I have lost count of the times I have read something along the lines of

#) Remove (insert name of component)

in the step by step instructions in car maintainance manuals to find out after the part is off that it cannot be re-fitted without a new widget being installed along with it, in a foot note. Leaving me without a fully functional vehicle to fetch said part.

I'm a sucker for not reading the whole step by step before trying, I would have been the one who burst the worn hose / something more serious.

Designer of machine tools - user of modified screws

it's a standard test to give students ... "read all the instructions before starting".  the instructions then lay out an exceedingly complicated/tedious task, but th elast instruction is "ok, now you've read these instructions, the last instruction is to ignore all this "crap" and close the book, and sit quietly at your desk, doing homework if you like, staring absently into space is also acceptable."

Oh dear.
I now have to re-read what I wrote for a viscometer installation some 10-12 years ago and see if I did indeed get the sequence correct for pressuring and bring to operating temperature.....

Phew! I did.
I see the manual (with lots of illustrations and minimal text) has stood the test of time. It still includes the adapted Windows clip art that came with Windows 98.
Mind you, barring a catastrophe, once written most manuals seem more resistant to change than the products they describe so that may or may not be a source of comfort.

JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

My high school history teacher once gave us a test containing 100 questions.  The instructions at the top of the test said "Read all questions before starting".  The last "question" said to only answer the even numbered questions.  He counted any odd numbered question that was answered as wrong.  Many of us failed the test, but we learned to follow directions.  To this day, I still read forms through before I fill them out, read recipes through before cooking them, and read installation/construction instructions through before beginning.

Had same thing done to me as dwallace said - BUT fortunately - I did skim the whole test first and saw the last instruction!!

Once had a teacher give us True/False test.

To me every answer was TRUE.  Sure enough, after he gathered up the tests - he said "Gentlemen (all boy school)- those were ALL true"

You have never heard so much moaning, groaning and cursing in you life!!

 

I was changing the disk brake pads on my Nissan 300Z. I read the instructions (twice). When it came time to compress the piston I pushed...used a "C" clamp...then a hammer!!! I went back to the book, TURNED THE PAGE to where is said " NOTE: the piston must be screwed back into the housing..."
However, I had screwed it up alright. Back to the parts store for a new piston assy.
The step-by-step instructions appeared to have ended at the bottom of the page so I didn't turn the page. Sigh...another learning experience.
I put MY "Notes" at the beginning of the instructions.

Speaking of 'Sequence Matters', it's like the manual for my 1965 Honda 305 Superhawk I had back in college.  Reading the manual you knew immediately that it had been translated from the Japanese by someone who knew what English words corresponded to what Kanji character, just that they had no idea how to put those words together in a sentence that made sense.  All the words were there, but somehow the meaning often got lost.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
http://www.siemens.com/plm
UG/NX Museum:   http://www.plmworld.org/p/cm/ld/fid=209

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
 

It seems that all electronics manuals suffered from that for quite awhile!  The only way to program your vcr was to get a neighbor kid to do it.

Technically, the glass is always  full.

Got an I-phone for Christmas - Immediately handed it to my 10 year g-daughter and asked her to program it and I AM an engineer and computer programmer.

Ten minutes later - she had it where I wanted it!!

KIDS these days - can't live with them - can't live without them!!!

I rebuilt an engine once carefully following the instructions every step of the way.  Got it all buttoned up and had 1 part left over.  I went back through the manual and while it showed the removal of that part it never showed putting the part back in.  So I got to do it all over but at least it wasn't for lack of following directions.

----------------------------------------

The Help for this program was created in Windows Help format, which depends on a feature that isn't included in this version of Windows.
 

I wonder if the manual was ever updated or if everyone, having found the problem and spent all that time redoing half the work, forgot to tell them?

JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

Q engine once carefully following the instructions every step of the way.  Q



oh, been there done that. Had an 81? escort station wagon bought new, approaching 60k miles and decided to do the timing belt replacement before we went on a long vacation.
  Factory manual, step by step, scheduled maintenance section. Had to weld up some special wrenches to access a bolt, but that is another story. New belt, timed, located, loosen adjuster, crank engine over.
   However, the same process was also covered in the engine rebuild section, but it had the small additional step of 'tighten adjuster bolt' before the 'crank engine'.
    Needless to say, when cranked with tensioner bolt loose, the belt slipped a few teeth, the interference engine design took out 6 of the 8 valves, and I had to R&R the head and have machine shop work. The belt replacement turned into a whole top end job.
    photocopied the appropriate pages and wrote a nice letter to the ford zone rep, which went into a dark hole somewhere.
     good little car though.
     sometimes I need to rein in my zeal for PM and adopt the 'if it ain't broke....don't break it' mentality.

Love that...

'if it ain't broke....don't break it'

Fits me to a tee.

What the heck does that mean anyway?
I know what it means. origin golfing?? like a golf ball fits a tee???

Things I learned in school:

1) Put your name on the paper first
2) Check the back of the pages
3) Follow directions
4) Oh, and some stuff about engineering :)

Things I learned in real life:

1) If you need a red pen to edit and get through a poorly translated instruction manual, take it with a grain of salt
2) If you can take it apart without instructions, you can put it back together the same way (paying attention to lubrication, bolt sequences, torque specs, when applicable)
3) If you can upgrade something while you're in there, why not? "If it ain't broke, upgrade it" fits me a little better than "if it ain't broke, don't break it." Not without a few mishaps of course. But who can really show that level of restraint?

My university exam technique went something like:

1) Read all the instructions.
2) Skim all the questions, marking the ones that you like.
3) Decide which of those you will actually attempt.
4) Work through that set of questions.
5) Re-do all of them.
 

- Steve
 

Kind of the same:
1) read question
2) skip question if it's not easily solvable
3) raise bar for solvability
4) go to step one

First run-through usually skipped all the questions.
It always startled me that there were people wasting 3/4th of the exam on a question they couldn't solve.  

NX 7.5
Teamcenter 8

For the "if it ain't broke don't fix it" brigade, if you want a scary statistic then try this; it came from a presentation so I can't verify but the source was apparently Boeing:
80% of faults are due to maintenance.
It is one reason to move away from predictive routine maintenance to condition based maintenance.
There was the case of a pilot sucked halfway out of the cockpit window after it suddenly fell out. It fell out because, during maintenance they replaced the window and renewed all the fixing screws - with the wrong size screws.

Of course, a timing belt breaking which causes no damage, you wait till it breaks. Usually on some dark moorland road in winter. I had that happen once with a Vauxhall Cavalier.
On the other hand, if it is an Audi A4 if the belt breaks you lose the engine as kcj.
But go to a garage and they won't just replace the timing belt they'll say it makes sense to replace all the belts.
Now since they have to take off all the belts to get at the timing belt, and refit the the old belts anyway, why do I get charged for all the other belts as if each were being replaced individually?
I wish we could go back to the days of real mechanics instead of "Auto Technicians" who solve problems, if they do, by simply replacing stuff until the problem goes away.
 

JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com