[NY65912]

I grew up in a family of mechanics. The family and extended family (friends) were plumbers, electricians, tile/marble/terrazzo, trowel trades, carpenters, drywall guys and automotive & truck mechanics. Being around all these people and working every school holiday and vacation helping one of these guys one could not help absorb at least some of the trade.

I guess that hanging out with the older guys who had souped up cars in the school yard and tagging along really planted the car fix seeds into me. When I was about 15 I went down to our family friends service station and asked for an old engine to take home and learn about it. It was an in line Ford six. I them started haning out in the service station doing small odd jobs and pumping gas. I really liked working on cars. I took auto shop class 2 years, it was only offered for 1 year but the shop teacher and I would talk hot rods and drag racing and he let me take it again.

My cousin and best friend had really good skills and we would work on his 40 ford coupe. We both learned as we tackled bigger and bigger projects. Then we got into VW's and it was all down hill from there. We would be able to drop an engine in less than 10 min if we teamed up as well rebuilding engines and hot rodding engines.

My cousing had a cousin that wrecked a '67 911S. We had thoughts of swapping the engine into my KG but I sent the engine to Claudes Buggies for all kinds of goodies and had an 1835cc that was kick ass. We did howerer graft the 901 transaxle into it, not an easy task.

So, for me it was exposure at a young age. If you have "good hands" and a mechanical mind then I say you can learn a ton through the BBS and books. But, there is nothing like getting dirty and challanging oneself. I say go for it. Sorry for the rant, but so many thoughts came rushing into my head when I tried to think about how I got into cars and working on them. GOOD LUCK