Learning how to maintain a car can save lots of money over the long pull. In addition when a repair is needed that is outside your scope you will be in a much better position to make sure you’re treated fairly if you have some basic understanding of how cars work. With youtube you can find almost every repair you could do easily documented for review.
I started learning about cars as a young kid probably 5-6 or so. My grandfather was a mechanic and worked for a man named Smokey Yunick on some of the first cars that were raced on Daytona Beach and what was the predecessor of NASCAR. I remember him explaining the concepts of engine/transmission operation and combustion cycles. I absorbed a lot from him, but really had no interest in cars until much later. I took a course in high school which was a shop class where we fixed the cars of teachers and students. Probably the most useful and practical course I took. From that basis I taught myself repair from simple maintenance up and to the point of being able to swap out or rebuild engines and some simple fabrication with MIG welding.
The basics of engine operation are fairly simple. The modern car engine runs off a 4 cycle system. Intake, Compression, Power and Exhaust strokes. Intake is where fresh air and fuel are sucked into the engine (in a specific ratio) as the piston moves down. In the next movement the piston goes up and compresses the mixture. Once compressed the spark plug fires igniting the mixture and pushing the piston down (this is where the horsepower is actually generated). Finally the piston moves up again from inertia and pushes out the old air and is ready for the next intake cycle. To run a engine needs fuel/air in the correct ratio(usually not a problem in fuel injected engines), spark(adequate strength), and compression (no leaking gaskets or piston rings).
To start the journey I would recommend getting the repair manual for your car and learn the following:
1. Brake Pad and Rotor Replacement (both disc and drum).
2. Oil Change and Filter
3. Cabin and Engine Air Filter Change
4. Transmission Fluid Change
5. Radiator Coolant Flush and Change
6. Learning how to change a Battery
Learning these things will save you some serious money, for example we took my brothers car in for inspection and it needed new brakes. They quoted us a price of 600 dollars. I was able to do the job in 2 hrs (at a leisurely pace) with about 100 dollars in parts, effectively paying myself 250/hr. If you have more then one car this is multiplied (I have 3 that I’m responsible for the maintenance). Another job that perpetually saves money is oil changes, takes about 10-15 minutes and if you use synthetic oil like I do you will save 30-40 dollars every time by doing it yourself.
I’m not going to create a step by step for how to do this stuff as it’s widely available elsewhere and there are small variations based on make and model. These jobs can be accomplished with simple hand tools for the most part.
The next time you need one of these repairs done give it a shot yourself first. Worst case if you find that the job is to much put it back together and drive it to a shop. By learning and practicing this stuff you can save some money, which will compound and allow you to reach retirement that much sooner.
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Warning more info then you probably care about:
*An aside about the gas blends available at the station. Have you ever wondered about the differences in octane and why to choose one or the other
? 87 vs 91 vs 93. Well here is the simple explanation. Octane is a fuel stabilizer, it prevents premature explosion of the fuel under pressure. Most car engines are designed to run on 87 octane. By designed I mean specifically the compression ratio which is a proxy for how much pressure is generated in the engine prior to combustion (most cars are between 8 and 10 to 1). Some engines particularly the ones in luxury cars use higher compression ratios (between 11-13 to 1), if this is the case the engine needs a higher octane fuel to prevent something called detonation. Detonation is where the air/fuel mixture explodes prematurely and it can harm the engine. It happens because as air is compressed it heats up (the air molecules hit each other more frequently and generate a kind of friction).More importantly, Changing the octane of the fuel does not change the power output of the engine. Meaning if you drive a honda civic your wasting your money by using a higher octane fuel or octane boost from the auto parts store. Race cars particullary ones that are super or turbo charged will use very high octane fuel 100 or higher to combat detonation. But again detonation is a consequence of using higher pressure in the engine, using high octane fuel in a normal compression ratio engine is a waste.
Reading this it turns out it wasn’t as simple an explanation as I thought hence the warning, but at least we were able to avoid the organic chemistry behind octane, maybe another time.
Middleburg Millionaire 