, Fitted in order to manoeuvre the car in the workshop, and started to drive it around the school field! After 5 or so minutes he came back to the workshop with a big grin on his face and announced...... "I've got a great idea, we'll teach you boys how to drive a car this holiday so that when you start your lessons for real you'll have a head start"!
Well, true to their word they did exactly that. And in the group we all got some rudimentary training during the first half of the holiday and by the time we started to turn the car, sorry rolling chassis into a training aid we could all drive it around the field, use the gears and steer accurately. With the aid of some cones most of us learnt how to reverse park as well.
We would have been on news at 10 had we tried to do it in these days and not with being praised for excellent training and forward thinking, Oh no, more like a court appearance for teaching malpractice! AmI glad I was born when I was....... you bet I am!
