To those of you who do your own work

u155282

I've always wanted to be my own mechanic, but none of my friends or family members know much about working on cars. It seems like a lot of the members on this forum are pretty knowledgeable (very knowledgeable in some cases) and yet don't do car maintenance for a living. So I'm wondering, if you are one of those people, how did you come to know what you know? Do you have friends and family that are into it? did you take ROP classes? auto-shop in highschool, or what?

Can you give me any suggestions for how to get started?

I've picked up quite a bit from online forums with DIY sections like this one. I also had one of those Haynes (I think that's right?) service manuals that walks you through pretty well everything you could do maintenance-wise to a stock car. But the problem with DIY threads and service manuals is that you still can't get anywhere without tools. So here's my next question - if I was going to start doing my own work, what would be some necessary tools to pick up? If someone could be so kind as to make a list I would really appreciate it (and I'm sure others would too). Obviously if you could prioritize by your opinion of order of importance and throw in some price estimates that would be even better.