Going to get my first car soon. Honda Civic. What should I learn to DIY on it? What is the easiest to learn for a complete noob?
Going to get my first car soon. Honda Civic. What should I learn to DIY on it?
Going to get my first car soon. Honda Civic. What should I learn to DIY on it? What is the easiest to learn for a complete noob?
rot8 tires, check/change oil, check belt, check troony fluid, check wiper fluid, check pwr steering fluid, check spark plugs
>check belt
Both the 1.8L (r18)and 2.4L (K24) of the 9th gen use a timing chain.
What they do need is a valve adjustment every 75-100k miles.
Tiny windows so you can have sex in it
Best thing I ever did with mine when I was a teen
The 8th generation has the smallest engine bay of them all. The best Civics are the '90s manuals. If you want to learn, find one that's being sold for cheap because the owner doesn't want to spend money to fix it, and use the money you saved to buy tools and the time to teach yourself.
don't listen to this poorgay
buy as new as you can afford
>poorgay
This is option is costlier up front, but it will pay off in the long run.
>buy as new as you can afford
Newer cars are more complex, and of lower quality. If you can't get a certain part because of a supply chain issue, you'll either have to modify it to run like an older car anyways or get fricked. Also, the older the car, the easier and cheaper it will be for a local machinist to make every part you'll need to keep it running indefinitely.
MACHINIST? You just told PrepHole aren't a mechanic or machinist without telling PrepHole you aren't a mechanic or machinist.
GTFO indeed.
Doh, typo, should be "told PrepHole but everyone into cars browses both.
Anyway, have your local machinist make you a cylinder head or transmission gear from scratch.
Tell that to classic car restorers. Trying to restoring a modern car without factory parts would be impossible.
>cylinder head
Lost PLA cast that shit and send it to a machinist.
>transmission gear
That's elementary shit. The only reason people don't do that is because buying parts are still cheaper. If SHTF, which seems likely the way things are headed, you'll be able to keep an older car running longer.
Anything after the cash for clunkers era are junk. They got rid of the older cars that last too long.
>so old that parts aren't available
Yes, and if you go even further, it becomes, "hey, I could make my own part." They are literally teaching kids how to restore Ford Model Ts at the Powerland heritage park in Salem, OR.
>transmission gear
>That's elementary shit
this place is a laugh riot. You could replace an old car cheaper than having someone make one gear out of proper material and properly heat treated.
>lost pla cast aluminum cylinder
Yeah bro so I was doing this roughing pass and I saw these 500 voids in your casting, looks like you need a commercial roto-mold…
Or take this to a welder who can weld sand-impregnated aluminum bring it back and we can run the setup again and rough it out until we get any more issues
Or we can just go billet for 500k
Your tripcode was cracked years ago.
#frick nig Sieg
Have you actually done any of those things?
>Newer cars are more complex, and of lower quality.
I used to believe this meme but it doesn't hold up. I bought a certified pre owned mini Cooper. Literally a German parts bin assembled by British hands. I've put on 200k miles on that car with regular maintenance following BMWs guidance and so far it's been an impressively solid vehicle.
When something breaks, the car tells me specifically what is wrong. Getting to shit isn't any worse than when I had my 300D merc.
> Oh noes I have to remove a plastic engine cover.
Only thing I had to buy was a coder app and a Bluetooth OBD2 kit. Well worth every dollar spent because now I can tell it to stop doing gay shit like beep at me for having an unbuckled seatbelt.
I took it off and never put it back on. I like olde
>tells me specifically what is wrong
Cool, what happens when the computer gets fried?
>"I'm too stupid to know what each part of a transmission does and don't recognize that many parts are similar to one another, so I think this is complicated."
I believe we were just talking about gears, some of those are synchros. You could make simpler straight cut gears, they'd be louder and wear quicker, but they'd still work.
>"Don't think about the future. Keep consooming goy."
>pay frick you money
Wouldn't be such a problem if more kids wanted to be machinists and mechanics than whatever the current thing is.
>$15,000 for time labor, materials fixturing and tooling which you own
The ability to repair your own car is priceless.
fr[3]nsch[4]n[d0t]org/ctw/res/4601[d0t]html
>Cool, what happens when the computer gets fried?
In 200k miles, the computer has never fried. It's original to the car and at this point, it's probably going to keep on working till I get rid of it.
It's 2023, tier 1 automakers have figured out reliable pcba manufacturing. It will outlive the vehicle.
Cool story bro
>more machinists
"Hey can you share your craft that took you part of a lifetime to master just to make me a custom, one-off part? It will take just 30 minutes, you can afford to stop production just for me? I'll give you $3.50 and a pack of smokes."
You're the reason why they charge frick you money. We need more entrepreneurs instead. Notice a common problem on a car? People talk about it on a Facebook group? Reach out to a machinist, and instead of having him make one part for $500, ask him to make a hundred for $5000 and go sell them $100 a piece on your Facebook group and on Ebay.
A lot of the costs involved in machining are setup times and making jigs and whatnot. If it takes an hour for the guy to measure everything and punch in coordinates to drill holes in your part, it takes 10 seconds to put a part in, and if he's going to make a hundred, he can make several at once and separate the pieces later during production. Machinists love to find ways to optimize production, but if you give him just one piece to make, there's very little to optimize, while he could spend time on a more serious client.
>We need more entrepreneurs instead.
I agree, read that last line.
>Reach out to a machinist, and instead of having him make one part for $500, ask him to make a hundred for $5000 and go sell them $100 a piece on your Facebook group and on Ebay.
That's the way its done. Even better if you also designed a better part.
>designed a better part
It's not too hard to do so. Often times, parts are designed to save on overall production costs. If Ford figured that they would stamp sheet metal to make a bracket, nothing stops you from making one in bigger gauge stainless steel, welded, with a gusset instead. But you will quickly find that the more steps involved in production, the quicker it will surpass OEM list price.
>ask him to make a hundred for $5000
ASK? You front the capital if you're so sure a given part will sell.
Ever wonder why there are so few aftermarket car transmission gears and the vast majority of those are for race car or off-road gearboxes?
How many gears have you personally designed, had manufactured then sold for a profit and how long did it take to make ROI?
Gears are pretty specialty anon. They still sell gear packs for popular models like F150 and S-15 trucks but we're talking stuff like brackets and overhaul kits for things like power steering pumps. Gears require a lot of engineering and knowledge of metallurgy to get them at the right strength, not too soft, not too brittle.
You can't get a machinist to make a part for your car without having to pay frick you money, but in a sense, you are right: popular models like Civic and older F-150 or Corollas have a lot of aftermarket parts still being made for them, including upgraded or better quality fixes. For instance a lot of Fords have an issue with the air blend door snapping at the pivot. Instead of replacing the whole assembly, which requires pulling the dash and stuff, Dorman has a replacement door with a separate metal bushing pivot. You cut a hole at the bottom of the assembly, pull the broken door out and put the new door through the opening, then you slip the bushing through the actuator hole. It's a $10 part and a 20 min fix with a Dremel and some duct tape as opposed to a $250 assembly and an 8-hour labor charge.
>buy as new as you can afford
Is 2015 new enough?
Yes, and take the time to study Honda-specific venues. Obtain factory service manual or if only available online get whatever aftermarket book is considered best for your specific Honda.
>Wouldn't be such a problem if more kids wanted to be machinists and mechanics than whatever the current thing is.
Why do you believe that?
The cost of machining greatly reflects overhead. tooling and machine purchase. Running machine shops is hyper-competitive so most don't survive. The work is as cheap as it's gonna get. Most machinists are not well paid. You clearly never worked in or around that industry. Ignorant customers are a plague because they imagine they can have a single piece machined for what they buy mass-produced parts for.
>Cool, what happens when the computer gets fried?
Replace computer. You are obviously not a mechanic. I am and have decades familiarity with the industry. When salvage ECUs become rare enough board-level repair outfits will cater to any market worth bothering with as they do much smaller runs of welders, CNC machine tools etc. Aftermarket systems will exist for anything worth bothering with and already do for the performance market.
As for machining gears, you haven't or you'd know why their absurdly expensive as one-offs. Most machine shops don't hob their own because of that and designers who aren't moronic buy from Boston Gear etc for one-off or short production runs. Gears rarely wear out so the usual fix is a salvage gearbox if some cretin does frick one up.
>Obtain factory service manuals
Where to find?
>Running machine shops is hyper-competitive so most don't survive.
You don't have to compete if you have your own designs. Competition among designers are lower. If designers machine their own parts, then they don't have to worry about price gouging.
>Replace computer.
>buy from Boston Gear
Might not be an option in the future.
Busriders on PrepHole are worse than PrepHole
Who knew.
What the frick is wrong with you people?
Dont just post shit when you have no fricking clue
>busriders
The best way to learn is by doing, that's not busriding.
What exactly are you taking offense to? Nothing in this thread seems like particularly bad advice. The split between old car vs. new car is mostly a matter of preference.
>Nothing in this thread seems like particularly bad advice.
>Also, the older the car, the easier and cheaper it will be for a local machinist to make every part you'll need to keep it running indefinitely.
gtfo
>easier and cheaper it will be for a local machinist to make every part you'll need to keep it running indefinitely.
lol i actually missed that, that certainly is moronic.
But there are a lot of old cars that still have parts being made like old chevy trucks for example.
>you need special dealer tools that are expensive to rent and only good for one thing
this is mostly bogus unless youre talking about scan tools. Ive had boomers tell me E-torx is a "special mercedes tool" before and i imagine thats something you believe
I've worked in a mechanic shop, and also have never taken any of my cars to a shop. I have a decent idea of what I'm talking about, in terms of doing vehicle maintenance. FRICK new cars.
Not that anon, but when you say "new" what year does it start to be new? 2015?
yeah, roughly. but it varies by manufacturer
There's a sweet spot between "so old that parts aren't available" and "an error with the facial recognition camera shuts down the car"
I think somewhere in the last 10 years is where it really starts getting ridiculous with a lot of cars
Give us some example of these 'special tools'
search "dealership exclusive tools"
> buy $500 car
> go to local machinist because you need a part rebuilt
Yeah, I can reverse engineer it, do a parametric CAD model, CAM tool paths, retype on a 5 axis setup and have a 1A for you in a month or two.
$15,000 for time labor, materials fixturing and tooling which you own
> but my car is only worth $500
Oh my bad! Okay how about $20 then?!
newer cars are absolute bastards to work on in your driveway, and the parts are much more expensive. Some if it you can't even do yourself, you need special dealer tools that are expensive to rent and only good for one thing. Even then, sometimes you absolutely can't do the work without special dealer computers, and they don't rent those out.
Mainly you just need to know how to change and check oil, and change tires. The rest, you can learn on an as-needed basis.
I hate all of you, so much.
PrepHole and PrepHole only overlap when there is no culture of keeping contributions to threads relevant and of value.
LIKE HOW IF YOU DONT POST 3 ON THE /HC/ BOARDS THEY EAT YOU ALIVE
LITERALLY HAVE, LIKE, A STANDARD. BRING SOMETHING TO THE TABLE. Dont just clog up boards with dumb shit when there literally is a board for that
People here love to find the stupidest things to be completely wrong about
Welcome to PrepHole
how to keep a tidy workspace.
how to lay out parts for reassembly.
exothermal expansion.
unfortunately jack points.
In 2018 I bought a 2009 Honda Fit for $9000. I put $2000 into it right away. Had just about 100k miles on it when I bought it. The list is pretty extensive of what I did, but I'll try to list a lot of it.
>coolant change
>oil and filter change
>transmission fluid and filter change
>belt change
>rear drum brakes
>front disc brakes
>front rotors
>brake fluid change/bleed (car was missing bleed caps, replaced those)
>fixed all 4 tpms as they broke (two were bad when I got it)
>spark plugs
>all four ignition coils
>valve adjustment (only thing I didn't do, payed the dealer to do it before I bought the car)
>repaired various broken plastic clips
>installed a larger battery (stock size was replaced once, but it was trash)
>new thermostat
>pcv valve
>cleaned MAF sensor and EGR valve
>replaced cabin and engine air filter
>removed engine air filter box and cleaned out the engine air intake (throttle body)
>new mats
>new windshield (old one had a crack; safelite did this)
>lubricated all the doors and everything else that needed it
>front sway bar links (didn't break until later in ownership)
>Recharged AC with EZ chill
>put in a remote start (first winter)
>Seafoam in brake booster vacuum line (removed the cowl to do this, needed for changing the sparkplugs also)
>changed tires last year
>recently replaced the intermediate (middle) muffler and catalytic converter
Learn to do basic service on your own, followed by other wear components like brakes, then belts and so on.