+ 1 Anyone Work on Their Own Car Anymore?
When cars changed from carburetors to injection, and side mounted engines gained popularity, I kind of stopped all together. About three years ago, now, MOT failed me on a wheel bearing and a front strut top mount, the garage quoted me £550 to do the job.... £30 worth of parts and £490 to put them in.... I almost paid them but they could not get to it that day, so I took home for look for another garage, then it dawned upon me, the two jobs were on the same front driver side.... they were going to charge me twice for pulling out the same strut... I mean, once you get to the top mount, the strut is out, knuckle loosened, drive shaft out, WTF is even left to do but hit the bearing with a sledge hammer. I actually have a 6-ton press, but it still comes to sledge hammer and sized impact sockets to break the bastards out. Seen 20-ton presses bog out on a wheel bearing.
And it's been the same ever since, £350 quoted for a starter, did it myself. EGR replacement... the list goes on. Now, I'm all for mechanics getting a fair wage, but they're not getting it, it is the shop overhead, and that I get too. Do diagnose a Ford Fiesta, a £72 OBD blue tooth device and then still a headache making sense of it all. I get how the sensors work with the ECU for fuel control and timing, etc., but you can get a BMW or Audi these days with over a dozen Body Control Modules and more than 50-wires to each loom... WTF!!!
Still, at £90 per hour for a dealership and £60 per hour for mates rates, I am working more and more on my own, buying 1k to 2k broken cars and fixing them, driving them until the wheels fall off. No punches pulled, stop leak, oil treatment, whatever keeps it alive, but with an electric corsa running £32000 (that was 2022) it is crazy.
Gear box rebuild going at £850 for a compact, I can get one off breaker link for £89 to my door, fit it in 3-hours, maybe 4 if it is a bitch. I can honestly buy proper specialty tools for a timing belt lock, flywheel lock and name brand belt for the cost of a timing job, save £400 labour and complete in 3-hours... chains a bit different, but only ever done one of those really.
The down side? Broke off a glow plug once, drilled and tapped the electrode, the tap broke, pounded it through to the cylinder and fished through the injector... magnet fell off my wand in the cylinder. Dead winter, rainy season, rebuliding a bitchy car to get a magnet out of the motor.... call that a £300 mistake and nearly two weeks working 1-2 hours per random day in rain and what not. Making it more insulting.... I bought a specialty laser tool magnet to fish out the electrode as mine was a bit bulky and wobbly, the new magnet was the one that fell apart.... trying in vane to get the magnet to attach to my old one, it fished out the electrolde anyhow.... FFS!
Change a BMW X3 main pulley? Better get a winch to break that bolt loose and two friends on a 6' bar to torque it, but the rates in shops kill me.
Any other cheap bastards like me out there?
- Bookmark
- 1
- 0
£30 worth of parts and £490 to put them in... Not accurate!
You yourself are proof of that. The price is for the kit, the time, the tools, the knowledge, and the economic tradeoff of doing your job over another.
You demonstrate you have some knowledge and equipment. That puts you ahead of 99% of people. You are an outlier.
The sledgehammer is for shock btw. You have to shock it loose as straight pressing can warp the metal faster than the bond breaks, many a thread and many a shaft have found that out the hard way.
If stuck in the wild, leave me with a hammer a chisel and a vice grips and I'll survive!
I have over 100k$ in automotive tools and equipment. From hand tools to specialty tools for each manufacturers engine to do timing chains and various other jobs to multiple diagnostic computers and oscilloscopes. Not to mention my lifts and other heavier equipment.
Modern vehicles require much more tooling and education than cars from 20 years ago. A silverado radiator calls for 11 hours of labor and requires the front bumper and headlights and all that shit to be removed. Including recovering the refridgerant. And that one machine cost me 10k$
Nobody wants to work on them. Not even the guys that do it for a living haha.
And most people are retards. Even the guys that '"fix their own cars" bring them to me to figure out what the problem actually is after they waste who knows how much money and time or fuck it up worse trying.
Work on my vehicles as much as I can. If I can’t do it my brother in law owns an automotive shop.
Work on my own cars? Yes.
Maintenance on my turd grinder? Absolutely not! Ill pay whatever the man is asking
HAHAHAHAHA LMAO
Even the man who takes a shit in his own shower has limits ........
Poop down the drain its gone forever. Shit pump goes bad theres a high chance you get covered in years' worth of shower turds LOL
HAHAHAHA LMFAOOOOO!!!!
For me it comes down to what tools are needed to get the job done, and is it worth it to buy a bunch of one-off tools I may never need again to do whatever task it is I need to do plus the amount of time it's gonna take me to do said job. I find anymore for anything remotely complex it's easier to take my car to an independent shop and get it done, but not anywhere near as satisfying.
Non-mechanical home repairs I find myself doing a lot as they're not as complex and generally cheaper to DIY. During the foreclosure crisis in the early 2010s I flipped a couple of houses and I've done a lot of electrical wiring (100 amp sub panel, multiple new outlets, EV chargers), running new plumbing supply and drain lines for new fixture installs, put in a Pittsburgh potty in my basement with a clean shit pump (I haven't had the joy of servicing a used one yet), tiling, drywall and floor installs.
Man these Shit pumps seem to be a common thing in the US - I'm curious to know more LMAO
Press... I hate to break this to you, but you guys have sewage/grinder pumps there as well.
I know gravity is scaled in the metric system over there, but it still exists.
I have NEVER seen one of these things before - I live in the modern world where we have advanced sewer and drainage systems that once you flush a floater down the Bog - you never have to see or deal with it again. I am gonna set up a Go Fund Me page for you pal to get you a new home, I hate to think my pal Milky is spending his days living this way
Doesn’t city water all go down the Thames? 100 yards to the channel and scared to swim for catching a turd in the face… or worse. I do miss my Tennessee well and septic.
Shame these Toilet turds never stop the fuckin Boat men turning up eh mate!!
Also @Saint gannett I need you to assure these cunts just how good a Fish Finger sarny really is mate as they don't believe me
Don't get me wrong. I love me some fish fingers and battered fried fish strips, accompanied with some crispy fires or potato chips. Just throwing it on some bread with some sauce just seems like a mouthful of soft mush.
We do have that still going, if we can get fish on this Island, without asking permission to drop a line, net or anything else... and that is from a US born. Gotta go to Hull and get Fish and Chips, that is a trip worth taking.
Can you believe the price of 8 Fish Fingers now is £4.25 per box????!! CRAZY
Yeah, the only thing is pal is Hull is a dump LOL Any Coasts up North are depressing as hell - I'm in Yorkshire myself so not far from most of them. Down South is where its at.
I hear of a lot of makerel off the channel, but not tried myself, like I said, water quality if so depressing. I was brought up fishing in the 70's off of the Indian Reservations of Washington State, USA, Salmon, and in fresh water, perch, don't even start the list. I bet you I had caught 30 type of quality fish, even helped downrig for a halibut, though Grandpa handled those lines, but I've seen one pulled into the boat, scared the hell out of me, was raised on the old folk tale of the halibut beating a man to death. Honestly, most scarey was a dogfish with its barb on its tail, like a buck tooth out of its back, sharp as hell. We chartered boats our of New England in the 90's looking for Tuna, but neve achieved more than a hangover and $500 shortfall, but some guys caught them and got good money right at the dock coming in.
I thought they still dumped it out of their windows.
Only in York, where Harry Potter lives.
That's an e-one simplex grinder pump. Those and flights are the most common.
NO SHIT!!! Lmao
Not to be confused with grindr
this is for big shit
Hahahahahaha
What the HELL is that - for Elephants?? lol
Its for a cast in place shit pump station. those are excavators in the bottom of the shaft. It's 65 ft deep. I don't think I have ever built anything that anyone can see once its complete. Underground work is all i have ever done. almost 30 years worth.
My God - thats Industrial sized grinding!!
Grew up poor and work in the trades, so I had to when I was younger and now I demand to because I'm well aware of how retarded everyone is. And this goes for everything in my possession. Even my own shit pump.
WTF??? Do you guys have bespoke sewage systems?
Sort of I guess. Most houses that aren't tied to cities have their own septic tanks with pumps and certain areas of the yard to act as leech fields when the final stage of the process flows out.
Mine has a grinder pump that pumps into the sewer. Or beyond where it goes after it leaves my house I have no clue. But that pump broke one time....
So Milky ..... Are we saying that if I came over to visit you then as I am walking up to your front door there is an area of your front garden that is literally full of Human shit being thrown out by your household Shit pump??? LMFAOO
Honestly... Maybe? I actually don't know where it goes. Not in my basement anymore tho.
So, how it works is the pump is inside this cylindrical concrete pit, inside a waterproof tank.
Anything that you put into any drain in the house (water, shit, hooker blood, piss etc) makes its way to the pump, which then literally grinds up any solids and extremely aggressively pumps it up to the ground level and outside into the great beyond. I have no idea what is out there, it could pump it straight into my neighbor's face for all I know. I just know it gets pumped out of my house.
I'm trying to finish off my lunch sat here - gonna have to talk about something else now as its putting me off my Babybel cheese
Lol yeah dude. Death gripping everything and moving slow so nothing falls in. While trying to breathe. And my wife and kids mad at me because they had to shit in buckets for 2 days lol..... ahh memories
HAHAHA OMG .....
Seriously, I cannot EVEN pick up Dog shit not that I've ever tried. Its the Law here that if your Dog lowers a turd on a pavement or on public ground you have to pick it up in a plastic bag and put it in a litter bin. I see people doing this all the time and the thought of it makes me gaggy. I couldn't do it - now matter how much I wanted a dog just NOPE. Dog shit is the worst - I mean, WTF do you do if its a runny shit???!!
Get a baggie and pretend to pick something up, for appearances.
I've had the fortunate pleasure of replacing my own grinder pump too....I'm pretty sure it changed me as a person.
I work on all my own shit. The problem with today's (everything really) is that there is nothing repairable. Everything is just compromised of components that are non serviceable. Mechanics are just parts changers anymore.
The reason why liberals have become so gay is because they have never had the pleasure of hand packing a wheel bearing with grease.
Your 100 percent right, it's all electronically controlled bullshit that needs the dealer to fix it. That's why I'll never get a newer car. I'll gladly fix my old "clunkers" before I get anything past like 2005 models, but preferably 90-2000s. I went to school for auto mechanics was gonna be a mechanic then started fixing some of these newer cars and said fuck this no fucking way and gave up on the career, now it's just for me and some family/friends that need repairs and only if it's an older car lol
Right there with you man. I’ve always worked on my own shit, not because I enjoyed it, but it used to be because I was broke and I had to. Now I work on my own shit, because I’m a cheap bastard that can’t stand the thought of paying someone for what I could do.
This new tech will eventually make it near impossible for the DIY guy. Until then though, I will continue to save a dollar where I can!
Same. That's why almost everything in my life is half ass assembled and incomplete.