End of the School Year!

Our shop at school has plenty of lifts, tools, space, etc. 

Mr. Alice Cooper has a little ditty called Schools Out For Summer, and that's our theme song for today! In the Automotive Diagnosis class, we wrapped things up, took a last chapter test, cleaned our tool boxes, and finished working on some cars and trucks. I don't have any classes this summer, so I'll be back in August with my final three automotive classes: manual transmissions, fuel systems, and suspension/alignment. Grades? Yeah, we get grades. Put me down for an A on this one!

The Automotive program only does Air Conditioning and Brake classes in the summer, and I completed those last year. If you're near Rock Hill and need AC or brakes, I know a guy that can help you out. 

BMW Z3

It took a LOT of transmission fluid to fill the 93 Ford F350. Our manual said the total capacity was 15 quarts.  

Overhead engine cradle in action. 

One fun part of the last day is that we also got some Chick-fil-A for the class, provided by the grateful owner of the F350 that my group worked on. His transmission is now working smoothly, all gears are solid, the electrical wires are tight, and life is good after only 380,000 miles! The people that allow us to work on their cars only pay for parts, and they really don't owe us anything, so this was very generous of the truck owner. Sure, he probably got his money's worth out of the transmission job, and we got to learn a lot about the Ford automatic transmission in a 93 Super Duty. 

Our instructor Rob working with students. 

After the transmission work, we did a little work to straighten the steering wheel on the alignment rack. 

I believe this is titled "Student buys $200 VW Beetle, and gets it running!"

Chevy Tahoe transmission parts. And some of the exhaust that was in the way. 
On the left, the transmission pan is sitting on the transmission housing, and of course you noticed that this does NOT have a fluid drain plug. On the right, the green round thing is a torque converter. Apparently this replacement converter was bad, so it was replaced, and then all this stuff went back on the truck. 

More transmission work on a valve body. In this one, the orange plastic is a one piece solenoid pack. Makes replacing them all easy, but if only one of the solenoids was bad, I guess you're buying them all. 

Getting in "gear." OK, I'm not a comedian. 

Just for fun, since I recently posted about the new tool boxes at home, here's a quick look at our tool boxes at school. Each team of students uses one of these Harbor Freight 5 drawer cars, with a Gear Wrench set of tools. York Technical College got these carts and tools in January 2024, and they are holding up well. Besides the drawers, there is some storage on the bottom shelf, so we put parts and bolts taken off down there to get them out of the way. 

Here is the Orange Team's box. We also have blue, red, green, and black carts in this shop. In another building on campus, there are two other shops, and they all have similar boxes and tools. The school has a list of tools you should buy, but that's not required. We're also allowed to use our own tools at school. 

My blue team put the 1/4 inch drive stuff on the top shelf. The black case has other Allen wrench sockets, Torx, etc. 

In the two smaller drawers we put wrenches and pliers. The cheap set of four picks weren't in the set, so I bought this awesome $2 set at Harbor Freight to use at school. They came in handy with removing O rings and seals on transmissions. 

Next drawer down we put the next larger 3/8 socket set and our two hammers. Remember, if you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail!

Bottom drawer with the largest sockets we have, the 1/2 inch drive, and a screwdriver set. This socket set included some standard wrenches too.