Maya McFadden Photos
Allyn Manning this week with his Gateway student workshop.
Shamraiz Khan’s dream is coming a semester closer to reality next week, after the Covid-19 pandemic tried to throw monkey wrench in it.
Khan, 19, and 11 classmates showed up for their final in-person workshops this week in Gateway Community College’s General Motors (GM)-affiliated program. Next week come finals, week 12 in a condensed semester.
They weren’t sure they would get to spend the semester in the workshop, rather than online, because of the Covid-19 epidemic. But they needed to be online.
This fall Gateway found a way, through safety protocols and a tightened schedule, to bring the mechanics’ class back in person. After finals next week, the second-year students are looking to return back to classes in February to complete their fourth and final semester to gain their program certification.
Last semester, when the pandemic first hit and everyone was trying to figure out how to handle it, the mechanics’ class, like most others in higher education, went online.
That proved challenging for students like Khan, who are pursuing dreams while hustling to pay bills at the same time.
During the spring semester, Khan was balancing his automotive course work while working two jobs full-time. The online shift caused him to have to find a way to do his classwork during his work breaks, including video conference meetings. When schools moved to remote learning after Covid-19 hit, Khan was doing landscaping and worked at a car dealership. He had to find a way to manage the schoolwork.
“I didn’t have a day off so I just had to do it from work,” he said.
Khan (pictured above) is hoping to follow in the footsteps of his father, who is a mechanic. Growing up, Khan helped his dad working on cars. While finishing up high school Khan had to decide between enlisting in the Army or getting a GM mechanics certification. He chose the latter. “I enjoy it, and am good at it. It’s satisfying to find the problem in such a big thing and fix it,” he said.
The GM students will take their finals during week 12. Then the second-year students are looking to return back to classes in February to complete their fourth and final semester to gain their program certification.
During their last Tuesday lesson this week with instructor Allyn Manning, the students disassembled heavy and light-duty front differentials and learned the units’ many parts at Gateway’s North Haven campus.
Rather than working in the lab, the class stayed in Manning’s instruction classroom for the Tuesday lesson. Manning put out the two differentials for the class to split in half and work on.
The groups started with taking out the bolts to take apart the case to reveal the ring and spider gears. The students took a close look at the spider gear before disassembling it.
“What’s it do?” Manning asked the students.
“It controls the different rotation speeds in the tires,” responded John Bell, 19.
Manning talked with the students about the differences between two and four-wheel drive. (The latter has more power.)
The students then looked closely at the spider gear in the light-duty differential. Before they could get their hands on the four gears of the unit, they had to work on removing the roll pin held in place by a cross pin shaft.
After many attempts to find a long and thick enough draft pin to fit in the hole of the rolled pin, the group took turns whacking the cross pin shaft out with a ball-peen hammer.
Some unsuccessful whacks later, the group was able to get the roll pin out to get the spider gears to fall out of place.
A member of the light-duty differential group, Adam Aponte, 19, described himself as a hands-on learner. “The online computer diagrams only teach you half the lesson. This is hands on work,” he said.
Aponte is a technician at a dealership in Danbury. He works evenings during the week and all day weekends. He joined the GM program to get certified to work on GM cars “the right way,” he said.
To make up for the lack of hands-on work during this past Spring semester, Aponte depended on what he got to do at work.
When this fall semester came around, Aponte was excited to return to the classroom. Aponte said the class is like one big friend group that trusts each other to be responsible for the sake of their learning and health.
Aponte (pictured), who is from Bethel, grew up working on cars with his neighbor. Fom there he fell in love with the hands-on aspect of the automotive industry.
“I’m not the type of person to sit behind a desk,” Aponte said. “This is my passion. Cars changed my life.”
At 16 years old, Aponte bought his first car. It was a 1991 Camaro RS with a Chevy 305 short block in it, because “nothing beats classic muscle.” He used it as a real-life textbook. After learning how to do small scale repair jobs on his own car, Aponte would do jobs on friends’ cars in his driveway.
Inside the Gateway GM workshop this week.
While the differential was disassembled Tuesday Manning walked the students through potential repair jobs like changing out an axle seal. Then the students took a mask break outside.
After reassembling both differentials, the group looked at how to measure differential backlash. Manning demonstrated the process on the light-duty differential. Then each student took a guess by feeling the resistance of the ring gear by holding the drive pinion flange and rocking the gear.
Guesses for the backlash of the heavy-duty differential ranged between .003 to .014 inches of movement.
After all guesses were finalized Bell took the final measure and determined the backlash at about .006 inches of movement.
Next week, the cohort will take two finals for the semester, a written and performance test. They’ll have made it to the finish line of a semester that ended up coming together after all.
This story was produced with financial support from Solutions Journalism Network.
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Best wishes for a successful graduation and good jobs in their field. May your perseverance be rewarded.