I’ve been spending a lot of time in the garage lately, and it has me thinking about the ROI of various automotive skills, which can be applied to other skills in life, too.
I have this desire to be able to replace or fix anything and everything on my car. However, I am constrained by the time, experience, and motivation required to learn all of the skills for this. In fact, it’s safe to say that the only people who can realistically do this are master mechanics who have spent years, even decades, in the automotive industry. Realistically, I will never reach this goal, and that’s okay, because most of the “easy” stuff I can already do, and this accounts for the majority of the work that I can expect to encounter as a vehicle owner. What I have learned has as a good ROI.
But I ask myself, “What would I do if the head gasket on my car blew?” I don’t know. That’s currently beyond my skill level to replace. I could potentially follow the instruction and pull it off, but there are many things that could go wrong in the process, and I likely would not have the skills to fix those. I like the idea of being able to do this, but let’s talk about this for a bit.
Unless you’re a die hard Subaru owner and you just gotta have that boxer engine [*snicker*], you will probably only experience a few blown head gaskets over the course of your life. Now, if you change one head gasket yourself, that experience will probably carry over to the knowledge you need for the next. However, you’re unlikely to need to do this on the same car twice (and I’m thinking of cars that only have one head gasket). So although you will have gained the experience of how to change it on one car, the next car could be completely different, and it’s possible that experience may not transfer very well for that car. Who knows what crazy crap engineers will be doing to engines ten years from now? Cars are already getting more difficult to work on.
So on the one hand, being able to change your own head gasket seems like a really great money-saving skill. However, it’s a skill that may only need to be summoned a few times over the course of your life, and it may not even apply to the next time you need it. For all of the hassle, precision, and patience required to accomplish such a feat, is it really a skill worth investing in? You need to also consider the risk of you screwing up and completely ruining your engine. Moreover, it is one of many very specific repairs. Do you lose anything by investing in this skill and not another? Skills have opportunity costs, too.
Honestly, there is so much that can go wrong in an engine, I suspect a greater skill would be learning how to swap engines. You can often do this with a junkyard engine. Although you are taking a gamble, if your engine blew at 200k miles, but you find a junk yard engine with 85k miles on it, chance are fairly high that the junk yard engine will still last a long time. Instead of worrying about the precision require to change, say, a head gasket, being able to swap an engine accounts for pretty much everything that could go wrong internally. Suddenly, that skill has a much higher potential ROI than simply knowing how to change a head gasket. (granted, I don’t think you should get a new engine just because the head gasket blew, but then again, sometimes that happens because other things are going wrong internally, too).
The only real exception I can think to all of this is learning just because you want to. I’ve actually been tempted to find a junkyard cylinder head so I can learn how to rebuild it. Just for fun. But I haven’t committed to that yet.
Perhaps an even more clear example would be transmissions. Average mechanics can rebuild engines, but average mechanics cannot rebuilt transmissions. That requires highly specialized knowledge, skills, and tools. If average mechanics can’t do that, what are the chances you can pull it off? Pretty slim, I’m sure. However, once again, what you can do is learn how to swap a transmission. You could either buy a rebuild and swap that, or take a chance on a junk yard special, and swap that. You can save yourself a lot of money this way.
(Side note: I once rebuilt a power steering pump. That was a fun little project 🙂 . Six seals and a bearing, it’s pretty doable )
But this is how it is for a lot of things. You can invest in skills that will only serve you on very rare occasions, or you can invest in skills that you may use frequently or which can be applied to many other things. I think it’s beneficial to invest more in the latter, as they generally have a higher ROI, and you have a greater chance of becoming proficient in them. Again, the largest exception is for when you enjoy something in and of itself.