Had a total game-changer moment at a shop in Phoenix last month

I was helping out at a buddy's garage near downtown Phoenix when a old school mechanic pulled up in a 94 F-150. He popped the hood and pointed at how I was routing my vacuum lines, said they were all twisted and pinched in spots I couldn't even see. He spent like 10 minutes showing me this trick of using zip ties to hold the lines in place before clamping them down. Ever since then, I check every line for kinks before I finish, and I've had zero come-backs on vacuum-related jobs. Has anyone else run into a random stranger who completely changed how you do a basic task?

3 comments

3 Comments

michael_williams4d ago

Respectfully, zip ties just mask bad routing instead of fixing the actual line placement.

angela7284d ago

Mask bad routing" is exactly what happened to my buddy Kyle last summer... he spent like 3 hours zip tying all the speaker wires behind his home theater setup, super proud of himself. Then a month later his subwoofer quit working and he had to cut every single one of those zip ties to trace the cable back to where it was pinched against a metal shelf bracket. @michael_williams is right, it was just a perfect little hidden mess the whole time, looking clean on the outside but the actual problem was still sitting there waiting to bite him. He could have saved himself the headache if he just ran the lines properly from the start instead of making them look neat.

ruby_bell474d ago

Agree and disagree. Fixing bad routing is the real answer, but zip ties are the difference between a mess and a neat mess. It's like putting a fresh coat of paint over a cracked wall. You still know the crack is there, but at least it doesn't stare you in the face every time you walk past. People do the same thing with cable management in their homes. They buy a nice box to hide all the cords behind the TV, but the actual power strip is still a tangled nightmare in there. The box just makes you feel better about it until you have to move the thing.