Old Friend Gloat

I went to the corner convenience store this evening and ran into an old friend that I hadn't seen since I was a teenager and still living in my home town a good 25 miles away. Turns out he is still running race cars and is renting garage space where he works on them right down the street from me. Not having much to do I followed him to his garage to see his cars and who else was there but ANOTHER old friend who I haven't seen for an even longer time. HE is renting some bays a little way down from the other guy. Thick as thieves, we went to grade school and high school together.

Between the two of them there is much banging, grinding, and welding going on. They've been sending parts out to machine shops to have work done on them and they were lamenting their lack of a miller and a lathe. Their eyes lit up when I told them that I have a small machine shop in my basement and would be happy to do their machining work for them (as long as it's not anything that they'd be hanging anyone's safety on).

I haven't seen these guys in 30 years, and there they were, right down the street, so close I could walk there on my hands. Looks like I've got a new hang-out and some really interesting projects in my future.

Reply to
Artemia Salina
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Sounds like trouble to me. That is pretty cool running into them. Happened to me a couple times.

michael

Reply to
michael

My Mom used to say:

"New friends are Silver. But old friends are Gold.!"

Lucky You!! And it is a nice gloat.

Take care.

Brian Laws>I went to the corner convenience store this evening

Reply to
Brian Lawson

Artemia Salina wrote in article ...

As far as I'm concerned, anything that has to be machined or specially fabricated on a race car has someone's safety hanging on it.

If you don't feel you can do a good enough job to "hang" someone's safety on it, or if you are not a stickler for perfection, then you probably shouldn't do ANYTHING involving a race car.

If you fabricate or modify a component without having the full confidence that nobody can do a better job fabricating/modifying that component than you can....and the car crashes and causes injury - or worse - you will be haunted for the rest of your life, wondering if your piece might have been involved in the accident and/or if you might have done a better job.

I've seen this happen to some great fabricators and mechanics who just could not accept the simple fact that, sometimes these things happen in this sport.

There is no room for someone who feels, "I'm good...but, probably not THAT good" in racing. It will bite you!

Reply to
Bob Paulin

Very good "gloat" indeed. A real tribute to your past friendship with those guys. We should all be so fortunate as to renew good friendships after 25 years. Also, there will be special appreciation for being able to help them with their machining projects.

Reply to
Robert Swinney

That's a good point now that you mention it. I suppose a better attitude for me to take is that I won't tackle a job that I don't feel I can do well. Knowing the limits of my skill is the most important thing here. This is beneficial to me though as it will help me to define areas of my skill where I'm weak and ultimately make me a better machinist as a result. Theoretically at least.

Thanks for bringing the point up.

Reply to
Artemia Salina

There's plenty of brackets and such that can be machined and have no safety implications. Sounds like he knows better than to build a wheel spindle.

Reply to
Rex Burkheimer

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