First Of A New Breed
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11.0 And then they were seven
On the day of the assembly of the Dodge Hemi engine every one of the trainees gathered and the plastic parts of the engine was right there in front of them. After about two hours of shuffling, movement and talk, the assembly process had not started. Stress and confusion started appearing in the faces of the trainees as well as argument amongst them as to which procedure to follow. We had a head count and three heads were missing so we decided to provide further support. We advised them, just as the assembly manual did, to follow the steps outlined in the manual. We further did another multimedia presentation of the Doge Hemi in action in a 3D animated Video sequence so that it would be easy to see what exactly they are trying to achieve. Understandably, certain parts of the manual was not quite clear especially the parts referring to components on the left and right banks of the engine and the way the pushrods were to be fitted to either side of the engine ( don’t worry if you do not know what a pushrod is) Three days later, with glue sticking to virtually everything in the training room and regular SOS calls to our lecturers, a roar erupted in the training room marking the successful testing of the assembled model engine. For the first time since the beginning of the program, confidence and self reliance replaced confusion and fear.
The Trainees were hugging and congratulating one another and everyone was screaming that they wanted not a model engine but a full engine to work with. The amount of concentration the trainees displayed during this period made it impossible to notice that two people were missing and the excitement made everyone forget their names. No one knew when or why they stopped coming for the training. Like the Spartans of old , the trainees started shouting Give us the Peugeot !!! , Give us the Peugeot !!!. Give us the Peugeot !!! This time, the war cry was genuine, everyone was now fired up and ready to dismantle anything that used petrol. Again we went through the real engine disassembly issues, lost washers, over tightened bolts, wrong tightening, sequences, marking of mating surfaces, application of grease and various lubricants and sealants. And like a goat thrown into the Roman colosseum, to fire the excitement of the crowd, we released our one cylinder two stroke engine petrol AC generator for complete dismantling, servicing and assembly. In a record time of thirty minutes, the trainees jointly consumed the generator, digested it and spit it out better than new. Further more each of them insisted that it could be done by one person in even less the time. They all achieved this successfully. After the euphoria of the successful test died down, the blues set in. One of the trainees complained bitterly that he could not understand why the school system could not provide a simple means of making these items available and the lectures more meaningful. He confided in us that he had learnt more about engineering in these few weeks than the whole five years he spent in school. That it was during the course of this program that concepts like Electromagnetic Induction, AC , DC voltages , Hall effect , Potentiometers, Bimetal Strips , Convection , Relays and switches made sense. Also several practical applications of kinematics made sense for the first time, on seeing several four bar linkages used in the automobile, though he passed all the courses relating to it. He admitted that prior to this program, he could not connect real vehicle batteries in parallel or in series, he could talk about it but he did not have a clue about what he was talking about. Another insisted that most of these subsystems were quite easy to understand if they are explained by someone who has practical experience with them. He however agreed that it would still take some time and practice for all the things they learnt to sink in . Yet another of the trainees suggested a complete change in the curriculum and involvement of competent trainers from any field to help the students. He felt that the Faculties in the various institutions should be involved in locating people in the industry that can be coerced to help the students. He wondered what the thermodynamics lectures were achieving if one had not had a first hand experience with ‘industrial heat’. Collectively, the trainees agreed that most students really did not like to learn anything, that their main reason for going to school was to get be in the good books of their parents , to make some money or make them more sellable when its time to marry . As the training had to continue and having a lot to do in so short a time, we had to abandon the course on reflections and face the vehicles awaiting us.
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