Mechanical Intimidation

I didn't get much real work done today. A friend of mine was sending me a barrage of text messages as he embarked on his first junk yard mission. He'd send me messages:

"I've never taken off a strut, this is easy!"
Yup, just a couple of bolts.
"What's this piece, I can't get it off."
ABS sensor.
"Do we need this?"
No, the racecar doesn't have ABS any more.
"How do these things work?"
Hall effect. Magnetic black magic. I'll explain later.

And he kept at it and collected a nice pile of parts that he's going to use to get his rally car ready. Even though I was three hours away and building drawers, I got to hang out and mentor him. It was a good day.
That got me thinking, a month ago I watched him do his first oil change ever on a race car he had bought. As we worked on the car together he'd ask me a questions and I'd answer them. He finally stopped and asked how I learned this stuff. "By doing it" was the answer. The first time you change brake pads you don't know how. Even reading up on it and watching videos and having someone looking over your shoulder doesn't fully prepare you for getting you hands covered in brake dust and hoping you're doing it right. But after you've done it once, you 'know' how. The next car may be a little different, but the job will be mostly the same.
Small job after small job we chip away at the intimidating nature of working on cars. I'm not sure if it ever goes completely away. Maybe we just continue to tackle jobs we haven't done yet until one day we find ourselves standing over a car we've build from scratch. At least thats how I hope it ends.

I get the "How do you know how to do that?" question a lot, and I'm nothing more than a mediocre parts-changer compared to most people on this board. The answer is, of course "Well, you take it apart, and then you put it back together the same way."

I also hope it all culminates in something like a Locost. I'd take an Exocet as a nice intermediate step.

Automatic transmissions and turbo-encabulators still terrify me, but everything else...not so much.

(Currently trying to build a motorcycle from scratch.)

Electrical systems are black magic as far as I'm concerned.

In reply to cmcgregor:

Yup, me too. All the time. I'm pretty sure the average person thinks anyone who can do a brake job must be some kind of warlock.

Like Mazdeuce said, the answer is you just do it, and then keep doing new things as the need arises.

I've never replaced a clutch. I've never had to. I did install one once when I bought a car completely disassembled. I'm almost looking forward to taking apart an automatic transmission someday. Not sure I can put it back together, but it sounds interestimg.

This is one of the things that i mention to my friends but not to my students. As an instructor there are constantly times where I seem to swoop in and fix a problem in a way that seems effortless and look like a hero to the students. Most of the time the majority of what is separating my actions from theirs is the confidence i have in doing them. This is especially true when swinging hammers at cars. I know a whole lot about working on cars, but probably half of what the students are actually seeing that makes them think i am SO good is just the confidence of KNOWING that i CAN succeed at whatever I'm about to attempt. It's the thing that is hardest to teach, because even if you manage to make someone fluent in the mental process of doing something, they don't actually become confident until they prove to themselves that they can do it by.. doing it. You can teach process, but you can't teach confidence. You can only encourage someone to gain it by putting their hands on the thing and doing it.

In reply to Vigo:

That's a very good point. My day job is (mostly) troubleshooting liquid handling robotics for a clinical lab - there's little or no formal training that led me here. Mostly it was a willingness to poke around pushing buttons until I found the one that did the thing I was trying to do. I frequently get called upon to fix instruments that I have never even used before, and frequently I'm successful in doing it, because of the attitude with which I approach the problem (push buttons until one does the thing you're trying to do).

This goes for a lot of things.

I've worked in manufacturing and field support for 10 years, interfaced with multiple different ERP systems, and helped implement them. I've never really had to sell one before which is a totally different skillset. Yesterday I had to have one of the technical support guys bail me out of a situation while I was presenting an ERP system for the first time to a perspective client.

I ended up getting cornered by a question from a customer and the presentation quickly got away from me. Luckily I had asked for support with the presentation and our guy helped me out. It's good to have a support system even if it's just for feedback.

It's been a long long time since I had that deer in the headlights moment. These things always get better in time as you develop your skills. The situation just revealed a number of weaknesses in my presentation strategy and showed me what areas I need to study further. I'll never be able to do it on my own unless I actually put myself out there though.

Transmissions are my Achilles heel. I did tear apart a siezed 4L65 once.... it didn't quite go back together correctly. That was OK, it was just a core at that point anyway. Oh, and Carbs. I think carbs were designed by the same black magic witchcraftery as auto trans. I'm sure there are animal sacrifices involved.

How the hell did you do that is a common question to me. I learned it is usually the answer. My favorite was always the manual transmission learning story. I bought a manual dsm, sold my corolla, and had to get home. It doesn't take rocket surgery, just a willingness to berkeley it up and have to do it over.

I think this right here is why my focus project has sat unloved for two months. It's not the lack of garages pace or odd hours stopping me, I'm just not confident since I've never dealt with this particular car before

Bobzilla wrote: Transmissions are my Achilles heel. I did tear apart a siezed 4L65 once.... it didn't quite go back together correctly. That was OK, it was just a core at that point anyway. Oh, and Carbs. I think carbs were designed by the same black magic witchcraftery as auto trans. I'm sure there are animal sacrifices involved.

Carbs were invented by the same people that managed to turn McDonald's fry salt into crack. No one knows how, or why, but they just work.

Gaunt596 wrote: I think this right here is why my focus project has sat unloved for two months. It's not the lack of garages pace or odd hours stopping me, I'm just not confident since I've never dealt with this particular car before

I had never done suspension of any kind, and tore into the most expensive car i will likely ever own, with nothing more than youtube and some forum walk throughs. You can too.

I learned alot growing up but fuel injection is something ive had too learn on my own and i still dislike it. Id much rather troubleshoot a carb/hei car then a modern port injected crank trigger car.

Automatic transmissions are just an R&R for me. I have no desire too try that skill out!

As a kid learned drum brakes out of a manual, pre-internet days. You learned that while you could do it w/ regular tools a brake tool kit made it a whole lot easier. Same w/ points ignition and the first clutch job. Finally figured out Holley carbs when EFI was becoming the norm. Live n learn.

Nowadays the internet is the wealth of knowledge, manuals are a lot more specific and there are YouTube 'how to' videos on just about anything.

Might sound like a dinosaur maybe cuz I am. Gotta love learning, don't really miss the good old days tho.

I remember being intimidated by a leaky valve cover on an old v6 Dodge dakota. Now i make my living working on other people's car. I'm the lead tech in my shop and part of my job is to help the other techs. Of course I get hit with the same question of "how do I know this stuff". The most important thing I've learned helping these guys is to lead them to the answer, not just spout out the answer or fix it for them. If I show them how to think through problem the next time they can (hopefully) do it themselves. You know, give a man a fish versus teaching a man to fish.

Vigo wrote: This is one of the things that i mention to my friends but not to my students. As an instructor there are constantly times where I seem to swoop in and fix a problem in a way that seems effortless and look like a hero to the students. Most of the time the majority of what is separating my actions from theirs is the confidence i have in doing them. This is especially true when swinging hammers at cars. I know a whole lot about working on cars, but probably half of what the students are actually seeing that makes them think i am SO good is just the confidence of KNOWING that i CAN succeed at whatever I'm about to attempt. It's the thing that is hardest to teach, because even if you manage to make someone fluent in the mental process of doing something, they don't actually become confident until they prove to themselves that they can do it by.. doing it. You can teach process, but you can't teach confidence. You can only encourage someone to gain it by putting their hands on the thing and doing it.

This!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I find it interesting that you guys who get paid to work on cars have others around you that ask you questions. It makes sense, but from the outside I think a lot of us assume that by dropping a car at a shop we have an 'expert' working on it. I'm sure that's true a lot of the time, but that would explain some of the hamfisted stuff I've seen come out of shops.
Talking to the rally car guy from the first post and he mentioned that he might pay someone to fix something, just in case. I relayed a bit of wisdom that I got from an old autocrosser about doing alignments at home, "It's hard to pay someone enough to care about this as much as you do."

Many years ago, my wife bought me a MIG welder for my birthday.

Took me 2 years to get the courage to actually use it.

I grew up in a neighborhood out in the country where there were 6 of us boys within a 4 year age span. When I was 14(one of the oldest) our fathers decided that we needed to learn about cars and how to drive. So they purchased a 1952 Plymouth for us to drive around the 10 acre field out back. One condition was that if we broke it we had to fix it.

Of course, we promptly broke the transmission. So we (the boys) scrapped up the money and one of the fathers took us to a junkyard. We had to remove the trans from the junk car and then put it back in "our" car. I don't think that being teenagers we had any thoughts about not being able to do it.

Before the car was finally retired a couple years later we had also replaced the engine and the transmission once again besides doing the regular service stuff.

Because of that I have never been afraid to try anything dealing with cars. didn't always succeed but at least I tried.

Currently reading amongst twenty other books 'American Beliefs' by John Harmon McElroy. The chapter 'Frontier Beliefs' has two of four themes that are; 'What has to be done will teach you how to do it.': and 'Progress requires organization.' A little simple but sure.

A couple of rules I follow along these lines...

1] if it was assembled, it can be disassembled

2] if it doesn't work now, I can't make it work any less by trying to fix it.

Honestly; the bigger thing is how many people let intimidation hold them back? Hell, my dad passed away when I was 12 with only a little time for wrenching learning (he was restoring a 68 mustang). I still ended up rolling up my sleeves and learning. I know a ton of people who let academic things intimidate them. I did engineering, suffered through it and learned that I love being plunked in the deep end. Ended up doing nanotech research as an undergrad, helped start up a lab, operated and maintained instruments with words like "reactor" in their names, and was published.

Ended up getting a job where I see something new every day and its always fun having to jump in and learn a new system (but I am back to automotive, got tired of academia).

Everyone learns one step at a time, you just have to have the courage to start taking steps and soon you could be running.

Good job taking the time to teach your friend how to do things, and also explain them. I can tell you first hand that it means a lot to have a mentor do that.

I've been obsessed with cars since I was a toddler, but I never learned how to work on them. My father was somewhat handy, but never taught me (and honestly as a teen/pre-teen I was too lazy/rebellious to learn). As I got older, I wanted to learn, but was either too intimidated, too busy or any other variety of reasons. I knew how to change oil and a flat tire, but that was literally it. I tried a few times on my own and always ended up in failure...including the time I bought a running '87 Chevy Nova for $100, and tried to rebuild the carb. I failed and sold the car to the scrap yard for a profit. It really sucked because I started getting into autox, HPDE and it was expensive to pay for work on cars when I broke them.

About 5 years ago, fellow GRMer Sonic gave me the opportunity to join his LeMons team. He lived 30 minutes from me, so I spent a lot of time at his house working on our race car. Like OP did, he took the time to show me how to do even the most basic things, one step at a time, and let me try it on my own. Before I knew it, I was laying underneath a Rolls Royce trying to help figure out how to turn it into a race car. While I'm very far from being proficient in auto repair, I'm no longer as intimidated as I used to be and am not afraid to try new things (just afraid to break them... ). Yes, you learn by just getting in there and doing, but having someone there to help teach you is very important too.