Learning Mechanics, My Story... (Do It Yourself)

I always rejected the idea of buying a car, because I think it brings you more problems then advantages: the papers, bureaucracy, all the taxes that you have to pay just to have a car.....I didn't want that. But... never say never...
I'm from Italy and in Europe I never had a problem with public transportation, of course there are problems with delays and cancellation , but in general is very good system. So you don't really need a car.

I started traveling alone around the American continent one year ago. After a few weeks in Costa Rica the idea of buying a vehicle and start to travel without worrying about the buses schedules started to grow in my mind. Motorbike was my first option since I was alone and was more affordable for my wallet than a car or a van.

So, I buy it? No!
What kept me from doing it was that I have no idea about engines, this made me sad and I decided to postpone this kind of trip for another moment.

So I kept traveling and traveling until I met this beautiful and smart Argentinian guy, and started making plans together. We plan to go to the US west coast to watch the Solar Eclipse, participate at the Festival in Ochoco National Park, Oregon and then travel south.

The day after we landed in San Francisco, looking for a way to go to Oregon, we realize that the only cheap and easy way to get there (and anywhere else) was with a car. Between me and Lucian, I'm the only one with the driving license and cause I'm under 25 the cost of renting a car is twice as much (because of the insurance) so renting a car for a month was not convenient and we just rented it for a day to get fast to Bend, Oregon. The idea of buying a van, that can let us move in the USA easier, started growing in our minds. After a few weeks looking in craigslist (thank god for this amazing website) we found a beautiful old Toyota Previa 91!!! We started making some changes inside immediately, make it a house with tires building a bed with wood. Because it was an old van, with more than 270 thousand miles, we went to a lot of different mechanics to check our baby and make sure that everything was fine for our long trip south( at least all the way to Guatemala). Evidently the main problem was an oil leak. Almost every mechanics we went to, told us to come back in two weeks or more and then leave the car for a few days. Of course we were living already in the van, so it was not possible for us to leave our home in the mechanic.
Our friend, who lives in Bend, left us use his garage and tools to check the car by our self.
My opportunity to learn more about mechanic has arrived!!!!! With no experience but really interested on fixing the van we wear the mechanic suit and started looking for the oil leak.

After a couple of hours cleaning and looking for the point where it was leaking we found the problem and the solution: Change the Engine Gasket!!! Like if we were doing an open heart surgery, paying attention at every step, we changed it. I really enjoyed doing by my self something that I always thought was just for professionals. Of course we were lucky to have the space and the tools to do everything(...and an internet connection to look for video tutorials hehehe)

We kept going south, mile after mile, enjoying all the beautiful natural place through Oregon, California, Nevada, Arizona, Mexico and finally Guatemala. I enjoyed driving and wondering in my mind while staring at the road. Thinking about how my trip changed from backpacking to "carryyourhomeontires".

Traveling in the US with a van, if you don't want to hitchhike(what is also illegal), its a MUST. Is the only way to get anywhere and really enjoy your travel like an adventure.

But my post isn't about traveling with a van. I'm leaving that for another post.

I'm a person who likes to learn how to "do it yourself". So I want to focus my post on my experiences with motors and how I learned a lot about them. Well "a lot", this sounds pretentious. I learned something, but more than that I discovered how much I like and enjoy doing staff that sound complicated.

So I'm again in front of a problem. I want to sell my car but in the last 20miles,before my final destination (San Marcos La Laguna) in a really bad and steep Guatemalan road, the brakes got really hot and were gone. It was the scariest hour of my life!

No mechanic in town and I don't wanna go looking for one, capable to fix the car, in who knows how many days and paying who know how much. So how can I solve this?. I was speaking with my friend Felipe about this problem, the need to sell the van but fixing it before without spending to much money and time. I'm so lucky, he is the man. He can show me how to do it and help me.

So, to make it short, in 3 steps: Take off the drum and disassemble the system, take the break shoes to the place where they can add the break pads, assemble the system and put back the drum.

First step: It was little hard.

All the system inside the drum was out of place, so to take out the drum was pretty hard. Something was holding the drum in position. Strong arms were needed and a lot of time and patience. In this video you can see how hard it was. I started thinking that doing this was not a good idea.

But after 5 hours we had the brake shoe in our hands and saw how bad they were!!!

Second step: Go to the place where they can add the new pads to the brake shoes.

Of course it was far away from where I was living. Luckily when I arrived to Sololá, the suggested city to find all kind of car parts, after asking a few people and walking for one or two km I found the place!!! Señor Roberto was really fast doing the job and I get the brake shoe ready with the new pads in a couple of hours.

In this photo is me, exhausted and happy to have found the right place!

Third Step: Set the brake shoe and put back the drum brake.

Felipe and I started working at 9 AM and finish at 5PM.

Was a long day of work but I felt comfortable getting dirty with the car oil and learning how the brake drum works.
To put all system back in the right place was no easy but we were really committed to finish as soon as possible and check the car. At the end we took the air out of the brake system and added some brake fluid....Now let's go try the new brakes...

I was really happy that we had no problem at all so another issue solved spending less and getting experience!!!!

These are left over pieces after our intervention (ops!!!)

The moral of this story is: Try your best even if you never done it before, if you really apply your self you gonna get back more than what you expect.

PS: I used to dream with a house, a big garden and a farm. Now I dream with a big garage full of every kind of tool to play and fix cars. I'm kidding :D

Thanks for reading my post.

all text and images are originals

#originalworks