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The Rise and Fall of The Home Auto Mechanic
What Happened to Home Garage Arts?
Home car repair is a lost art. Repair used to go hand in hand with car ownership. The earliest car owners maintained their own vehicles. Chauffeurs were expected to have mechanic skills. Literature from the period stories of drivers getting under the hood so the passengers could continue their Whole generations of boys tinkered with cars in the 40s and 50s. As cars grew increasingly more complicated, and auto mechanics more specialized, drivers gradually stopped repairing their own cars. We must reclaim this lost art so we can experience more financial and civic freedom.
The Model T, from Ford was the first mass produced car.
A Brief History of Cars
Early cars were custom, expensive, more like toys. People who could drive them also learned to repair them. Early car repairmen were car whisperers–they tinkered with and maintained specific cars. This was important because every car was different. There were hundreds of car companies, selling a wide variety of custom cars. With so many different car companies, and so many different custom cars, how were car owners able to keep up with their own repairs? Why don’t more do so now when cars are standardized?The Beginning of Auto Repair
The first automakers were bike and carriage makers, metalworkers and machinists; there were over 100 car companies, which built gasoline, steam, and electric engines Electric engines appealed to women and the wealthy, steam engines were hard to start and appealed to the enthusiasts, and gas engines were easier to start than steam, and cheaper than electric engines. The gas engines eventually won out when Henry Ford began mass producing them.The Essence of Home Auto Repair
While researching for what happened to home auto repair, I came upon a site called Your Model T Stories. A family was featured: The Baulch family of Australia. The author’s grandfather had bought a model T in 1924. In 1967, he passed it to the author’s father. He immediately set to working on the car, first replacing the engine head. The car stayed on the family farm for 25 years, disassembled, and waiting for a full restoration that never happened. Ownership passed to the author in 1992. It was like a giant jigsaw puzzle with some missing pieces. After 10 months, the author figured out that there were 3 parts to the car: the chassis, the body, and the electrics, as he called it. After replacing pistons, and almost everything else, the car was running as good as new. The owner did all the engine work himself. Here is an illustration of the dying art of auto repair. Despite how simple the car was, it took 26 years to restore it. Most of that time was lost to procrastination.
A Timeline of the Baulch Family’s Model T Story
A Timeline of the History of Auto Repair
Cars through the 20th Century
The early 20th century brought standardization in the auto industry with Henry Ford, which also brought the price of the car way down. Assembly lines meant more mechanics at dealerships and private businesses, and competition arose between those two business models.
The Great Depression of the 1930s meant lower car sales, and car maintenance also took a hit. But, interestingly, car owners took responsibility for painting their own cars. Even cars straight off assembly line were poorly painted, so why wouldn’t the owners hand paint them–with brushes, no less?
By the Mid-20th century, the auto repair and auto-making industries had split in two, never to reconnect again. Car owners used to repair their own cars. Early cars were unstable, experimental, and expensive, yet car owners weren’t afraid to repair their own cars. Now it is a lost art. Car repair became a lost art because of professionalism, specialization, and secret information.
The Professionalism of the Garage Arts
When Henry Ford invented the Model T, he put cars into the hands of regular Americans. He innovated in the industry with the speed he was able to produce cars, which in turn brought the price down. Lower prices meant more cars sold, period.
With the car in more people’s hands came the demand for more auto mechanics. This led to unions, who worked to professionalize the mechanic trade. Car ownership gradually went from a driver’s personal responsibility to keep his car running to a responsibility to employ mechanics. Soon it became part of car ownership to patronize the dealer’s mechanic shop.
Home Auto Repair During the Depression
By the Great Depression, car purchases plummeted, and mechanic services sky-rocketed, as money was scarce, and maintaining possessions took priority. NAPA, the (National Auto Parts Association) showed up during this time period, in 1925. Advance Auto Parts was next, in 1935. The used car market also appeared during the Great Depression, in 1932. These developments during the car’s history really affected the auto repair industry.
Tool stores preceded the Auto parts stores. Lowes, a hardware store that sold diverse goods, like a general store, came first in 1921. Ace, a co-op of Chicago area tool stores was right on its heels, in 1924. The hardware store industry exploded during the post WWII era, as the DIY industray, particularly in the home improvement arena took off. The home improvement movement parallels the rise and fall of the amateur/home mechanic. What else happened to remove the garage arts from the home?
A timeline of the earliest tool and auto part stores
World War II Played a Huge Part
As the auto repair industry grew, so did specialization. As cars became increasingly complex in the 40s, mechanics needed more training in order to maintain them. Car owners were unable to keep up with their own repairs because of the war.
Most men were fighting in the war. Women were recruited to work in factories to support the war. Women weren’t repairing cars at home, and if their men were fighting the war, of course women would patronize mechanic shops.
Rationing
Rubber and gas were rationed because Japan had taken over our rubber distributors. Even though gas was rationed, that was because of the rubber shortage. Less gas meant fewer cars on the road, and fewer tires worn out. People were urged, through propaganda, to walk and take public transportation. People were only allowed 5 tires(4 + a spare) per car, and if they had any extra tires, they had to donate them to the war effort.
Another major WWII change to the automobile industry was this:
Automakers completely shut down making cars during the war, and were the chief suppliers of army vehicles, including planes! Cadillac’s famous V-8 engine found its way into the engine bays of a whole range of fighting vehicles.
But What About Civilian Cars?
In order to maintain cars in America, one major GM plant, at Saginaw, Michigan, was dedicated solely to producing replacement parts, so the nation’s existing fleet of GM vehicles could be kept running. The other car companies did similarly.
Post WWII America’s Love of Cars Grows
After the war, rationing ceased, and automakers returned to making cars. Henry Ford supercharged his company by presenting his first new car to President Harry Truman in 1946. Truman was a real car enthusiast, happily driving all over the country.
The 1950s were the genesis of American car culture. It was even depicted in TV shows and movies, like Happy Days, a TV show from the 1970s and ’80s. Grease was a movie based on a play about 1950s car culture.
Auto Repair Industry
Mass car production fed the auto repair shop industry. Auto repair started as the pragmatic exercise of keeping your own car running. It became a professional opportunity for advancement– the auto repair industry. Auto makers and mechanics themselves began to protect their industries from competitors. Chief among those competitors was the home auto mechanic.
The protections have gone so far as to create certifications and laws to prevent amateurs from taking care of their own auto problems. This has come to a head with the right to repair legislation in several states.
Specialization
Mechanics specialize in many separate areas, including engines, transmissions, electrical circuits, and diagnostics. That’s not to mention the specialties involved in body work.
One of the reasons opponents of right-to-repair give for locking out car owners from repairing their own cars is safety. So why can’t car owners learn to repair their cars the hard way? Professionals make mistakes, so why can’t car owners? That’s the way it is when you learn.
Expertise is also a poor excuse to lock people out. If people want the expertise of a mechanic, they are free to hire one. But if they want to do it themselves, they should have the freedom to do that.
Telematics: Secret Information
I mentioned before that more advanced car tech made it hard for car owners to keep up with repairing their own vehicles. One of the reasons for that was how car makers kept information secret, forcing everyone to patronize their auto shops. Telematics is an example of ‘secret information’ which prevents car owners from fixing their own cars. Until Massachusetts’s Right to Repair forced automakers to share telematics with car owners, they only shared this vital info with dealerships. With the passage of Right to Repair, we may see a resurgence of home auto repair. There shouldn’t be competition between the professional mechanic industry and car owners who want to keep their cars maintained themselves. Those who repair their own cars are not trying to put mechanics out of business; they are trying to save money and improve their skills.
Two Kinds of Freedom
We must reclaim the lost art of home auto repair, if we are to be truly free. There are two types of freedom we can gain by reclaiming the garage arts: financial and physical.
We Have a Plan That Works
We have taken a step towards physical and financial freedom by replacing our SUV engine in our own garage. If you can change your oil, you can learn to swap your engine. We can help with your engine swap. Control the time frame of your engine swap. Save money by doing it yourself. Start with the free engine replacement checklist, and the engine swap tool list. Finish with our fully indexed video course, which will guide you through the swap step by step.
Physical Freedom
What do I mean by physical freedom? The freedom to go where you want, repair how you want, drive what you want is what I mean by physical freedom. But we are limited in these decisions by how much money we have.
Financial Freedom
Financial freedom would fund that physical freedom. Just as Americans were able to save their resources for the WWII fighting effort, we should be able to save our financial resources by repairing our own vehicles in our own garages. Benjamin Franklin famously said, “A penny saved is a penny earned.” Repairing your own vehicle is a penny earned, indeed.
Video: Engine Replacement Course
This video shows samples from my engine replacement course. Check it out to get an idea what to expect from the course itself. If you have any apprehension about tackling your own engine replacement, you have come to the right place. If you can change your oil, you can learn to replace your engine. I’ve completed my own engine replacement, and I’m happy to show you how to do the same.
If you liked this video, you can find more on Big Red Media on YT.
Visit our YouTube channel for more videos about our Big Red SUV, and our tiny two-car garage.
Transcript follows:
Introduction
So you found just the right car. You bought it, you paid it off. It’s worked great. It’s done everything that you need it to do. It’s just right for your family, just right for your work. Everything is perfect, and then one day it stops running. You take it to the mechanic, and then you get the bad news: The engine needs to be replaced.
The Problem
Now what? You can either spend a ton of money putting a used engine in this great car. You don’t know how long it’s going to last. Or you can put a refurbished or new engine in this great car. You don’t want to give up the car, but the cost is just too high. Well I’ve been in that situation and I have an answer.
The Solution
I’ve created a plan that works. So, if like me, you’re kind of stuck. You don’t really have or want to spend the money on a used engine. You’d rather put a new engine in the car but that’s too expensive. And again, if you’re like me, you’ve done maintenance on your car yourself. You could change the oil obviously, you could swap brakes. You could put in new shocks and a few other things like that, but you’ve never done any job as big as swapping your own engine.
Well, I did just that. I swapped my own engine and I created a plan so that you could do the same thing. That plan was made so that if you can change your own oil you can learn to swap your own engine.
The Video Course
What does that plan look like? I’ve created an instructional video detailing every step that I took to swap that engine. It includes high quality 1080p HD video from multiple angles, including first person, where you can see everything my hands do, and over the shoulder, so you can get a full scale view of everything that’s happening. So you don’t miss any of the action And so that everything is clear and easy to follow, I set up professional lighting all around my work area so that you don’t miss a thing.
Tons of knowledge is transferred in this over 40 hours of in-depth video instruction. I wish I’d had that myself going in.
An Example
“I just broke this. I’m going to take all these out and drill that bolt out of there.” You get to see everything: every problem, every error, every mistake, and how I figured out how to fix those mistakes. You can watch me restore this car to its original manufacturer specifications. And since I’m doing this in my own garage, I don’t have a whole set of high-end professional tools.
The Tools
So what did I do? I listed all of the tools that I used personally: tools from Harbor Freight, AutoZone, and any place that you might go locally to buy tools that I used during this engine swap. And how can you know that this engine swap returned that car to factory specifications is because I used the original GM service manual for all these repairs. So you can trust that I’ve done this repair with the right steps in a right order. I followed that service manual step by step, word for word. You can think of it this way: I took the official GM service manual and turned that into step-by step instructional course.
You Can Do It
Using the genuine GM service manual, I’ve indexed all the videos so that every step is easy to find. So save money, do it yourself, and demystify this complex procedure by doing an engine swap on your own car in your own garage. So do yourself a favor. Get that car off the blocks, get our video, swap that engine yourself and start driving that car right away. Get the instructional video at bigred.media.
Why Home Mechanics Should Care About Right to Repair
Did you know it was illegal to repair your car in some states? But, the 2020 Right to Repair Act, passed in Massachusetts, makes it legal to repair and modify items you’ve bought yourself or through a repair shop of your choosing. In Massachusetts, the law is mostly about auto repair. As money continues to grow scarce, it’s important to maintain the freedom to extend the life of your car.
What is Right to Repair?
In 2012, Massachusetts passed an automotive right to repair law that gave independent repair shops the same access as dealers to vehicle information that’s used to diagnose and repair problems. This law ultimately led to a de facto national standard. This is because rather than need to pass a law in every state, automakers agreed to extend the Massachusetts law standards across the board.
However, the 2012 law didn’t include telematics data, which is real time information the car sends directly to dealers. When this law was passed, there wasn’t much telematic data available; only OnStar. OnStar was GM’s creation: the first widely adopted telematics application in North America. Other companies had their own version–does anyone remember Ford’s Wingcast? OnStar is the standard that stuck.
But What is Telematics?
Telematics looks at how cars and trucks function by using GPS technology and onboard diagnostics (OBD). It also follows the vehicles on a map.
Think: an intelligent computer in your car that reports on every detail: speeding, idling, fuel use, low tire pressure, etc. This info can help you save on maintenance costs and improving fuel efficiency by studying your driving habits. Carmakers have kept most of this information secret up until now.
What Does Telematics Have to do With You?
If car manufacturers and dealerships are the only people who can view this data, auto shops and home mechanics are at a disadvantage. With the passage of the Right to Repair act in Massachusetts, the door is open for the rest of the country to follow, leveling the playing field for mechanics and you to repair your car.
Growing Number of States Join Massachusetts
The tides may be changing, though. As of March 2019, California became the 20th state considering right to repair legislation. If California state bill AB 1163 passes, it would close a loophole in California’s warranty law and require companies to give consumers access to parts and service information.
Support for Right to Repair is growing. 25 states (and counting) all have pending legislation. Check the map to see if your state in onboard.
Some argue it’s not safe, some argue it’s a security risk, and others worry about copyright infringement.
But we believe that Right to Repair is an excellent idea because of freedom and financial savings.
Not Everyone Agrees
So far, not all states agree. It’s illegal in Sacramento, California to do anything more major than repairing a brake shoe in your own garage.
The code states that the repair must be minor, defined as “brake part replacement, minor tune-up, change of oil and filter, repair of flat tire, lubrication and other similar operations and cannot be performed outdoors if the repair would leave the vehicle inoperable for more than 24 hours.
The city is controlling people by limiting the repairs they can do to simple things. They have different excuses for this limitation, like property values, and chemical spills that can endanger peoples’ health. They also use vague language to enforce the code. This smacks of control, plain and simple.
Why Right to Repair is Good
Right to repair offers freedom to small repair shops and car owners. Offering the telematics to consumers will open them up to be able to control their own repair. You can repair your own car more effectively with the ‘secret data’ from your car’s telematics.
This will open up competition among repair shops to get that business. Now the dealerships must open up and share crucial car repair information, which will in turn foster competition. It will also open the door for you to repair your own cars. Before Right to Repair legislation, you didn’t have access to enough information to be able to repair your own cars.
How Right to Repair Impacts the Economy
Advocates for the right to repair argue that independent repair providers — often small “mom and pop” shops — are vital to local economies. They also say that if a manufacturer has what amounts to a monopoly on repair service, prices rise and quality goes down. With the playing field leveled, you can shop better prices for the same repairs. You can also choose to do the repair yourself—win win.
Safety Concerns
An Article on Manufacturing.net says that manufacturers are concerned that it is slow to work with their recommended parts, so customers would buy aftermarket parts, and then they are worried about safety. They think manufacturers should educate us about where to buy proper parts to avoid these problems.
Are the car companies really concerned about safety here? Or are they worried about their brand reputation? If people use non-recommended parts, will their failure (or success) negatively affect the brand? This seems more like a control issue than a safety issue.
Security Concerns
Security is highly regarded as one of the largest risks with adopting Right to Repair laws.
Automakers need to comply by their 2022 product line.
They worry that changing the way they make car in order to comply with right to repair would take a long time–decades, and would threaten security. They think opening up the telematics and securing the cars against cyber threats is too hard and unsafe.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) testified: “the ballot initiative would prohibit manufacturers from complying with both existing Federal guidance and cybersecurity hygiene best practices.”
Be on the lookout for 2022
2022 is the year Right to Repair will come into play. According to Forbes Magazine, the cars from the 2022 model year have already been encrypted to secure data. The cars were not prepared to share it.
Think about it. If carmakers can keep information from you, they can also keep control from you. OnStar used to advertise how they could shut down cars from a remote location.
The Security Innovation Center – SIC
According to the Security Innovation Center, allowing customers to fix their own devices, rather than having OEMs repair internally will in-turn provide hackers with increased access and power.
A lot of the resistance to Right to Repair comes from the consumer electronics industry.
When Right to Repair extends to the consumer electronics industry, you’re going against companies that always try to maintain control of their devices, even after they sell them to you. When they start talking about how dangerous it would be to share their back-end software with you, remember how thy have nothing to say when they are hacked, and all your data is captured. And they don’t have anything to say when terrorists use their devices to wreak havoc.
These concerns are misguided. Just as security measures tend to secure devices against their owners, and are unable to prevent hackers and malware, keeping diagnostic codes, etc from consumers would only hurt them. Manufacturers would be better off seeking ways to fight bad actors.
Fear of Assault
The Drive—talks about a campaign from The Coalition for Safe and Secure Data to scare away support from Right to Repair by implying that telematics will tell stalkers and rapists where to find victims.
In reality, Right to Repair only grants access to technical, car related data, not personal or GPS information. Furthermore, data security expert Paul F. Roberts, founder of Securerepairs, went on record with Vice’s technology column Motherboard questioning whether this problem already exists with current telematics.
Some Fear Terrorism
In 2019, the FBI voiced their concerns about sharing telematics inviting terrorist threats.
Fear of terrorism is related to fear of assault. If the location data gets into the hands of the wrong people, they could disable thousands of cars, creating unthinkable damage, the argument goes. Manufacturers should work hard to prevent these kinds of events, rather than ways to tie the hands of their customers. Freedom is a better choice than oppression in the name of safety.
If you choose safety over freedom, you deserve neither.
Some Fear Copyright Infringement
When cars were just mechanical, there was no intellectual property issue. Now that cars have software diagnostic systems, they could fall under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act of 1988.
So are carmakers worried about third parties compromising their systems, or are they concerned about losing their monopoly? Bozi Tatarevic, an automotive writer/mechanic thinks they are more concerned with their dealer partnerships and want to help them bring in customers for their out-of-warranty repair work. With telematics widely available, that is business off the table for them. You could handle those repairs yourself.
Rigth to Repair is Good for the Environment
While California originally voiced concerns about the negative environmental impact of Right to Repair, (ie. how to dispose of hazardous chemicals, or unsightly landscapes), most environmental arguments are in favor of right to repair.
Repair.org suggests “reuse is the best green policy.” Equipment repair and reuse minimizes carbon emissions, material waste and much more.
All too often, usable products and device components are shredded or tossed away instead of being salvaged, fixed and reused. Products need to last longer, which includes optimizing electronics not only for the first owner, but also for the third, the fourth and the fifth owner through formal and informal reuse and repair.
Right to Repair is Good for Consumers
You and local mechanics are the big winners in teh Right to Repair victory. You can now repair your own vehicles or take them to your preferred mechanic. Local mechanics benefit from having access to newer vehicles. Your not having to run to dealer for every ‘check engine’ light is freedom indeed.
The Right to Repair movement states, : “Products that can be repaired should be repaired. Refurbished cell phones can be sold to someone new. Repaired computers bridge the digital divide. Even better, repair jobs are local. They won’t ever be shipped overseas.”
“Whenever voters are asked if they want more control over repair, or if they trust manufacturers—it’s not even close, and you get a clear indication of why Right to Repair is a winning idea. It’s time to let people fix their stuff,” proclaimed Nathan Proctor of The US Public Interest Research Group (USPIRG)
No Turning Back
I’m inclined to think that though dealers are reticent to give up total control of the vehicle, this can only help them in the long run by building up trust with their customers. Auto manufacturers are not creating false security concerns in order to maintain control. They are looking for repeat customers, and this is a way to have a subscription model. They should stick to leasing cars if that’s what they want. Once consumers get a taste of freedom to repair their own car, they won’t want to turn back.
One obstacle to wide-spread adoption of Right to Repair Laws is COVID 19. The pandemic scare has slowed everything down because of quarantines and social distancing mandates. Ironically, this fear-mongering is way more effective than any scheme automakers could come up with. Those who support Right to Repair need to incorporate a COVID strategy to win their legal battles. This is essential, as the shutdowns have made DIY auto repair a more viable option, both financially and time-wise.
What Does this Have to do With You?
Right to Repair laws directly affect your ability to repair your own car. If you have a dead engine, we have a product that can help. Anyone that change their own oil can learn to swap their engine. Buy our video series to guide you through your engine swap.
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