Tell us how did you started to work in cars...since i dont have much memory , i only remember it was messing with the cougar...like 5 or 6 or more years ago...
Now i´m trying to work with F.I. cars, but these aren´t easy to understand...
(http://teaca.iespana.es/cougar/cat2.jpg)
ever sence i was old enough to pick stuff up i would take it apart, try and put it back together, or make something out of it. started with electronic toys, moved on to bikes, then gokarts, and eventualy cars. im not happy unless im working on something.
I don't understand the question?
almost the same as nate other than the fact its in my blood.. my family has been nothing but speed on wheels.. ever since i could walk ive been in the garage helping someone do something to a car
doesnt help that my mom owned a 71 chevelle with a 454 in it... ;-) she used to run the powderpuff circuts
and now im here
I think there might be a word missing... "How did you get started working on cars?" English isn't MexCougar's first language, but he does better than some of us who have spoken it all our lives, heh.
Since I'm posting... I started out being out in the garage with my father. He was part-owner of body shop for a while, an insurance adjuster before that, and before he had his stroke, he was installing Spraybake brand paintbooths in bodyshops in the tri-state area. He's done a few hundred anyway, I bet. Anyway, that's how I got started. And, my very first car was an '84 Ford LTD (Midsize). The first work I did to it was a heater core ;) And that's how I got started on foxes, even though I wasn't crazy about the car when I first saw it, it was all I could do to hold back tears when I dropped it off at the junkyard.
i guess i started with the little thing like remote control cars then bires then any thing that move that had screws i tore apart. but cars were a give away since i can remember my dads friend,my uncle kevin( no relation but is a better uncle than some that are in my family) has had some thing cool and or fast to drive. he has had a 1930 Duece Coupe since i can remember with the 350 Chevy and was turquise with awesome flames. and then it got totaled so now it is black with chrome mags & side pipes and chrome undercarrage. he i would have to say was the start of my interst in cars and then i bought my 400 dollars black 86 ls, which i hated for the first year i owned it because i was a Chevy guy and i thought the car was ugly but it grew on me the longer it sat in the driveway as i wated to turn 16 and now i love it and have big plans for the car and now i get to take a car apart and when i breck something i cant get in trouble because i bought it the only good part of growing up.
I have been into cars since I can remember and have hundreds of diecasts and model kits from when I was younger. I guess I started learning about how cars are put together by building those models.
I didn't start working on any real cars until recently when I got my Cougar as my first car in 2001. I did help out in the garage when my grandfather would work on the cars but at 9 years old I was mainly a tool fetcher. It has been a tremendous experience thus far doing what I have done to the Cougar and I really enjoy learning new things about it. Nothing is more satisfying than finding a problem, fixing it, and it working perfectly.
I started pretty much like Nate: When I was a kid I took all my toys apart. I graduated into my father's CB and ham radio equipment (much to his chagrin), then onto bicyces (every bicycle I've ever owned except the current one was hand built). In the meantime I would always be outside pestering my father when he was working on his '78 Ramcharger, to the point that I ended up supplanting him for family vehicle maintenance/repair. On the day my mother traded her '84 Voyageur in on an '84 Cherokee I had to replace a flat tire on it. My mother went out to take the van in and it had the flat. My father simply said "Get the boy to do it". I was 12.
I seriously got into mechanical work, though, when I got my first car in 1989. It was a '78 Trans Am that I've bored the messageboard members with stories about many times before, so I won't get too much into it, except for the fact that it was a $600 car and I had barely enough money for the gas tank, much less maintenance and repairs. I learned a lot on that car (for instance, did you know that valve covers off a burned 267 will still work on a 350? And, completely related, did you know it's not a good idea to beat your valve covers in with a hammer when you skin your knuckes once too often while working on the car? :hick: Apparently rocker arms and valve covers should not touch...) and it ignited my passion for cars.
Of course, my knack for working on electrical things coupled with my passion for cars steered me into specializing in vehicle electronics. While most of the technicians I'd worked with were content with replacing a part, I was always the type to be more interested in why a part failed, and how I could prevent it from failing again. Especially if I saw a pattern, where the same part kept failing in several vehicles. Because of this I was frequently involved with GM techline , providing input for TSB's, etc. Then, that fateful January 29th, 1998, a cellphone-talking meathead tried to stuff his Mazda up the tailpipe of my Volvo, at 50MPH, and my carreer was thus ended. I can still do automotive work, but not on a 40-hour-per-week basis, nor on a heavy duty basis, so I resorted to installing police equipment into RCMPcars. This provided a paycheque, but it also provided valuable customizing/fabrication experience, and the part time basis provided me with the time to pursue other ventures, such as Thundercat Electronixx.
One thing I had never really had a chance to get into in a big way was vehicle customizing, until the police car thing. ON my own cars I'd install a stereo or remote starter, maybe some wheels, but never anything major. Finally, after a lifetime of wanting to but not having the funds or the place to do it, I am starting the customizations of my Thunderbird.
I started my work on cars when I purchased my first 1979 Cougar XR7 for $100 not running all the car needed was a timing chain and she purred like a kitten well a big kitten.
I think the reason I first got into cars was because of my best friend- I remember that I began reading Hot Rod and Four Wheeler magazine (that I checked out from the school library) in the fourth grade. Pro Street was all the rage back then and I just thought those cars were so cool, and I wanted to learn more. I started reading car mags all the time, and before long I knew a lot but I had never actually worked on a car. In the 8th grade I was convinced that I wanted to be an auto mechanic, but my parents dissuaded me from that idea (sometimes I wonder if I shoulda stuck with it). Funny thing is, I always bugged my dad to take me to the garage when he worked on the car, but since I liked to sleep in til about 10 on weekends he always took off and went down early and I never got to go. I didn't REALLY work on my car until after my senior year of high school, and even that was some real minor stuff. I've really taught myself everything I know. I tend to just jump into projects with both feet and get them done (like doing the brake swap on my old Mustang and rebuilding the engine for my thunderbird). I think I'm doing pretty well for myself...I've always thought that I had a fairly high mechanical aptitude, I like stuff like fabrication, and I feel like I can do any job on my car as long as I have the right tools & equipment (of course that's probably not always the case :p)
When I was little, I loved cars...used to drive past the junkyards in the Philly area and see huge stacks of crushed cars...I would say, "boo-tiful mommy, boo-tiful!"...My first drawing was a shaky oval with two shaky circles under it and I called it a car when I was 2 yrs old. I think the real clincher was when my bro let me start up his old '76 T/A...set up for 1/8th mile...that was a milestone in my memory. It was his first car at 16yrs old...I was 5yrs old. My sister also got a '72 Mustang "fastback" at the same time. I grew up taking things apart and putting them back together, very much like Nate said. I think we all have pretty much the same mechanical sickness...lol.
This is the first question that is asked when you start an auto class and I'm always the one who NEVER worked on a car when they were little, in fact I hated working on cars when I was little. Well I wouldn't call it "working" as much as it was standing around grabbing tools and pumping brakes and more standing around. Actually I didn't even know how to change a tire until my junior year in High School. lol.
After I got out of the military I started wrenching on my 84 Eldorado and I would literally go out at dawn and stop at sunset. Some days I would even forget to eat. I was hooked. And that was the first car I disassembled to non-repair. A habit I still cannot seem to let go of. :D
Ever since I was born. My dad bought his Chevelle 2 months after I was born, and wasnt afraid to do burnouts with an infant in the front seat. I got so used to it, there was nothing my mom could do to keep me away from that car. I then worked on a 72 C10, and my jetskis, then disassembled gokarts. Now I mess around with paint, after all of grade school sketching on notebooks, and spray painting lawn mowers and bikes.
well like nate and a few others when i was a kid id tear things apart then try to put them together. sometimes without sucsess. then my uncle took me out to work on is little dodge ram truck thats when i was hooked. then helping dad with his ol crown vic. then when i was 16 i was supose to get a cougar the 83-86 body style but unsure what year the cougar was cuz my grandma had it out in back of her house in the weeds and she told me i could have it as long as i got it out. so when i was gonna head down to get it she told me when i got there she already junked it. and at that time i wasn't too happy but i got over it and look at me now possibly gonna build a race car out of the 84 :evilgrin: but that bout sums up how i started working on cars. oh and school and tv shows did help me out a bit.
i always would mess with my toys. break them, then fix them agian.
I still do it with computers and cars. i was always messing with my stuff. even tore apart my "armatron" from radio shack and got it back working, stereos, bikes, toys, I would mess with everything, and I have always loved cars, prolly had over a 1000 hot wheels at one time, gave them to younger cousins, but still have a few choice ones. so eventually my need to tinker moved to cars.. and eventually computers.
I started working on my cars with my Dad when I was 5 ( I messed around with my bikes all the time when I was a kid too......hell.....anything that was mechanical interested me). He taught me everything I know and most importantly the lesson of "If you're gonna do something, do it right the first time"
Like a lot of the others, I took all my toys apart to see what was inside when I was a kid. Then moved up to bicycles, never owned a new one till the ex-wife bought me one for my birthday. Also messed with old radios and TVs, and built a few electronic kits along the way. Got my first car at 16(with my money from a part time job), mostly had grease under my nails ever since...
that is just like me. i took my tricycle apart when i was three and it snowballed from there. it's fun to take stuff apart and find out how it works.
I got into cars because my family owned a car and semi repair shop. From birth till I was around 14 or so, it's all I knew. While most kids were playing around in the backyard I was in the shop wondering/looking/absorbing/learning everything I could. At 14 my father passed away from cancer, and 2 years later the family business shut it's doors. I wish me and my dad could have done a father/son project. Cars are a part of my life, without them, I don't know what I would do.
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No wonder everyone knows more than me here.. :bowdown:
I didn't have a car until I was about 20 (lots of bus riding), then didn't work on it until the 3.8L head gasket blew (88 LS) a few years ago, which I would have never attempted without finding this board & coolcats.
Although, about 5 years ago, I did do the bondo job in my sig after meeting up with a deer. :hick:
I just got tired of getting ripped off by shady mechanics. I still have alot to learn, but at least now I know some basic terminology and principles, and also have met some very generous people on this board.
I've been into cars since I was a kid, but didn't have a car guy in my family, so I was never exposed to working on them.
I really didn't start doing any work until I was 18 and it was just a case of realizing I could do the work I was paying someone else to do. So with the help of a buddy and just diving in and doing it, I taught myself how to work on cars. That's really all it takes is doing it. I made my share of mistakes and chased around stupid problems, but who hasn't. I rarely (read: never) have help when I'm working either, so it's kind of my "own" time.
Once I started I couldn't stop, so here I almost 20 years later to still doing it, and enjoying it. There isn't a project or job that I'm afraid to tackle really.
Having the web now as an info base is immensely helpful. You can only get so much info out of manuals and questioning "real" mechanics.
when i bought my 1st car for $100. that should tell ya there, it need some work. it ran though!
I never did start. I was born with a wrench in my hand.
My family is chock full of car nuts, and I got sucked into it as well. The first big project was when my dad used to race at a local race track and we built the race car. Being so young, I never got to do "the fun/cool stuff," but as I get older, my dad lets me do more and more of those fun/cool things. I'll have a much bigger role in the HO conversion and I'm pretty excited to dig in :) .