It is a myth that modern cars are too complicated for the average person to work on. The difficulty is in the diagnosis of what is wrong. The systems are complex but the repair solution usually is not. Once the problem is clearly identified it is just a matter of replacing the proper component. There is very little repair involved. Identify, remove, replace component. Plug and play. There is a normal engine underneath all those pretty plastic engine covers.
But if you aren’t able to properly diagnose the problem you can spend a lot of money changing the wrong parts.
I have my own private little dream car garage and none of my cars ever goes back to the dealer once purchased. The exceptions are that I don’t work on the automatic transmition and I don’t go into the internals of the engine. All external engine, body, electrical and running gear work is done by me.
I do not have basic knowledge of auto maintenance. However, I was not interested in cars as a child, I do not have a driver’s license and I do not own a car. In my case, is it reasonable for me not to know much about cars?
I taught a young woman how to pump gas at the pumps last summer (I was pumping my own gas when she came over and asked me, since she was stumped).
That’s pretty much where I am. My dad taught me some mechanical stuff, and I’ve done some mechanical repairs on my cars in the past, but I’m just not that interested in it. I’ll still replace bulbs and fuses and fluids and wipers and stuff, but the rest is done by my local mechanic. Which reminds me, I think I’m overdue for an oil change.
Oh yeah, I do make sure I change a tire on each car I buy by myself at least once, because it would be awfully inconvenient to get a flat somewhere that I couldn’t get cellphone reception and not be able to drive out of there because I didn’t realize I didn’t have a tire iron in the car.
That sort of ties into my earlier point- on earlier cars, there was more maintenance to be done; when you had to change oil every 3k, do stuff like tuneups on cars with points and change other fluids more often, it definitely paid to learn to do it yourself.
Nowadays, when a tuneup consists of changing a few ancillary filters, the PCV valve, and the spark plugs, and it’s done maybe once or twice in a car’s lifetime, it hardly pays to learn to do it yourself, if you value your own time.
Oil changes are even going that route, with the more recent oil life monitors and oil improvements that allow 10k oil changes. When it was oil changes 3-4 times a year, it was worth the time and money to DIY, but when it’s once a year or so, DIY loses some of its luster.
Except that when you’re doing it once a year or so, it becomes more trouble to have the equipment on hand and retain the memory of how to do it. I frequently have to relearn things from scratch when I do them only once or twice a year. Simpler to take it to a shop that does them constantly and thus can do it faster and cleaner. It’s worth $25 to be in and out in 30 minutes rather than spend 2 hours on a crap job I don’t want to do.
Everything in complexity below oil changes I know how to do, at least. Tire changes, fluid checks, OBD reading (though I have to rent the equipment from Autozone), changing headlights, etc.
But if the event is happening less often, it costs less total. It might be worth it to save $200 a year on oil changes by doing them myself. It’s not worth it to save $40.
Part of the fault also lies with the car manufacturers, especially for under-the-hood stuff. There’s little excuse for not being able to top off fluids, but for anything else, getting to the engine past all the plastic and carbon-fiber covers can be intimidating, if not downright difficult. That’s before we even start talking about how they actively make it extremely hard to get to routine maintenance items without having to unscrew whole components under the hood of your car (probably so you’re forced to take it to the dealership). My air filter was difficult to find. My freaking BATTERY was difficult to find. Changing out the headlight bulbs takes unscrewing and removing the windshield wiper fluid tank, and even so, it’s damn near impossible to get my hand into the space to unclip the old light.
If you’re a driver you should at least know what to do in emergency situations. Have a flat? Know how to pull over safely and call for help. But what if you can’t call for help because of where you are? Then you should know the basics of changing a tire. It’s simplicity itself, so there’s no excuse for not knowing. As to knowing other mechanical stuff to maintain your car … nice to know, but hardly necessary if you’re willing to pay someone to do that maintenance for you IMO. I used to do all the basic maintenance on my cars – fluids, tires, battery, tune-ups, oil changes, brake checks, etc. To be totally honest, I’ve not had to do much of that for quite a while. It’s so much easier to just take a car in for an oil change nowadays and, while there, have them check all the other basic stuff for you. Just make sure you have a good trust-worthy mechanic. I still try to troubleshoot any problems with my cars before taking them in for any problems, but that’s because I enjoy doing that kind of thing. If that’s not in a person’s interest or he/she does not have the time, nothing wrong with entrusting your car to a good mechanic if you can afford it. In this way, I would equate cars to home computers. Good to have some basic knowledge to maintain, diagnose and fix common problems, but if not, know someone who can help you.
The analogy to computers doesn’t really work that well. I can think of many situations (and been in a few) where not knowing how to something very basic, like change a tire when you’re somewhere remote without cell phone reception, or understand you can’t keep driving when your car’s overheating or the oil light comes on otherwise you could fry your entire engine, can result in major expenditure, major pain in the ass, or a dangerous, possibly life-threatening situation.
Cars are well-built enough these days that sort of thing is rare, but stuff can happen…I’ve driven cross-country and several hundred miles into Mexico quite few times. Even driving in some of the rural parts of Michigan not thatbfar from my house, I have no cell phone coverage. When I had a tire go flat on me in the boonies here and couldn’t get the spare tire off because it was rusted to the hanger, it was a giant, hours-long, expensive pain in the ass. I had neither the tools nor the knowledge to get the stupid spare off. I had to hike to someone’s house, ask to use their phone, call a wrecker, pay said wrecker to come all the way out to Bumfuck, Michigan, and change the freaking tire. The whole thing took about 4 hours and it was dark by the time I was on my way again.
I agree it’s really handy to have either a great, trustworthy mechanic, or a mechanically-savvy friend or two. I do have a mechanic I trust and I also know a couple of people who are excellent shade-tree mechanics, who will do routine things like oil changes and tune ups or answer panicked phone calls like “my power steering fan belt just shredded and I smell burning and it’s Sunday and I am 50 miles from the house, help” and give me good information. (Cut the fan belt off, toss the shreds away and drive without power steering, it won’t hurt anything.)
I know how to check the fluids and put air in the tires… but I’ve never been unfortunate enough to need to change a tire on the road, so I can’t say I know how to change a tire. But here’s my reasoning:
I know where the spare is
I know I have an emergency kit in the trunk that has the tools I’d need were the situation to arise
I know that there’s an explanation of the process in the manual (and the kit also has flashlights so I’d be able to read it in the dark)
So, I figure that’s good enough and if it ever comes down to needing to do it I’d be able to figure it out from that.
The neighborhood kids, including mine, were playing basketball in the neighbor’s driveway. The backboard shattered, and crumbled to the ground in thousands of tiny bits.
I went to help, and saw no one injured. I grabbed three brooms: Two typical ‘witches’ brooms and one utility/garage push broom.
There were SIX kids and two were mine. NONE OF THEM – ages 9-17 – COULD OPERATE A BROOM.
For the kitchen brooms: They had NO CLUE how to hold it so that they could make a sweeping motion.
For the garage broom: Easier to figure it out, but they were just pushing it like a plow, STUNNED that 90% of the glass would just slide underneath of it.
I had to teach them how to use brooms. I’ve showed my oldest and youngest sons everything I can, especially when we are going boating, because it covers so much about cars, trucks, trailers, tires, engine… etc. They don’'t have the attention span.
If the oldest were to drive, he’d DO NOTHING to take care of his car. This is a major battle for us. Whatever these kids don’t take care of, their grandparents jump in to replace the basketball they don’t know how to fill, etc. Yeah… REPLACE a ball the kids didn’t inflate… more than once.
I know the basics, but the car I have now has run-flat tires (no spare) and no dipstick. The car computer tells me when the oil is low or if the tire pressure is low, and I take care of those things myself, as well as windshield washer fluid and dead light bulbs. Other than that, it’s going to a mechanic for whatever might come up, including oil changes. I have the basic knowledge of how that’s done, but I don’t have the equipment or the desire to do it.
I know the emergency basics – checking oil, checking/changing tires, changing wipers, etc. I’ve changed my oil before but tend to take it in out of laziness and because it’s something I can do over lunch at work versus taking up part of the weekend. I’ve changed headlight bulbs before and agree with those who say that you’re apparently supposed to have some sort of 9" long elfin-thin fingers to pull it off.
When my wife bought a new car, I gave her a tire pressure gauge to carry in the glove box. She said she’d have no idea what to do with it.
None of that stuff was covered in Driver’s Ed when I attended. My dad, however, had raced motorcycles for 25 years and then taught me how to drive. I probably had already helped him change the oil in the motorcycles many times before I got my license. He would not allow me to go take the final driving test until I could:
• Check the fluids and know why low fluids are bad.
• Change a tire. In the dark. In the rain. On a steep incline. With no help at all. (“Because you’re never going to get a flat tire on a sunny day on a flat surface. It’s always the worse conditions…”)
• Steer out of a skid, e.g. while driving on ice or snow.
• Swap out windshield wiper blades.
• Add oil, wiper fluid, brake fluid, and/or any other fluid that needs adding. And that meant add the fluid to the correct receptacle.
• Check the tire pressure, every time I get gas.
• Jump start the car. In the rain/dark.
I’m not sure I think that Driver’s Ed programs should or shouldn’t cover this sort of thing, but every single day, when I am out driving on the roads, I wish all drivers had learned to drive from my dad, or at least paid attention when they were taught about defensive driving.
I can fill my gas tank, check oil, put more oil in, check my tire pressure, put air in my tires, and change a flat in theory. I’ve never actually changed a tire in real life; only a couple times under my father’s supervision when he was showing me how to change one. Both times I’ve gotten a flat were a busy highway, driver’s side. I called AAA rather than risk trying to change one. My current care doesn’t even have a spare tire.
What kind of disposable cars do you drive? In about 8000 miles, my 1998 Corolla will be going in for its 6th 30K service. Lord, I’ll be due for my 2nd timing chain.
When I was sixteen my father told me I could drive his old car if I came up with a way to fix it. It needed a new engine. I bought a used one from a junkyard and installed it. The old engine had fewer than 100,000 miles on it.
New cars simply don’t need the maintenance the old ones needed and they’re much more reliable. The car I’m driving most now has 55k miles on it, and the only maintenance that has been required has been oil and filter changes, and I did them all. Plugs aren’t scheduled for replacement until after 100k miles. The idea that someone could have just driven it and never checked any fluids as long as the scheduled maintenance got taken care of at a dealership is valid. It has pressure sensors for the tires to tell me when to add air, so I don’t run the tires low and wear them out fast.
I understand how there are people that are totally car-ignorant, but where I grew up, a guy who couldn’t set points was worse than one who threw like a girl.
A lot of people view automobiles, and especially their cars, as appliances. As such when they require maintenance or encounter minor issues, they’re clueless as to how to approach them.
The thing is, the dealerships and car makes don’t mind this at all. It ends up lining their pockets, far more often than not. Everything from overcharging for a simple swap of a bulb to changing an air filter in 5 minutes, translates into a nice bit of $$.
I suppose the real place for concern, isn’t necessarily the people who don’t know how to perform maintenance, but those who willfully ignore maintenance and proper upkeep, turning their vehicle into an unsafe multi-ton road hazard. Not to point anyone out, but at the absolute minimum, drivers should properly maintain their tires (the only part of the car touching the ground).
