How does someone who currently knows fuckall about cars become a mechanic?
>>15418015
They don't. At they don't become a good mechanic.
take a mechanic course
read stuff online
practice
repeat
>>15418025
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection
Go to school?
they get hired
literally the only difference between you and the mechanic is where the two of you stand when talking
>>15418084
>>15418051
These. Read everything you can. Take a tech course or get a job entry level at a shop. Learn what you can, where you can. If you're actually willing to show up, listen, and do shit properly when you're asked to do it, plenty of shops would have you, and have someone willing to teach you.
get a beater and have at it
You buy a car that's in need of everything but runs. If you're lucky you'll have someone that can help walk you through repairing the car, if not then you'll learn through trial and error (and posting on /o/). Put new brake shoes on, change brake fluid, make sure brakes work. Dump coolant, new radiator hoses, new coolant. Change oil. Fill power steering fluid resivoir. You can look up how to do these things, they're easy. Then start fucking with your engine. New sparkplugs and sparkplug wires all around (learn how the engine works and the role sparkplugs play before you start pulling sparkplug wires). Adjust engine timing.
After all this, start pulling apart all the doohickeys in the engine compartment that you haven't played with yet. Do this one by one, and take pictures of how you take it apart so you know how to put it back together. Once you've taken everything apart and put it back together EXCEPT THE ENGINE, holy nutsack, you can do 80% of what your mechanics do. If you're feeling real ballsy, get informed and take apart your engine. Do your research and don't fuck the engine up. If you're going to pull the engine, make damn sure you have another car to drive to work or whatever. First engine pulls can take weeks. Even professionals take a few days to properly dismantle an engine, diagnose issues, and put it back together.
All in all have fun with it. I did. I bought pic related, spent 2.5 months rebuilding everything functional (with no prior experience) to get it past inspection, drove it from West Texas to Nebraska, then another 3 hours home. Car caught fire 5 miles from home because the brake didn't disengage and dragged for over an hour.
>>15418164
you should have smelled that drum that something was wrong LONG before it ever got to that point.
>>15418185
It had a major exhaust leak at the exhaust manifold, and there was a basketball-sized hole in the floor pan on the same side of the car, which filled the car with exhaust. We were running with windows down. We found out the brake was engaged when the tire (2 week old tire at the time) blew apart with a huge bang. But even then, hindsight is 20/20.
![Airplane-Engine-Reciprocating-Diagram[1].png](https://i.imgur.com/1F78eA5.png "Airplane-Engine-Reciprocating-Diagram[1].png")
Don't the US Armed Forces teach you how to work on engines if you're so inclined?
>>15418015
>How does someone who currently knows fuckall about cars become a mechanic?
You learn about it. That simple. Take the auto shop courses in high school. Super great. The taxpayers paid for them too.
Do you have any drive at a regular job? Being a mechanic means you have to do a number of tedious tasks that demands some accuracy or else you botch the job.
Do you care about doing a good job each time, or just enough to get by? In my opinion, almost anyone can be a mechanic. But many are not because they have no drive to be one. If you want to be a mechanic only because it is a job, then chances are you will be a not too good mechanic because you don't really care about either the machine or in satisfying the customers' problems with the vehicle.
Becoming a mechanic is like most other trades. If you don't know anything about cars, is that because you didn't care to learn? Or because you are 13 years old in a family that didn't stress education?
Most junior high schools onwards have classes teaching disassembly and re-assembly of small engines and automobiles. My junior high school (middle school) had small engines classes which you could take even as a 7th grader. Lawnmower engines in 7th grade and small motorcycle engines in 8th grade. High school had the whole series of auto shop courses and there were quite a few.
>>15418015
>How does someone who currently doesn't care about or like cars become a mechanic?
You don't?
get a shitty car that's easy and cheap to get parts for (a 90's civic)
get a repair manual
use google
start fixing/maintaining shit
buy tools as you need them
>>15418015
Buy yourself a cheap and simple car along with a Haynes manual. For less than $1000 you should be able to buy yourself something that's old and still runs. For that price I'd suggest looking for any old honda, mazda b2x00, chevy s10, toyota corolla, nissan sentra. Imo you'd be best off buying yourself a little honda since there's such a huge community for them, tons of helpful videos online and they're really easy to find parts for.
Do what >>15418164 said, replace your brakes, do an oil change etc etc. The best way to learn about cars is to work on them yourself.
