That is valuable as well, in some places car mechanics could be eager to let's say make repairs more costly than needed
I imagine a car is x100 worse
My current toolbox for the car is:
- Socket set (£50 halfords)
- Spanners (I already had these I guess £20-30)
- Allen Keys (£5)
- Several different types of Cir-clip pliers (£20-40)
- A battery powered soldering iron (£50-100). I have no mains power where I work on the vehicle.
- A lighter (£1)
- Mole-grips (£10-15)
- Axel Stands (£50)
- A Jack. (£100)
- Fuse Pullers (£3)
- Tub of Grease / Copper Grease (£15)
- Toolbox (£10)
- Stubby Screwdrivers (£10)
Changing any of the bearings
Tuning the spokes on the wheels
Changing the cog
All require special tools that cost more than 45 pounds
Only the several wrenches, Allen keys (because none are the same size), chain break and tire-changing plungers cost less
Every nut and every screw has a different size. It's madness
We are rare, but we exist. Prior to moving on from it due to an unrelated injury, for the decade prior I did all my own work including numerous engine swaps on my vehicles.
However, this is because as noted, I had the tools and parts. I had all the spanners and sockets I needed, easy access to parts via wreckers and parts networks, and had my own engine crane and stands. My vehicle of choice for most of that time was 2x 1987 Toyota MR2 AW11's.
I mostly got into it because it was my "non computing" hobby for the most part. And for the time I spent engaged in it, I really enjoyed it.
With a lot of swearing and heaps of scrap metal to find the right sized scrap you can will power it out I promise.
To save you all the trouble of all I went through, it was fun debugging mechanical stuff, but ultimately there is no "self-reliant car owner"
It all comes down to tools and parts. You need easy access to a lot of both or else you are limited to extremely ugly temporary fixes which amount to super gluing your engine back together.
On our overland trip, when we had an issue, it turned out impossible to fix without a massive lift and air tools, so all my years prep was essentially reduced to having a few extra words I could tell the actual mechanic capable of performing the fix.