how old where you when you first work on a car

[memike]

I remember this like it was yesterday, my mom was told to change the spark plugs in the ford wagon we had that her brother said it will be a good driver for the road trip from California to Grand Rapids Michigan, I have pictures some where in a box.
Loyd told my mom the car will fix it's self after a plug and gas filter change, I believe it was a 390 from 64. Remember! My mom was the only girl out of 5, and she was handy and new how to buy used cars... in the picture it looks like I was 9, and I was on the inner fender changing spark plugs and my mom said make sure you can turn them with my fingers all the way in !! Man was all my uncle's proud of us, we was a team !

Missing my mom at this moment, she was so smart and beautiful.

 

[Professor Fate]

Match book cover .016
So i was told

Sounds about right- but good luck even finding a matchbook nowadays!

 

[memike]

Sounds about right- but good luck even finding a matchbook nowadays!

I have a half bushel of vintage match books here, always good deals where I go on the hunt for vintage surprises

 

[Ozyduster]

My dad was cheif mechanic for Datsun Racing team in Australia i grew up in a three story home on the beach the whole bottom floor was the work shop. Basicaly a house on top of a garage lol After that specialised in building race cars etc, i would wake up to various forms of race cars reving etc. Pulled my first motor when i was 8 years old, dad had to crack some of the nuts for me. Spent most holidays wandering around the shop and helping.

 

[phaelax]

My dad worked on cars. And sorta worked on boats, and by sorta I mean he took the boat engine apart to build a bigger one and never finished it. So you'd think he would've shown me a few things growing up, but nope. Technically, didn't even teach me to drive a stick, I had to figure that out on my own, while being followed by the cops. (he got pulled over, cops said they won't tow the car if someone else drives it home. Me at 18, license for only a few months and NEVER drove a stick before, had to drive us home. Next day I took it to school, I learned very fast apparently.

When I was 18/19, my gf's dad helped me replace the alternator in my daytona, that'd probably be my first time.

 

[62 dodge lancer 340]

13 my first car was a 1939 Ford I bought for 25.00$.

 

[trainguy65]

We were riding Dirt Bikes and Go-carts out in the Country in Middle School, and they would break down. So I started cleaning Carbs. out, fixing chains and sprockets etc. Took the Head off a Briggs and Stratton to free a seized Piston. My Dad was great. He taught me to Change oil and Plugs as I watched him on the Cars. Got my Duster at 15, and the rest is History

I was helping my late uncle tinker around on his AAR Cuda when i was 14 . After riding in the back of it since i was 9 years old by this point i was obsessed with Cudas .When i turned 17 i bought my first car in 1982 which was a 72 Cuda 340 . Blue with blue int . Auto , buckets , non rally dash .

 

[Joe Mc]

I was 5 or 6 (66 now) when I had my first experience working on automobiles. My uncle and partner had a trucking business and told me to take the plug out underneath the truck. He talked me thru it but didn't tell me what would happen after I did. Of course I got soaked with trans gear oil. They laughed and told me to go into house and show my mom & his wife how I helped. They didn't laugh...

 

[Gilad Avital]

My 75 Valiant Custom was given to me in 1990 it was my first car.
It was my grandfathers car and I remember working on the car with him when I was five...

 

[TheRacerDave]

I think around 14. I had some familiarity with small internal combustion engines from helping my grandfather with his mowers and a David Bradley garden tractor.

At the end of my street was an auto repair shop and a discarded 289 Ford engine out back. With the neighbor kid's help we hauled it home in a Radio Flyer wagon. If I recall we pulled the heads, intake, and small parts for the first trip, and brought the short block on another. Hey....is that Johnny Cash singing "One Piece at a Time?"

My house had an exterior entrance to the basement, and that's where it went. I acquired a Ford Service Manual somewhere and learned a LOT from taking that engine apart and reassembling it, trying to understand what did what and why. It never ran (that wasn't my aim) and I ended up giving it to the neighbor kid. Why? Because I had just gotten my hands on a 318 poly! Same basement scenario.... lot's of fun, imagining, and learning.

At 15 the neighbor kid and I built a go kart from an old swing set and some metal in his dad's garage. Everything had to be bolted together because we didn't have a welder, so it took a lot of ingenuity. We powered it with an old 2-cycle mower engine (poor choice - all rpm, no torque) but it did work. Unfortunately it wouldn't haul either one of us, so his little brother who was much lighter was the only one who ever rode it. Not fast, not good, but a mechanical adventure. I'm still amazed at the ambition, resourcefulness, and determination I had at that age. Social influences and girls would wreck all that.

We also abused his father's Penncraft riding mower by discovering you could pull this lever that would override the governor, stomp the throttle and it would do wheelies!

After that I began working on my non-mechanical dad's car and the rest, as they say, is history.

 

[Dart Frog]

True story! When I was 4 years old I got a toolbox with plastic tools for my birthday my mom had moved us to Vegas we were living in some apartments. I was caught under the back bumper of a car as it drove away. Another hide tanning ... One of my first real endeavors was to bring back to life an old motor that my granddad had on a drag saw in the back of his pole barn. I think I was probably 11, he said get it running and you could use it for your go-kart ambitions. Couple days later when he came home I wrapped the starter cord around that flywheel and fired it up. That motor had been sitting probably 20 years . I can still remember the look of amazement on my grandfather's face.

 

[tinman2]

I was 15 years old and my first engine work was on my 71 Honda CL-100. A bunch of us guys were flat track racing around a vacant field one day. After a long afternoon of this, my engine felt like something was pulling it down. I slowed down and it seemed to be running ok so I made another lap and it started smoking a lot out the exhaust. On further inspection, I found a vent tube out the top of the crankcase that had poured out the oil I guessed from bouncing around that rough field.
I babied it home and removed the SOHC head, then the cylinder which was in pretty bad shape as was the piston. I took the cylinder off, took to have it bored, bought the next size up piston and rings, put it all back together, and cranked it up. During disassembly, I tried to be careful not to let the cam chain get slack enough to come off the gear down inside the crankcase. Oops. That didn't work out. So, I wasn't sure if the cam was timed correctly. I then advanced the cam one tooth. Couldn't really tell any difference. Advanced it another tooth... power was down. Then I retarded it one tooth, then two. Same results. Put it back in the center, and all was well.
I did all this on my own with no outside guidance. I just looked at how everything came apart and reversed that for reassembly. Got the torque numbers from the Honda dealer.

 

[tinman2]

My first experience with a car was when my 16 year old best friend and another neighbor were putting new plug wires on his 67 Dart. Of course they got them out of order. I went to a local service station and asked about a V8 firing order. The mechanic handed a big book to me so I could look it up. That when I memorized 1 8 4 3 6 5 7 2. I went back to my friends house, pulled all the plug wires off and started from scratch. I put them on and the car cranked and ran perfectly. They were amazed. I became the go to guy after that.

 

[BillyBob0780]

I started messing with cars when I was about 16. My mom bought a 71 Austin Mini. Shortly following a dumb purchase of a 76 Vauxhall Chevette what a rot box that was.......

 

[Calhoun]

Worked on a 1963 Galaxie convertible with my Dad when I was 12. My younger brother has the car now.

 

[Demonx2]

I think around 14. I had some familiarity with small internal combustion engines from helping my grandfather with his mowers and a David Bradley garden tractor.

At the end of my street was an auto repair shop and a discarded 289 Ford engine out back. With the neighbor kid's help we hauled it home in a Radio Flyer wagon. If I recall we pulled the heads, intake, and small parts for the first trip, and brought the short block on another. Hey....is that Johnny Cash singing "One Piece at a Time?"

My house had an exterior entrance to the basement, and that's where it went. I acquired a Ford Service Manual somewhere and learned a LOT from taking that engine apart and reassembling it, trying to understand what did what and why. It never ran (that wasn't my aim) and I ended up giving it to the neighbor kid. Why? Because I had just gotten my hands on a 318 poly! Same basement scenario.... lot's of fun, imagining, and learning.

At 15 the neighbor kid and I built a go kart from an old swing set and some metal in his dad's garage. Everything had to be bolted together because we didn't have a welder, so it took a lot of ingenuity. We powered it with an old 2-cycle mower engine (poor choice - all rpm, no torque) but it did work. Unfortunately it wouldn't haul either one of us, so his little brother who was much lighter was the only one who ever rode it. Not fast, not good, but a mechanical adventure. I'm still amazed at the ambition, resourcefulness, and determination I had at that age. Social influences and girls would wreck all that.

We also abused his father's Penncraft riding mower by discovering you could pull this lever that would override the governor, stomp the throttle and it would do wheelies!

After that I began working on my non-mechanical dad's car and the rest, as they say, is history.

So let's see...you and some kid's older brother build a rogue go kart and get the younger kid to ride it? "Here, try this. It'll be great!" Hmm...

Then you do wheelies on the friend's dad's lawn mower? I think wheelies are just in our blood. PBR would be proud!! (I won't say whose mower but I learned that mower wheelie trick in college too!)

 

[TheRacerDave]

Haha, yeah, but he was a willing test pilot

We couldn't help ourselves with the wheelies.... years of building model cars, playing with HO slot cars, and reading every car magazine we could get our hands on fueled the obsession to emulate the antics of drag cars. But it would be 10 or so years before I had a car that could pull the wheels.

 

[Workingdog1]

Been fn things up or running since 15.
Best was on family move to Idaho with 3 vehicles. 70 LTD waterpump let loose 30 miles from possible parts. Dad went for pump while I yanked in drizzle SW of Jordan Valley Oregon
Dad picked up wrong pump, I drove to hopefully pick up correct one and give him a needed break.

Got it rolling and made it to cabin around 10 pm.
School started following day. Bathed in morning stung by wasp in towel.

Beauty of 70 390 a/c power steering Ford bracketry is amazing as it worked fine til Dad traded in on new 78 K5 with 3 leftover brackets in the trunk.

I laugh every time I think about it.

 

[Nat]

13 on next dor guys Nova SS

 

[krivman65]

I built model cars as a kid. If I remember correctly, the first car I worked on was my '65 Plymouth Valiant. My dad bought it as a father-son project. That would have been about 2001 or so, so I was about 13. I still have it.