With the expertise and astute posts on the board, I'm interested in knowing something of everyone's first experience in hands-on auto repair (not necessarily your P car). (Simple or complex)
My first experience was with my Karman Ghia, which I knew absolutely nothing about, but enjoyed the "down-in" experience behind the wheel of that car. I was about to go on Fall semester break, and had to drive over 9 1/2 hours from New York to home. All excited and ready to leave, jumped in the car with a friend I was giving a lift home to, and the car turned and turned over, but would not start.
My friend, MIT engineering accepted, who had decided to become a missionary, surprised me by stating that maybe it was a thing (a "thing" to me that is), called the distributor cap and rotor.
We opened the rear, popped the distributor cap in the dark under a campus street light, and he showed me my first "carbon" all over the distributor contacts and rotor. (I never had changed either. or even knew what they were). So we proceeded to clean the contacts with (I believe) with what we had available at the moment (a crude pocket knife) (scrape, scrape).....and it started right up. Off we went.
That car gave me 3 more years of pleasure and learning in all kinds of driving conditions (the snows in New York and Penn, all the way to La, etc.,) ...(and many miles to the following owner)...and my appreciation for German engineered automobiles.
