Some people buy a car and exclusively get it repaired at the dealership. Others rely on their trusted local mechanic. But if you’re a car enthusiast, there’s a good chance you like to personally handle your vehicle’s maintenance. But how far do you go in the pursuit of keeping your car’s roadworthy?
Some jobs are easy to tackle. Doing an oil change is often our first introduction into auto care, along with other basics like swapping out air filters and flushing the coolant now and then. Brakes are fairly easy to handle, too, once you know what you’re doing, though you might call in a friend for the bleeding side of things.
But what about the harder stuff? What is it that scares you, frustrates you? There are plenty of stickier jobs that could qualify. Timing belts are a great example here. They can be frustrating to change, often requiring pulling lots of stuff off the engine to get at them. You might find as well that you need some kind of special tool to lock your cams or crankshaft in place to do the job right. Plus, if you have an interference engine, there’s a Sword of Damocles hanging over your head the whole time. Make a small mistake, like aligning the belt just a few teeth off, and you can trash your entire engine just seconds after you start it back up.
I’ve done all kinds of wrenching jobs, from refurbishing fuel injectors to swapping in coilovers and swapping out diffs. Still, there are a number of jobs I turn my nose up at. I generally won’t touch a timing belt on anyone else’s car but my own, given the stakes at play. My girlfriend’s car is due, and given how the last oil change went down, I don’t think I’ll be taking any chances. I’ll change my own spark plugs, but I’m very reluctant to do so for friends—I’d hate to strip a thread and leave them with a car that’s not running.
For some jobs, it’s more dependent on the car in question. Changing the spark plugs in a Corolla? No problem, it’s a 20-minute job. Changing the spark plugs in a Subaru, or a Mitsubishi 3000GT? Hoo boy. Clear your calendar.
I’ll happily change transmission filters and fluid on an old Falcon. It takes little more than an hour or two and you just need a socket wrench and a funnel. As the Aussies say, it’s a piece of piss. In contrast, the design of my BMW 320D makes the same job incredibly frustrating. With no transmission dipstick or fill port under the hood, it’s a far more difficult job. Filling the transmission requires getting under the car with a transfer pump, and checking the levels relies on getting the fluid to the proper temperature and watching it drip out of a hole. It’s way too fussy. From the professional mechanics I spoke to, it’s best done on a lift with a buddy in the car shifting the gears to ensure the fluid is circulating properly.
I won’t take on that job again, because it was an absolute mess the last time I tried. It took me months to get all the spilled fluid off the driveway, besides.
But those are my hangups. I want to hear about yours. What maintenance jobs do you refuse to take on? Be as broad (or as vehicle-specific!) as you desire.
Image credits: Lewin Day, Parvez AzarQaderi via Unsplash where credited
Anything where I need a lift. Timing belt. Clutch on my Stratus – did it once, next time I’ll pay someone. It also needs rear valve cover gasket replaced, along with spark plugs and wires, which i will do when my cousin is here to help me, but i won’t tackle on my own.
Also, how the mess did I wrench for over 35 years without an impact wrench? That thing has made some things like suspension work SO much easier!
I’ve tackled pretty much everything. I have a tire machine and a bubble balancer. I’ve done many manual transmissions, 1 automatic and many rear ends and transfer cases. I drew the line at doing the timing chains and tensioners on my wife’s Explorer with the 4.0 V-6. When I looked at the cost of the kit, the special tools necessary in addition to the necessity of pulling the engine, we decided it was better to just scrap the vehicle. One of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
Definitely get that. When you start thinking about how many weekends you’re going to lose it gets easier
Engine, transmissions and diff rebuilds.. is my limit. I don’t have an post lift and jacks to take them out.
Of course it depends if you have your spare or your spare + 1 car available.
But in general, I find globalisation is great for car repairs. All the “specialised” and even diagnostic tools that used to cost a fortune are now available cheap but made out of chinesium. Things like Porsche progamming tools is just a click away from Alibaba. I won’t be able to imagine being able to select different grades of parts from the comfort of my home via RockAuto in the 90s.
I’ll never ever again do a big engine job for a friend. A colleague of mine had a head gasket leak on his Peugeot 207 because these petrol engines all eat them up. I offered to help, but insisted there was a chance I’d mess up his engine. He greed. I lent him a car, asked for no money and stored his POS in my workshop.
That freaking job took weeks, we cleaned up all the mating surfaces, controled them with feeler gauges, I struggled with the seized water pump bolts that had to be drilled out, I redid the RTV seal on the one piece camshaft holder thingy, which had some oil passages for the dephaser so I had to be careful AF. I did my first timing belt on this. Once everything was back together, the car ran like shit and threw a ton of codes. No mechanic wanted to help, it was a nightmare.
In the end he had to pay someone 200€ to figure it out: the procedure we followed was incomplete and we were one tooth off because of the cam phaser. He still had the gall to say 300€ overall was expensive for a head gasket, timing belt, water pump, oil change and brake job. He wasn’t bitchy or anything but that was a fucking ordeal for me and I had to drive my BMW all that time which cost me a pretty penny too.
We’re still friends but now I have this rule: no big jobs for friends.
Very fair.
I spent a few weeks doing a head swap once and the car ran great at the end of it. For a day. Then it blew up again and I had to scrap it.
That sucks, and it sucks even more if it’s not your ride!
Welding and suspension work. I specialize in electrics, so everything involving that is a piece of cake, and engine work is fine too, but rust and seized fasteners kills me.
Same. I dumped a Golf Cabrio because I stripped a driveshaft fastener and just went “nope”
Wife’s Sienna, it was time for that timing belt/water pump swap. Now, I’ve never done this on a DOHC Vee-engine, but I’m sure I could complete the replacement without issue.
But do I want my first time to be on my wife’s beloved van?
No effin’ way, pal.
lol the Ru Paul quote, my Wife watches that show religiously.
I actually did the timing belt on my ’89 Montero and water pump while we were there, but I am tapping out this week at the valve stem seals.
I no longer have an address in a county with no emissions standards, so I have to get it plated in the city. I am taking it to a guy this weekend, or dropping it off. I was supposed to go today but it is snowy and cold, and I forgot that the drivers side door doesn’t open from the outside. It is too cold to do the fiddly finite work to re-attach it so I am waiting.
The valve stem seals require removal of the heads to be sent off for rebuilding/machining/etc at another place, then the stems have to be replaced on the bottom of the valvetrain. All of this is beyond my abilities for sure. And that is if that is the only work needed to get it to pass emissions, which I think it will be. The thing still drives great and has plenty of power, it only puffs ghosts at stop signs and lights like the usual Montero with 300k miles on it.
On the BMW the only thing I haven’t been able to do so far is the alignment. I don’t think I want to get the stuff to walnut blast and shops do that for reasonable price. Also the ZF transmission fluid swap, I don’t have a lift.
Yep. I’ve said I did pretty much everything—but the machine shop got the heads. I got them back clean, true, sealed, and with new valves. I have no shame in that.
Due to time constraints I’ve stopped doing really any routine maintenance, I’ll just pay for those which I’m not a fan of but it’s where we’re at in life. The D100 I work on myself because it just sits anyway so I can take as long as I take on it.
One job I do NOT want to do in my gravel driveway is the clutch on the Mustang. It’s still working but it is 16 years old at this point.. it’s coming I’m sure.
Gravel driveway is ruining my life right now, I get it
Wiring. Electronics are of the devil. Also they hate me as much as I do them, for example I’ve now had four different electronic devices catch fire while I was using them. A packard-bell 386, the cruise control unit in my 74 buick, a sidekick xl cell phone, and my work desktop.
The only stuff I farm out is tire mounting and alignments. I’ve never trashed an auto transmission but I would pass on that job too. Once you have a decent shop set up and enough running vehicles so that nothing is a rush job it can be pretty fun and satisfying. Some days you’re a rock star in the garage. Other days nothing goes right except the swearing and you walk away to try again tomorrow.
well said—and the username fits perfectly
Thumbs Up!
I was very proud of getting my BMW back on the road. Definitely get you there.
I’ll almost always pay someone to deal with messy fluids for me.
I’m willing to tackle about anything on my project vehicles in the name of learning, fun or money savings. My daily is generally reliable/insured enough to keep me out of major work, but I’ll do most minor things. My wife’s car, unless I’m 100% certain I can handle it I’ll take it to the shop.
That said, specifically, AC work (except simple recharge) and tire mounting are two I don’t mess with myself regardless of the vehicle.
I can use the tire machine at work and it’s not bad, but when Discount tire does it for $24/ea I can’t justify the 2 hours it takes me to do it
I removed one and remounted it on my jeep manually years ago to repair a leak and just to prove I could do it in an emergency (off-road), but without a machine it’s a pain to say the least.
Me too. Once.
no longer dead broke, there’s a lot to be said for, ‘pay the guy who does it everyday’
Diesel injection systems.
Google image search “Hydraulic Injection Injury” to see why.
Did so 25 years ago: took forever to load the picture on my old dialup. As I had old diesel Mercedes, I kept some medical references on a piece of paper in my wallet—and never failed to assume there was pressure in a line.
I’ll pretty much do anything on my race car Porsche 944 S2, but race cars are easy to work on. They are stripped of everything but the essentials, they break all the time and are regularly taken apart so no rusty bolts. And also because they break all the time I pretty much have the procedures memorized and optimized. But that has spoiled me and when I look at a modern street car I wanna barf.
And you do not need the race car to get to work the next day.
That’s the biggie. I was fortunate to have space to park basically junk so I always had 2 legal and another waiting. Being into a single make at the bottom of depreciation made it pretty cheap—and I could always get to work
On my old race car I could do a engine/tranny swap in 4 hours.
Regular breakage was one reason I got the diff change time for a Datsun 510 down to about 20 minutes. Came in handy one night when I had to do it in the rain on the side of a country road in an unregisterd 610 coupe with a V8 conversion – was VERY keen to get done and out of there before a police car came by!
The clutch on my AWD V50 is nearly due, that is a shop job as I can see myself living under the car for a month eating rust grease and blood, better to use whats left of my brain and make some money to pay somebody
I’ve done a lot of repairs myself on my fleet over the years. Timing chains, water pumps, all manner of electrical and suspension work, and I particularly enjoy making brake lines. But, one thing I refuse to touch is transmission work. Just not something I feel skilled enough to tackle.
For me, I refuse to do anything involving an engine hoist, A/C service or anything that requires putting the car on a lift. I don’t have any of the equipment or the space to do repairs that need that properly.
So basically I stick to simple stuff… oil changes, coolant changes, tire rotations and spark plug replacements. I have done the odd semi-advanced thing like adjusting the valves on my Fit, but if I had to do it again, I’d probably pay someone to do it next time.
And while I don’t save much doing oil changes, I do it myself because then I know it was done properly using the correct oil and the correct oil filter. In the past, I’ve had “free” oil changes where I observed the wrong filter was used and most likely the cheapest recycled bulk oil was used.
And I like to do tire rotations myself because I’ve encountered far too many instances of improperly torqued wheel lug nuts.
Having spent a decade working around automotive technicians, I have severe trust issues with anyone I don’t know touching anything on my cars. So many times I’ve tried to save myself hassle by having a “trusted” shop work on something. Only to find later that they broke clips, bent brackets, cross threaded fasteners, took out NVH insulation and didn’t put it back, under-torqued wheel bolts, the list goes on. Now, the most I’ll trust someone else with is swapping a set of tires (providing I bring them the loose wheels and new tires already removed from the car) because I don’t yet have the equipment to balance them in my home shop.
This! So much this! I had a shop that had only 2 mechanics near me and they both seemed like they know what they were doing so I would bring my cars to them – but alas, they moved farther away and I now need to find someone new. I can also tell you a couple of stories from my BMW dealer (there are reasons you lease, and not buy, a BMW) – the one where they replaced the thermostat and forgot to tighten the hose-clamp (luckily I stopped at the bank on the way to my office and found the problem before I got on the highway) and that after multiple requests to look at the brakes since the car didn’t feel right and the dealer doing exactly nothing, I end up doing the brake pads and find on the right side one pad with nothing left and one with more than half – the caliper pins were sticking – I should have taken a look a month into my lease.
That’s a hard question. I’m all about the DIY becauase i love my car, love wrenching and love learning how to do something… so in a perfect world, under the guidance of someone who knows what they are doing, ill try any mechanical repair… but we’re not in the perfect world and It’s never just about a flat refusal. Available time and money come into play, as well as access to a lift. Finally how big of a brat the car has been to me lately plays a role in my desire to spend days underneath it getting beat up.
When I bought my Mustang in my 20’s, anything short of warranty work I did myself. I had time and no money.
In my late 20s, I replaced my front main seal, motor mounts and rear axle seals as part of a bunch of other upgrades (bigger rear brakes, long tube headers) at my friends shop using his lift. I had time, expertise available and a little money. UT the car beat me up, mentally and physically.
Three years later, it was busy at work and I gave the same friend the car to do the rear main seal and the clutch since I don’t know how to do a clutch, the shop was busy and I had no time. Honestly, easiest clutch I ever had to do ;-). I still don’t know how to do a clutch (dealer did the first under warranty repairs) but I really have no regrets. In this case I had no time, no expertise available to guide me and enough In savings to do it.
Now 3 years later in my mid 30s with a toddler, the question is time above all else. The door lock actuator went in my f-150 and I looked up how to replace it. And let me tell you now, nothing about that job looked appealing. It looked like it was going to be a full day of me fighting with a door…so I said to myself “this looks like a Ford problem” and that’s what I did (lucky enough it was covered under a service bulletin). No time, and no money (as anyone with a toddler knows)
Is it maturity? I don’t know. I doubt it. I think its priority and age. I Still love working on my cars but I want to do fun things like upgrades, not repairs. Plus my car hates me. I am the living iteration of the “one broken bolt away” meme.
Still, I guess long story short, I probably won’t do a clutch… unless someone wants to teach me.
I hate messing with doors. Break 50 clips and ruin the card every time.
I’ll do timing belts but not chains. At least on my Mazda it was a daunting task so I paid someone to do it. It might be easier on other vehicles but there was two main things that scared me. My car is right on the edge of a parts changeover in mid-2007 so it was really difficult to know if I was even looking at the right parts, plus there’s been multiple revisions of everything. Also the chain sprockets aren’t even keyed to the shafts; they’re held in place with friction washers. I was 90% sure I would mess it up.
Rebuilding an automatic transmission and DIY paint job. And those are things I have done before, but won’t try again. Otherwise I’ve never paid a dime to anyone else to work on my vehicles, and don’t ever plan to until I’m just too old to keep doing it myself.
That’s where I’m at, especially on newer automatic transmissions which have significantly higher complexity and tighter tolerances than a TH350 or 700R4. I’ll also paint smaller bits, but as soon as it involves masking off windows or trying to blend paint colors, that’s where I leave it to the professionals.
Shops do alignments and…..thats about it for me. I do everything else. If I hate working on a car enough that I would rather have a shop do it, I sell the car and get something else. I haven’t ever finished a job and thought “man I wish I had spent hundreds (or thousands) of dollars to purchase my freedom from this work today.” and I have done some incredibly crappy jobs. Oil pump on an AWD v8 Trailblazer is one of the absolute worst. Second to that, probably engine on a Mazda MP5, or heads on an early 00s turbo Mini Cooper.
I set the toe on my minivan after doing tie rods using some string and four lawn chairs. Seems spot-on and the steering wheel is dead center. Watched a Youtube video on how to do it.
I change the oil myself because I know it will be done correctly and I can reuse the old oil for bar/chain lube on my chainsaw. I’ve amassed enough tools over the years that about the only thing I won’t tackle on my own is something that requires a tool that I don’t own.
Slave cylinder on an Audi 4000 quattro. Where every other manufacturer had the decency to use bolts, Audi used a steel spring pin in an aluminum transmission. It’s impossible to drive it out and the cylinder is almost always seized inside the bore it sits in.
If the sorento 3.3L timing chain rattle ever continues beyond start up, I’ll farm that job out. I avoid transverse engine work as much as I can. I VASTLY prefer doing literally any work on a north/south layout.