Newbie

[AlmightyRon]

Well, every Sun I try to work a bit on my car. It is the only day I have to myself and I try to relax as much as possible. This Sun I am replacing the spark plugs and doing a bit of tuning up. So my question to the board is this, "As a newbie, fixing his own car, where should I start?
As always,

Thanks for the help,

Ron

 

[vigman]

Welcome to the CAC

What year... what issues do you have....
whats the milage.

Buy a shop manual and read a little every sunday that way you will get familiar with the car with out getting greasy.

Mike

 

[Uerik]

isolate

Hey there Ron,

Well I too was a newbie working on my 85 vette and it has been a REAL project and it seems to never end. The best thing that i can suggest is picking one section at a time and going with it, because there are so many different branches to working on older cars that unless you have a fat pocket book then you're going to run into problems.

If you're wanting to get in there and get dirty then there is a great way to start out. If you haven't already done so then I'd suggest purchasing a T.P.I.S. Fast Pack http://tpis.com/ click on kits and there is the fast pack there. It is a kit of things like a throttle body air filter, fuel pressure regulator, plugs, an air filament. All easy things to do to add around 25hp. http://www.madirect.com have similar packages that are all easy and fun. You can also buy the items individually so you don't have to replace your brand new plugs or anything (or just hold onto the new ones). Also at tpis.com you can buy the TPIS Insiders Handbook that has a bunch of cool little things that you can do like porting your own plenums and modifying your MAF Sensor and Air Filter Housing to increase CFM's. Those are some of the easy fun things.

I've done all that and right now I am working on customizing my interior a little bit. Interiors don't have to be an expensive project, it just takes some time and elbow grease. I am working on changing the color of my instrument cluster as you can see here http://corvette1984.freewebtools.com/Corvette1984/MAINDIRECTORY/Template.html but i probably wouldn't suggest doing it without a little bit of background in electronics or if you are a fairly active hobbyist. Also I took out all my console panels and painted them with a color changing paint metallic black to metallic green, its pretty neat.

All of the stuff here is pretty simple it just takes patience, and don't let this stuff overwhelm you, I've learned what little I know about cars from working on my vet And all of it is pretty rewarding.

Hope that helps give you some ideas!

Uerik