on the persistence of interest
How long have you worked on cars? Not loved then, not driven them, but really worked on them? How has your approach to the hobby/obsession/all-consuming passion changed in that time?
I’ve been into vehicles and specifically cars for as long as I can remember (well before my age acquired a second digit, even), so in a sense I had always been accumulating knowledge about them before I really started getting grease under my fingernails. I didn’t really work on them, and even shied away from that pursuit to a degree until I bought two first-gen RX-7s (on a whim–is there any other way to buy a car?) as project cars about five years ago. After that, my experience and knowledge of cars ramped up exponentially as I’ve averaged about one engine swap a year since then, with varying degrees of success.
When I first started wrenching under the hood I didn’t have the touch with tools that I do now. A fastener that took me ten minutes to loosen then would take me a matter of seconds now, and on the other end I can sense when a bolt or screw is really tight enough. I don’t have to consciously think about which way to turn a nut to loosen it when reaching around the back side of a component to get to the fastener–my fingers just know which way to turn it. And I can visualize the engine and drivetrain as a system and in terms of their specific subsystems in a heartbeat after I pop the hood, or even just driving down the road thinking about the internal combustion that’s taking place on the other side of the firewall.
In spite of all this, I think my appetite for digging around under the hood has mellowed somewhat. Within the first couple of years I would work on the car at all hours of the night for hours at a time with no food, tools in disarray, multiple bandaids on each hand. More of my evenings and weekends were spent fixing this or tweaking that. Now, though… I think about my approach to working on my Audi, and it’s almost like I need to organize my garage, block off a whole Saturday, get the boombox, shop towels, etc, just to begin to undertake a repair or upgrade.
Maybe I’m just more realistic about the time it actually takes me to do what I used to think I could get done much more quickly. I certainly don’t leave as many “projects” half done and come back to them the next day or the next week. I’ll usually only start on something if I have all the necessary tools and parts–before it was almost like I needed to compulsively disassemble something otherwise I’d go nuts.
Maybe I’m just less enthusiastic about cars in general. I’ve certanly been more frugal in my spending lately, and for the first time in a while I don’t have a project car, at least not one in progress (the 240Z resto is still waiting for takeoff, as it were). Having a project tends to spur my interest and involvement in the hobby, I think.
I dunno. I could conjecture further about reasons why I feel like I’ve mellowed out but the attitude remains. And I think it’s a good thing. There’s more balance–I’m not as voracious about turning wrenches and it’s given place to other pursuits in my life. So in the end it’s not a negative thing, or really overwhelmingly positive, but more of an observation than anything else.
How has your own interest waxed and waned over the years? Where does it stand now?