Personally I have a lot to that my father for, he was a farmer but in his youth had a passion for Shortwave, built his own valve receivers and listened to shortwave stations from all over the world, this was late 40's and early 50's. Farmers were a resourceful lot having to fix and maintain all manner of their own plant due to their remoteness from service and repair facilities. He had a small but adequate kit of gear and all manner old old stuff in the sheds which was gladly offered to the young enquiring minds to keep us occupied rather than get under his feet.
After a few stern words about not losing any of his tools and an insistence to return them to where we found them we were off into the big boys world of fixing stuff.
IIRC my first
patient was a Villiers MK 10 engine that was quickly spirited home to the basement where I could tackle with gusto. Some infrequent supervision followed with instruction that it MUST have spark, fuel and compression in order to run. So of course a cocky younster must tackle the most difficult first....spark.
Off came the covers and cowlings to expose the flywheel, under which were the ignition points, that of course must be mandatorily cleaned.
On the Villiers flywheel there was a cover plate and when removed you could look through between the 3 spokes of the flywheel to see the ignition points housing which was covered by another cover plate and once removed you can see, clean and adjust the points.
Not knowing how to proceed I marvelled at the workings in detail, rotating the flywheel too and fro by hand while watching the points open and close and lining up with the timing marks and the piston reaching top dead center.
ZAP Even at such a young age (under 10) I instantly had great respect for electricity and steps that heeded to be taken to keep one safe. That Villiers never bit me again and for a short while later in my teens I worked on all manner of small motors for a living.
Back to the Villiers, Dad showed me how to remove the flywheel, these old Villiers where great in this respect with a captured flywheel nut that when undone pulled the flywheel from the crankshaft taper.
Cleaned the points and was rewarded with a nice spark with a yank on the starter cord.
Then came the carburetor which of course must be duly removed and dismantled and inspected in great detail.
Finally it was all ready to be reassembled and a start attempted......I couldn't wait.
Spark, check.
Petrol, check.
First pull.....nothing, OK
Select full choke.
Second pull.....Yiha, flick choke off..........holy hell, off at full revs....I mean FULL revs.
Shite, I wish I'd mounted this motor on something it was dancing all around the concrete floor of the basement.
How many things rush through your mind when things go bad still amazes me but quickly I realised in my haste to get it running I'd left the speed governor linkage loose.
Young as I was, I just had to man up and grab the thing and press the stop button....
The racket had stopped and I was safe now.
I still remember how hard my heart was beating 50 yrs later.
Hell look at all those marks on the basement concrete floor
.....what can I do to tidy those
ah, broom a little dirt over them.
Yep all kids will try and hide their mistakes.
Just got things sort of tidy and mum appeared wondering what all the commotion was.
Who me? I was a little angel.
Problem identified and fixed....ten minutes later after double and treble checking the governor linkage I had it running like a Swiss watch.
What will be the next victim.....me, that's another story.