How did you learn to work on cars?

My dad had a repair garage and small dealer ship. He also was an excellent machinist.

I grew up there. Auto mechanics in high school, aircraft mechanics in the Air Force. Back to dads garage.

I have no money. Things would break and I would take them apart and have no clue what I was doing. Sometimes it worked out and sometimes it didn't. It worked out enough times that I became pretty good at it, I think. I always figured if I could take something apart, I could get it back together.

I grew up more or less obsessed with cars but did not grow up in a household where anyone did their own wrenching. I started out tinkering with car audio stuff. Some creepy guy living with my uncle helped me change brake pads on my car at the time. I sort of retained that knowledge. Not sure because several years later on a different car I had someone help me with brakes. Once in english class we had to do presentations, one guy in class worked at Jiffy Lube or something and did a how-to on changing oil. Wow, its that easy? So I changed my own oil after that. At that point I could do just your basic bolton type stuff. Necessity forced learning how to change a starter and alternator somewhere along the line.

Nowadays its so much easier for the amateur mechanic types with how easy it is to find info on the internet. Chances are someone has already done the job you need to do and documented it.

Within the past couple years I have changed several springs/shocks/struts, and did my first timing belt change by myself with help from the internet. This year I'm about to learn about waterpumps and other cooling system things, and also drum brakes (x4 vehicles).

I was 17 and the starter in my flood damaged '95 Nissan Sentra went out. It cost 400 dollars to replace that I paid for from my first job landscaping.

I looked at the bill and saw the part was less than half of the repair cost and swore I'd never pay for some minor repair again.

I learned because I was bored and didnot want to pay someone else to do what I could.

Grew up super poor, only car I could afford was an 80's Mustang I pulled out of a nieghbor's field. Motor was seized, spent the entire Summer rebuilding it with the help of my grandfather. Didn't know it at the time, but I got thrown into the deep end of the shade-tree mechanic pool.

At the time I hated it, but it boosted my confidence. Like others have said, it helps you dive into a project when you know you can't make things any worse.

Learned from dad. He was an aircraft mechanic and do-it-yourselfer. Mainly out of necessity. When us kids were old enough to drive, his requirement was we had to learn the basics (change flat tire, etc), explain how an engine worked (dad specialized in aircraft engines) and rebuild an engine. I rebuilt an engine out of a 69 Datsun 510 wagon, next younger sister rebuilt a 68 Yamaha 350 twin 2-stroke motorcycle engine and my youngest sister rebuilt the engine in what is now my 70 Opel GT.

I continued the DIY out of necessity, couldn't afford to pay someone else and could only afford older cheap cars. Now I can afford nicer cars and pay someone to fix the daily drivers but have a couple older cars that I work on for fun. I'm also an aircraft mech that does logistic work now so I don't work on aircraft anymore. I do enjoy tinkering on mechanical things though, hence the older car toys.

The internet.

great thread.

I was the oldest of three boys, dad taught me some, would help you out of a bind if he could. It was out of necesity, I really wanted a car and had very little bucks. All three of us boys learned to work on cars, you never even considered taking to a mechanic, that wasn't even an option. You just jumped in and did what ever it took. Changed out a transmission when I was 16, a junkyard engine replacement at 17, rebuilt an engine by 24. Soon your buddies were gearheads too and you learned you could do mods and be faster.

Started with building and repairing bicycles when I was an adolescent. Then upgraded to motorcycle repair in my teens because we could only afford beater motorcycles.

Couldn't wait to start Auto Shop in my first year of high school. Spent all 3 years in shop soaking it in and representing my high school in automotive competitions.

Now I am in my 20th year as a professional tech.

I was blessed growing up on a small farm and having junkers laying around to take apart. Also small tractors needed to be fixed. We always bought the manuals so we knew how to do it.

My first car was a Mustang II which I made road worthy buy taking parts from a pinto. My father didn't believe in air tools, or angle grinders, so everything was very hard work. After he died I built my own air compressor from parts I found lying around in the garage and started doing things the easy way.

I hate working on anything that has to be fixed, and some days I wish I didn't have the ability so I could have to pay someone to do it for me. I do know that usually the only way to have something don't correctly is to do it yourself.

N Sperlo wrote: My father was a mechanic and never wanted me to be one so he didn't "teach" me anything until I was on a different job path. I started with simple electronics and then went crazy with the big boy tools. I still don't know much. I just learn as I go.

Same here though my pops told me he would break my neck if I ever became a mechanic professionaly. Two of my uncles out in california where I grew up own their own shops, Both my grandfathers were mechanics. I watched and learned.

failboat wrote: Nowadays its so much easier for the amateur mechanic types with how easy it is to find info on the internet. Chances are someone has already done the job you need to do and documented it.

But there's a 90% chance it was the first time that particular person has done the job, and about a 30% chance of the writeup being wrong, dangerous or inaccurate. There's no entrance exam to post to the internet.

At about 8yo my duties included washing the car and checking the oil level and tire pressure weekly. Dad was disabled and I was in charge of doing all the stuff he couldn't. That's when I learned how leverage can overcome the lack of strength.

I read every car craft, hot rod, four wheeler and high performance Pontiac magazine from cover to cover over and over again. Bought my first car at 15, 1980 T/A 4.9L with a cracked head and bad trans. Had it on the road by the time I got my license.

Took automotive technology in high school, came in second in a state wide ASE competition which won me a partial ride to Northwest Tech. My dad had a massive heart attack two months before I was supposed to go to school, doc said he only had a couple months to live. I decided I couldn't leave so I went to work full time at the little repair shop that I had co-oped at my senior year.

Learned quickly that while I love wrenching and maintaining my own junk, working on other peoples junk for a living sucks.

I work on houses now.

Keith Tanner wrote:

failboat wrote: Nowadays its so much easier for the amateur mechanic types with how easy it is to find info on the internet. Chances are someone has already done the job you need to do and documented it.

But there's a 90% chance it was the first time that particular person has done the job, and about a 30% chance of the writeup being wrong, dangerous or inaccurate. There's no entrance exam to post to the internet.

I swear half the time, I'll read about it on the internet and the procedure is made MUCH more complicated than it really is. Even with my questionable mechanical abilities.

My Dad got me started, then it was high school auto shop. Spent some time as an apprentice and plenty of trial and error. My best friend is an awesome pro tech and has given me lots of pointers along the way.

Keith Tanner wrote: But there's a 90% chance it was the first time that particular person has done the job, and about a 30% chance of the writeup being wrong, dangerous or inaccurate. There's no entrance exam to post to the internet.

Truth. If you're like me, you're looking up some kind of job that you'll only do once, otherwise you'd know how to do it already. :) Look at the pictures, note other people's complaints, and use your head. I did the PCV system on my Volvo a few weeks ago. There was a big thread on swedespeed where someone graciously documented his work but he did at least 50% more than he had to. Buried deep in the thread was a smart poster who had discovered that a crow foot was the perfect tool to save a lot of unbolting E36 M3. That'sthe kind of gem you look for.

My father was a mechanical engineer who had a fairly complete machine shop in the basement and some type of "hot rod" car in the garage all the time. I don't remember it but according to my mother I started "helping" him when I was 3.

Learned enough from him to get a job as a machinist to pay my way thru college to be a shop teacher. Which I did for 28 years.

nicksta43 wrote: Learned quickly that while I love maintaining my own junk, working on other peoples junk for a living sucks.

Out-of-context quoting FTW.

By doing it, nobody in my family even tinkered with their cars when I was growing up.

After my first car died, my dad bought me a Fiero back in '03 and told me I had pay for any maintenance or repairs. I couldn't afford to, so I figured out how to do everything myself by reading the internet and with some help from my dad.

I'm one of the rare people that had no real family background in cars and ended up balls deep in it anyway.

I think my curiosity was going to drive me towards learning about cars to some extent no matter what else happened, but what really sunk the hook in was that my grandmother bought me subscriptions to Motor Trend and Hot Rod when i was about 10. I was just old enough to be able to mostly grasp the content, so it was just the right level of challenge to figure out what Hot Rod meant in all their tech articles and so on. I think by the time i was 14 I had a decent idea of how camshafts affected engine behavior. I remember that being a big mental challenge at the time.

I worked my first car off a friend's parents at age 14. I worked my 2nd car off another friends parents at 15. I worked at an automotive machine shop for a summer that year. My parents bought me my 3rd car when i was 15 too, and that was the one that really helped me learn how to work on cars. Mostly due to lack of diagnostic knowledge at that time, i thought that nearly everything on it broke, so i replaced it. At one point when i was 16 i did a rings and bearings rebuild on the engine before i found a broken flexplate causing the original concern. To be fair, a lot of it really did break! By the time i got my first job working on cars and started taking auto tech class at community college at 17, i was way ahead of most kids in knowledge and experience and i was driving around in a car id had all the way apart and back together again. I was also driving my 4th car.

Now i'm 29, ive owned a bit over 50 cars, im a master certified tech, i have a degree in automotive technology and a bachelors degree to teach it, i teach automotive at a high dollar trade school, ive done bunches of motor swaps, and several of the cars i own are among the most-modified of their type in existence. It sounds cooler to say it than it is to live it, but im pretty damn happy with my car obsession and im not planning on cutting back anytime soon.

Necessity for me also.

My first car was an A1 VW Scirocco. I used to think that it must have been built the Monday after October Fest but later (after owning other VWs, Audis, BMWs) realized that generally they all are engineered to fail. I started learning to fix the POS after having to repeat the work I paid mechanics to repair it. Usually on the side of the road, in the middle of the night coming back home from college or heading back to college.

Now I do it b/c I'm cheap and b/c I want the job done right. Too many mechanics half ass things.

I bought a TR7 as my daily driver while in high school....

Slowly, with much anguish and a side of busted knuckles.

After a decade (on and off) I'm to the point where I can usually slog through easy stuff (fluids, brakes) and suspension.
(with only minor use of bad language)

Trans work or engine internal work, nope nope nope.
Oh yeah, my attempts at 'body work' have not turned out well.