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Me and cars

Why cars?​

When I was 19 my friend Dylan did a deep dive into automotive technology and talked about it at me for an entire week. I realized I had no idea how a car worked, which bothered me, so I slowly began to learn.

My mistake!

In one of the clashing-est interest overlaps to ever do it, I've developed a hatred of car dependency. I spend a lot of time complaining about how driving sucks, and laying about reading texts on new urbanism. I spend yet more time (and exponentially more money) maintaining my cars, and it sucks is so much fun.

If you want to make mistakes like mine, but exciting and new, check out the following resources and heed my words of wisdom.

Helpful resources​

YouTubers (general)​

  • ChrisFix to learn basic maintenance with no fluff
  • MotoIQ for amazing teardowns and platform analyses
  • Royalty Auto Service - don't sleep on these guys. They know their stuff and will show you how to do a proper, professional, by-the-book job with common issues. Their video on brake jobs is particularly good. Also, the main dude has some Geralt energy.

Volvo​

Subaru​

  • SubaruONLY - Luke Shannon's excellent Subaru modification how-to's
  • MotoIQ again, they do deep dives into making power on the EJ25 blocks

Words of wisdom​

These lessons were painful to learn. I made these mistakes even though they are literally the same pieces of advice everyone gives about getting into cars.

  1. Always have a plain, simple, normally aspirated car that starts every time. Try not to do anything weird to it. If it needs to go down for maintenance, keep your scope in check and only bite off what you can chew. Order extra bolts, bushings, pins and small easy-to-break items ahead of time if you're touching anything that might be original to the car or rusted. IT'S SO EASY TO FUCK THIS UP.

  2. Any car can be a special car. It doesn't have to be fast or expensive. A good car is the one you can go start and drive right now, and the best car is the one that puts a big smile on your face.

  3. Don't text and drive, or I will find you.