First, no grudge against MMM for the forum. (I hate forums. Email and usenet has been threaded since before I was born probably, but all the standard forums junk everything into an unintelligible stream of a progressively heterogeneous conversation. You need a real structure to handle this, a structure that includes
at least threading.)
So much information! I didn't know I knew so much about working on cars from the beginner's perspective. I could (and should) probably write a book about it, except that I don't really know what a book is anymore. Probably just a dedicated blog would do the same thing with obvious advantages and conveniences.
Sorry I started this and haven't finished it yet. I'm 2 years into the busiest time of my life right now and don't have more than 2-3 hours free per week. Let me try to answer some of the issues raised in this thread that I've started.
I am not an automotive guru. I have occasionally thought about the possibility of becoming a professional automotive mechanic as a backup job. I enjoy it, but I love other things more, like "Science", or at least that's what I do. Anyway, I've got some experience, and it is that which I employ in summarizing these issues and their potential resolutions.
Each one of them is worthy of a full blog post and more. I should write those someday, but for now, I'll try to summarize.
- Obtaining (Buying) Parts: You're really limited by the market of your local area in so many subtle ways, much like anything else. Napa, Autozone, O'Reilly, Carquest, Pep Boys are some of the bigger multi-state DIY budget outlets that I know of. Their wares are acceptable for many things. They've been getting progressively better at exposing their inventory databases online, so I would definitely check that before going out to buy. There are also some online companies, though I've never used any of them before.
There are 3 classes of parts: parts that you can get at Autozone et al, parts that you can only get at the dealer, and parts that you can only find at the junkyard. They generally correspond to parts that are changed often during your vehicle's lifetime, parts that are replaced only in unusual circumstances (you torque a lug nut too hard and snap the hub stud, thus need a new stud) and parts whose lifetime is comparable to the typical lifetime of the vehicle.
The dealer should be the resource of last resort, obviously, for stuff you can get elsewhere. A fourth category of places to get parts can only be discovered by the dedicated DIY mechanic. You can either find specialty shops, like just European car parts, or only Japanese, or All American Specialty, or whatever by yourself on google maps or something, but you can, and already should be patiently searching your neighborhood for honest, quality repair shops (see the next point). Once you've found a good shop, you can ask them about where they get their parts. Autozone, online, et al usually serve parts from a very similar (or the same!) database. If one has it, the others will as well, if none has it, it is very unlikely any of the others will. But then you have market modifying effects, such as Autozone branding their own stuff from their suppliers, creating nuance complexities across catalogs, etc. However, Autozone, online, et al parts are usually of lesser quality than the suppliers that your local grunge mechanic uses (if she doesn't use Carquest et al). The probability of having one of these specialty suppliers in your area is obviously, market dependent. If you do have (at least) one for your car, and their prices and parts are good, you're lucky. - Finding a Mechanic Shop: I personally find myself greatly mistrusting the big, gleaming, franchise stores, staffed with a dozen crisp, uniformed employees--this came from many experiences. However, a grungy shop seems to be more likely to rip you off, or give you low quality service than not. What I usually do to test a shop is take my car there for emissions and inspections. You could go and have them change your oil or something innocuous like that. If they felt shady, when you get home you can look over their work, I guess. While I sit in the cramped or filthy waiting area I try to feel out things, like how the mechanics like their jobs, what the work culture is. This also gives you the opportunity to ask the proprietor (who usually mans the counter) about some issues you've noticed with your car and what you've done/may do to fix them, and ask about their prices for certain services like alignments. If their prices are good, and their work is fast, then I might take my car back there and have them do something that I don't have time to do myself. Obviously, there's still a certain amount of risk, but you'll get that anywhere. Trustworthy, competitive automotive work is usually found among the lower class, where people actually both care about good prices by necessity and greater automotive literacy forces better service at better prices.
- (Front) Brake Rotors: I have an old mechanic friend who lives across the street from me. One day I was servicing the brakes on my car in my driveway, got confused and grabbed the computer to try to figure out how to take the rear brake drums. He came over, laughed at me, and then said that brakes, both disk and drum are nearly mechanically identical across all cars and decades, notwithstanding ABS, so once you've done one car, you can pretty much just work over the brakes on another with minimal confusion. However, some car makers attach the brake rotors to the wheel hub in a way that you can't remove them unless you take the whole steering knuckle off. This will continue to sound scare only you learn what a ball joint is and how to separate it, but by that point, you'll be ready to replace your own axles and tie rods too.
- Batteries: This has already been addressed, but I want so say something about it. I know two things about batteries: I had one that lasted over 5 years (the Napa guys were impressed, because it was a Napa battery), and a better (not necessarily a more expensive?) battery makes a difference. If I were as an experienced a Mustachian as MMM, I'd nail this with some sort of system of PDEs to find the optimum price point. Really, this applies to all parts: cheap parts may be crap, but I suppose you knew that already.
Sorry for rambling a little, and maybe giving more information than is necessary; I don't have much time to organize my thoughts. I'm going to edit the original post in this thread now and spend some time reorganizing that writing. I think I'll post a series of topics in this forum, linked to each other in table-of-contents fashion and try to cover what seems to be necessary for a beginner to confidently maintain at least 0.9 of their vehicle.
