I went to trade school back in the early ‘70s up at Beloit, but I was basically born into it because being on the farm you do your own mechanical. My uncle and grandfathers were great mechanics. I remember scraping gaskets on a Minneapolis-Moline tractor when I was 5. If you’re born into it like I am it’s addicting. It’s like guns or fishing or any other hobby. You get to do something different every day - a different challenge. You meet somebody different and work on different vehicles. I remember everything in detail from about four years old and up. I came across my kindergarten picture last summer, and there’s about 40 students in the picture from 1959. If you do not have a memory, you will not succeed at it. My grandfather, my mom’s dad, at 101 had perfect memory. How do you stay current with cars changing all the time? I can scatter the parts on the bench, and I’ll put it all back together. I subscribe to a couple of magazines and newsletters, and there are schools in Kansas City every spring that keep you fresh. You could be a plumber with a simple tool set. For $2,500 you could have everything you need. I’ve got a half a million worth of tooling plus the building. It costs me $2,500 every year just to update my diagnostic computer. If you don’t do that stuff, you’ll get behind. You’ll be so stupid you can’t change oil anymore. The manuals - parts labor guides - cost $250 each. Success doesn’t happen between 8 and 5, but I have a lot of fun out here. All this doesn’t work if you don’t have great customers that pay their bills.Īre you one of those guys that can tell what’s wrong with a car by the way it sounds? I’ve just fixed hundreds and hundreds of thousands of cars in 45 years. I have figured out it was a pack rat over the phone. my Ford diesel doesn’t have any oil pressure. The gauge isn’t reading.’ I said, ‘Does the engine start and run?’ He says, yeah, and I said, ‘It’s got two oil pumps. If it didn’t have oil pressure it wouldn’t run.
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