Greasy encouragement from our automotive guru
Depending on the year, a Ford Model T came with about 11 tools in the factory toolkit. That included a pair of pry bars for dismounting the tires, an oil can, bicycle-type air pump, and the jack. With these, the driver could not only perform any and all regular maintenance, but the more involved 1- and 5,000-mile services, and many minor repairs.
The factory recommended toolkit for repair that involved taking apart the engine or transmission was about 35 tools, and some of those were things like a flathead screwdriver, slipjaw pliers, and a pipe wrench. A couple of hundred dollars spent on a socket and open-end wrench set today would cover 95 percent of what you’d need.
Ford’s catalog for every part in the car was 32 pages long, and that counts page 5 listing telegraph codes—the actual parts took 18 pages. The Owner’s Manual, 32 pages, told you how to disassemble and adjust the rear axle. When you spent your $750 for the world’s best-selling car, that was it. You didn’t need anyone or anything else to keep it on the road.
A lot of this went through my mind last weekend when I was replacing the front shocks on my 1997 Mercedes E420. It was almost an easy job—it needed three sockets, a pry bar, an open end 17mm wrench, and some wire.
And the drivers’ side was, if not easy, straightforward, so I went to the passenger side optimistically, where the AC controller and a manifold for the car’s many, many vacuum systems made it obvious this would be essentially impossible. After losing my 17mm open end wrench into an inaccessible crevice inside the firewall, where it is still annoyingly rattling, I started researching.
What Mercedes does is use a specialized $130 tool to reach this particular nut, and as I neither felt like buying one and waiting for it to arrive nor having a new shock on one side of the car, I was largely stuck. After turning to social media, I cut part of the shock away with a grinder so I could get a pair of Vice Grips on it and, well, it was messy and my kids learned unfortunate new words.
All of which is exactly why people are afraid to repair their own cars. Fundamentally, nothing about this particular job was complicated and anyone should be able to do it. But there was little information available and what I’d already researched was inaccurate.
The very idea of car repair being a specialized trade has been a self-fulfilling prophecy, eroding the Sunday afternoon tune-up into the expensive and esoteric domain of dealerships and independent shops.
Of course not everyone has the desire or skill to open up their transmission, but if you can grasp the skill of a backyard blacksmith from 125 years ago then you can still work on your car. I’ve known people who have rebuilt Ferrari engines in their driveway. Cars are just a bunch of pieces bolted and screwed together, and that’s it.
If you like, say, jigsaw puzzles, then you’d probably like rebuilding a carburetor or a clutch, too. And when you think that dealerships like to charge $125 an hour and up for labor, there’s an excellent value proposition, too. I don’t know that the culture will every change back, but there’s no reason it couldn’t.
So pick up a couple of tools and do your own brakes next time. Drop me a line if you need help, and we’ll curse at them together.