Car Repair Skills Everyone Should Have

[Malthus]

I can assemble a brake.
Beyond that I've never had to do anything. I guess I could figure out changing a tyre, if the place to put the jack is clearly marked, could maybe bluff through some other things, but....I hope when I have kids I won't have to have a car so this won't be necessary.

This is the point though - these days, regular car users (assuming they take the car in for regular maintenance) literally don't have to know anything about car maintenance. I've never been in a situation it was necessary - other than jump-starting a car where the headlights were foolishly left on. When major stuff starts to go because the car is old, it is typically stuff your average amateur won't be able to fix.

This was not always the case though. In the past, if you wanted to drive, you really needed to know some car repair/maintenance basics, because the things simply were not all that reliable.

[Grey Fox]

but....I hope when I have kids I won't have to have a car so this won't be necessary.

[DontSayBanana]

Take it into an auto parts store & have them test it.  They do it for free everywhere I've been.

Yup.  Or if you've got an automotive-quality multimeter, you can check it with a voltage meter.  12.6V is the minimum you want to see, so when I say automotive-quality, I mean capable of handling >12V.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I can't really agree that basic car maintenance is a hobbyist set of knowledge. I don't think you need to know how to change your own oil, but you need to understand the concept of changing oil and various other fluids because otherwise how do you even know what sort of maintenance you're supposed to do? If you always drive new cars they give you a maintenance calendar of sorts and just tell you to come in every x miles; most manufacturers these days even throw in 2-3 years worth of these visits gratis so if you buy new cars regularly you'll never bee "off schedule" and will always just be going to the dealer. But unless you plan to always drive a new car or a car no more than 2-3 years old you at least need some base level of knowledge.

Having knowledge doesn't make you a plebe or imply your oh-so-valuable time is being misspent. That's the same kind of argument people make who say stay at home Mom's should earn $150,000 a year based on their amount of hours worked and the market rate for services like "professional governess" and "private chef." The reality is neither your employer or society at large is paying you one way or the other for your free time and you'll almost always be dealing with your personal property on free time.

Some of this is just basic avoiding "infantilizing" yourself. I've called the auto club to fix a flat two times in the past ten years. One time they had someone out in 15 minutes who did the work and sent me on my way. It was bad weather, we were dressed in nice clothes..I just didn't want to mess with it. The other time, the tow driver called me back and said, "Yeah, when I take these calls we get a flat reimbursement rate of $75. You're an hour out of my way so it isn't worth my time, sorry." Luckily this was in the smartphone age, I googled the closest tow/car service place (est 2 mi away) and called someone there who came and set me up in about 40 minutes time. On this second occasion I would have changed the tire myself if I wasn't 1 hour into a 5 hour road trip, I needed/wanted an actual new tire not the donut that I found in my trunk. In both of those scenarios I paid someone to solve my problem but I was glad that if push came to shove, I knew how to change the tire myself. Shit happens in life, if you're ever driving in bad weather and have a flat you may not get a guy there to help you out until tomorrow or etc. Why have the possibility of ending up 100% beholden to society just to get home when less than 30 minutes of education can give you the ability to change your tire yourself? I guess maybe a lot of you are like my old grandmother who drove her car 0.75 mi to the supermarket and 0.35 mi to church and never deviated from that path, but I can't say with any certainty where, when, or in what conditions I'll be driving in August of 2014 or March of 2015 and if I end up somewhere that it's a huge bitch to get someone to come help me out I can't see a single argument for rendering myself incapable of solving my own problem to save less than an hour of my time that would be required to learn how to change a tire.

It came up a bit in another thread about personal budgeting, and I never got back to it then, but something I've noticed because we keep a meticulous track of our finances is the more money you make the more money in absolute terms you waste on stuff you consider "oh well, I'll just pay whatever" type expenses. When you're broke maybe those "whatever" type expenses are paying $0.50 for extra meat on your sandwich at Subway, when you've established a firmer income I've noticed it's very easy to get that attitude about other things. "Oh, I don't know much about this type of contracting, he's the professional if he says I need it done let's do it." That's an attitude a lot of people have and I don't care how much money you make if you like being taken advantage of that is exactly how to do it, by having the attitude you're not an expert in something so you'll just do whatever the expert says and pay them whatever they ask. Before we ever got into buying rental properties we made sure that we had a firm handle on the real materials costs, expected labor costs etc for all kinds of maintenance. You don't run a business by ignoring the details, and a properly run household should be run like a firm.

[crazy canuck]

But unless you plan to always drive a new car or a car no more than 2-3 years old you at least need some base level of knowledge.

And that base knowledge consists of continuing to allow your chosen garage to service your car.

[derspiess]

I usually don't change my own oil since a local place does it for little more than the oil + filter would cost me.  I laugh when they try to upsell me on an air filter replacement, though.  That's definitely an area where you save a bit of money over time by doing it yourself.  And it's about the easiest under-the-hood maintenance you can do.

[Malthus]

I can't really agree that basic car maintenance is a hobbyist set of knowledge. I don't think you need to know how to change your own oil, but you need to understand the concept of changing oil and various other fluids because otherwise how do you even know what sort of maintenance you're supposed to do? If you always drive new cars they give you a maintenance calendar of sorts and just tell you to come in every x miles; most manufacturers these days even throw in 2-3 years worth of these visits gratis so if you buy new cars regularly you'll never bee "off schedule" and will always just be going to the dealer. But unless you plan to always drive a new car or a car no more than 2-3 years old you at least need some base level of knowledge.

Having knowledge doesn't make you a plebe or imply your oh-so-valuable time is being misspent. That's the same kind of argument people make who say stay at home Mom's should earn $150,000 a year based on their amount of hours worked and the market rate for services like "professional governess" and "private chef." The reality is neither your employer or society at large is paying you one way or the other for your free time and you'll almost always be dealing with your personal property on free time.

Some of this is just basic avoiding "infantilizing" yourself. I've called the auto club to fix a flat two times in the past ten years. One time they had someone out in 15 minutes who did the work and sent me on my way. It was bad weather, we were dressed in nice clothes..I just didn't want to mess with it. The other time, the tow driver called me back and said, "Yeah, when I take these calls we get a flat reimbursement rate of $75. You're an hour out of my way so it isn't worth my time, sorry." Luckily this was in the smartphone age, I googled the closest tow/car service place (est 2 mi away) and called someone there who came and set me up in about 40 minutes time. On this second occasion I would have changed the tire myself if I wasn't 1 hour into a 5 hour road trip, I needed/wanted an actual new tire not the donut that I found in my trunk. In both of those scenarios I paid someone to solve my problem but I was glad that if push came to shove, I knew how to change the tire myself. Shit happens in life, if you're ever driving in bad weather and have a flat you may not get a guy there to help you out until tomorrow or etc. Why have the possibility of ending up 100% beholden to society just to get home when less than 30 minutes of education can give you the ability to change your tire yourself? I guess maybe a lot of you are like my old grandmother who drove her car 0.75 mi to the supermarket and 0.35 mi to church and never deviated from that path, but I can't say with any certainty where, when, or in what conditions I'll be driving in August of 2014 or March of 2015 and if I end up somewhere that it's a huge bitch to get someone to come help me out I can't see a single argument for rendering myself incapable of solving my own problem to save less than an hour of my time that would be required to learn how to change a tire.

It came up a bit in another thread about personal budgeting, and I never got back to it then, but something I've noticed because we keep a meticulous track of our finances is the more money you make the more money in absolute terms you waste on stuff you consider "oh well, I'll just pay whatever" type expenses. When you're broke maybe those "whatever" type expenses are paying $0.50 for extra meat on your sandwich at Subway, when you've established a firmer income I've noticed it's very easy to get that attitude about other things. "Oh, I don't know much about this type of contracting, he's the professional if he says I need it done let's do it." That's an attitude a lot of people have and I don't care how much money you make if you like being taken advantage of that is exactly how to do it, by having the attitude you're not an expert in something so you'll just do whatever the expert says and pay them whatever they ask. Before we ever got into buying rental properties we made sure that we had a firm handle on the real materials costs, expected labor costs etc for all kinds of maintenance. You don't run a business by ignoring the details, and a properly run household should be run like a firm.

If you are talking about stuff like jumping a battery or changing a tyre, sure, it is useful to be able to do it ... it is also really easy to do even if you don't know how. The package my jumper cables came in had a handy diagram, even a total mechanical illiterate could eventually figure it out. Ditto with changing a tyre. If necessary, as long as you have the right stuff, you can get it done without a lot of specialist knowledge.

If you are talking about knowing about regularly scheduled maintenance, sure, that's something necessary to know. Ditto with where to put various fluids. Again, with new cars, they make this pretty obvious, with pictograms even.

I can't think of a penny I have saved by not knowing about car maintenance beyond the obvious. When stuff has in fact gone wrong with the car, it has been stuff that this sort of basic knowledge would not fix.

The fact is that cars have changed. It used to be the case that running them required some mechanical knowledge above having the ability to read very simple instructions. That is less and less true. At the same time, the basics that you have to occasionally do have become easier, to the point where specialist knowledge is less necessary.

[Jacob]

My high school buddy's very salt-of-the-earth manly man older brother just posted on Facebook "It would be nice if everyone would stop 'trying' to be a mechanic and let your mechanic fix your vehicle."

[KRonn]

How do you check the battery?

Take it into an auto parts store & have them test it.  They do it for free everywhere I've been.

And I think if the battery is four years and it's going into winter then replace it anyway. I should have done that, knew enough to do it, but just forgot about it. Cold weather saps a battery and an old battery may not survive. Mine went dead during those below zero cold days we had.

[Malthus]

My high school buddy's very salt-of-the-earth manly man older brother just posted on Facebook "It would be nice if everyone would stop 'trying' to be a mechanic and let your mechanic fix your vehicle."

Real men aren't their own mechanics; real men are their own dentists. 

[derspiess]

And I think if the battery is four years and it's going into winter then replace it anyway. I should have done that, knew enough to do it, but just forgot about it. Cold weather saps a battery and an old battery may not survive. Mine went dead during those below zero cold days we had.

In that last cold snap we had, my brother's battery and my wife's battery died right at the same time.  I felt like I was AAA that night.

[11B4V]

And I think if the battery is four years and it's going into winter then replace it anyway. I should have done that, knew enough to do it, but just forgot about it. Cold weather saps a battery and an old battery may not survive. Mine went dead during those below zero cold days we had.

In that last cold snap we had, my brother's battery and my wife's battery died right at the same time.  I felt like I was AAA that night.

Trickle charger helps. The trucks and mustang get driven maybe once a week and the trickle charger helps. If the neon is parked for a couple day I'll put a trickle charger on it. It's battery is 8 years old.

Not exactly what I got but similar.

[CountDeMoney]

For the majority of people, their car is their most expensive investment and the most valuable possession.  It's only common sense to at least read the fucking owner's manual that comes with it in the glove compartment.

[11B4V]

For the majority of people, their car is their most expensive investment and the most valuable possession.  It's only common sense to at least read the fucking owner's manual that comes with it in the glove compartment.

You'd think.

[Monoriu]

For the majority of people, their car is their most expensive investment and the most valuable possession.  It's only common sense to at least read the fucking owner's manual that comes with it in the glove compartment.

Financial investments are far more valuable, I think.