<VV> now age of vehicles

[Bryan Blackwell]

On Dec 13, 2013, at 3:22 PM, Bob Gilbert wrote:

> "Back in the day" I would continue fixing and repairing in my own garage but those days are largely gone, outside of my Corvairs.

IMO, a lot of these things have more to do with "us", not so much the cars.  Back in the day it was a good use of our time to fix a car, nowadays perhaps not so much.  I find that doing my own work I can have a nicer car than if I pay someone, but I generally like fooling with cars anyway.  Plenty of folks on the Neon forum do their own work too, and there are even jokes about "cheap Neon owners".  Takes me back ;-)

In all honesty, I find most newer cars require less work and when they do break, I can ask them what's wrong with a code scanner.  With a Corvair, the diagnostics take a few extra steps, but my eye is better calibrated to SAE sizes than Metric.  I'm getting better at eyeballing 12 vs. 13mm, tho :-)

For any kind of car if you have the books and good tools, it helps a lot.  I start with the Haynes books on the newer cars until I can score a factory manual.  And buying tools, well, when wasn't that fun?

--Bryan

Bryan Blackwell | Springfield, Va. | bryan at skiblack.com | http://autoxer.skiblack.com/  
  Corvairs: '62 700 Wagon, '64 Greenbrier, '65 Corsa, '66 Corsa
  '69 Road Runner, '99 Neon R/T, '00 Miata SE, '09 Ford F-150
"Why do something if you're not going to obsess about it?"