Lessons from an Amateur Shade Tree Mechanic

As I have written in these pages before, I love to tinker on things and work with my hands. I’ve been working on my own stuff since I was old enough to hold a wrench. Sometimes with amusing results. As I’ve gotten older and more experienced, my efforts have become more successful and less amusing. More often than not, things actually work like they are supposed to and stay fixed until something else breaks. With that in mind, I thought I would share some insights and hard learned lessons I’ve picked up over the years.

1)     Use the right tool for the job – As tempting as it is to use a pair of channel locks or a blow torch on a stuck nut or an SAE socket/wrench on a Metric fastener (or vice versa), don’t do it. You will cause yourself needless aggravation and ruin the nut (and possibly more than that). Trust me when I say that it is cheaper to go buy the correct wrench or even a set of wrenches than to spend hours tracking down, ordering and waiting for some out of state parts house to ship that one bolt you need after you [insert stupid human trick here] and destroyed it.

2)    Get the best tools you can afford- Yes, good tools cost money, but you do not have to spend Snap On tool truck prices to build up a decent set of tools that will last you a lifetime. I still have the no name socket set someone gave me years ago, and it still gets work done. I have since added other tools including some Harbor Freight made in China specials and some “brand name” tools (also made in China ironically). Start with a basic set of sockets and wrenches and work your way up from there. Compare the cost of having your project “done by professionals” versus the cost of doing it yourself. Spend the difference on buying tools. Keep an eye on the big box stores around major holidays. They almost always run a sale on tool sets in the $75 to $150 range. Those are a bargain when you compare what you get versus what you’d pay for the collection separately. Check Craigslist, FaceBook Market, Offer Up, and local pawn shops for deals on expensive tools you want to have but for which you can’t justify paying full price. Also, remember that limited use and specialty tools can be rented or borrowed. Just remember that those tools are rented to sticky fingered nephews and Opas who don’t always take care of them. I had to borrow a harmonic balancer puller from AutoZone a while back. It was almost unsuable because some gormless ape had bent the freaking kit bolts I needed to mount the puller to my truck. We made it work, barely.

3)     Take care of your tools – This SHOULD be a no brainer really. Don’t leave your tools out in the rain to rust, make sure you wipe them down when your done with them, don’t use your combination wrench as a hammer, don’t loan your tools to people who don’t treat them properly (I’m looking at you Opa) or your sticky fingered nephews, etc.

4)     Start small and work your way up from there – just learning to change your own oil or change the brake pads on your car can save you a lot of money long term, give you a sense of pride and teach you valuable lessons in the process.

5)     Work smarter not harder – while diving right in, unbolting everything in sight and making a royal mess of things can be quite entertaining, it is not always the most efficient method or a guaranteed path to success. Take a few minutes to look at a manual, watch a YouTube video, etc. and learn a thing or two. A word of warning, paper manuals are good but have their limitations. Haynes and Chilton manuals typically address a range of model years and options and may not have the specific photos or description of the particular thing on which you are working. AllData is a bit better as it is year and model specific, but it also assumes a bit more experience and knowledge upfront. I used to have the full set of factory service manuals for the 1973 Ford Thunderbird from which it was possible to assemble a complete car. Factory manuals are probably the best option, but getting a hold of them is pricey and not as easy as other options. I would only do that for a classic car I was restoring from the ground up as a show car.

6)     A garage or shop space is a huge plus – in this day and age of everyone accumulating stuff and storing all the excess in their garages (if they even have a garage), I cannot emphasize enough how nice it is to be able to work on a vehicle in a place with a smooth, level concrete floor, out of the wind/rain/snow/sun, etc. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve had to put projects on hold because it was raining/hailing/the temperature of the sun’s outhouse outside. Since I do not have a garage at my current residence and the allegedly paved driveway could charitably be called “off road”, it makes for some interesting maintenance experiences.

7)     You have to be able to get the vehicle off the ground to work on it. A good quality jack stands and a 3 ton floor jack should be considered a bare minimum for working on your car. Ramps are helpful too. If you can afford a lift, they are worth every penny. I really wish I had one.

8)     Don’t trust everything you read on the internet – this also should be a given. Go on any car forum, and you will find contradictory information…sometimes in the same post as back to back comments. Setting gaskets is my favorite. Word of advise: do what the manufacture of the gasket says to do not what some hick on the internet says.

9)     If you have everything apart, it really pays to go ahead and replace other things in reach while you are already there. I’m mean you’ve done the work. Why would you want to do it twice or four times? For instance, when replacing the radiator on The Queen’s chariot, a smart husband would have gone ahead and replaced the AC Condenser/Power Steering Cooler while he was there. Guess who is not a smart husband? To be fair, you won’t always have the cash to do everything that needs doing; but, when you can, go ahead and save yourself some time and headaches. Especially if you have a higher mileage vehicle. For instance, the second time I had the front end of The Queen’s chariot pulled apart, I went ahead and changed the water pump, thermostat and thermostat housing while I was at it. On the truck (which has two fuel pumps one of which died), I went ahead and replaced both pumps since it was easier to remove the bed than it was to drop both fuel tanks. If you have to pull the transmission for any reason, you might as well go ahead and pull the flywheel too and change the rear main seal on the engine as that is a common failure point for oil leaks. 

10) Quality costs money – The old saying about buy once cry once really does apply to car parts and tools. I’m not saying don’t buy cheap parts (because sometimes that’s all you can afford), but I am saying that you will get better results by doing a little research and paying for the best quality parts you can afford. That $40 no name part from China you bought off eBay from someone with a poor grasp of the English language might last 5 minutes or 500,000 miles. You never know. What I do know from personal experience is that, when that $40 no name piece of junk craps the bed a month before the alleged warranty expires, you are out of luck getting a replacement under warranty from Uncle Chen and his goofy nephew Wang. I’d much rather deal with a North American company who will at least try to play by the rules.

11) Full Synthetic Oil and Extended Life Oil Filters are worth the money.

12) For modern OBDII cars, buy a scan tool. Even a cheap one. I picked up the Blue Driver scan tool which connects to my phone via Bluetooth for about $100. Best money I’ve spent on a tool for diagnostic purposes. You can spend insane money on these things; but, unless you intend to go pro or get deep into the weeds of reprograming your ECU, there is a point of diminishing returns. A good tool will tell you what the check engine codes means and the most likely fixes. They do have their limitations though. They can’t tell you anything for which a sensor is not connected. For instance, The Queen’s Chariot had, at one time, a distressing habit of shorting out the number 5 coil. That code is P0305 on the chariot. Okay, pull an electrical connector, remove one small bolt, pull the bad coil, insert new coil, reinstall the bolt and connector, and done. Until a few days later when the code pops again. What the…??? Now, we have to go digging deeper. Upon inspection, I notice the coil/spark plug well has liquid in it. Liquid and electrical components do not play Bueno together. My first thought was that The Queen had barreled head long into a deep puddle at speed. Problem was that it had not rained recently and she denied turning the chariot into a submarine. So, there are precious few sources of liquid under the hood, and the pendulum of possibilities swings over pretty quickly to the worst case and most expensive scenario which is a cracked head. Before panicking too much, I started the car to see if there were any obvious signs of a leak. Good thing I did as I discovered that the heater hose had a pin hole leak in it directly over cylinder 5’s spark plug well. It was spritzing a very small stream of coolant into the well but wasn’t a big enough hole to be a visible leak when the coolant system was not under pressure. Replaced the heater hose and the coil (again). Problem solved.

13) Corollary to # 12, work simple/cheap to hard/expensive. If you hear hoof beats, think horses not zebras. In rare cases it will be cows or wildebeasts; but, generally, shaving with Occam’s Razor will get you better results than rebuilding the engine every time a check engine light comes on.

14) If you find yourself in over your head, stop digging. There is no shame in asking for help.

15) Take photos and notes as you go. You will thank yourself later when you forget how the alternator is supposed to be mounted or something simple gets misplaced. Being methodical about your work will pay huge dividends later. I tend to be pretty anal about laying out bolts in the order and pattern they came out of the car so I know how they are supposed to go back in. It’s not always possible when you are disassembling a lot of stuff to get to a $20 part with only 2 bolts holding it in the car. Do the best you can and go slow. There are no trophies for finishing a repair quickly if you have left over or buggered up parts.

16) It’s a good idea to double check your work to make sure you didn’t miss something small. When I replaced the AC Condenser/Power Steering Cooler on the chariot, I might have forgotten to tighten a hose fitting or two. Cleaning up a copious amount of power steering fluid that sprayed all over the engine bay was no fun but served as an excellent reminder to not skip over the small stuff.  

17) Engineers are sadists who get perverse thrills off making it difficult to work on cars. The design folks don’t help by insisting that everything “look pretty”. My mother had one of the first Hyundai’s imported to the US back in 1986. Engineers thought it would be cute to put the oil filter above the front sway bar, under the alternator and covered over with a splash guard that had a hole in it in the exact size and shape of the oil filter. Unsuspecting neophyte grease monkeys might think it possible to remove the oil filter by that particular orifice. Don’t believe it. It’s a trap. A monkey trap to be specific. Knowing what I know now, the secret is to remove the splash guard and create the room you need to access the things that need to be changed.

I’m sure there are other things I’m forgetting, but this will do for now. Enjoy.