Confidence

What I love most about engine work is how the concept of combustion engines is the same but once you get into them you start to observe how differently each one was designed. Besides the Mercedes engine we disassembled at school with the guys, I got a chance to swap out head gaskets and install various aftermarket components on a 6.0 International at work. My foreman told me that whatever my interpretation of meticulous is, to double it. When everything was finally put back together, it wouldn’t start for a good 15 minutes, made me quite nervous. When it finally did start and we took it for a test drive the turbo lag vanes broke and we lost all boost. Put a new turbo on it and it has been running good since. I guess what I learned the most is to have confidence in your work because if don’t you will get overwhelmed with doubt. On another note the lethal injection video was nasty but very informative. Even though the chances are very low I think anybody working on any sort of hydraulic system should be aware of the dangers involved and what to do if something did happen.