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What is your grease monkey skill level ?
YellowSnow
Moderator, Swaye's Wigwam Posts: 35,812 
What is your grease monkey skill level ? 28 votes
None - I can put air in my tires and pump my own gas and that's about it
25%
7 votes
Basic - I can change my own oil, air filters, batteries, etc
39%
11 votes
Advanced - I can do my own brakes, spark plugs, etc
28%
8 votes
Expert - I can drop in a new engine block, replace a transmission, etc
7%
2 votes
Comments
And cars weren't computer chips
I’m waiting for @1to392831weretaken to mock your expert option as I feel like he’s a bit of a Macguyver and could build his own car from scratch.
Edit... Brakes (not drum) I can do in my sleep, and apparently did once as I put the pads on backward. Drove it around the block and ruined the rotors so I got to change those too.
On the MacGruber front, yes, I think I'm responsible for the only Yamaha FZ-07 in the wold that sports a Suzuki GSXR600 front end. And it works great! I'm currently grafting Harley Sportster cast wheels onto the front end that was removed from that FZ-07 and adapting all of that to a '70s Yamaha TT500 for a flat tracker project for a buddy of mine. I've done two supermoto builds that featured parts made in-house, and that was before I had the CNC. Fun stuff. I've rebuild many engines from the crank on up that ran great, but that's all with stock parts, as engine internals are typically forged and ground. @Tequilla style sleep-wrenching story: Ran off the track at Pacific Raceways at about 170 mph and ended up plowing the wall HARD outside of T2. I was knocked out cold, but the bike suffered way worse. Total yard sale. It was a limited edition CBR and was going to cost a fortune to put back together, so I was planning on putting off that rebuild until the winter. Buddy hits me up about a North Cascades Highway loop ride a couple weeks out, so suddenly I'm overnighting parts and working around the clock to get the bike rebuilt. I was working 12 hour day shifts, coming home, working on the bike until after midnight, then getting up at 4:00 to go back to work. I guess a few days of this got to me, as I returned to work on the bike one evening, and a lot had changed. The bike was moved, the rear stand was flipped backward, some of my tools were out, some of the fairing fasteners were put away in a little paper bag in my tool box. I hadn't done any of this, so I started grilling my roommate on why he was fucking with my things, and he said he hadn't touched it. The kicker was when I found the torque wrench out and set to exactly the torque that would be required to drive the engine mount bolts in. It was sitting on a folding chair (previously not there) on top of the open service manual. Open to the page about installing engine mount bolts. The engine mount bolts that were supposed to show up in the mail that day while I was at work... It was with a lot of apprehension that I dropped down to check those mounting holes, and my worst fears were confirmed. There were bolts in those holes, and the whole reason for ordering the ones that I did is that no local shop carried anything with the right thread pitch. Coarse-thread bolts had been driven into fine-thread holes on both sides. Which would have taken a ton of force and persistence!
After thinking about it, only one thing could have happened: I went to bed that night and then got back up and did some sleep-wrenching. I took the cover off the bike, got the torque wrench, opened the service manual and read up on proper engine mount bolt torque, grabbed the WRONG bolts from the bin, and machined these wrong bolts (right size, coarser threads) right into the engine block, then tidied up a bit before going back to bed. Probably naked all the while, and the bike was just parked outside next to my house.
I had and to this day have ZERO recollection of doing any of this. I also am probably the leader of several prominent local fight clubs...
They are a mode of transportation. Nothing more, nothing less.
And Ducks PUMP MY GAS!!!
My kid does all my oil changes and now he does my brake jobs and tune-ups, too - and since I drive a Tacoma, that fucker doesn't need anything else done, so I have my needs covered.
I paid for the timing belt and water pump replacement about 250k miles ago because I wanted it done on a timeline, and wasn't sure I could pull it off.
The nightmare era to work on cars was the late eighties. It was the worst confluence of emissions regulations and Rube Goldberg methods of meeting them. Nowadays, you just throw a dozen sensors and some ignition timing and fuel metering at the problem. Back then? Nine billion vacuum hoses and cables and hydraulic lines and whatnot. All in engine bays that were every bit as crammed as they are now. No thanks. I pulled the engine out of an '84 Prelude in college with the intention of rebuilding it, EFI conversion, etc. for a class project. I'm almost glad that engine was stolen, as I don't think I would have had a prayer of remembering where all those vacuum lines went if I'd have had to reinstall it.
Most of my maintenance is with dirt bikes, as they require stupid amounts of motor work. (If you follow the manual, for instance, a CR250 needed a new piston every 15 hours of use.) A lot of Luddites bitched and moaned about the dirt bike world finally catching up to EFI a mere 25 years late. Me? I celebrated never having to open another fucking FCR carburetor again and debated burning all the spare parts I had laying around in effigy.
/csb
Edit...it was a coupe which she thought was cool. It was annoying as fuck.