Date: Fri, 8 Feb 2013 13:42:12 -0800
Reply-To: Scott Daniel - Turbovans <scottdaniel@TURBOVANS.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Scott Daniel - Turbovans <scottdaniel@TURBOVANS.COM>
Subject: Re: Friday Philosophy: On Documentation
In-Reply-To: <42356E43-D564-45AC-8147-882AE228060B@gmail.com>
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You mentioned a ship's engineering log ...great idea ..document
everything done to it or changed on it.
Every aircraft...ones that are genuinely maintained and serviced
..usually company owned rather thanprivately owned....... has what they
call 'the forms' ...it's a log book of all repairs done, where, by whom,
etc.
plus all planned future repairs and upgrades and so on. That way
everything is kept track of, past and future.
Like the complete opposite of seeing that someone has modified some
system ...and there's no record of what they did.. It sure helps to keep
track of that stuff. It just ends up saving time and energy and $.
A signficant portion of what I do making vanagons happy is undoing
poorly done stuff or just doing it right cause someone didn'tat some
point in the past.
If it was an aircarft, and you wanted to be sure it could be worked on
intelligently in the future ..
or deal with sudden headlight failure in flight ..
the technician would draw up a nice drawing of the non-stock headlight
relay wiring , and put that in the vehicle's forms or log book. Plus
...it just feels good to do that, and can save all kinds of grief in the
future.
youknow what they say about time...there is always time to do it over
correctly. It save times to do it right the first time ofcourse.
and for sure ..doing something really right does take time ..
my joke saying on it is it takes 3 times as long to do something really
right.
Some of the the stuff I see done on vanagons.....just frightening
sometimes, amusing too.
that would be a great project............make your own competewiring
diagram for your Van. Big project I'd think.
Diagrams of subsystems are much easierto do.
Vanagons can be like aircraft ..
as long as the basic body/chassis is prevented from corroding, and
treated to prevent that ..
and we can get road fuel and driving is as we know it now ...and we can
get parts as needed ..
they can be like on old Cessna ..they can be kept viable pretty much
indefenitely . Many are not maintained to anywhere near aircraft
standards unfortunately. But they should be IMO !
sounds a little beyond platonic to me.
what fun,
Scott
On 2/8/2013 12:55 PM, Jarrett Anthony Kupcinski wrote:
> I am fortunate to have a workshop attached to my garage. That being said, the space is more conducive to clutter than doing actual work, so this past week I’ve begun remodeling it. As such, building codes have been on my mind, and specifications in general.
>
> Keeping things to spec goes a long way towards making my life easier. If my Vanagon breaks and is then repaired according to the principles in Sir Bentley, when it breaks in the future I won’t have to remember the oddities of the first repair to perform the second one. It’s all written down in the big green book, so if I really need to remind myself of what went on, I just turn to the appropriate chapter and refresh my memory.
>
> If, on the other hand, a repair deviates from scripture, then there’s a good chance that future repairs will have to take into account the previous repair. And the more non-standard repairs I make, the further the van deviates from its original state, the more variables are introduced into the system. This is to say nothing of the outright modifications, and is why troubleshooting through the list can be frustratingly difficult at times. Ultimately, all repairs require peculiar knowledge of the particular vehicle which must be rediscovered or remembered.
>
> I actually have a pretty good memory, but it’s reserved for far more important things like my phone number from 30 years ago or what “TARDIS” stands for. I can’t remember, for example, how I wired my headlight relays into the fuse box, so for efficiency’s sake, I write things down. Well, I try to, anyway. Writing things down can be such a pain.
>
> I have often thought about creating a complete wiring schematic just for Olly.
>
> Ideally, I would have an appendix to my Bentleys documenting my repairs and modifications. Something like an ship’s engineering log, complete with diagrams and pictures. Of course, this takes time, and I seem to have less time than memory.
>
> Some list members give repair reports. I enjoy reading these out of voyeurism, and also because I gain insights into my own van. Online blogs are also good, because they often have photographs. The best part of both of these methods of public documentation is that they share the record with the community, helping us all keep all our peculiar vehicles running just a little longer.
>
> Jarrett K
> Olly, 89 Westy in the Platonic sense only.
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