Fix Your Own Car

Less peo­ple are will­ing to get their hands dirty by fix­ing their own vehicle

More peo­ple take their vehi­cles to auto repair shops for sim­ple repairs than fix them on their own.

Last week­end, I was at home and told my dad that my check engine light was on. I told him my water tem­per­a­ture gauge was not reg­is­ter­ing any­thing and he said he would look at it. Three hours later, he had changed the sen­sor and it was fixed.

Our gen­er­a­tion has fewer and fewer peo­ple who are will­ing and able to make minor repairs to their own vehicles.

My abil­ity to fix or change any­thing on a vehi­cle is lim­ited. I can put air in the tires, add engine coolant or oil if need be, and even replace the air fil­ter, but that is it. If I took the time to learn, I could prob­a­bly change my own oil. Ultimately, I end up pay­ing some­one else to do the work for me rather than tak­ing the time to learn to do it myself.

Therein lays the rea­son that most peo­ple today do not fix their own vehi­cles. It takes longer than two min­utes to make any sig­nif­i­cant changes and peo­ple do not want to take that much time out of their day. Whether it is a mat­ter of lazi­ness or sim­ple lack of know-how, young peo­ple do not take the time to fix their own vehicles.

With that said, there are peo­ple, espe­cially stu­dents in auto­mo­tive pro­grams, that are capa­ble and will­ing to fix their own vehi­cles. Those indi­vid­u­als enjoy work­ing on cars and want to do that for their careers. The rest of us who do not enjoy it, how­ever, do not take the time to learn and there­fore pay some­one else to do it.

Auto repair shops have become promi­nent fix­tures of more recent times, since so many peo­ple take their vehi­cles in to be ser­viced. Quick-stop oil change busi­nesses undoubt­edly were founded dur­ing the tran­si­tion from past times of mechan­i­cal apti­tude to the way things are now. For some­thing that only takes the aver­age per­son about 20 to 30 min­utes to com­plete, less peo­ple still take the time to do it themselves.

Though tak­ing your car to a mechanic is the easy way to get it fixed, it is by far the most costly. Auto repair busi­nesses, espe­cially deal­er­ships, charge $50–100 per hour just for labor. They real­ize that peo­ple are in a rush to get their cars fixed and charge ridicu­lous prices to work on them.

Some projects, such as over­haul­ing a trans­mis­sion, do take extra time and have to be done pre­cisely or the vehi­cle will not run. There is a com­mon adage that mechan­ics “fix” more than what is nec­es­sary and there­fore charge more. It would seem to me that peo­ple would want to avoid mechan­ics so they do not get taken advan­tage of.

I am just as guilty as any­one else of not being able to fix my own vehi­cle. If the check engine light comes on, I take it to Auto Zone or have my dad look at it. The abil­ity to fix sim­ple prob­lems on a vehi­cle seems like a skill of gen­er­a­tions past. Though it might take sig­nif­i­cant time an effort, it might be worth the invest­ment for me to learn a lit­tle more about my car. Along with hav­ing some extra change in my pocket, the pay-off would be the sat­is­fac­tion of know­ing that I can fix my car myself.