Hey all,
I am wondering how to learn about auto work. I am self taught in many things but this subject evades me somewhat. It seems like the kind of thing that someone would teach to you directly but most of my learning comes from self study interacting with things directly and reading texts.
My brakes are starting to make a squeaking noise when I come to a stop and as a result I have gained an interest in learning about some basic auto work.
Does anyone have any good resources where you can learn about these things in a sequential manner? That is to say, learning the most basic concepts up to the more advanced concepts?
Thanks.
As others have said, get a manual for your car if its available (typically Haynes or even a factory service manual if its cheap). Aside from this i think ChrisFix on YouTube does one of the absolute best jobs of explaining tasks such as replacing your brakes in a way that even someone without any knowledge can follow along and using basic hand tools. A lot of other channels can show you similar tasks but he can explain it all without leaving knowledge gaps as many others assume you already know how to turn wrenches.
I learn similar to you and do almost all my own services on my vehicles and have quite a bit of experience working on cars, but even still I like to Google to find specific videos on services that I haven’t done before and watch them several times in the days leading up to performing the service. This helps me absorb all the steps, so I feel more confident that I’m not going to miss something or get overwhelmed and put myself into a bad situation (like breaking some ancillary part or getting halfway into something it turns out I don’t have the skills/tools for).
I would pay special attention to how things work so that you can transfer and reuse what you’ve learned across different makes and models even if they’re put together differently as well as helping you with future repairs that might share similar components.
Thanks for the recommendation!