WOODBURY- NHS Ag mechanic juniors and seniors start the rebuilding process of their garden tractors. It is a known tradition that every year the upperclassmen get to bring in a tractor or garden tractor, and is the most exciting time of the year for most students.
Some of these tractors are considered fairly common while some are one-of a-kind.
“The craziest thing that someone brought in was probably when I was teaching small engines at Wamogo (now Lakeview High School). They brought in an old, single cylinder diesel motor,” Andrew Zielinski Ag Mechancs instructor at Nonnewaug says. “That was neat to work on because I hadn’t seen anything quite like it before. It was a cool learning experience for both me and the students that were working on it.”
With all the different brands and types of engines that are seen in this unit, ranging from single cylinders all the way up to three or four, it takes a lot of knowledge to orchestrate a whole class on how to rebuild them.
“I have been teaching small engines to some extent the last nine years,” Zielinski says. “The junior/senior class here at Nonnewaug goes the farthest I have ever gone with engines and is the closest we get to a full-blown engine rebuild unit, which is something many want to be able to do in this class”
