I meant no disrespect with the Customer Service comment. Granted, the job requires a respectable amount of knowledge on the material so they do, surely, know what they're doing (not just some high school wanker looking for a job), but it's not as dignified a title as, say, Sr. Technical Director (or whatever your title may be).

I'll definitely take you up on that PM offer (and would never hesitate otherwise), but real quick, what exactly do you mean by "central business?" As you can imagine, my singular passion is for the automobile (or anything, for that matter, that defies God by taking man to the sky or to speeds once reserved for radiowaves), including R/D, design, manufacturing, testing, sales, etc. What, then, would be central business?

 

No disrespect taken. I just meant to say that there is some joy to be found in that kind of work.

All I meant by "central" was that I feel strongly that your job ought to be what your company does. A finance guy in a bank; a computer guy in a computer company... That kind of thing. Thus, what you do is in fact tied to your company's fortunes.

I just think there's more satisfaction in that, Alex, than being the finance guy in the computer company, or the computer guy in the bank... See what I mean?

Of course, businesses are always changing... Things are never easy.

 

Great explanation.

I guess it'd be difficult to be the car guy in the sex toy company, but maybe not the accountant in the car company. Nevertheless, I'll definitely keep that in mind when looking for my first big job in my career. I daresay I'm actually old enough to already have a career.

It's weird, though. If you look at auto racing, even the prestigious F1, CART, and NASCAR (no matter how redneck) have their odd-balls. In F1, David Coulthard is a self-proclaimed non-car guy; he's chauffeured around in a Peugeot! With most of the newer CART guys (Tracy, Andretti, Fittipaldi obviously not included), the drivers usually don't know shit about how to build/tune their cars. They only know how to drive them fast - I guess they do that well enough to not have to know the other stuff - so that's why they have their engineers.

Then there's NASCAR, where all the drivers know how to do are turn left and tell their crew chief if it handles loose or tight.

Oh well. I'm all for distributors and carburetors, shadetree mechanics, and grassroots racing...

 

I hate how xviper doesn't use blank lines in between his paragraphs.

 

Alex, if the big three aren't for you, maybe there's something going on in one of the tuner shops somewhere. Anyway, I'm not worried about you, Alex. Keep the energy going, and strive for excellence.

 

That means a lot more than you think, especially coming from you, Charlie.

BTW, I'm even more of a Chevy guy than a Honda guy, but I'll gladly take a job with any of the Big Three, or even the Germans, Japanese and maybe even French (just not the Koreans, Swedes, Spanish). If it gets me into racing, I'm all for it.

 

Actually, the NASCAR guys (at least some of them) are probably the most mechanically inclined group of racers. Most of them started out in ASA or something similar, with a 1 man crew (usually their dad or uncle or friend) and turning the wrench themselves during the week to get ready for race night.

The guys that came up through karts usually don't learn as much, since everything is "sealed" so to speak.

 

Well, in ASA and Grand Nationals I'd say so, but most of those guys in NASCAR (save for Elliott, Craven, Marlin, Jarrett, Martin, Terry Labonte, and a few others) don't know too much. Even when they raced dirt track like Newman and Mayfield or sprint cars like Harvick, they had their engineers doin' the dirty work. Only the old timers (racist bastard Spencer included) in a league as political as NASCAR really got their shit together because they've been racing for awhile.

The real racers are in outlaws, dirt cars, sprint cars, etc.


As far as kart guys not learning as much - you couldn't be more wrong. Tire pressures, tire compounds, and suspension setup (not including shock settings, of course) like caster, camber, toe, ackerman, gearing (crank and drive changed race to race guaranteed, and usually between heats), and engine setup (powerband tuning with throttle plates, reed valves, power valves, sleeves, porting, expansion chambers, venturis, etc.) make much more of a difference between winning or losing in kart racing, than they do in "big boy" racing. You try setting up a 125 shifter with front discs and triple axle carriers and see how much of a difference 1/8th-turn on that nut will affect snap oversteer under braking.

Karting isn't kiddy shit - even the Briggs/Stratton 5hp single-speeds are bastards to set up.

And, considering a bunch of the karters are only kids (think 9 years old), that means they're learning about that kind of stuff real early, and real fast. They also know driving techniques, AND how to left-foot brake (the only way to go fast in any wheeled vehicle). When you get into the big leagues with factory sponsors and shit like that, then it gets a little more gritty, but I'd say 70% of the kart teams out there are family-run.

 

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