Blog 25: Mentorship

Literal:

Click here to view my log of up to date mentorship hours.

Mentorship: 

Daniel's Auto Center

Jorge Ramos

(626) 814-4694

Interpretive:

I would have to say that the most important thing that I gained from my experience at my mentorship would have to the all the knowledge that I gained from the hands-on learning that I did at the shop. The reason for this is that, not only did I learn a lot, but I also got to put all that I learned to the test. I learned a lot at the shop that I could have learned from articles or books on automotive mechanics, but I learned it a lot faster by actually doing what I taught. I think this is important because all the knowledge that I gained from my mentorship is something that I will carry with me my whole life and that will help me throughout my whole life and even more if I choose to go into auto-mechanics for a living. 

Applied: 

Everything that I did at the shop helped me answer my EQ because everything that I was learning was auto-mechanics and I was learning about all the important parts of a car and what a car can't and can go without. I found two of my answers from paying attention to what customers brought their cars in for and learned what parts give people the most problems and which of those problems can become deadly for the car's mechanical life. The other answer, I got from my mentor from what he told me about engine oil, which was also at the shop. 

Blog 24: Exit Interview Questions

1) What is your essential question? What is your best answer to your essential question and why?

- My essential question is, what is the most important factor in extending the mechanical life of an automobile? My best answer to my essential question is regular oil changes because, as my mentor, Jorge Ramos, said: "Engine oil is like the blood of a car." Engine is what keeps your car running. You can have a prefect engine, a full tank of gas and any additional parts you want to increase horse power, increase efficiency, etc. but without oil your car won't run. Engine oil keeps all of the metal parts in your car lubricated so that your engine doesn't blow up from the friction cause by the parts. This is why, when compared to my other two answers, engine oil comes out on top. You can keep your car in almost perfect condition by replacing parts at certain miles and always making sure that your sensors are working but without properly maintained engine oil, your car's engine will be at risk. 

2) What process did you take to arrive at this answer? 

- The process to arrive at this answer wasn't very long, it was the process to arrive to the conclusion that regular oil changes was the most important factor in extending the mechanical life of a car, that was long. To find this answer, I simply asked my mentor what he thought was most important in a car. He said the fluids of the car were most important but he didn't specify what fluids. I later dug deeper into my research and paid more attention at the cars that customers brought into a shop to see what caused people the most problems when it came to their cars. I found that faulty sensors caused a lot of problems as well as parts that need to be replaced every so often miles. These two became my other two answers for my EQ. I then took these three answers and weighed them out and started looking at what the consequences of each were and came to the conclusion that you can change mile marker, or milestone, parts as often as you want and you can have your sensors in tip top shape all the time but if you don't keep your engine oil clean and healthy, your car will not last you and new sensors and mile marker parts will have been for nothing. 

3) What problems did you face? How did you resolve them? 

- Throughout the year, I only faced two problems. The first was that when I first started researching for my senior project, I started off with articles that were really technical and had a lot of words that I didn't know, which led to me misunderstanding what I was learning. I resolved this by toning down the academic level of my research. The second was that I couldn't find a mentor. I found a lot of shops that were willing to help me but one of three problems always occurred. One, the shop didn't have enough room for since I wasn't an actual mechanic and would  be taking up too much space in such a crowded work area. Two, I had to take and complete an automotive class before the shop let me work with them to avoid probable and fatal mistakes that I could've made on the customers' cars. Three, liability issues with the insurance of the shop. One of these three was always a problem with the shops that I tried to get mentorship with. I actually didn't resolve this, I got this resolved for me by my friend, Yareli. She asked her dad if I could work with him and he said no, but her dad asked her uncle if I could work with them and he gladly said yes. That resolved my whole issue.  After that, I didn't have any problems because any questions that I had, my mentor answered. Even now, whenever I find that I have questions about an article that is a bit too technical for me, I ask my mentor to dumb it down for me and he does. 

4) What are the two most significant sources you used to answer your essential question and why? 

- My two most significant sources were the Engine Bible on carbibles.com and my mentor, Jorge Ramos. The Engine Bible is what the name of it states; it's everything and anything you need to know about how an engine works, the different types of engines, possible problems with engines, how to take care of an engine and informative videos about engines. My mentor was a big help because when ever I had a question about something I didn't understand on carbibles.com or any other article, he'd dumb it down for me as much as possible. He also spent a lot of time with me working on cars and walking me step by step on how to do a job such as changing the transmission fluid or engine oil of a car, replacing the oxygen sensor of a car or changing the timing belt of a car. These jobs helped me figure out what a car couldn't function without and he helped me understand how important engine oil was In a car. So, I guess you could say my two most important sources worked in unison: one gave me written information and the other clarified any information I didn't fully understand. 

5) What is your product and why? 

- My final product is that I acquired the ability to be able to work on my car and the cars of my family members at home. I acquired this ability through the information I learned from articles and the hands on learning I got at my mentorship. Without my research and my mentorship, I could not have learned any of this without taking an automotive class in college. 

Blog 23: 2014 Interview

1) Susie Davidson (East House)

2) I don't know but I really like horses so I was thinking if I could so something with that.

3) There's a stable by my house where I take my horses that would probably let me take them there. 

4) I see that a lot of people are working really hard and I hope to see some really informative presentations.

5) No

Blog 21: Independent component 2

Literal

A) I, Omar Rodriguez, affirm that I completed my independent component which represents 30 hours of work. 

B) The sources that helped me complete my second independent component were my mentors, Jorge Ramos, Carlos Ortega and Victor Mendoza. 

C) This is a log of my hours. Hours Log

D) For my independent component 2, I continued my hands on learning at Daniel's Auto Center in La Puente with my mentor, Jorge Ramos. Because I was doing more hours of service learning, I got to get more experience in the field of auto mechanics which helped me in finding my second and third answers to my EQ. 

Interpretive 

During my second independent component, I learned a lot more than I would have through any research article or any amount of research. The reason for this was because I was getting hands on learning with 3 automotive mechanics who always showed me how to complete a job step-by-step. Not only did they show me step-by-step instructions on how to do things, but also gave me an explanation of why certain things were done in a certain order and how to do them. For example, Carlos - one of my mentors - and I were working on the torque tables of a 1991 Chevy S10 Blazer which required a lot of work such as removing the entire intake manifold, the thermostat, and the rocker arms. At the end of this job, we had to put everything back on which required the cylinder head bolts to be torqued to specifications. I didn't know what it meant to torque a cylinder head bolt or even that when you do, you have to torque the bolts in a specific order. Carlos explained to me that you have to torque the cylinder head bolts in order because each bolt has a certain amount of torque to be applied on it that can only be achieved if the previous bolt is torqued properly and if you don't, one bolt will have more or less weight on them than required which will also cause the cylinder head gasket to not seal properly. This is only one example of how my mentors helped me. My mentor, Jorge Ramos, also taught me something really important when we changed the the switch for the headlights of a car (I never could remember the proper name for it) next to the steering wheel. Because we had to remove the steering wheel of the car, we had to remove the airbag in the steering wheel. It was at this time that he taught me that all yellow wires in a car are very vital because when they're covered in a yellow plastic, it means that they are connected to the air bag system. 

Here's the yellow wire I was talking about. That's also where the steering wheel is supposed to be.

And here's the steering wheel without the airbag. 

These top two pictures are from that same job. It's a picture of all the wiring under the steering wheel. On the bottom picture you can see the switch hanging off. 

This is the camshaft pulley of a 2001 Chrysler Pacifica. 

And now this picture. This is from one of the most time consuming jobs we've ever had. This is from when we had to replace the heater core of 2001 Ford Expedition. 

This independent post also contains some pictures of my independent component. 

Applied

This component helped me come up with my answers because of all of the time I spent doing hands on work. It helped me understand what's really important in a car, what keeps it running and my mentors helped me come up with ways to word my answers and explain them. 

The Mayor didn't want to work with us...

Today I went back to the shop for a couple hours to kill some time and I found out the mayor didn't want us to fix his car because it was too expensive and he didn't think the car was worth it. I agree with him, though. His Lexus was in really bad condition and needed a lot of work done. The downside of this is that we won't be working on the mayor's car but the upside of this is that my mentor and I won't have to fix the cylinder heads, which means we won't have to work on the car for 20 hours! Whoo!

Kügel Motor Video

So I found this really cool video explaining how the Spherical engine mentioned in my last post works. It goes step by step on how it works and give details of what is really going on in the engine.

Kugel is German for "ball"

So, I found this really cool engine 2 weeks ago. I read about it in a couple of articles (that I couldn't count as an article for RC because they weren't over 750 words) and I found it really interesting. I'm still a little confused on the whole mechanics of it all but I'm going to start searching up more articles about it and get a better understanding. So, the engine was designed by Dr. H üttlin and his team and was displayed at the Geneva Motor Show in 2011. He named it the kugelmotor because kugel is German for ball and the engine itself if a spherical engine. My understanding of it, so far, is that the engine's spherical design gives you the milage of a hybrid engine and runs on almost any fuel. Like I said, I still don't fully understand the mechanics of it. I just thought it was a really cool concept for an engine.

Here are a variety of pictures of the Hüttlin Spherical Engine