Reply to I saved $1,600 in 3 hours yesterday doing car repairs myself! AMA!

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP, are you sure you really saved $1000-$1600?

The reason I ask is that often if you don't have training and do these things all the time and just feel your way through them, you end up with a half-@$$ job that needs to be replaced early and/or alters some other part that needs to be replaced early.  I'm sure you saved something but I doubt it is as much as you think.  We have a mechanic that will use used parts where it is applicable.  That saves money too but you have to know when it is a good idea and when it isn't.  That comes with experience.

As another example, I often do stuff around the house and "save" money but I know when I try to sell my house a "home inspector" with no more experience than me is going to come in and see all the Home Depot and Lowes parts.  They are then going to make a list of all the things that don't "look professionally done" or "meet code" or "where done with inferior parts" and the buyer's real estate agent is going to try to negotiate down the price.  I suspect the same thing happens at car dealers and CarMax.[/quote]

Another shade tree mechanic here weighing in for the first time.  If anyone doesn't recognize that reference, it's slang for someone who works on their own or others' cars outside a traditional automotive shop (ie. on jack stands in a parking lot under the shade of a tree).  I'll mark my future posts as I work backwards through the thread, but I've been doing this a long time (I'm a late 30's male and have been working on my cars for probably 15 years).

To the quoted poster, I'm sure there are DIYers that do half-@$$ jobs, but I bet that's actually the minority.  The rise of technologies like Youtube and online forums (such as this one) are game changing for DIY mechanics.

In the past, you had to either buy an expensive third party service manual for your specific make, model, and year vehicle, and then try to follow written directions with a few diagrams.  OR, you could get someone to teach you in person.  OR, maybe, you could buy a DVD or VHS tape of the work being done.  I'm speculating on that last bit.

Today, if you search youtube, you can find pretty decent DIYs for many common service tasks across a wide range of vehicles.  If you just search for forums dedicating to your manufacturer, you'll find a wealth of knowledge and links to DIYs, both written and video.  The free information is amazing.

The flip side is that it will take you probably much longer than a pro mechanic to complete a task, but if the alternative is watching sports while drinking beer, that might be ok.  Pro mechanics run high volume operations, and it's all about the speed they do things.  As the person actually owning and driving the vehicle, you have a vested interest in taking your time and doing the absolute best job possible.  No one is going to care more about the quality of the work done than you.

The same thing goes for parts.  As the owner, I'm extremely picky about what parts I put in my car, and can take my time to shop both for price and quality.  I'll get into some of the details in future posts.

In summary, I would put the quality of the work I do up against any mechanic for almost any job I do.  There is very little "art" to wrenching.  For someone with an engineer's mind, it comes naturally.  To be honest, I see all kinds of hack jobs constantly done by pros to save time.  I can post some details in a future post if anyone is curious.  I can also post some of the frequent mistakes I see beginners / DIYers make.[/quote]

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