I learned how they worked by taking one apart, putting it back together, and got it to run (it was a junkyard car). My auto shop teacher told me he was amazed, because I was a nerd and nerds had no mechanical aptitude.
I did take auto shop, but didn't learn anything there, and I don't think any of the other students did, either. I learned how cars worked in my dad's driveway. This was much to the chagrin of my mother, who hated having partially disassembled wrecks in the driveway and oil stains everywhere. I passed by the house many years later, and the signs were still visible :-)
Get a car (mine arrived as a pile of junk on a flatbed), some tools, and start turning wrenches. It's not that hard, and I (and a couple friends) had a heluva good time. I suspect an account of that helped me get into engineering college.
My only regret is I ran across a '68 Chevy SS for $600 that I passed on.
You can just learn by doing. It's no different than a self taught programmer.
I learned entirely by wrenching on my own car. Engine internals and transmissions are hard simply because you often need specialized tools. But there are plenty of parts you can fix yourself with only simple tools.
The main challenge now is that newer cars have a lot more complex components. Back in the '70s you could completely disassemble and refurbish a carburator. Fuel injection systems are a lot more complex. However, a lot of the systems on newer cars are still pretty basic.
One of the benefits of knowing how to work on cars is saving money. I fixed my wifes car (emissions failure) with a $12 part from ebay when a garage wanted $150 just to diagnose. And if you do have a garage work on your car, explaining what's wrong in way that makes you sound knowledgeable goes a long way to prevent being ripped off.
Fuel injectors are also quite dangerous. They operate at sufficient pressure to break the skin, and high-pressure fuel/oil injections can require amputations.
I managed to learn it all on my own; I rebuilt an engine too, but it wasn't some junkyard car's, it was my wife's car that she had gotten caught in a flash-flood and seized the engine on (see: "hydrolock"). Worked great for another 90k miles after that and was still running great when she sold it.
All you need is the ability to read, the desire to learn, the courage to get your hands dirty and not be afraid of breaking things, and some mechanical aptitude. And a little money to spend at Harbor Freight for some tools.
One of the rods was bent, and the valves in that cylinder were also bent because the piston had struck them. I still have that bent rod/piston in a box somewhere as a souvenir: the bend was pretty significant.
What's weird is my wife actually managed to get the car restarted after a while, and drove home that way!! It was making a terrible tapping noise though. I'm not sure how it was running that way; I didn't investigate too closely. This was a 2000 Acura Integra GS-R, by the way.
Anyway, I left everything alone in the other 3 cylinders because that all looked fine, and I replaced the piston, rod, and journal bearings on the bent one. I also replaced all 4 valves. It wasn't really that hard; I took the head and new valves and valve seals to a shop that specialized in rebuilding cylinder heads and they cleaned it up (it already had close to 100k miles at that point, so there was a lot of carbon build-up) and replaced the valves. They also put together the piston and con-rod for me as I didn't have a press for that. Then I just did the standard bore honing and put it all back together (and cleaned up the domes of the other pistons while I was at it). Worked great after that. The total cost wasn't much either; the bare parts only came out to a few hundred IIRC, from one of those online OEM parts sellers, and the shop work was $250 IIRC. The only specialized tools I needed were torque wrenches (which you should have anyway, but they're absolutely critical for engine work), and an air impact wrench (the crankshaft pulley bolt on that car was a real bear), and a drill-operated bore hone (cheap).
When the car's brand-new, you probably can use a foot-long breaker bar. Over time, though, they can get seized.
I have a breaker bar, but I haven't used it ever since I got an impact wrench. You can put a lot more torque on a bolt with a handheld impact wrench than you can with a giant breaker bar; they're really a quite remarkable invention when you think about it. The one I have (1/2in drive Ingersoll-Rand titanium body) has 1000 ft-lb IIRC.
Get a VW Bug or an ATV with an air-cooled, four-stroke engine. Buy a good torque-wrench, a socket set, some allen wrenches, and a proper disassembly/reassembly manual and get to work!
I have removed every rolling part of my ATV. It's quite strange to go 65MPH knowing that you put all the parts together... I am still alive so far, ha. :)
Last few cars I've owned seem to be designed to prevent the owner from even looking under the hood. They don't seem to design them for easy user access anymore. But then again, I came across a computer from ASUS the other day that said you void the warranty if you open up your case. WTF???
On the plus side, you have far more to work with these days than a Haynes manual. You'll have Youtube videos, discussion forum posts on every job, 'borrow a tool' programs from stores/libraries, a range of parts-suppliers competing for your dollars that will ship to your door...
Indeed. After looking in the right places I was able to get the 300-page shop manual for my motorcycle. Everything is very well diagramed and OEM parts are readily available online for not much money.
It has gotten easier for DIY auto mechanics. I spent a year in a community college auto repair program. I took just the classes, I felt I needed. I didn't want to work as a mechanic, but open a shop. Well, that never took place. I am glad I took those classes though.
What still troubles me is passing my bi-annual smog checks. It's not just my vechicle, it's family members vechicles.
I can check most of the smog components, except the catalytic converter.(I found away around checking the catalytic converter, but won't divulge, because it might be illegial.)
The one tool I might buy if the price was reasonable is a device that measures the emmissions out of the tailpipe. I think there's a big need for portable emmission testers. The price point would need to be around $300 for my taste. I don't know if it's even possible at that price point? I'm basically just concerned with HC's.
In order to pass emmission standards, I make sure the engine is running reasonably well. I change the oil. I check all ERG. I make sure that cat is hot. I then check the voltage off one of the O2 sensors(gotta pick the right on, and be quick with the voltage measurement. The computer will throw things off pretty quick with the wrong O2 sensor dissabled.) With the 0-5 volts you read you can get a good idea of the stoichiometric burn of the gasses. You can detect wether the vechicle is running rich, or lean, but it's not fool proof.
Even with preparation, it's hit it miss whether a vechicle passes smog.
I would love to gave a home devise that measured these gasses.
I'll pass this along. All Smog shops are in CA are required to have onsite one Emission manual to show the customer.
Good shops have two references. They look at this information when they do the visual examination. Good shops usuall have Motor Emmissions for the current year, and a subscription to Mitchell Manuals. A subscription to Mitchell manuals(OnDemand5) is more money than the Motor Emission publication, but it's hardly ever Wrong.
If you fail the visual on a smog test, ask to see the refrence material they used to fail you. If it's a Motor Publication--the information might be wrong. It's filled with many errors. Most shops cheap it out and only buying the cheaper Emission manual. The Motor Emission manual is joked about among Smog Techs. They know it's filled with errors.
I kinda went on, but frustrated from dealing with a recent smog check.
At least on European cars you can read the O2 sensor voltages over the OBD2 port. $30 bluetooth dongle from ebay and you get the readings graphed on your phone. I just did that yesterday on my '02 Peugeot 307.
When you say the "right" O2 sensor I presume you're talking about the one after the cat? Doesn't that mainly tell you whether the cat is working or not? If the engine is running a bit rich and there is a bit of excess fuel coming into the cat, the cat should burn it up, I think.
And you probably know this, but there is an important difference in the voltage readings depending on whether you have wide- or narrow-band O2 sensors. Wideband is typically for performance cars.
I can recommend a odb2 dongle as well. Very interesting to plug in every once in a while. Do mind most dongles are read only though. You need a good cable to write. Be carefull if you want to tweak de ECU! Theres lotsnof info on the internet on how to tweak stuff.
$30 is way too expensive btw. On aliexpress i bought a wifi (because of iphone) dongle for $9,99 incl shipment.
I don't really get the point of having a "second bonnet" - there is already one covering the engine and everything else.
Lexus has been known to make things deliberately difficult to reach, like putting the starter motor in a place where getting to it involves disassembling most of what's on top of the engine (requiring the replacement of lots of auxillary "soft" parts like gaskets and o-rings in the process):
In comparison, most other makes and models mount the starter motor somewhere on the side of the engine or transmission where getting to it doesn't require disassembling much else.
I doubt their goal here was to make repair more difficult -- after all, some must have failed under warrantee and were repaired on their dime. Sticking the starter in the valley instead of on the side just makes the engine package size a bit smaller (and the SC was a small car).
Every failing starter I have encountered exhibited the "click of death" (turn the key and get "clicks" rather than a turning engine). I doubt it's a problem exclusive to Toyota.
PS - I drove a manual transmission Mazda truck that had no starter for 8 months. Thankfully, I live in a mountainous region, so "push starting" the vehicle by using a hill was "easy" (except when it wasn't).
> Last few cars I've owned seem to be designed to prevent the owner from even looking under the hood.
I found I can't even rotate the tires on my current car (Sonata) because it's got no central jack point. Seems to be designed just for shops that can lift all 4 jack points at once. :-(
Plus one for the air-cooled VW. We just bought a 1981 VW Westfalia, which has the same 2.0 liter engine as the Porsche 914 I owned thirty years ago. It's like coming home again. Dead simple, and the instructions for dropping the engine don't cover even two pages. I've always considered the Bosch fuel injection of VWs and Audis, no matter what version, to be problematic and a general pain in the ass, but it mostly works most of the time and is the only potential sticky part for a newbie.
Parts are still readily available, though anything that moves under its own power is likely to sell for more than it did new (which wasn't much in today's dollars). But you'll get smiles and waves anywhere you go whether you end up in a Bug or a Bus.
If you have a car it probably needs some type of work, somewhere. The big cost is in tools, but just start simple and work your way up to something like an engine rebuild. Even doing simple but time consuming tasks like replacing leaking gaskets or hoses teaches you a lot and saves a ton of money.
Maybe science nerds tend to be good at mechanical work, but surely it's not the case for language nerds, history nerds or any of the many other possible areas of nerdiness.
