Am I just getting older and more cantankerous?
Does any one else get the feeling that an increasing amount of the advice / responses given to questions are the result of what has been read earlier,
(on here).
Whilst references to previous threads are very useful I would question the validity of advice saying 'x is better than y' without personal
experience.
Might it be an idea when responding to indicate if the comments are based on personal experience?
Rant over
Sorry
Mick
There are a lot of "EXPERTS" on this site. Some are of the "ARMCHAIR" variety. some are of the "I MUST HAVE AS MANY POSTS TO
MY NAME AS I CAN" variety, and some actually know what they're talking about. You have to sort the wheat from the vast amount of chaff!
A lot of the questions asked, have been asked before, and with a little play with the feature called 'search' you can usually find the
answer.
At the end of the day if the advice is good advice then whats the problem? This hobby is alot about personal preference anyway, what one person thinks
is the best solution to the problem could be another persons worst solution.
I admit to not actually building anything ATM. I now have somewhere to start building as soon as I finish uni for the year. This doesnt make me any
less qualified to answer questions that I know an answer to. If i dont know the answer, i keep quiet, and learn from the outcome. I think thats one of
the best things about an open forum like this.
I do however agree there is no substitute for experience. Yet this experience can come from lots of places.
Cheers,
David
quote:
Originally posted by Mix
Am I just getting older and more cantankerous?
i often respond to threads with answers refering to stuff ive read on here before - but i also usually point that fact out too.
sometimes i feel like the search facility myself, as i tend to remember nearly everything i read...
i very rarely read a thread and get annoyed by people stating opinions as fact - does this mean i do it and dont notice?!
I agree the search button could be used more,but i sometimes find myself in search far longer than i need to be.
At the end of the day its far quicker to just ask the Q and get answers back ten fold,and then some more
What bugs me is the IRS/De Dion/Live axle threads.
How many times a year does that one come up?
dont read em then ?
I wish this forum had been hear when i built my 1st one,
The way i see it ask a Q, read the replys and act on the ones you like, or just toss an idea in see what people think, nothing is Gospel.
I'd rather ask the question instead of search,as i said earlier you the answer just as quick and ten fold.
The search system can take a bit of sifting through,and anyway you have to give newbies a chance some people are pretty hard on newcomers.
quote:
I wish this forum had been hear when i built my 1st one
), but as Jon says, read what you want and toss
the rest in the bin. When Chris first set up this site, it was slow to start with, but the mass exodus from TOL didn't take long. This site is a
lot easier to use (except on AOL!), and in my opinion a huge improvement on the Yahoo list.
What are the advantages of de-dion then?
has anyone got any dimensions for an IRS?
oh bloody hell, it's started
tom
You wanna build a de dion you do, you don't wanna do it like that.
But the live axle is better because..........
Having absolutely no experience of de dion, I couldn't possibly comment on which is best
I used search for the IRS dimensions and got no dimensions at all just that IRS is hard to set up. i asked the question and still got no dimensions at
all just that IRS is hard to set up.
IRS is working on various cars out there so why can it not just be copied? So yes the search facility is great but it isn't infalible. Sometimes
the exact answer wasn't there and you need that extra info. Sometimes you don't get it at all. That's life. That's the point of an
open forum - it's open to everyone asking anything. If you don't like open forums, don't sign up to one.
I have sat in search for ages trawling through stuff that was not relevant to the question I wanted answering. It's sometimes easier to ask. Some
people won't mind answering again.
[Edited on 5/2/05 by chunkielad]
quote:
Originally posted by Ian Pearson
quote:
I wish this forum had been hear when i built my 1st one
Not wanting to open THAT can of worms, but the "OTHER LIST" was pretty good for advice etc. I spent about four months trawling through it before deciding to go ahead with my build. There was a lot less deviation from topic (which I prefer
quote:
intolerance of other peoples stooopid questions raised is just like TOL used to be.
I've no problem with questions/answers repeated, makes them easier to find - and some discussions I never get tired of . Peronsally I do try to
do a bit of research myself before posting a question.
But the topic seems to have drifted a bit from Mick's original point. I must say I agree with him whole heartedly.
Most of us have read the same books, or talked to old timers with similar experiences - being quoted the "standard practice" by someone
that's never practiced it isn't all that useful. When someone says "I've tried this and here's what happened" it's
gold, I look for that most of all - the other advice I tend to discount. It's how I separate wheat from chaff anyway.
The number of times the "standard practice" is quoted without or out of context (ackerman, bump steer and bush pivots come to mind) is a
little alarming - it often worries me to think there's builders who take the advice without further research of their own. Maybe no one would,
but you never know...
Well pointed out Mick, I hope more of us take your advice. I'm trying to stick to posting only on things I've actually tried myself.
Except for this one - doh! .
Certainly there is some "chatter" that accompanies every thread here. But this is a community of human beings for God's sake, not a
cold, calculating machine, but a collaboration of human knowledge that includes the noise of personality.
I like it!
Even so, I do wish someone would invent a really good search tool for extracting the truthful information.
BTW - I learned how to build suspensions from reading some very good books AND combining that with information gleaned here. It was hard at times, but
I think I benefited greatly from understanding how it all works. I personally think that if you are building a car from scratch you should be willing
to do the learning about how it ALL works. Otherwise buy a kit! Would you really be willing to say "I built it, but I don't understand
how it works..." Not such a good ring to that IMHO. (Was that off topic? )
[Edited on 2/8/05 by sgraber]
This forum is just like the rest of the internet (and better than TOL, IMHO) in that you usually get an assortment of answers, of varying quality.
The person asking the question has to sift through, sorting the wheat from the chaff (to mix metaphors), and take responsibility for their own
decisions.
On one memorable occasion I was berated for continuing to ask the question and not following someone's advice... even though I could see that the
advice was not what I wanted (and was crap anyway).
I soon got to know the people who'll give sensible advice - if there's a stony silence in response to a question then it may be that no-one
knows the answer, or they have an answer they're not confident to give out. Then there are others who have an opinion on everything -
they're also easy to spot after a while.
That's just the way it is on ANY internet forum.
rgds,
David
yeah david why didn't you want a vat of sulphuric acid in your garage?
Hehehe, no kidding Steve - there needs to be an extra button: "Google Search" "I'm feeling lucky" and "Just the correct
info please" .
Scariest I've ever found: "to set your brake balance, find a dirt road so that you can get the tires to lock up easier". Scary
'cause it sounds like a reasonable idea 
...
Is it hard to add "I heard" or "I've read" or even "I read in 'Build Your Own Sports Car'" so we can
check for ourselves? Quoting references is the way that academics have been trying sorting truth from fiction for a long time, and a great way for us
to find out how to learn more.
I'm sure we all agree the best way to learn is from experience. In all the time I've been a member of these lists (way back to
"onelist" if anyone remembers that far), I've only ever recall one person (Rorty) relate an experience with bump steer and how the fix
cured it. A few have said "I have bump steer and it's never been an problem". Everyone else appears only to have read the same books
as me . But so many seem to know how vital it is to shorten a perfectly good steering rack without saying why they know it .
Sorry for being cantankerous - our engineering ethics training taught us we have a morale and a legal obligation to ensure all advice in our field
given is correct, even if given for free. We swear an oath to that effect in a "secret" ceremony when we graduate, if you can believe it
.
Wow!
Didn't expect my little whinge to generate this amount of responses.
To be honest I was a little aprehensive about posting it in case I offended anyone.
I was, (in the main) trying to highlight the plight of the Newby who may not have been sitting in the wings for months forming opinions about the
contributors, so his winnowing skills may not be up to speed.
It doesn't take much time to indicate wether responses are:
The result of personal experience or reputation only
Info taken from elsewhere, in which case a link or reference would be helpful.
Mick
PS At no point did I ever advocate intollerance of other peoples requests for info, S**t I ask enough daft questions.