Hi Guys,
For many folks, especially in the ag community, fixin stuff was a necessity. Gramps>pops>son/daughter was the natural progression. For others, it was a little different.
After cutting my teeth on Wentworth and LUCAS - "The Prince of Darkness", I got in with Dr. Porsche's love child and went metric. I was fortunate to have two brothers, who were German trained, factory VW dealership mechanics turned renegade, take me under their wings. They taught me how to read a micrometer and use a torque wrench, amongst other mundane things, like fulcrum/axle spade/spider gear color codes.
Me: "I changed out that bent axle and torque tube, but now the tranny's noisy."
Them: "Did you use the same color that came outta there?"
That kinda stuff, the details???!!!
Not that many years later, I went to work for a crop dusting out fit that had been in business since before WWII, and run by the then current owners since '55. I was in shade tree heaven. We had a forklift, high pressure washer, steam Jenny, and a 100 gallon magnesium safe cold dip tank. The first time I completed a VW rebuild and ground run break in, made an impression on the crew. I learn much about wood, dope, and fabrication in the 10 years I spent there. We did all our own repair work. The only things we sent out was prop overhaul, magnaflux or plating.
About 5 years in, we moved into town. My new neighbor, a Gillig Service guy, who would later become the maintenance supervisor for the City of Lodi's corporation yard, has tried to wean me off carburation and points.
Now, a decade and a half into the 21st century, I am hooking up with you guys. PAX

 

Didn't John Fogerty get lost in Lodi? Again. Anyway, my Daddy taught me about pulling wrenches when I was just a kid. He grew up in the depression and didn't have a pot to **** in or a window to throw it out of. He was very ingenious and a man of many mechanical talents. He could repair tv's, radios, appliances, watches, clocks and pretty much anything mechanical. I used to bitch at him about having to help him work on cars when I wasn't even old enough to drive yet. He kept telling me that "some day you'll be grateful". And today I am very grateful to my Dad. There's no telling how many hundreds of thousands of dollars I've saved over the past 45 years of pulling my own wrenches. And I made a little money here and there by working on a very select few other peoples cars. I learned early that the a-holes will want you to repair their brakes and then complain that their engine is using oil and it wasn't doing that before you worked on the brakes. Yeah, right. And the hole in you muffler is there because you ran your windshield washer fluid reservoir dry.

 

I wrenched on outside stuff too, mostly VWs, mostly for friends. At the time VWs were the primary bottom rung econo car. British iron was disappearing and there weren't many cheap used Asian rigs floating around yet, which I wouldn't work on anyway. Since those were the lean years for all, I would offer the inexpensive used replacement part choice "It'll work, but I don't know for how long" or "The book says to do this" options. PAX

 

My wife and I met a lady that worked at the local Walmart near where we lived in TN and she had a Geo Prizm that leaked oil out the crank seal to the tune of 6 quarts per day! Huge oil slick under her car in the parking lot. I felt sorry for her and told her if she'd buy the parts that I told her she needed, I'd see what I could do to repair her car. That damn thing was just as nasty on the inside as the outside. I THINK she was living in it. Anyway, it needed plugs, wires and belts, along with the new crank seal. I spent two days cleaning this car up and working on it. She didn't have quite enough money to get the belts and I told her they were critical because they had so many cracks in them. "They'll have to wait" was her response. So, she got the car back. Two weeks later she wanted to complain to me that it still had an oil leak and she had to pay someone to put new belts on it for her as one of the old ones broke! I looked under her car when I went outside and there was a NICKLE size spot of oil under it. I went back inside and won't repeat here what I told her, but she was very red faced when I walked off. Never touched another persons car after that.

 

I taught myself how to work on stuff and was quite popular with the neighbors when their stuff broke down. I used to take broken stuff and pull it apart to try to figure out what was wrong and fix it. When the other guys were reading comic books, I was reading repair manuals and science lab manuals. One time I let my old manual typewriter get rusty and I had to take it completely apart (well maybe I didn't HAVE to but I did anyway) to clean and re-lubricate everything. Funny thing is when I was done it worked perfectly even though I had a few leftover parts. I rebuilt the head in my first car a week after my dad bought it for me when I was 16. He was pretty upset when he came home from work to see the top of the engine missing. It ran so much better when I was done though that after that he had me work on his cars too. It wasn't until I went to a local votech as an adult that I actually got any formal training.

 

I'm not going to pass myself off as a wrencher, but tinkering has been in my family for a long time. My grandfather was a carpenter. He actually built a couple of houses back in the 50s. My dad helped him going around with a bucket and picking up nails!

My dad was always a fix-it kind of person around the house. Using an extension cord to replace a lamp cord. Installing a filtered drinking water system under the sink. Building a custom cabinet in the kitchen for the microwave. Painting. Building rock walls and paving stones for a walkway.

My girlfriend calls me "a fixer" kind of guy. I change lightbulbs. I've done painting. Wall spackle. Garden arrangement. Tree trimming. I've torn the dashboard apart a couple of times. Wrenched some easy things under the hood. Cleaned headlights. Anything I can do with hand tools I'll take a stab at. I don't have any special equipment or jacks. These skills I learned from my dad and from watching videos on Youtube. I can give up on things if I know that if I try doing things, it might end up worse than when I started.

 

Dad and I went through my first rebuild at age 12. Our 1955 John Deere 40S. Grandfather bought it new in 1956. Still use it every week to mow the yard. From there he helped me with the rebuild of our John Deere 3020 Diesel when I was 17. After that, Joined the Air Force, and have been turning wrenches since.

 

Jealous (age 12...)

Thank you for serving our country, Rob.

 

You're welcome Derf. It was college or the military after high school. I was not ready for college. I've had some great experiences from it.

I distinctly remember how hard the head bolts were to torque on that little two cylinder. 110 ft-lbs.

 

When I was growing up, dad did the work on our cars and everything around the house. Sometimes it wasn't fun handing tools because I didn't know what that particular tool was or where it was. Today I do most of the work on our vehicles and on a few other peoples cars. Glad I'm mechanically included and can do most of the work because I have saved a lot of money.