![]() ![]() “Everyone breaks off a bolt at least once if not more often (probably a lot more often), so don’t let it bum you out too much.” “Try not to get too discouraged – just remember that the next time you do a brake job on your car you’ll know how to go about getting things back together and it won’t be as much of a hassle.” “A lot of the knowledge in the owners’ manual is superfluous bullshit, but there is some knowledge there that you need to know.” “That isn’t much of an explanation, but I don’t want to get into explaining in more detail how to do it, mainly because I haven’t done it enough to be of much help to you.” I mean, if Barb doesn’t know something, she doesn’t know something…deal with it. It’s just a straight up, “here’s how it works,” “here’s what has worked for me” type book. It’s not trying to be something it’s not. The book screams ‘home grown,’ from its shaky illustrations and dark photos to the typewriter font and the fact that it was printed on an “old, sometimes working, sometimes not working, small (Multilith 1250) press.” It is spiral bound and it is perfect. The book is written, illustrated, and printed by women for women. It was printed in 1976, four years after my Mav was built, and focuses on American cars. It’s like this book was placed there just for me, buried amongst the other books on the 8 foot high shelves in a small section of the store marked ‘Automotive’.īehold, my car bible: The Greasy Thumb Automechanics Manual for Woman, written by Barb Wyatt and illustrated by Julie Zolot. What I ended up finding in West Side Books in Denver could not have been better. Right, I know…the web has been great for searching, research, for forums and pics, but I wanted some old school, hold in my hands, period relevant literature. So, I did what everyone does these days when they want to learn about something…I went to the used book store. But if I was going to rebuild a car with Pop, I had to show up with at least some sense of the workings of an automobile. I had a car that would flood all the time and Pop showed me how to prop the choke open to get it started and I carried a wooden spoon in the car for that very reason. I’ve always been semi-comfortable with cars in that I can change a tire, add/check oil, window washer fluid, etc. In this time between purchasing the Mav and picking it up, I’m just trying to soak in as much knowledge as possible about cars.
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