[Verdoro 68]

My son, who is a Sophomore in High School, has been taking auto shop this year. He's been bragging about all the gear the shop has and how great it is. The instructor has an open shop night every Thursday evening so we visited tonight to use the tire machine.

Seeing a group of gearhead kids covered in grease, chowing down on pizza and helping each other out on the cars really brought me back to High School. If I had a shop like that available back then, I would have been there any chance I could have. So great to see wrenching with your buddies is still a thing and I'm glad they have this opportunity. It was also fun to see my son know his way around the shop. He dismounted a few tires off my Rally IIs and is going to sandblast the rims to prep for paint.

The shop is impressively equipped with a lift, a Mustang dyno, brake lathe, valve grinder, presses, engine test stand, welders and a ton of tools...pretty much anything you'd need for most any project. They also had a really cool library of vintage repair manuals which included THREE original 1968 Pontiac service manuals. The instructor is a rock crawler guy with a worked over propane-powered '62 Scout. We talked shop for a while about old iron.

The T/A generated some convo among the kids in the parking lot, so I couldn't resist the opportunity to pull it in to the bay and show off I can't wait to bring the Goat by for a spin on the dyno when it's done and really blow them away.

[dataway]

Very cool ... every community should have something like that.

[tigergto]

Nice

[Jeff Hamlin]

Good Stuff!

[Half-Inch Stud]

That HS shop class brought to you by....My Science Project

[indymanjoe]

Very cool! i cringe when i see chiltons manuals though

[dataway]

Gotta be honest, while Chilton's tend to "generalize" repairs ... you can sometimes find some gems of information in them. Weird stuff sometimes, part number charts, parts interchange, stuff that often isn't even found in publically available factory publications.

[Half-Inch Stud]

Those MOTOR's Manuals are my favorite, next to the PMD 68 Manual. that is most cool for the youngers to read into.

Manuel showed the Motors Manual's Manual shift rod hookup image to Manuela.

[Verdoro 68]

That picture was one shelf of about 8 or 10 that were filled with various manuals, many factory, dating back to 1947. Lots of ‘60s GM in there.

One of the shop cars is a ‘95 Buick with a supercharged 3.8. It has 1,100 miles on it but it looks more like 200,000. It was apparently donated by GM for the purpose of education back in the day. Crazy.

[grandam1979]

Used the same chiltons manual for 40+ years love it. I took auto body in high school back in the 80’s just your pictures bring back all kinds of memories. Thanks

[mgarblik]

Looks like a typical HS automotive shop. Decent equipment, good lighting, clear walking space. Even a Sears Craftsman wood chipper for the real trouble makers! (just kidding). In Ohio, these smaller shops were mostly closed about 30 years ago and HS students were bused to Joint County Vocational HS their Junior and Senior year. The shops are much larger and even better equipped, but their is something to be said for the smaller HS shops IF they have a GREAT instructor. We visited a minimum of 15 school automotive programs a year with the Beswick Grocery Getter and the Boss Bird over a 20+ year involvement with ASE and Valvoline. That's 300 schools. Lots of good ones still out there with some great students and teachers. Some not the greatest as well. Teacher makes a huge difference IMO. Glad you enjoyed it.

[Verdoro 68]

My go to for a long time was that big black all makes/models '64-'71 Chilton manual. I think I got it for Christmas one year in High School. Still have it on my shelf.

The school dates back to '58. I was surprised at how far back some of their literature goes and the number of vintage tools they had. Really cool stuff. It really gave me the warm and fuzzies to see times haven't changed that much, even if the cars have.

[kingbuzzo]

Nice to see the kids learning a trade and loving it...

[camerjeff]

Really nice to see the kids interested in cars, great to see you can spend some time with your son there!

[Half-Inch Stud]

I think the paper manuals rule while working. Internet and Dealership web instructions just doesn't cut it for me.

[mzbk2l]

Agreed. Throw some sticky notes on the pages in the different sections/books for the project you're working on and it's FAR quicker to open to that page than to restart your search on the web-based manual every time you need to flip back and forth. (Although having the entire library at your fingertips on the web-based search is kinda handy, too...)

[HoovDaddy]

The local High School called me about 6 months before I retired wanting to know if I'd like to assist the Auto Shop teacher teacher. I've been doing it for 6 years and love it. It's fun working with the kids. Nice shop, 7 bays with lifts, computerized equipment. We have 6 late model shop cars that we can bug and students can diagnose. And there is plenty of other repair work on a daily basis.

Times have changed. We don't have old books or manuals not even new text books since covid. All training materials and other necessary repair procedures/specs are electronic through subscription services such as SnapOn, Identifix, AC Delco, Ford ACE, and our diagnostic scanners. That's how the current generation thinks, they don't want to use books. We can access factory service info on any electronic device within seconds. The alignment rack and tire balancer have procedural and instructional data videos back to the early 60s built in. Assignments are electronic as well and parents can track their children's progress daily. Since covid, all students are assigned a laptop to use in school and at home.

They also have the opportunity to get a ASE student certification before they graduate if they pass the test.

We are building a '65 Mustang and a T-Bucket right now. We try to fabricate as much as possible in house on the Bucket, including the frame rails. The Mustang will be repop parts.

[hurryinhoosier62]

All the high school auto shops around here are gone. The school systems didn’t want the expense or liability, so they offloaded the programs to the local vo-tech school (Prosser). What it turns out isn’t encouraging for the future of auto mechanics.

[Baron Von Zeppelin]

Your son is very lucky to be taking that course.
The instructor must really bond with those kids to be having an open shop night.
Have never heard of such a thing before.

I had a great auto mechanics environment in high school.
Brand new central location mega-shop built for all 4 city high schools to use.
Tools and Equipment out the kazoo

[Greg Reid]

That's awesome.
My maternal Grandfather taught HS Auto Mechanics for over 30 years. I have most of his shop manuals here, a couple marked 'Instructor' I have one or two that go back to the early 1940s.