Car Maintenance

[Skosh]

Hey guys,

First off, apologies if this is in the wrong forum but didn't really know where to put it.

Basically, I want to learn how to maintain and also tune cars. At the moment I have a lot of theoretical knowledge about engines, tuning etc but having never really worked on cars I've no practical experience of doing so.

I have some spare cash just now so I am planning to buy a car to practice on. The advice I'm looking for is which car would be best? I'd obviously prefer it was something cheap to buy and with readily available parts as this is my first time.

I have heard that mini's and beetles are good cars to learn on as they are very easy to work on. I love Mk1 Golfs but I'm not sure what they are like to work on.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks

[Skosh]

Cool.

Thanks for the replies guys

Yeah I just saw that Clubman actually. I have a soft spot for them so could be an option but like you said it looks like a lot of work.

[Skosh]

Thanks very much for all the help guys.

I understand the principle behind getting something with a more simple engine to practice on but like was mentioned before, an s13 200sx would give me knowledge of fuel injection and turbocharging. Now, I don't want to run before I can walk so to speak but obviously the cars I will be owning in future will most likely have EFI and some sort of forced induction.

Would it be easy enough to work on an engine such as this with the limited skills I have or it would be easier to start on a basic engine first and work my way up?

To give you a bit of background. I have some engineering experience and I am a very fast learner therefore I pick things up quickly and find complicated problems to be quite challenging and fun (maybe I'm sad).

What do you think?

I just don't want to spend time on say a carb'd engine only to then have to start all over again when I look into working on more modern cars.