Finally, I’m clean and dry. I’m also tucked in bed with fresh white cotton sheets, relaxing after spending most of today lying in a muddy puddle whilst inches away from being crushed by 1.5 tonnes of car being held in the air by two ramps I didn’t entirely trust. Even with jack stands under the car I was still cautious.
You see today I finally got around to tackling the long list of things my car needed doing, things like an oil change and trying to get the front parking sensors to stop thinking they’re constantly up against something. Come rain or shine I told myself, I will be getting that car done. Well today rain came, then sun, then rain, then sunny rain and just to mix things up, sunshine and driving torrential rain thanks to 40 mile an hour gusts ensuring I was thoroughly soaked whilst under the car in a puddle of mud which has soaked up through the stones outside our garage, with my head on the drenched mossy concrete pad of the garage floor. The rain was also doing a brilliant job of washing the dirt from the car before dripping off directly into my corneas.
The thing is though, even whilst soaked to the skin, muddy, covered in oil with eyes full of dust, I was happy. I love it, especially on a warmer day, arm deep under the car with Volbeat blasting out of my phone. You see I love tinkering with cars, and I love being able to repair and Maintain my cars. I love spending afternoons tweaking and fixing, cleaning, and servicing, keeping my car going. It’s funny as well, you don’t realise how many sharp bits there are under a car until you reach up into the abyss of belts and pulleys to undo something, where you end up looking like you’ve tried to catch a cat that was hiding in a thorn bush.
I was asked today, by someone with far too much time on their hands as they bent down to talk to me in the mud underneath my car, why I don’t just go to a mechanic. And well, you see I spend a lot of time in cars, I drive many miles on a daily basis and as you well know, write about them too. So, by being able to also maintain and understand them on a mechanical level is not only a skill I’m glad I have but I like to think it helps towards my mechanical sympathy.
What’s more is I’m not a wealthy man, and mechanic shops tend to be on the more expensive side, having to pay for parts and the years of training and knowledge the mechanics have. But if I’m able to do it myself to a reasonable level, I’m happy to spend half a day under the bonnet of my car with the radio on whilst arm deep in the engine bay, swearing like a sailor to save a few hundred pounds.
Swearing is a necessity when doing anything mechanical, but even more so in car repair. There’s an ongoing joke that the engineers who design the cars don’t like mechanics and honestly, I totally understand where mechanics are coming from. You see when your car is built most of the time (there are several exceptions) the engine is put together on a production line, with all the components designed to fit in as compactly and efficiently as possible. Then once it’s fully assembled, it’s lifted into the car from the bottom and bolted in. But this means when it comes time to do any maintenance or repair work, there’s never enough space to be able to get your hands and a tool, and as a result you need to have flat Stanley style hands with 57 joints in the fingers and the strength of hulk in your pinkie finger. You also need to be able to interchange arms. The number of times I have needed two left arms whilst giving the engine block a reach around is ridiculous.
There are times I have needed a mechanic, things like air con re-gassing, wheel alignments and anything to do with the airbags. It’s funny on any car, the airbags are the one thing you never hope to see and just hope they’re working. Whilst I’m confident in doing most things on a car, I know my limit and know when it’s time to go and give the keys to an actual expert. Until then I like to pretend to be a mechanic and do my own repairs, replace my own parts and do my own swearing, and I like to be able to save money doing it as well. I’ll happily go and spend an hour wandering around a scrap yard before butchering a car for the part I need and then spending the rest of the day fitting it to my car. I also see getting parts from a scrap car as a form of recycling, re using a part that would of otherwise have gone to scrap and saved a few quid in the process.
The engineer in me loves it to, I love analysing each part and how it interacts with the other parts, I do a lot of design so love to look at how that part there was designed to interact with this part here, and in some cases, why the hell they did it that way in the first place. I swear sometimes these things are designed purposely to have to be done by a specialist. I know that that whilst right now I can work on my car and get parts, the way modern cars are being designed, and build is making it nearly impossible to work on your own car. You need so many specialist tools that a casual hobbyist like me simply can’t justify it. But until that day comes where I can’t get parts or tools for my cars anymore, I’m going to keep reaching into the depths of an engine bay whilst swearing. I do also plan on finding somewhere less swamp like to work on cars. What I’d give for an actual workshop.