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
None of them. I’m a great believer in the dignity of other people’s labour.
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Well, fancy that, Adrian writing Cheques with abandon! 😉
( I do the same!, makes life much more easier!)
Don’t be silly. I don’t write checks. The housekeeper does it.
Of course, what was I thinking? ヽ(͡◕ ͜ʖ ͡◕)ﾉ
Someone is trying to channel their inner Fancy Kristen.
I won’t do anything that won’t save me enough to be worth my time. And I won’t do struts, even if it would save me a lot. I don’t have the right tools to keep them compressed and rigging a solution is a bad idea.
I don’t think I can change the oil in my pickup as cheap as Valvoline can, and it’s more convenient.
I have priced it out. With a coupon, Valvoline is cheaper than DIY.
I can guarantee you that the oil filter that they use is rubbish!
Im not a fan of doing timing belts. Ill pay for that. And my 88 jeep comanche has killed my will to do electrical work. Why oh why would you install a french efi system!? Because you know, in 1987 everyone knew that THE FRENCH had the best electronics! Thanks AMC, i guess its better than rover.
I’ve heard that system was pretty advanced compared to the American stuff; you found it unreliable though?
Its advanced when its running- the big problems is it doesn’t hold codes like OBD would, so you cant check later. Or if its an intermittent issue, it is hard to track it down without firing the parts cannon. And its VERY sensitive to any ground issues. for example, all my turn signals and parking lights went haywire because one light had a 2-way bulb instead of a one-way.
There is an individual that now makes a scanner for them while they are running, which helps immensely. It will read all the live codes, such as MAP pressure, voltage, O2 data, etc. but you still have finicky grounds to contend with.
Overall, the 91+ Mopar electronics are preferred. If I could do it again, I would look for one of those just for simplicity sake.
having done this before, you aren’t kidding. Transverse V6 in a tiny engine bay with the intake manifold going over top of one bank…
I salute you for taking that on
Exhaust work is the first thing that comes to mind – I used to tackle it myself, but I found a great place that does better work than I can, for not much more money. See also: radiator/cooling-system flushes.
Next up: suspension, especially anything involving spring compressors. Had a front spring let loose under a Sedan deVille once and that’s not a risk I feel like taking again.
Finally, anything related to software, at least if it’s going to involve resetting or calibrating something. Thankfully that’s been limited to my 2012 Volt, and was only a one-time recall-event taken care of quickly and free-of-charge.
I just paid the shop to replace the Y-pipe on my G37x. In (distant) years past, I would have done this myself, but this thing is so low to the ground, even if I put it on stands it would still be tight. I was researching a higher-performance stainless exhaust, which could be bolted-in, which is what I really wanted but that would have been at least double the cost for just the parts. The custom exhaust guys ended up cutting off the flanges – which I thought they were going to try to keep on – which is kinda annoying since it now precludes me from eventually installing a bolt-on system – but they were super fast & convenient and right at my ambivalence point on cost. I am not necessarily happy with the regular steel they used (I am in the salty Northeast), but this just gives me an incentive to get the next daily driver sooner.
I used to do everything myself but now that I have a bulging disc I am not sure I can do as much.
It all depends on cost. I’ll do anything myself to save a few grand. But to save a few hundred? My time has a price…
Without a proper lift, I really don’t like getting too far under the car. It just gives me the heebie jeebies. Even on quickjacks with jackstands and the wheels thrown under, something about removing a subframe or transmission doesn’t sit right with me, plus it’s also a pain in the ass. There are certain things, all under the car, that are just such a PITA without a lift that it’s usually worth paying someone to do in order to keep my time and sanity. Both my cars are due for transmission/diff service. The local indie will only charge me a few hundred bucks in labor. I could spend all morning under my car getting covered in transmission and diff fluid, worried that a car is going to fall on me, then dealing with the old fluid disposal, cleaning my garage floor of spills etc, or spend $500 and use that time to play with my cats or take the family to breakfast.
That’s also how I feel about most home repairs. Am I capable? Probably. Do I want to? Not at all.
I also turned wrenches for a living for over a decade, and it totally sapped all the fun out of working on my own stuff. The last thing I wanted to do when I got home from work is grab a ratchet and do the same thing I just spent 12 hours doing.
Yeah, that’s pretty common. Last thing I want to do after work is fix someone’s computer.
Back when I used to cook for a living, I never cooked when I got home, always got take-out or delivery.
Yep after a few orchard and greenhouse jobs in my 20s, no houseplants for me.
I’ve done most of the basic stuff but my least favorite is body work.
Great one. Last year, I spent a ton of time turning a big dent in one of my Focus’ rear doors into…a smaller dent. I wanted to get a sense of what it was like, but yeah, professional next time.
Standard body work tends to be really cost effective to have someone else do (the insurance companies tend to keep shop rates down) – and they will have a paint booth that will result in a better finish and less environmental pollution.
After doing a timing belt job on an interference engine, spin the engine over 4 times by hand slowly to make sure (a) nothing is hitting and (b) the timing marks are still aligned.
I will never, ever rebuild a differential.
After doing all of the research on regearing my Jeep, getting the FSM, and reading until my eyes bled, I fully realize and appreciate just how much work goes into getting gears set up properly. You need proper preload on several different key bearings, you need to have backlash and coast set, adjusted, and shimmed properly. To truly do it right takes special tools, for measuring bearing preload and drag, and many other important adjustments. If you mess up any one of those things, you have to spend the time and money to try again.
I gladly forked over the $1600 for the shop to do it for me.
I did successfully put a new ring and pinion and Detroit Locker in the Model 20 rear of my CJ-7. But it was quite the learning experience, took about a week of my time and I probably wouldn’t do it again. It kinda falls into the what happens if this goes wrong category. If it takes a lot of time, and uses a bunch of special tools, and the parts are expensive – that’s a good candidate for taking it somewhere else. I would put an automatic transmission rebuild into this category.
Agreed. I’ve changed solenoids, conductor plates, filters, and pulled valve bodies out of transmissions, but I’ve never dropped one for disassembly, much less even opened the case on one. And I don’t plan on it, either. That’s definitely something you pay an expert for (and a warranty is a nice bonus).
Recently, I replaced my passenger side door handle on my 350z.
Part of the job was taking off the door card. Yes some clips broke but those are easy to replace.
Upon reassemble of the door card, I promptly closed the door. I locked it, unlocked it, and went to test out my new door handle.
The door wouldn’t open.
Surely i needed to unlock the door again right?
Nope! Turns out the actuator/linkage for the door locks was stuck in the halfway position so the door was closed and locked and no way to open it.
I had to tear apart the pristine door card and replace the entire thing as well as fix the door lock.
So I am NEVER messing with 350z door cards or lock actuators ever again.
Oh, that sounded painful. There is nothing worse than having everything put back together only to have to take it all apart again. A lesser wrencher might have just decided that the passenger door no longer works.
I hate bleeding the brakes. I’ll do it, but I hate it. Why can cars not come, standard, with speed bleeders? It would be so much nicer.
Little trick: Run the hose from the bleeder down and into a bottle of fluid (like water) so that the end of the hose is below the level of the fluid (I recommend a clear 2L bottle for reason below.) Open the bleeder. Go and pump the brakes. The fluid keeps air from getting back into the system, and the water won’t go up, either. Furthermore, you can easily see when all the air is out of the line because there won’t be any bubbles coming from the end of the tube.
This is a great trick. They even make a kit (I have one) that provides the bottle, a hanger, etc.
Yep! I have a Gatorade bottle with a hole in the lid for this very purpose. Works pretty well.
I have used the same glass pickle jar with a hole drilled in the lid for like 10 years now!
Glass is wise. Heavier and more likely to stand up on it’s own.
It also more likely to shatter if you drop it. Also, what’s all this nonsense with holes drilled in the lid. If you use a 2L bottle you don’t need a lid while you’re bleeding, and the lid can be used to actually seal the bottle when it’s not in use.
A plastic water bottle with a hole drilled in the cap and 2 feet of aquarium tubing, and you’ve got a brake bleed kit for under $2. Takes five minutes per corner tops.
Paint, with a number of exceptions:
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I’ve used headlight restoration kits once on both vehicles I’ve owned, and they recommend (but I forewent) painter’s tape. But it’s hilarious how severe the instructions were about not getting any on the body.
“If any of the restoring liquid touches the body, your entire car will dissolve.” Only slightly exaggerating.
If only that were true. A bottle of that stuff sounds far more convenient than hauling stripped parts cars to the junkyard.
Fluids, especially oil. It’s always messier than you want and proper disposal is inconvenient enough that I’ll just pay for the oil change.
If your car has a top mounted oil filter, an oil extractor is a total game changer. I do my changes in 10 minutes, don’t get a drop on me, and the container seals up tight enough to transport to Autozone and dump out, no transfer of oil from one container to another. If you have to get under the car to do the filter anyway, it’s not such a boon.
Unless I’m going to enjoy doing it/learning from it, I’ll pay someone else to do it. In the time it would’ve taken me to do a job I don’t want to do, I could work enough hours to pay for someone else to do it, and then everyone is happy and getting paid.
Also things like oil changes, where it’s not much more expensive to have it done, and then I don’t have to deal with wasting an afternoon, disposing of the oil, etc. Not worth it to save a few bucks.
That said, if I’m curious about the job, and/or it’s something I don’t mind doing, I’m happy to crawl under my vehicles and play around for a day.
Super well said! I have found that using a coupon for an oil change makes the difference between me and them doing it negligible and I do not have to drive around all over the place and figure out how to do an oil change in the winter.
These days I just do basic maintenance. Water pump, brakes. etc. etc. Fluid changes and more complicated things such as strange error codes and electrical gremlins I leave to my mechanic. I ain’t got the time, or patience for almost anything anymore.
Anything suspension related, I know I will mess something big time and then how am I going to be able to take it to the shop?
This, plus springs scare the hell out of me (as someone else had pointed out with a spring compressor gone wild story). It’s almost literally like a loaded gun, except with a gun you at least have to pull the trigger.
I’m sure I’m being a little extra but that’s how they make me feel, anyway.
I stay away from really heavy engine work because I don’t have any non-project cars and can’t afford to have it out of action for a while with me learning. Other than that I tend to stay away from hydraulics, because I hate working with hydraulic fluid.
Well, I live in an apartment and my close friends and family do too, so I couldn’t do much even if I wanted to.
But really…I hate getting my hands dirty (literally, not figuratively).
There’s plenty of interior work I will do, though. Speakers, subwoofers…head unit…replace lights with LEDs (inside or out)…install dashcams…that covers most of it.
Me too re apartment life. So for me, the bar is often “once the collected tools/equipment won’t fit in the rolling box I use for transporting them from apartment to garage.”
Anything requiring special tools I won’t use again. That’s a good indication its above my skill level.
Anything relating to tires. Too cheaply done elsewhere.
Anything that takes more than a day. I don’t have the patience.
There are some tools I might justify that get used only once, like a 50mm impact socket or a triple-square drive set, with a claim to myself that I might use it again somewhere. But I think your logic is solid here.
I assume you’re ok with handling wheels on their own, sure (on/off/rotate) but it’s that mounting rubber & balancing those wheels.
I’ll take wheels off one at a time to do brakes and such, but my lift is a 4 post, not a 2, so I don’t have a good way to get all 4 off at once. Even if I could, tire rotations are free or nearly so at a tire place, so there’s just no reason to do them myself.
Tires! I wish I could do them myself but my significant other has said no to giving up any garage or basement space for a changer & balancer. Almost every time I have a shop change out the tires they screw something up – like the dealer who bent ALL of my rims beyond repair, the shop that forgot about the locking wheel nut key and left it on the lug (luckily I noticed a vibration a mile or two down the road, pulled over and found the key), and countless call-backs for unbalanced wheels. The last time, for said significant other, I went to a small local chain – when they balanced the tires they were under-inflated (got out of their driveway and the light went on – their driveway was inconvenient to return to, stopped at the closest gas station and filled them up) so the tires were not balanced correctly. I bring it back, they re-balance and the car is better, but on the highway home still some vibration, so I stop at a different store in the chain and the staff there got it right. I brought the cannabis-breath staff some donuts the next day, they were very appreciative.
Timing belt was the first thing that came to mid. I have a 07 XC70 Volvo with the 2.5T, when the t-belt was due on that I farmed it out to a Volvo guy. I’ve done plugs, brakes, fluid changes and suspension work on that car, but I won’t touch the t-belt. Last thing I had done was the top 02 sensor. I attempted the job, realized I couldn’t easily get to it lying on my back, and had the shop around the corner do it.
On my 4Runner, I’m considering installing new suspension soon (2″ lift) myself, but I think the front control arms are going to need to be replaced in order to get the alignment right, and they’ll most likely need to be cut out (Thanks New England!), and I don’t have the ambition for that. I’ll have whatever shop I find to align it do that.
I may even just get a quote for a shop to do all of it.
As I’m getting older, the weekends are becoming more valuable, and wasting one in order to save a few hundred bucks on labor is less and less attractive.
Well said, many of my friends do all of their own repairs to car, home etc. Do not value their time and will spend hours doing something that would not cost much to have repaired. It is often the cheap people who value money but never value their time.
My local shop is willing to split work with me. They’re even willing to finish what I might run out of time to do (and, at that point, desperately need the vehicle in running order) without charging me a premium. So, with that, I’m happy to continue to use and support them
That is a great arrangement!
Oddly enough, oil changes. The price of a decent synthetic and a good filter in Canada comes out alarmingly close to getting the dealer to do it. Plus there is the time, disposing of the old oil…it just isn’t worth it to me.
I also won’t do the plugs on my wife’s Sienna when they come due. The intake manifold has to come off.
Lastly, bodywork/welding. I have never welded successfully, and I can’t get it perfect, so let the pros take it where needed.
I’ve always chickened out on transmission work. With the trend towards less serviceable and non-serviceable transmissions, I will probably continue to have a professional take care of anything in that department.
This seems like a place for:
“The road to hell is paved with overconfidence”
The list grows every year with my salary and the newness of my fleet. I try to never work on my wife’s daily driver. Too risky. Anything involving a dial indicator and a clean workspace is usually off-limits.
Inside the engine or the transmissions or axles, I do not have the confidence, space, or tools for. I will help buddies in their shops on their cars but not me on mine alone in my shop.