{"id":3300,"date":"2011-02-17T09:00:57","date_gmt":"2011-02-17T09:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.badreputation.org.uk\/?p=3300"},"modified":"2013-05-31T16:15:49","modified_gmt":"2013-05-31T15:15:49","slug":"secret-diary-of-a-female-petrolhead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/badreputation.org.uk\/2011\/02\/17\/secret-diary-of-a-female-petrolhead\/","title":{"rendered":"Secret Diary of a Female Petrolhead"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have a confession to make: I’m not actually a petrolhead. Not even a little bit. I didn’t play with cars as a little girl, and I didn’t go to track days with my father. I never learned to drive, and wouldn’t have been able to tell the crankshaft<\/a> from the water pump even if you held a gun to my head.<\/p>\n

At least, that was the case three months ago. I\u2019m not going to go into the many and varied reasons why, sitting on the sofa one November weekend, I decided that I wanted to know more about cars. Suffice to say that maybe I was going a little house-crazy from being stuck indoors with the flu.<\/p>\n

So I decided I was going to rebuild an engine.<\/p>\n

This is a difficult and challenging task if you\u2019ve worked with cars all your life. It is nigh on impossible if you can\u2019t tell your pistons<\/a> from your poppets<\/a>. I also decided I was going to learn how to drive. This, too, would be a challenge, as the last time I\u2019d been behind the wheel of a car had been twelve years ago. My father decided that, as I was seventeen and had my newly-minted provisional license in my pocket, the best thing to do for my first hour in the driver\u2019s seat would be to take me out in London rush hour and make me practise three-point turns and parallel parking. After miraculously not killing anyone, I swore that I\u2019d never get behind the wheel again.<\/p>\n

The other major drawback is that my father was an engineer and a mechanic. He had engineering for his work, and mechanics for his hobby. You can imagine what his reaction would be if one of his children finally – finally! – showed an interest in anything remotely mechanical. Even if it was the girl.<\/p>\n

Obviously, you can\u2019t just walk off and buy yourself an engine. Well, actually, you can, but there\u2019s not much point. First off, you have to work out where you\u2019re going to keep it. There\u2019s a useful space in the back garden, and I\u2019ve measured for tarp, engine stand, and general manoeuvrability. It will, I am told, be sufficient.<\/p>\n

Then, you have to come to terms with the fact that you\u2019re building an engine, not a car. There\u2019s no space to keep a clapped-out old banger in suburban London, and I\u2019m not about to shell out for a garage for no apparent reason. The downside is that my beautiful rebuilt engine will never be seen in action. The upside is that I am far less likely to explode myself and the neighbours.<\/p>\n

Thirdly, you\u2019re going to need to get some tools and learn about engines. And therein lies the rub. Have you ever tried to find a general mechanics course? Have you? I have. There are two choices:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Full-time year-long course leading to an NVQ or equivalent;<\/li>\n
  2. How to not explode your car when changing the oil.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    OK, so they weren\u2019t terribly suitable. How about a textbook? I used to be an academic, I\u2019m good with textbooks. Well \u2013<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Internal Combustion Engine Fundamentals<\/strong><\/a> by John B. Heywood \u2013 looks interesting, and has been added to the wishlist.<\/li>\n
    2. Essential Car Care for Girls<\/strong><\/a> by Danielle McCormick \u2013 well, it\u2019s pink. It must be just for girls. The reviewers helpfully point out that this is a book simple enough for even women to understand. OK, then.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
      \"Cover<\/a>

      Pink automatically makes everything simple enough so even a woman can understand.<\/p><\/div>\n

      After wishlisting the first and stabbing my eyes out over the second, I decided that textbooks may be all well and good, but what I really needed was an opportunity to take the damn thing apart myself. (Yes, I was the child that disassembled all my toys to see how they worked.) Unfortunately, in order to do that\u2026 Yup, I was back at square one.<\/p>\n

      Despondent, I complained about this Catch 22 to a colleague of mine, who had been making similar noises about getting a little fed up of being pushed into a knitting club or daisy-counting-clique. What she really wanted, she said, was to mess about with something a little more robust, like an engine\u2026<\/p>\n

      So. We\u2019ve measured the back garden. We\u2019ve ordered appropriate textbooks and acquired a couple of Haynes manuals. We\u2019ve ordered a model engine to get a rough idea of how this all works. I\u2019ve signed up for driving lessons in the vain hope that I can overcome my car phobia.<\/p>\n

      And then, once the sun comes out, we\u2019re going to lay down the tarp and set up the engine stand, and buy a crappy clapped-out engine off eBay for 50p and take it apart.<\/p>\n

      I\u2019m not going to tell my father a word about all of this. I have a horrible feeling that he will be so delighted that I have finally come around that he will decide to show me how to do it \u2018properly\u2019. Where my teachers failed to instil any interest in me at age 12, I am hoping that my own interest at age 29 will bear out and let me stick with it.<\/p>\n

      Who knows? It might even work.
      \n<\/em><\/p>\n

      To be continued…<\/em><\/p>\n