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- Feb 19, 2019
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Back in the "good old days", I was an old school Diesel mechanic. Racks, flyweights, mechanical injectors... some of them didn't have an electrical system at all - air starters (loved that sound!), mechanical cables run through pulleys and connected to levers. Mechanical gauges. I worked on a tugboat that had a locomotive engine in it, connected to the propshaft by a huge rubber airbag that pushed against a friction plate... release the pressure for "neutral", and to put it in reverse propulsion, you shut down the engine and flipped a lever on the air starter, then re-started the engine in reverse rotation. If ever there was someone who should be resistant to "newfangled", it should have been me.
I remember the implementation of electronic spark control on automobiles, and all the dire predictions. I remember the fear of power locks and windows, "what if your car goes in the lake and the electrical system shorts out, you won't be able to escape!" Electronic fuel injection took phobia to a new level, "the police will be able to shut down your car" and "the government will be able to keep your car at the speed limit, what if you have to get to the hospital in a hurry?" I remember wrestling with the earliest Detroit Diesel DDEC machines, when the electronics weren't yet up to the task of the punishing marine environment and "working" on it required an expensive proprietary computer. Travelling in broader circles in the marine industry, I recall carrying power packs, stators, and ECUs for Mercury Offshore engines while working in remote areas with no support. Things with wires failed, but no more frequently than the mechanical systems - we carried water pumps, steering rams, and entire lower units as well. Longer trips, an entire powerhead made the journey with us, thankfully I never had to change one of them in the field. More than anything, fuel quality was the headache.
I remember mechanically modding and digitally tuning my first fuel-injected motorcycle. It was a learning process, but I found it fascinating to be able to precisely control fuel and air at insanely small granularity. What would have been a much longer circular process of tuning/testing in the mechanical world turned into a half-hour on a laptop, with free software and a $35 connector. Now tinkering with electronically-controlled Diesels again, open-source software and a (still) $35 connector, monitoring and adjusting engine parameters that would have been unthinkable back in the days when I first took a 4-foot long x 1-inch drive breaker bar into my hands.
Through this journey, I have seen the cycle of suspicion, contempt, and outright fear exhibited by naysayers toward new technology. It's healthy to question, and a certain amount of questioning results in improvement - but there is a point where it becomes counterproductive. Where would we be today if fear of technology had won at each step, squashing each advancement? Sure, we could all live there... but given the choice, would we?
I remember the implementation of electronic spark control on automobiles, and all the dire predictions. I remember the fear of power locks and windows, "what if your car goes in the lake and the electrical system shorts out, you won't be able to escape!" Electronic fuel injection took phobia to a new level, "the police will be able to shut down your car" and "the government will be able to keep your car at the speed limit, what if you have to get to the hospital in a hurry?" I remember wrestling with the earliest Detroit Diesel DDEC machines, when the electronics weren't yet up to the task of the punishing marine environment and "working" on it required an expensive proprietary computer. Travelling in broader circles in the marine industry, I recall carrying power packs, stators, and ECUs for Mercury Offshore engines while working in remote areas with no support. Things with wires failed, but no more frequently than the mechanical systems - we carried water pumps, steering rams, and entire lower units as well. Longer trips, an entire powerhead made the journey with us, thankfully I never had to change one of them in the field. More than anything, fuel quality was the headache.
I remember mechanically modding and digitally tuning my first fuel-injected motorcycle. It was a learning process, but I found it fascinating to be able to precisely control fuel and air at insanely small granularity. What would have been a much longer circular process of tuning/testing in the mechanical world turned into a half-hour on a laptop, with free software and a $35 connector. Now tinkering with electronically-controlled Diesels again, open-source software and a (still) $35 connector, monitoring and adjusting engine parameters that would have been unthinkable back in the days when I first took a 4-foot long x 1-inch drive breaker bar into my hands.
Through this journey, I have seen the cycle of suspicion, contempt, and outright fear exhibited by naysayers toward new technology. It's healthy to question, and a certain amount of questioning results in improvement - but there is a point where it becomes counterproductive. Where would we be today if fear of technology had won at each step, squashing each advancement? Sure, we could all live there... but given the choice, would we?
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