There were times when I felt like our high school mechanic’s teacher took advantage of us for free labor. He was always purchasing old cars for us to work on. Granted, it gave us experience, but sometimes we had to work so long on some old, rusted things that I felt we didn’t have a chance to experience all the different parts of the work we were supposed to know.

Also, since these cars were often from the 1940s or earlier, the parts were hard to come by. So, instead of replacing old parts with new ones, we were expected to refurbish what was there. That often meant a lot of time in rust removal and sanding.

There were different teams, and our teacher assigned each to a different part. One team worked on the transmission. One team worked on the electrical. One team worked on the steering assembly. And so it went. My team was assigned to refurbish the engine.

It took most of a week and some scraped knuckles just to get the rusted bolts to release the engine from the frame. It took even longer to disassemble the engine so we could work the rust off the many parts. When we got to the valves, as the team leader, I went to the teacher and asked him for some direction. He told us the main thing we needed to do was to grind the valves so they fit smoothly into the valve seat to close off the piston chamber before the fuel was lit. When I asked him to show us how to grind the valves, he sent over one of his student assistants.

Since we were the first-year class, we had two seniors as TAs. When we asked questions the teacher didn’t want to deal with, he had them help us. My team gathered around the valve grinding machine to learn.

“I have never ground valves before,” the TA said. “It’s something my team never got assigned to do in the three-plus years I have been in the class. But I’m sure it can’t be that hard.”

He took one of the valves, turned on the machine, slid his goggles into place, and shoved the valve up to the grinding wheel. Sparks flew everywhere.

After briefly grinding it, he took it to the engine block and tested it in the valve seat. It had a big gap. So, he ground it some more, then retested it. He told us that was what we needed to do, so I set two team members to grinding and the rest of us worked on sanding the valve seats to make them smooth. Every so often, we would switch places so we could all learn everything.

Meanwhile, the TA checked on what we were doing now and then and told us we were doing well. We kept working on this for over a week, but it seemed like the gaps between the valves and the valve seats were getting wider and not closing tighter, so I asked the TA about it.

He just shrugged. “It’s an old inline eight engine. With that many valves and that much rust, it’s bound to take a while. Just keep grinding.”

But one day, when one of the team members checked the valve he was grinding against the valve seat, the valve slipped through the hole and fell with a clatter to the cement floor below. I knew something had to be wrong. I approached the teacher about it.

He sighed. “What seems to be the problem?”

“No matter how much we grind the valves, they don’t set in the seat well,” I replied.

A shocked look came over his face. “It’s been a whole week. You aren’t still grinding those valves, are you?”

He didn’t even let me answer, but rushed past me to where we were working. He gasped at what he saw. The valves were mainly just stems and had almost no head left on them. He looked at the grinding machine and let out a gasp.

He turned to the TA. “You must set the angle right for the valves you are grinding. You should have known that.”

“My team was never assigned to do valve grinding, and no one ever showed me,” he said.

My team and the TA were punished with oil and sump cleanup detail for a few days while our teacher tried, with no luck, to find new valves for his car. We then got assigned a new engine, but with better direction.