What are some car-repair jobs you always wished you could do but have never done?
Mine are, in this order of "I wish I could do it" order
painting
alignment
replace/rebuild engine
clutch replacement
tire mounting and balancing
timing belt
head gasket and vcg
I've done electrical, brakes, shocks, cooling systems, alternators, ujoints, pitman/idler arms & tie-rod ends and ball joints, tuneups, emissions hoses and sensors, exhaust, electrical components, fuel pumps, and fluids, but not the six things above.
What are some car-repair jobs you always wished you could do but have never done?
Painting is something I have done and wish I never had... The best paint guy I ever knew was someone you had to catch in the zone between sober but shaky and falling down drunk. The runner up was a complete stoner.
Done just about all of it. My painting left a bit to be desired, and I don't really like rust repair bodywork. I've installed AC, installed oversized brakes, totally rebuilt a few cars - engine, suspension, electrics - the works. I've done some automatic trans work - but never a FULL rebuild.
What I'd really LIKE to do is build a complete car from scratch - but after taking 16 years on the plane, and it's not done yet - at 65 that likely won't happen
None, I've done a bunch of work on cars in my day, but I'm fed up with it now. I wish I could find someone who has half a brain who would do a decent job fixing my truck. It's old and has issues, but the repair people I seem to find these days fix one thing and break something else.
The only one I haven't done is tires just because I do not have the machine. It is too easy to just pay the guy for the few times you need it done. Usually tires are mounted when you buy them anyway. Alignment can be done "old school" but again, it is easier to pay the guy if you are at the tire store. I did do it once after replacing idler arms and ball joints using the stick method. I ended up replacing the tires and getting a professional alignment after I was sure my ball joint job was OK but the guy said I had it pretty close. I did a pretty good job painting the roof of a van with rattle cans and I painted my boat with a gun.
I don't know anyone who does their own tires but when I watch the guys, I wish I had that equipment, especially the air equipment, to just remove it and put it back and spin it in between.
They look pretty bored when they do it, so I think it can't be all that hard to do if I had that power equipment to do it.
When I replaced the pitman arm and idler arm and tie rod ends and ball joints, I remember purchasing a set of pickle forks which I still have. Maybe I can use them for BBQ?
I also bought a grease gun at the time, which came in handy over the years, but I haven't seen a zerk fitting in decades. Have you?
I aligned the toe by turning the tierod ends, measuring with a stick with two sticks sticking up and with nails lined up on a tire centerline chalk, so I too "got close".
I took it in for alignment and they said the toe was spot on but changed as they messed with the other things that I couldn't do at home.
I think with digital tools in the shop, alignment MEASURING should be a piece of cake. I think the problem is supporting the vehicle on its weight so that you can change things without having to drive the vehicle.
Also, I think the biggest problem with alignment (as opposed to those other jobs) is MENTAL. You have to translate inches to degrees and vice versa and you have to find the centerline and you have to THINK more for alignment than for any of the other jobs.
Spray cans for a roof? Interesting. If it works, it works! (that's my motto when my wife asks me "Is that the way it's _supposed_ to be done?".
Nobody expects a home job to be as good as the pros, but it still would be nice to do.
I was thinking manual. An automatic might be too much for a home job due to the potential equipment requirement. For a manual, all you need is a good jack, some tools for tight places, clutch alignment tool, snapring pliers, and everything else you probably already have.
I'm older than you, so I know what you mean that it probably will never happen. We lost our chance.
I too would love to have built my "own" car, which, by that, I mean I would have taken my very first car or maybe one of the cars from the 60s, or 70s, or maybe as late as the 80s, and then rebuilt it "my way", whatever that would mean, such that it would be unique.
My advice to a kid in his twenties or thirties would be to save the car he likes best, probably it's a simple one, manual, inline six perhaps, and then just learn it, work it, and repair it, and make it what you want it to be.
The closest I came to for the engine was an Infiniti Q45 I had where my wife holed the oil pan somehow (she said it wasn't her fault).
To replace the oil pan, I had to buy an engine "holder" where I unbolted the engine mounts and jacked it up from underneath and then hung it on a hook over this crossbar which bolted into the shock bolts.
But I've never replaced an engine mostly because I never drove an engine into the ground that needed to be replaced. I envy people who have done it because it must feel great to put a new engine in yourself.
I haven't had a manual for so long that I think I lost my chance to do the clutch and pressure plate. The one chance I had in the 80s, I blew it by paying someone else to do it. That was my mistake because that turned out to be my last chance in life to learn how to do it and experience it.
I know what you mean. All mine have been chains, where some have plastic chain guides or tensioners which need replacing - but I've never needed to replace a belt - but belts are pretty common on cars nowadays, aren't they?
I may get my chance yet on at least the valve cover gasket as mine has a few spots of oil on the edges. :)
As in piston ring? If so, I think that qualifies as a "engine", at least to me, since you have to open her up pretty deep to get to the pistons.
Replacing the transmission would also be something I wish I had done, along the lines of putting in a clutch, which is I think essentially the same thing since the transmission has to come out anyway. In fact, unless it's a swap (like yours was), I would think replacing the transmission one to one would be easier than replacing just the clutch, and pressure plate.
I may have lost my chance on most of the things above though, just like I can't hike in the Grand Canyon anymore (due to being old).
Long ago, in the 80's, at Sears, I bought the compressor, the sprayer, and the sandblaster, and the welder (but I bought gas welding equipment which turned out to be a mistake because the skill set needed is great compared to arc welding on thin metal with wires below them).
Not wishing to merely fill with bondo, I cut out the rust, and welded steel plates (melting the harness bundle below the rocker panels by mistake but repairing that easily enough).
I was still working on it, when it was totalled after I lent it to a friend, so the only thing I have left is the memory and the tools.
What I learned from all that was never lend your car to a friend, and in the end, I never learned how to paint it because I never needed to paint a car ever again.
Ever since then, I farmed out my painting, but I wish I had finished that one job.
I just realized that this sentence above that MEASURING alignment should be easier now than ever before might be misconstrued.
Everyone thinks you need a nuclear bomb to do alignment, but sometimes a single grenade is good enough for two guys in a foxhole.
What I would do, were I ever to tackle alignment, would be to buy the digital measuring tools for camber and caster, and I would get the toe plates so the wheels could still turn on the vehicle's weight.
That way I could measure caster, camber, and toe.
I do realize there are many more items to measure, such as kingpin angle and steering axis inclination and front-to-rear alignment and the straightness of the tracking and more than I can remember from my 1960's high school auto mechanic shop elective.
But if you own the car, you already know all those things are ok if you haven't had a major accident and even if you didn't know it, you can do one alignment at the shop which will prove it.
The good thing about alignment is that digital measuring tools are cheap nowadays (a couple hundred bucks) and accurate enough for the tolerances specified by the manufacturer. Another good thing about alignment nowadays is that most cars only allow a small subset to be changed without bolting in camber plates and other widgets.
So it's pretty much not even caster, camber, and toe nowadays for most cars, although you still need to measure all three (or maybe two, and calculate the third).
I think the biggest problem with alignment isn't that you need a couple hundred dollars of tools (realizing that a shop's TV-camera alignment tool and toe-plates is nuclear overkill for what we need at home).
I am pretty sure my biggest hurdle is that alignment takes KNOWLEDGE where you have to convert degrees and inches using trig and measure a lot of things to an imaginary centerpoint and to each other.
I'm thinking that can be misconstrued just like the alignment can be misconstrued.
What I really think about home jobs is that you _care_ more than the guy doing your work for you for pay.
He has more experience and better equipment. You care more about the results where your equipment just has to be good enough.
Recently I brought a car back to the shop because a bolt was missing where the guy insisted the bolt didn't do anything. That's what I mean about caring about the job.
When they mount my tires, they don't align the dots to get the least amount of weight. They say it doesn't matter. Maybe they're right. I don't know, but it doesn't seem like the right way to do the job to me.
When they do the clutch, they put in whatever they put in but I doubt it's Redline.
That's what I mean more so than they don't know more than we do.
They know. But they might not care as much as we do about the results.
My '63 Valiant (170 slant six, push-button automatic) had lowered suspension so it cornered like it was on rails, and put 206HP to the rear wheels. 60 in 1st, 90 in second, and bury the needle in drive.
The 69 Dart wasn't quite as radical but would do 104 all day long (225 slant six)
the 1953 Coronet Sierra (241 Red Ram Hemi Overdrive) was a complete rebuild, as was the custom 1957 (Dodge) Fargo Express. Wish I still had those 2. The Coronet was one of my paint jobs. "'69 Chevelle and 72 VW Beetle were 2 others. Both turned out nice except for one "sag" on each. The Coronet had no sags, but not much shine either.
A couple sheets of tin with grease between works in a pinch for slip plates - and for camber a simple square and calculator works just fine. Toe in with a few sticks and a tape measure - or a simple laser level (bubble level with a laser built into the one end - used to "extend" the wheel angle instead of using sticks) works pretty good. Calculating caster is a bit more difficult without the proper tools, but a mathematical genius (that's not me) could figure it out with the same square, ruler, and calculator.
The laser level will do the tracking just fine, and a digital protactor or electronic level would make things easier.
The most important thing - from having done alignments professionally, using sophisticated equipment, is MNOWING what the effects of different adjustments are - just because a car is "within spec" doesn't mean it will go straight down the road and won't wear tires. Tayloring the caster and camber leads is part science, and part witchcraft.
I've done or assisted in most of those and a bunch of others except #6. These days I buy new cars and don't even do oil changes.
If you really want to tackle #3, it is easy enough to do. Buy a new Corvette and for an extra $5000 you can go to the plant and assemble your own engine. Of course, they have a pro with you.
Serpentine belts are common, as are interference engines. I replaced the belt on my Geo when it got up around 100,000 miles. I didn't know the maintenance history on the car and assumed it had never been replaced. iirc, the belt was around $40 and the job took a couple of hours. The biggest problem was the limited space.
I do the tires on the bike with tube type tires. I would do the tubeless but I worry about not having enough air to get the bead to seat. I brought the bike to an indy shop for a new set and everything was going good until the front tire. Even with a high flow air systems and the tools he had a hell of a time. The sun was sinking in the west before the bead finally caught and he could inflate it.
I've had problems getting the bead to seat correctly with tube tires but with those you can deflate, beat on it, curse, inflate, rinse and repeat until it goes.
After replacing the joints I aligned my pickup with a tape measure and plumb bob. I was not at all confident so i took it to a tire shop. It was within spec and didn't need any tweaking.
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