Wrenching Levels
I love working with my hands, and increasing my ability to take on more ambitious projects has been one of the most rewarding things I've done over the last 2 decades. Similar to swimming levels, I think it can be helpful to share the significant growth moments that I encountered as I developed myself. Naturally working with your hands is a vast space, so this document focuses on the ideas specific to maintaining machinery. This also tracks how I envision my growth continuing
- Level 0
- Check tire pressure
- Top off windshielf fluid
- Be able to clean your car, inside and out to showroom condition
- Level 1
- Swap to an emergency flat
- Be able to rotate tires safely
- Level 2
- Change your own oil
- Level 3
- Perform common mods:
- Lighting
- Suspension
- Exhaust
- Tune
- Perform common mods:
- Level 4
- Professional grade brake service:
- Brakes, Rotors, and fluid bleed
- Be able to retract E-Brake on tech-heavy vehicles
- Be able to replace wear sensors on tech heavy vehicles
- Level 5
- Perform the remaining maintainence to bring a car to 100k+ miles
- Belts
- Spark Plugs
- Coolant
- Trans & Diff fluids
- Perform the remaining maintainence to bring a car to 100k+ miles
- Level 6
- Be able to diagnose and repair common manufacturing defects, examples I've come across:
- Be able to inspect a car using your senses (sight, smell and ears) to catch problems.
- Level 7
- Be able to accomplish ambitious but well documented modifications, like engine swaps, turbos, etc.
- Level 8
- Transcend the need for community support and be able to accomplish whatever is needed either with regards to modifications or repair
- Custom fabrication, welding, 3d modeling likely required skills.
- Level 9
- Manufacture cutting edge machines (like competitive race cars) from (practically) scratch. See superfastmatt pike's peak videos for more details.
Presently I reached Level 6 and aspire to reach Level 7 using the miata as an educational platform.