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Originally Posted by cicy33
Even oil changes can be hazardous. I knew someone who once forgot to put back in the plug tightly. Can you guess what happened? But that is just me. I totally admire anyone who can work on their own vehicle.
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I knew somebody like this myself, care to guess where he worked? JIFFY LUBE.
In another life, I used to work as an aircraft mechanic, and all mechanics have to be certified (takes 2 years of schooling to get certified), or be supervised by a certified mechanic for two years. However, every once in a while, we would get a call about an aircraft that was on route, that had a shim missing from a newly replaced tire, and we would have to go out and replace said shim. It doesn't matter whether you are a novice or a pro, anyone can forget to hook something up.
I do a lot of work on my cars myself (I take the cars in for an oil change, because it is not woth the hassle), and you can save a lot of money, but sometime you have to weigh the cost of the repair against the cost of the downtime when the car is your only means of transportation. I've recently changed a window regulator myself, buy my car was down for nearly three weeks because I needed a specialized rivet gun which I could not find at any tool store in my area. I bought the tool gun online, and it took two and half weeks to be delivered. Since I have a spare vehicle, it wasn't an issue, but if I didn't, I would have been up a creek. Also, sometimes it makes sense to let someone else do the work. I took my car to Sears to have the Struts replaced, because it was only $50 more to have them installed.
So for suspension work and exhaust work the chains stores economy of scale usually get you good name brand parts installed cheaply. For transmission work, I will take it into a trusted mechanics shop, too many specialized tools to do it myself. Everything else, I do myself.
If I don't need the part right away, I usually order my parts from
RockAuto.com, the parts are usually cheaper, otherwise I go to my local auto parts store.