5 ms·

My wife and I recently finished an introductory auto mechanics class — which was an incredibly fun time and an excellent experience — and one of the recurring t

My wife and I recently finished an introductory auto mechanics class — which was an incredibly fun time and an excellent experience — and one of the recurring themes of the class was just how miserable, unreliable, and dangerous cars were ~50 years ago. This video is a good example of that; it's not just mileage or seat belts or airbags, it's everything from tires to engines to brakes.

chiph 11y ago
Growing up, we had a late 60's Dodge station wagon. It was pretty much the definition of "unsafe" - the interior was made of hard metal surfaces, loose steering & suspension, and no crash engineering at all. But it was the first family car that came with disc brakes, and that's why Dad bought it. Later, they bought a mid 80's Pontiac 6000, and while it had disc brakes, GM hadn't increased the size of the brake rotors to accommodate the change from asbestos brake pad material, so it had huge brake fade and panic stops really did result in driver panic. Not a fun car to drive.
- alistairSH 11y ago
  My first car was a Pontiac 6000. God, it was awful. But, it was a station wagon, so at least I could pile a bunch of friends in the back.
Someone1234 11y ago
Wish I could find an adult intro to auto mechanics class around here. That would be massively useful for everyone to learn but it seems like all anyone who already knows basic auto repair says is "YOU DON'T KNOW HOW TO DO THAT?!" with a sarcastic condescending tone, and I guess that attitude filters down to lack of education since it is obvious or whatever. But on the positive note there is a 101 to gun safety class every two city blocks so I have that going for me...
- wmeredith 11y ago
  Find your local community or technical college.
- peejaybee 11y ago
  You might want to pick up the Chilton's or Haynes manual for your vehicle and start from there. Most of these manuals will have a section describing how you perform basic maintenance on the vehicle. It's how I learned.
  - bdamm 11y ago
    What they don't teach you is the "tricks". Looking for an air leak using a spray bottle, putting anti-seize on engine bolts as you are reassembling engine parts (like an alternator attachment bolt!) or just how important correct torque and new fasteners are. And that doesn't even begin to touch the true magic in having a large collection of chemicals. Know when to use DC-4, WD-40, 33MS, brake cleaner, contact cleaner, and of course, GOJO.
    - djrogers 11y ago
      I don't think any 101 classes going to get to that level of detail...
    - abawany 11y ago
      I got into auto repair when I was swindled by an incompetent/unscrupulous mechanic in Austin in the 90s. Haynes/Chilton were quite reasonable starting points to learn the basics. I also spent a lot of time on automotive newsgroups and forums, which is how I absorbed the tribal knowledge such as the anti-seize tip above. E.g. if you own a Honda, you can get excellent help troubleshooting its quirks on honda-tech.com. It is where I learnt how to troubleshoot a failing input-shaft bearing on a transmission and how to find a very cheap interchangeable replacement that got me going again. It has been a fun journey and it is very nice to see through the utter nonsense most auto repair places spew. I would repeat that a community college course and/or Haynes is a good starting point and then it is off to the forum that caters to your car :).
      - lfowles 11y ago
        > I would repeat that a community college course and/or Haynes is a good starting point and then it is off to the forum that caters to your car :). To me, this is one of the most fascinating aspects of the internet. No matter your make or model, there is a dedicated forum for your car. And it's got plenty of active accounts.
- fancy_pantser 11y ago
  This is going to sound daft at first, but hear me out... Car Mechanic Simulator 2015 on Steam is actually a reasonable, entertaining way to walk through the basics of auto repair. It will help you learn he names and functions of individual parts and systems as well as how they are interconnected, what they look like, their relative cost, and generally where they are. In the game you will, for example, start with real-life diagnostic codes and then troubleshoot from there, buying parts you hope will fix the issue. After playing the game if you go to YouTube and search for your exact car (by year, make, and model), you'll find a bunch of repair videos. You'll now have the vocabulary and basic understanding to follow along with any common repair.
  - masklinn 11y ago
    Also /r/justrolledintotheshop you discover a significant amount of information by looking at that stuff and dropping a comment asking what you're seeing (if somebody hasn't already done that, which has usually happened). The denizens of that subreddit are incredibly nice and the subreddit is halfway hilarious and terrifying: some people drive these things[0]… around you… [0] http://imgur.com/90AvmSL http://imgur.com/90AvmSL
  - ddingus 11y ago
    This makes a ton of sense! I find the attitude mentioned above annoying. Of course a ton of people do not understand these things. We make great cars today. So many of us really don't have to know. It is a want to know in most cases. Share and share alike man.
- abruzzi 11y ago
  My favorite book, even if you don't have a VW, is John Muir's "How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive: A Manual of Step-by-Step Procedures for the Compleat Idiot". It is great because it was written for someone with no mechanical experience, it assumes no specific knowledge, it is geared towards an older cars (air cooled VWs) that are much simpler than modern cars so you aren't thrown into the deep end, and is very funny and well written. My favorite line from the book was something like "we'd have far less accidents if we were all strapped to the front of our cars like an aztec sacrifice." Which, while probably not the best approach to safety, has a kernel of truth that things that make us feel same may not make us safer, because they make us more willing to take risks. The book begins with a great section on the theory of all the parts of the car from the 4 stroke engine to the differential to the brakes--how they work and why they're needed.
  - andygates 11y ago
    It's an absolute beauty, and all hand-drawn - none of this murky photo rubbish, it's the wonderful fusion of technical illustration and cartooning. When I draw, I aspire to that warm, friendly clarity.
- ddingus 11y ago
  A lot of people who know, jump in, get documentation on the car and start wrenching. I grew up fixing nearly everything I owned. Was cheap, and I learned a lot. Today, it is actually a lot more fun and accessible. Videos of most repairs are online and easy to follow. I compare this to the first time I changed a transmission, or timing belt, and it's like the sci-fi future is here. Ask about it, and there you go! Often, books did not even have that many photos. You had to reason through the repair. My advice on this is to get some good tools and a place to work on the car. Clean it too. Working on clean cars is fun. Poor tools and a dirty car can be hell. Then, fix your car, upgrade it, or get a fun project car, maybe one you thought was cool as a kid. Most anyone can work on 90's and older cars. Newer ones do still offer a lot of opportunities, but sometimes are tough, due to all the advanced controls in place. The skill I got as a kid means I can get a 500 dollar beater, size it up, and be driving it regularly for a few weekends of work. It came in handy during hard times once in life. It still does when on camping adventures. I've done some crazy stuff to get vehicles home! Good times. (Not so good actually, but seeking adventure sometimes means finding it.)
- Jeema101 11y ago
  Get on Youtube and Google and search for '{car make & model} {repair}" - you might be surprised what you find. There's a lot of online forums for specific cars, and a lot of people posting repair videos on Youtube. It also helps if you have an old beater to work on so that you can take your time and you don't end up messing up your daily driver car. Last summer I successfully replaced a clutch by myself on an old car of mine soley based on videos and walkthroughs I found online. It took forever and was probably an order of magnitude more difficult than any automotive repair I'd ever attempted prior to that, but I did it.
bkjelden 11y ago
Where did you take such a class? A local community college? That actually sounds like a pretty fun idea. The engineer in me always loves learning how to take apart more things and put them back together.
- Amorymeltzer 11y ago
  The city/town runs a series of adult education classes, usually 10-12 weeks. There's a huge range of subjects (cooking, dancing, languages, painting, smithing) and while we're often too busy to do more, it's absolutely worth it.
- sokoloff 11y ago
  If you have a basic understanding of tools and fasteners, and even a $100 toolkit from Home Depot, start by changing the brake pads on your car. Youtube or Google search for a video and/or writeup of changing the brakes on your particular installation. Many common cars have a user-generated video of the procedure. I know that sounds insanely risky, but if you don't end up with parts left over, and everything seems like it went together correctly, the chances of screwing something up are very remote, and the chances of screwing it up in a way that won't be obvious in the first mile of driving are even more remote. Anyone in the Cambridge, MA area who has a very flexible schedule and wants me to put an eyeball on them while they do their brakes, I'm willing (but scheduling is often a bear). I would suggest this even before taking a class at the community college. I think you're going to be taking the class with peers who have spent at least 50 hours with a wrench in their hand growing up. You are going to learn more (or at least I would learn more) if you have some of the basics and have experience with the basic hand tools.
  - lutorm 11y ago
    Coincidentally, I tried to do my own brakes when we lived in Somerville, but finding a place to do the work was a big problem. I ended up driving out to a friend on a farm out by Concord, but it's a huge hassle to not be able to do it in your own garage with all your tools at hand.
henrikschroder 11y ago
As part of getting my driver's license you have to spend half a day at a class on driving risks, you get to spend some time driving in really slippery conditions, getting the feel for ABS and traction control. They also showed some actual wrecks so you could see what happens and how they break, and they really stressed that even though it might be tempting to buy a cheap, old, used car, DO NOT buy something built before the year 2000, stay on this side of the millennium, older cars are dangerous!
- ams6110 11y ago
  They're not all equally bad. Even in the 1960s, for example, Mercedes had introduced unibodies, collapsible steering columns, disc brakes, crumple zones, side-impact reinforcement. A lot of what became standard, mandatory safety features were pioneered by Mercedes and a few other companies that have always had safety as a concern.
  - Aloha 11y ago
    Citroën actually introduced the first production unibody in 1935 - Ford in 1936, and Nash in 1941. 1949 Chrysler Imperial was the first car standard with Disc Brakes, Mercedes can however take credit for the crumple zone, and probably side-impact reinforcement. Unibody as a safety feature is more complex, Unibody cars are not inherently safer (quite arguably a perimeter frame may be safer for some collisions), and until recently they were often heavier for the same size car - it wasn't until the late 70's-80's where a unibody could be lighter than a BOF car because of enhanced computer modeling - generally a unibody however is safer than the X-frame as exemplified in this video.
m_mueller 11y ago
I feel like that's where we are right now with computers/software.

chiph 11y ago

Growing up, we had a late 60's Dodge station wagon. It was pretty much the definition of "unsafe" - the interior was made of hard metal surfaces, loose steering & suspension, and no crash engineering at all. But it was the first family car that came with disc brakes, and that's why Dad bought it. Later, they bought a mid 80's Pontiac 6000, and while it had disc brakes, GM hadn't increased the size of the brake rotors to accommodate the change from asbestos brake pad material, so it had huge brake fade and panic stops really did result in driver panic. Not a fun car to drive.

alistairSH 11y ago
My first car was a Pontiac 6000. God, it was awful. But, it was a station wagon, so at least I could pile a bunch of friends in the back.

Someone1234 11y ago

Wish I could find an adult intro to auto mechanics class around here. That would be massively useful for everyone to learn but it seems like all anyone who already knows basic auto repair says is "YOU DON'T KNOW HOW TO DO THAT?!" with a sarcastic condescending tone, and I guess that attitude filters down to lack of education since it is obvious or whatever. But on the positive note there is a 101 to gun safety class every two city blocks so I have that going for me...

wmeredith 11y ago
Find your local community or technical college.
peejaybee 11y ago
You might want to pick up the Chilton's or Haynes manual for your vehicle and start from there. Most of these manuals will have a section describing how you perform basic maintenance on the vehicle. It's how I learned.
- bdamm 11y ago
  What they don't teach you is the "tricks". Looking for an air leak using a spray bottle, putting anti-seize on engine bolts as you are reassembling engine parts (like an alternator attachment bolt!) or just how important correct torque and new fasteners are. And that doesn't even begin to touch the true magic in having a large collection of chemicals. Know when to use DC-4, WD-40, 33MS, brake cleaner, contact cleaner, and of course, GOJO.
  - djrogers 11y ago
    I don't think any 101 classes going to get to that level of detail...
  - abawany 11y ago
    I got into auto repair when I was swindled by an incompetent/unscrupulous mechanic in Austin in the 90s. Haynes/Chilton were quite reasonable starting points to learn the basics. I also spent a lot of time on automotive newsgroups and forums, which is how I absorbed the tribal knowledge such as the anti-seize tip above. E.g. if you own a Honda, you can get excellent help troubleshooting its quirks on honda-tech.com. It is where I learnt how to troubleshoot a failing input-shaft bearing on a transmission and how to find a very cheap interchangeable replacement that got me going again. It has been a fun journey and it is very nice to see through the utter nonsense most auto repair places spew. I would repeat that a community college course and/or Haynes is a good starting point and then it is off to the forum that caters to your car :).
    - lfowles 11y ago
      > I would repeat that a community college course and/or Haynes is a good starting point and then it is off to the forum that caters to your car :). To me, this is one of the most fascinating aspects of the internet. No matter your make or model, there is a dedicated forum for your car. And it's got plenty of active accounts.
fancy_pantser 11y ago
This is going to sound daft at first, but hear me out... Car Mechanic Simulator 2015 on Steam is actually a reasonable, entertaining way to walk through the basics of auto repair. It will help you learn he names and functions of individual parts and systems as well as how they are interconnected, what they look like, their relative cost, and generally where they are. In the game you will, for example, start with real-life diagnostic codes and then troubleshoot from there, buying parts you hope will fix the issue. After playing the game if you go to YouTube and search for your exact car (by year, make, and model), you'll find a bunch of repair videos. You'll now have the vocabulary and basic understanding to follow along with any common repair.
- masklinn 11y ago
  Also /r/justrolledintotheshop you discover a significant amount of information by looking at that stuff and dropping a comment asking what you're seeing (if somebody hasn't already done that, which has usually happened). The denizens of that subreddit are incredibly nice and the subreddit is halfway hilarious and terrifying: some people drive these things[0]… around you… [0] http://imgur.com/90AvmSL http://imgur.com/90AvmSL
- ddingus 11y ago
  This makes a ton of sense! I find the attitude mentioned above annoying. Of course a ton of people do not understand these things. We make great cars today. So many of us really don't have to know. It is a want to know in most cases. Share and share alike man.
abruzzi 11y ago
My favorite book, even if you don't have a VW, is John Muir's "How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive: A Manual of Step-by-Step Procedures for the Compleat Idiot". It is great because it was written for someone with no mechanical experience, it assumes no specific knowledge, it is geared towards an older cars (air cooled VWs) that are much simpler than modern cars so you aren't thrown into the deep end, and is very funny and well written. My favorite line from the book was something like "we'd have far less accidents if we were all strapped to the front of our cars like an aztec sacrifice." Which, while probably not the best approach to safety, has a kernel of truth that things that make us feel same may not make us safer, because they make us more willing to take risks. The book begins with a great section on the theory of all the parts of the car from the 4 stroke engine to the differential to the brakes--how they work and why they're needed.
- andygates 11y ago
  It's an absolute beauty, and all hand-drawn - none of this murky photo rubbish, it's the wonderful fusion of technical illustration and cartooning. When I draw, I aspire to that warm, friendly clarity.
ddingus 11y ago
A lot of people who know, jump in, get documentation on the car and start wrenching. I grew up fixing nearly everything I owned. Was cheap, and I learned a lot. Today, it is actually a lot more fun and accessible. Videos of most repairs are online and easy to follow. I compare this to the first time I changed a transmission, or timing belt, and it's like the sci-fi future is here. Ask about it, and there you go! Often, books did not even have that many photos. You had to reason through the repair. My advice on this is to get some good tools and a place to work on the car. Clean it too. Working on clean cars is fun. Poor tools and a dirty car can be hell. Then, fix your car, upgrade it, or get a fun project car, maybe one you thought was cool as a kid. Most anyone can work on 90's and older cars. Newer ones do still offer a lot of opportunities, but sometimes are tough, due to all the advanced controls in place. The skill I got as a kid means I can get a 500 dollar beater, size it up, and be driving it regularly for a few weekends of work. It came in handy during hard times once in life. It still does when on camping adventures. I've done some crazy stuff to get vehicles home! Good times. (Not so good actually, but seeking adventure sometimes means finding it.)
Jeema101 11y ago
Get on Youtube and Google and search for '{car make & model} {repair}" - you might be surprised what you find. There's a lot of online forums for specific cars, and a lot of people posting repair videos on Youtube. It also helps if you have an old beater to work on so that you can take your time and you don't end up messing up your daily driver car. Last summer I successfully replaced a clutch by myself on an old car of mine soley based on videos and walkthroughs I found online. It took forever and was probably an order of magnitude more difficult than any automotive repair I'd ever attempted prior to that, but I did it.

bkjelden 11y ago

Where did you take such a class? A local community college? That actually sounds like a pretty fun idea. The engineer in me always loves learning how to take apart more things and put them back together.

Amorymeltzer 11y ago
The city/town runs a series of adult education classes, usually 10-12 weeks. There's a huge range of subjects (cooking, dancing, languages, painting, smithing) and while we're often too busy to do more, it's absolutely worth it.
sokoloff 11y ago
If you have a basic understanding of tools and fasteners, and even a $100 toolkit from Home Depot, start by changing the brake pads on your car. Youtube or Google search for a video and/or writeup of changing the brakes on your particular installation. Many common cars have a user-generated video of the procedure. I know that sounds insanely risky, but if you don't end up with parts left over, and everything seems like it went together correctly, the chances of screwing something up are very remote, and the chances of screwing it up in a way that won't be obvious in the first mile of driving are even more remote. Anyone in the Cambridge, MA area who has a very flexible schedule and wants me to put an eyeball on them while they do their brakes, I'm willing (but scheduling is often a bear). I would suggest this even before taking a class at the community college. I think you're going to be taking the class with peers who have spent at least 50 hours with a wrench in their hand growing up. You are going to learn more (or at least I would learn more) if you have some of the basics and have experience with the basic hand tools.
- lutorm 11y ago
  Coincidentally, I tried to do my own brakes when we lived in Somerville, but finding a place to do the work was a big problem. I ended up driving out to a friend on a farm out by Concord, but it's a huge hassle to not be able to do it in your own garage with all your tools at hand.

henrikschroder 11y ago

As part of getting my driver's license you have to spend half a day at a class on driving risks, you get to spend some time driving in really slippery conditions, getting the feel for ABS and traction control. They also showed some actual wrecks so you could see what happens and how they break, and they really stressed that even though it might be tempting to buy a cheap, old, used car, DO NOT buy something built before the year 2000, stay on this side of the millennium, older cars are dangerous!

ams6110 11y ago
They're not all equally bad. Even in the 1960s, for example, Mercedes had introduced unibodies, collapsible steering columns, disc brakes, crumple zones, side-impact reinforcement. A lot of what became standard, mandatory safety features were pioneered by Mercedes and a few other companies that have always had safety as a concern.
- Aloha 11y ago
  Citroën actually introduced the first production unibody in 1935 - Ford in 1936, and Nash in 1941. 1949 Chrysler Imperial was the first car standard with Disc Brakes, Mercedes can however take credit for the crumple zone, and probably side-impact reinforcement. Unibody as a safety feature is more complex, Unibody cars are not inherently safer (quite arguably a perimeter frame may be safer for some collisions), and until recently they were often heavier for the same size car - it wasn't until the late 70's-80's where a unibody could be lighter than a BOF car because of enhanced computer modeling - generally a unibody however is safer than the X-frame as exemplified in this video.

m_mueller 11y ago

I feel like that's where we are right now with computers/software.