Ah, summer. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and the project car you swore would be done by now… isn’t. You spent all winter making vague gestures towards fixing it up, but you never actually did it. Now, you’re going to have to learn all those skills that you should’ve picked up over the snowy months. The only question is, where do you start?
Earlier this week, IÂ asked you all what auto repairs you wanted to learn this summer. You turned in a wealth of responses, and today we’re looking through them in hopes of giving everyone else an inkling about what tricks they should pick up over those long summer days. Let’s dive in.Â
Rebuilding transmissions, in theory
This is the paradox of life. When I was young and broke, I had all the time in the world to do this kind of stuff but without much money. Older and able to spend money on quality tools/equipment, there is no time to do it. Youth is really wasted on the young. If I won the billion dollar lottery, I would enroll in tech school to learn how to rebuild automatic transmissions. I know the general theory but want to know the total and and outs. That, and enroll in trucking school to learn how to operate an 18 wheeler that weighs 20 tons. It would be as a pure challenge to prove to myself I was capable of these things.
Submitted by: Tex
I, too, would like to learn ECU shenanigans
Mostly electronics / tuning related…
CANBUS hacking for logging OBDII PIDs for things like oil temp (not exposed over standard OBDII protocols).
Smoothing out a cammed car at very light loads.
Flow testing and replacing / rearranging my fuel injectors to even out fuel trims across banks.
Submitted by: Anton Volkov
Cardboard-aided design
About 10 years ago I took a welding class in a nearby community college and it was a lot of fun. I would recommend that to everyone. Currently though I am learning to do CAD drawings on my own. The learning curve is pretty darn steep. But I think this is the future for car enthusiasts. There are a lot of things that you can get 3D printed but in order to do that first you have to master CAD.
I’m a big fan of Fusion360 for my CAD work. Also I’m pretty sure this stock photo is of the same 3D printer I have.Â
Submitted by: Jesse Lee
Home alignment
I’m going to have to learn how to replace a tie rod and do an alignment, I just noticed I bent the current one. Maybe not the hardest thing, just something new. Has anyone used the iphone bracket that you hold against a wheel to do an alignment? Is it vaporware?
Submitted by: Heavysquad
No longer doing it yourself
Earlier this year, I was building a mountain bike up from a bare frame. I’ve done this a dozen times and it’s always been fun. Until suddenly, it wasn’t fun. The shifting was being wonky, I really didn’t want to deal with internally routing the cables and I just collected all the parts, put them in a box and took them to my local bike shop and said, “I used to enjoy all this, now I don’t- can you please make all this work?” and 2 days later I had a bike that functioned perfectly. It cost more to have them do it. But I had zero frustrations. And I cannot overstate how important that is.
I think I’ve gotten past the point in my life where I want to fix things- I have a job and a kid and a house and free time is so precious that it’s not worth the time it takes to fix things anymore.
It kind of makes me sad- I used to LOVE this stuff. ohmygod, new tools and a new thing to lean? YES. SIGN ME UP. But now, I would rather let someone else change the oil in my car or replace the brake pads or whatever.
Submitted by: Buckfiddious
Some bodywork
After spending the winter and part of spring fixing up our rescue pup of a Fiat 500 I want to spend the summer enjoying vehicles rather than fixing them.
If the spirit moves me I may try some bodywork
Submitted by: Slow Joe Crow
Headlight wiring
I need to rewire the headlights on my 996. It is from that era of German cars that used a different type of wiring insulation…which is all now crumbling in every one of those cars.
I’m passable at wiring, but I’d like to do a nice job. And it’ll require met to disassemble the headlight pods, so I hope I can do that, polish them up, and make them look new again. It’s the kind of detailed work I’m not used to doing. I had an actual rubbermaid tub of old broken headlights for my race car. When one was too damaged to stay in its socket, I’d pull out the next-best one.
Submitted by: Poorsche
Making that paint shine
What I am learning this year is buffing paintwork and generally looking after the paint after. My cars are all very good mechanically as I have always maintained them well, But I never seem to put the same effort into the paint.
Submitted by: Mark Hughes
You should maybe know where your glasses are, just sort of generally
Actually finding my glasses and a good flashlight, and determining the puddling leak of brake fluid was not from the brake cylinder but a brake line.
Submitted by: The-Other-Bob
Bending brake lines
my Bronco has needed a brake line bent and flared for months and I’d love to see it driving this summer.
Submitted by: aoifedaofe
