Whilst I could enroll at local community college I dont really have time right now. I was wondering if anyone here lived in LA and would be interested in helping me out on the weekends. I just want someone to show me things like bleeding brakes (replacing bleed valves) timing oil change carburettor cleaning basic checks that kind of stuff. I dont have a garage so am kind of limited in that way. Are these reasonable things to hope to achieve? Many thanks Gabriel (silverlake area - LA)
Getting started with this stuff, pick up a basic Do It Yourself car guide like Haynes or Chilton. $35 and you'll get step-by-step instructions on all of the above.
I was going to get a dummies guide.. but I am kind of a hands on visual kind of person. I just thought I could learn 10x faster if someone showed me on my car what each bit is and which thing to adjust and how. I am not very good at learning from books I always have too many questions which the book can't answer!
Hi Gabriel, I know exactly how you feel, I felt the same way years ago and still do sometimes when there is something I want to do that I've never done. Add to that the fact that every time I tried to do anything to my wifes BMW I ended up breaking something and having to pay double to correct my mistake. Heck I looked for the oil filter for over 30 min and still didn't find it. ou: To get to my point, I used the web to find everything I needed, I found pictures of someone changing the oil on one..bingo, then I needed to change a Cabin filter and read the instructions, it was somewhere behind the dash!!! Then I found step by step pictures, boy did they come in handy, I would have never found it. With your Buick all you have to do is ask questions on this site and you'll probably get your answer...with Pictures!!:TU: What would you like to know first?
Gabriel, Head over to BuickStreet and ask Cyberbuick if he might be of service. He's in the valley, so he shouldn't be too far away. He is quite familiar with Q-jets, knows his way around distributors(courtesy of IgnitionMan - also at BuickStreet), and could give pointers on alot of other stuff.:TU: I'd be willing to bet, he wouldn't have any problem making a few extra bucks!!:Brow: :TU:
thanks for the tip gsxmen have pm'ed cyberbuick. I have received much help from people here but there is nothing like having someone physically standing there point at stuff! Also since this is my daily driver and very essential to life in LA I dont want to screw things up. I am always worried about turning the wrong screw or adjusting something incorrectly so that the car wont start or something. I was thinking (and it might be useful to others) of taking a whole bunch of photos of the egine, brakes etc. and then maybe people here could annotate them showing exactly what eah piece does. Kind of like a very simplified interactive shop manual maybe. it could be even set up as part of the web site so that you could move the mouse over areas of the image and it would tell you what they were and you could zoom in maybe to see detail more closely... how about it as a project?
