Automotive school

[Mullet Bullet]

i grew up turning wrench's. got pulled into the UTI shit. honestly it was a waste of 14 months and $28K. i do make DAM good money now but ive also been turning wrench's for 6 years or so full time, on my own time and projects for about 17 years.

go to independent shops and apply. dealerships are ok but there is A LOT of politics that go with.

[Pantless Spency]

thanks for the insight mullet, and everyone. unfortunately i didn't grow up turning wrenches, or learning a thing about cars. i wasn't allowed behind the wheel till i had my permit, and i've always had a sort of desire to learn about cars. maybe the field isn't for me maybe it is. i wont know till i try it for myself, but instead of going all out i'm just going to find a local community college and take some classes and then try to work at a small shop. there's a shop in town where my parent's take there cars on the regular and i often go seeking advice on my cars and tools that i don't own to do certain jobs on my cars. the guys are real nice and i feel i have some what of a small establishment of a friendship/business opportunity with them, mainly because the owner davey has a son about my age who is in to cars as well, and maybe he sees some potential or curiosity in me.

my parents are sort of against motorsports and petrol mechanical type shit, they're hippies and love bikes. i feel like that kid who never got to play with toy guns and when he grew up all he wanted to do was play with guns. (LOL)

also another inspiration was the fact that my best friends who i use to spend 2 weeks out of every year at there house (literally) are big into motorsports, dirt bikes, cars, lifted bronco's all that jazz, and that taste of that side of life, sort of had me feeling hell bent towards cars i guess. my best friends father is a member on r3v and hes the one who actually got me into e30's. after taking a ride in any of theres i fell in love with the feel of the car, felt like a little rocket ship, go kart, or glove! lol. he works for ground control and is part of the inspiration.. i under stand that the automotive industry is not lolli pops and sugar canes and your not cranking out clean ass cars like Ryan C's calypso that was just featured in SW. but it can be on that par if i work hard in small shops, go back to school and try and move my way up in to a better shop that does that line of automotive work.

sorry for the blog r3v lol that sure is a mouthful up there.
thanks again for all the insight from all the mech's and automotive students. i really appreciate it and i take all of your advice and comments 100% seriously in the debacle of finding out if this is for me or not.

[immajackuup]

uti is a joke,all they do is prepare you for ase test and teach you basic stuff. What I did is study couple ase books at the library then take ase test. Think hard before you enter the mechanic field,shit is hot,dirty,get pay flat rate which mean you have to rush if not you lose money,stand all day and listen to loud zip zip impact gun. Remember you are going to do this rest of your life and it will take a toll on your hands and back. I myself is going back to school to become a electrician and thought being mechanic is easy. I should listen to my uncle and other peoples couple years back.

[Sagaris]

There is a lot of truth in this thread.

I have been obsessed with cars my whole life and have always done my own work on them. I considered being a mechanic but then I worked in a shop when I was 17 and I got to see how grumpy and beat-up a real mechanic is. I didn't want to come home tired, sore, and greasy every day, and I didn't want to kill the fun of the car hobby by getting frustrated with repairing them all day.

Instead, I am doing mechanical engineering and feel like I have much broader possibilities of how and where I want to work and while some people have a problem with sitting at a desk all day in the A/C, it sure beats being on your feet in the hot weather.

If you are not a genius then that is okay, you can still survive a mechanical engineering program, but it will own you if you are not determined, hard working, and disciplined. Almost all of my friends at college dropped out of college/mechanical engineering because they cared too much about the "college experience", partied too hard, and thought they could get away with putting in a high-school amount of effort into the degree.

I actually think being a machinist and opening up your own machine-shop would be a really cool profession. I had an uncle that was a machinist, asked for a raise, didn't get it, quit, opened up his own place and now he is retired and flies his airplane to Brazil (where he is from) for fun.

Oh, and you never know if/how your love for cars is going to change. I never thought I would ease-up on the hobby, but man is it nice to do other things than just fix your crappy old car all day and all night. Hopping in a Camry with air conditioning, going to work+coming home and having the rest of the night to do whatever you want is not a bad thing at all!

[slammin.e28]

I never thought I would ease-up on the hobby, but man is it nice to do other things than just fix your crappy old car all day and all night. Hopping in a Camry with air conditioning, going to work+coming home and having the rest of the night to do whatever you want is not a bad thing at all!

Some of us are...



...and all we have is our e30.

:puppy:

[gearheadE30]

I've been working as a mechanic for 3 years in a shop that mostly works on E30's and other older BMWs. It's been a great learning experience, and I started when I was in high school. Over that time I've seen a bunch of lincoln tech and UTI guys come and go. Lincoln tech was typically better, but only for the people who actually did the work and tried. I'm going to Purdue at the moment for Mechanical engineering. Sure I probably won't be doing the same kind of down-and-dirty car work when I graduate, but like others have said, its nice to keep it a hobby. I rarely have a desire to work on my own car and motorcycle when I get home, because that's what I've been doing all day. the body guy at the shop I work at actually just moved away and basically retired from automotive work, because he said he wanted to get back to it being something he enjoyed. It's hard, and seldom a good idea, to make a job out of a hobby...