Fuel Fill Door - left side or right side?

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Squint
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Re: Fuel Fill Door - left side or right side?

Post by Squint »

InlinePaul wrote:Think like a river. In a river the right bank is on your right if you are floating downstream.
Serious question: is that actually how rivers have their banks labeled? If that is true, I had no idea that was how they did it.
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Re: Fuel Fill Door - left side or right side?

Post by ClutchFork »

Squint wrote:
InlinePaul wrote:Think like a river. In a river the right bank is on your right if you are floating downstream.
Serious question: is that actually how rivers have their banks labeled? If that is true, I had no idea that was how they did it.
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Re: Fuel Fill Door - left side or right side?

Post by Shadow »

InlinePaul wrote:
six wrote:Ummm, left and right side while you're facing which direction? As you are looking forward from the back of the car, or looking back from the front of the car?
Think like a river. In a river the right bank is on your right if you are floating downstream. In a car the right side is to your right if you are driving.
Or a more simplistic approach-- the car has a front and a back, correct? If you think of it that way, then it's completely obvious which side of a car is the left & right.

With my background in automotive repair, it was important to correctly identify each side of the car. Otherwise, it would be a problem describing a problem on the left side of the car, for example. I honestly never realized that there is any confusion on correctly identifying the sides of a car.
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Re: Fuel Fill Door - left side or right side?

Post by Rope-Pusher »

InlinePaul wrote:
six wrote:Ummm, left and right side while you're facing which direction? As you are looking forward from the back of the car, or looking back from the front of the car?
Think like a river. In a river the right bank is on your right if you are floating downstream. In a car the right side is to your right if you are driving.


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six
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Re: Fuel Fill Door - left side or right side?

Post by six »

Shadow wrote:With my background in automotive repair, it was important to correctly identify each side of the car. Otherwise, it would be a problem describing a problem on the left side of the car, for example. I honestly never realized that there is any confusion on correctly identifying the sides of a car.
The confusion (at least to me) is that most repairs [under the hood] are done while facing the rear of the car. For example, my battery is located on the [US] driver side, which is the left side of the car as you describe it, but it's to my right as I'm looking at it. But the front-and-back description you gave helps with this a lot. I guess that is why they use the terms "port" and "starboard" for marine and aeronautical applications. By the way, an easy way to remember which is which is all the "short" words go together, and all the "long" words go together. Port="left"=red; and starboard="right"=green. And another by the way, that's left and right as you are facing the bow if you are sitting at the stern (or if on an airplane, facing the nose as you are sitting at the tail). Good thing to keep in mind if you ever become stranded at sea and want to determine which way a distant vessel is facing.
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Re: Fuel Fill Door - left side or right side?

Post by IMBoring25 »

From personal experience, despite aircraft being specifically referenced in the definitions, if you use port and starboard in an aeronautical context you may get laughed at.

I used port and starboard specifically to eliminate the frame-of-reference question when referencing a part that was most visible from forward looking aft. It still wasn't appreciated...
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Re: Fuel Fill Door - left side or right side?

Post by Squint »

IMBoring25 wrote:From personal experience, despite aircraft being specifically referenced in the definitions, if you use port and starboard in an aeronautical context you may get laughed at.

I used port and starboard specifically to eliminate the frame-of-reference question when referencing a part that was most visible from forward looking aft. It still wasn't appreciated...
While I don't have a ton of experience in aeronautics, I have never heard port/starboard used at work nor by a couple of family friends that were professional pilots.
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