These Are the Life Skills You've Learned by Working on Cars

When to call it quits and call in an expert, not just keep pushing blindly on.

Too often people get really stubborn about a small, but difficult, job and end up making a huge mess of things long after they ought to have stopped, all because of ego. You only need to look at all the project cars for sale to see that. The skill is knowing you are in over your head, and being able to not give into a sunk cost mindset and; either, sell before you wrecked things good and proper, or call in an expert and admit to yourself you do not have the skill to do this yourself.

And yeah, it is an applicable life skill.

You can’t do everything. Sometimes there are things that are just beyond your power, whether due to time or money or skill or tools. There’s no shame in calling in expert help before you make things worse for yourself — and more expensive when you end up going to a shop anyway.

Submitted by: skeffles

Read the entire instructions before commencing work.

Read the instructions twice. Then read them again, just to be sure. If you really want to do things right, Google the instructions. Sometimes the forums will have a slight spin on what the company wrote, and that can save you time or effort.

Submitted by: Blockheads

Letting our frustration and anger through swearing at inanimate objects. Never really said f* you or called something a mother f’er that wasn’t living before working on cars/bikes. I don’t even really say that stuff to people either, it just comes out when working on the rusty shit we end up with in Ohio.

Screaming f-bombs at a rusted bolt won’t have quite the same effect as proper penetrating lube, but yelling something as you tug on a breaker bar might give you the super-saiyan boost you need to finally break it loose. Or break your socket.

Submitted by: jstump

It’s commonplace among many to have a cold beer when doing some work, or, in the words of Andy Dufresne, “... a man working outdoors feels more like a man if he can have a bottle of suds.”

So I don’t know when, where or why, but at some point along the way I decided that no alcohol, no matter the kind or quantity, was to be consumed when working on brake, fuel or electrical systems of ANY kind at any point until they were completed, tested and shown to work correctly.

Many years later, I’m putting a new gas grill together and my father (a recovering alcoholic of 45 years at that point) calls, asks what I’m doing and then asks if I’m also enjoying a cold beer. I tell him my philosophy on this and he roars with laughter on the other end. Still laughing he says, “You’d make a terrible alcoholic! Consequences? What are those. I gotta go and call all my AA buddies, bye!”

When the grill lit up, wasn’t leaking propane and didn’t explode, I cracked a beer for dad. (For any safety geeks, yes I used Snoop.)

I’m not really sure what Snoop is in this context, so I’m assuming you had the Dogg himself come inspect your freshly-built grill. Honestly, that sounds like a great cookout. Why wasn’t I invited to the party?

Submitted by: NegativeEd

First - Murphy’s Law: Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong.

Second - On every project there will be at least one fastener that is too tight, too rusted, too worn or too inaccessible to be easily removed. In such a case, step back, take a deep breath and quiet the angry monkey part of your brain before you make a bad situation worse.

If you start rounding off bolts, you’re only going to make life harder for yourself. Grab some rust remover, spray it on, and then go wait. Make yourself a sandwich. There’s turkey in the fridge.

Submitted by: Earthbound Misfit I

How to scope out the wrenching job—making a mental list of the tools/materials/sweat equity it’ll take to complete and realize one of three things:

1) The job is easy—I know I can do it—so let’s git ‘er done. Ex: changing the oil.

2) The job looks do-able—I ought to be to do it—so let’s tackle it and see if I’m up to the task or not. Ex: removing the extremely fragile grille from my Charger, repairing the cracks, and reinstalling it. (The tight spaces for gently wrenching that brittle plastic grille back into place nearly drove me to sobbing.)

3) The job is obviously out of my league—don’t be an idiot—let the experts tackle. Maybe I can tag along and at least learn something. Ex: turning the Charger’s 440 into a roller cam stroker 512—not a chance in hell for me to even know where to start.

Point being: realize your limitations, but at least stretch yourself and learn new things. But don’t be an idiot concerning what you bite off.

You aren’t equipped to do every job. That’s fine. But those middle-tier repairs, the ones that seem doable but may not be, are the real sweet spot. They’ll push your abilities, force you to learn new skills, and hopefully leave you with a result you can be proud of.

Submitted by: the 1969 Dodge Charger Guy

Be prepared.

Before I take on any new mechanical job, I go straight to Google or YouTube and find how-tos for the job. I usually watch more than one. Last weekend, I did the rocker arms on my van, chasing the dreaded “Pentastar Tick”. Had I stopped at one video, I wouldn’t have found several tips and shortcuts that saved me hours of time. I take notes and write things down.

Organization is a form of preparedness. See, I’m not a naturally organized person. I am a “I think I saw it in this pile over here” person. But because I am so forgetful and scatterbrained, I desperately try to be organized when and where I can. That means having places for my tools. Gathering up the ones I need before I start my project, so I’m not spending half my time wondering where the 1/4 flex extension is. I use one of those compartment trays, like the ones for parts storage or tackle boxes, to sort bolts as I remove them, because I will forget. I keep an old long-handled ratchet with a 15mm socket on it hanging next to a strap wrench and all of my oil supplies, so I can do an oil change in 15 minutes.

I prepare myself to take at least twice as long to do a repair or maintenance than I think it’ll take. If I think a job will take half an hour, I give myself an hour. It sucks to run out of daylight or miss dinner because you’re still trying to find a nut that rolled away, but it happens - so be prepared for it.

Be prepared to spend more on parts or tools than you thought. If you’re on an extremely tight budget, consider waiting (if you can) to save up more money. If you plan ahead for a repair, you can often find parts cheaper online. Don’t cheap out on parts unless you have no choice - you don’t always have to buy the best, but do your research and stick to name brands. No-name Ebay crap is no-name Ebay crap for a reason. I went through three sets of struts on my old Neon back when I was “trying to save money”, when I could have just bought the Monroes or KYBs and been done with it.

And be prepared that sometimes, a job goes sideways, and you’ll either have to come back to it later, or take it to someone with more experience and patience than you have.

Making a plan of attack is incredibly important in wrenching. You can try to roll with the punches, make up a game plan as you go along, but that won’t work as well as getting everything laid out from the start.

Submitted by: dbeach84

How learning and experimenting can quell anxiety. For most people, if they hear a weird noise on their car, there is a moment of panic thinking “oh crap what is that, is this going to be expensive, what do I do?”. If you have worked on your car in a sufficient amount before, there is a big relaxation that comes with immediately knowing what the problem is (or is likely to be), and knowing that you’ve worked on it before and can fix it again.

Of course, this is a double-edged sword. Once you’ve started working on your car, you begin listening even more intently for all those little issues. Is that normal road noise, or are your new tires rubbing?

Submitted by: BigRed91

The most reliable form of a vehicle is bone-stock.

Any, I mean any, deviation from bone stock will result in at least some form of negative feedback. Whether it is a decrease in reliability, a decrease in efficiency, or a decrease in comfort, there is no free lunch.

It’s just something to consider when you open the modification can of worms. There is usually no going back once you start modifying things, so be damn sure you’re okay with that vehicle never being the same again.

This isn’t necessarily true. Sometimes, the tradeoff can just be that your fancy aftermarket part costs a hell of a lot more than the OEM one — sure, you can fix your bouncy base-model Fiesta suspension with custom-built adaptive dampers, but are you really going to?

Other times, the tradeoff can actually be a benefit. I’ve owned multiple cars with semi-solid motor mounts, that give an improvement in response at the cost of an increase in cabin NVH. I, for one, loved that NVH increase. You just need to find the mods that work for you.

Submitted by: modularfordfan

Sometimes the hard, slow way is the best way.

Given a difficult task, I will try multiple, different ways to get it to be easier and faster. I will go buy different tools, I will stop and look up the task online to see if other people have done it easier. I will do anything rather than just do the hard task. But in the end, I will have wasted exponentially more time trying to make the task faster than if I had just diligently done the task.

If you spend two hours trying to figure out a shortcut that’ll save you 10 minutes, you haven’t actually saved any time. Similarly, if you spend $400 cobbling together a Rube Goldberg machine of Harbor Freight tools, you haven’t saved yourself any money over the proper $300 Snap-On tool.

Submitted by: Unacceptably Dry Scones

I learned what pure unadultered RAGE feels like and how to spot it coming so I can take a break before it is too late.

Seriously, being able to recognize that one moment before you go off the emotional deep end is extremely helpful and translates very well to parenting (although I still do miss the emotional off ramp sometimes).

Swearing may help you break loose a stuck bolt, but running on pure rage is a recipe for disaster. You always need to be able to cool off, take a step back, and reevaluate problems when working on cars.

Submitted by: my goat ate my homework

Rebuilding the transmission on my KitchenAid stand mixer (it took FIVE hours - take pictures every step of the way - trust me) gave me insights into using YouTube for multiple mechanical issues. And now I google before stopping by the “shop.”

Or swing by AutoZone and have them read the code - I should just get a code reader. However, never kid yourself that shit is easy because it’s “just a new driver’s side door handle.” I started to take that puppy off, realized I needed some kind of off-set screwdriver and asked the mechanic to replace the broken one with the supplied part when I had it in for a full oil change. He bitched at me later about how much of a pain in the ass it was. I told him that’s why I hadn’t finished the job myself. ;)

The replacement radio antennae just screwed in place...

Do you know you can get concentrate for window washer fluid and mix it yourself?

I am frugal, to the point of cheap.

“The KitchenAid is busted? How in the hell do you fix that?”

One YouTube video later...

“Oh. I can handle that.”

Submitted by: sybann

Problem Solving / Troubleshooting. I used to get intimidated by large or difficult projects that were (at the time) out of my realm of knowledge. At some point I had the thought that those that do the difficult work, on a very over simplified level, are just people like me that learned how to do a thing. So why can’t I learn how to do that thing? Now I seem to look at large projects more like a bunch of little projects that equal a whole.

I’ve also learned to basically take things apart until you find the broken bit, fix that bit, then just put it all back together. You just better know how it came apart in the first place.

With any task imaginable, it’s highly likely someone else has done it before you. If they could figure it out, why can’t you?

Submitted by: Lotus2891

I learned the power of research. I didn’t have much in the way of a role model when it comes to this sort of thing. My dad dipped when I was 9 and my step dad put in the least amount of effort. I learned to wrench on my own, which required tons and tons of research with few in-person guides to show me the way. Did I mess a lot of stuff up? You’re damn right I did. I’m the epitome of learning things the hard way. But I’ve learned a lot about how to find the best sorts of sources when it comes to so many things: DIY projects, investment strategies, home buying and repair. I wouldn’t change a thing.

Scanning through resources, like forum threads or shop manuals, is helpful enough. Learning how to quickly find those resources is even better — it’ll help you through the rest of your life.

Submitted by: Fluffy6079

Things are often a whole lot easier than it looks..... Find a diagram and pull up youtube. if a human was able to assemble it, I can disassemble it and reassemble it.

I used to be relatively intimidated by engines or general repairs of things that I couldnt see inside of.... wrenching made me realize how simple the world actually is, as long as its not german.

Most mechanical things in this world are just an assembly of smaller, simpler pieces. There are of course two exceptions to this rule: carburetors, which run on dark magicks, and German automotive electronics. Trust neither.

Submitted by: redneckrob and his flock of Volvos