Guess what… I’m new
- This topic has 7 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 14 years, 9 months ago by .
- Posts
Hello,
I think I found this site the other day while googling “how to do the best paint job on planet Earth”.
I’m in my mid twenties and I’ve always had two loves in my life: music and cars. Car & Driver and Road & Track were my bibles and bedtime stories when I was a kid and I couldn’t wait to start driving. Somebody’s probably laughing right now reading this, “Car & Driver, ha, real serious there buddy.” Well, neither of my parents were technically-inclined, and for me at the time, those magazines were the equivalent of your favorite comic book / porno magazine. I slept with them under my pillows.
I had a little notebook where I would cut out and paste car ads. I was even up-to-date on all the latest prototypes. At 10 years old I was explaining to my 60 year old teacher why she should buy a Taurus SHO instead of another Oldsmobile (basically because it had a lot of horsepower). At 15 I applied for a correspondence motorcycle repair course. My parents found out and canceled it. I understand where they were coming from but it was something I really wanted to do. After that point, I got distracted by girls and started developing my interest in music production. I started university in electrical engineering but quickly lost interest and dropped out. The next 7 years were entirely devoted to my second passion, music. Not much came out of it really. I’ve been unemployed for a long time now and weird things happen to you when you do nothing all day. Lately I’ve been browsing the net a lot, just trying to keep my mind busy.
Subconsciously or not, all my searching has led me here. Actually, the truth is that I have an ’03 Celica and I want to see if I can learn to paint it red one day. But, I almost feel like I’m picking up where I left off in a way back when I was 15. I’m a hell of a lot older than I was, but I believe anything is possible if you have a passion for something. So I’m going to test my passion :). This site seems to be rich with information and nice people. There is a personal touch and no-nonsense approach to the articles here that I noticed and that made me feel at home. The time that’s put into them is apparent and the detail is impressive considering that it’s all free. If that isn’t passion, then I don’t know what is. If there is more to learn in this forum, then my internet bill is going to be pretty scary this month. I’m looking forward to learning a lot from here and asking many questions. Many of them probably annoying to some of you. Needless to say, no useful contributions will be coming from my end other than ones ending with a “?”, apologies in advance for that. 😉
Happy to be here.
Hi Jommy :welc
it seems to me right now that you really have nothing to lose for an interest in any career. it seems that youre pretty up to date with cars and such so anyting in that area should interest you. Try getting a job at some local shops or garages or something. It looks like you have an interest in bikes, and as far as i can tell customized bikes are getting more and more popular on the west coast and even east coast. hopefully something will catch your fancy man. Welcome to have you.
:welc Jommy
Hi guys, thanks.
Ryan, your analysis is right on. I could do anything at this point. I guess I was instinctively drawn back to one of my first loves as a starting point. I like the idea of maybe running a customs shop in Florida or Cali. I’ve asked around at a few garages around here in the past, and generally they expect you to have prior experience or a formal training before they will hire you. Don’t know if it works exactly the same in the US, guess it depends on the place.
I started looking into schools around here. There’s ‘Automotive Training Centres’ and they offer a 6-month auto tech course, costs around $6000. Also have a refinishing course that lasts 4 weekends, seemed a bit short to me though. I don’t have my own garage so I’m not able to start practicing on my own machines right now. I feel like that would be a good starting point though. Love to hear everyone’s thoughts on all this.
Well if a shop requires you to have previous experience those classes will give you that experience. The class will also probably have different types of certifications to get that will also help you on getting a job. Call the schools and ask about the classes and see what you will get out of. 6000 is alot for a class but apparently youre not in the US. I was very weary about going straight to an auto body shop and asking for a job when I had no idea what I was doing. Usually they start you off as detail or shop clean up. Thats why I went to my local community college and took welding and Im currently in Collision Repair/Refinishing. I love it. Hopefully you will find something
That’s cool man. I think the reason why that course is so expensive is because they have a full-blown garage and body shop on site with all the newest equipment. But yea, it’s a lot. I have dual citizenship and would consider going to the states if I found something more affordable. Someone mentioned UTI and WyoTech to me in California. And there must be a ton of decent community college programs out there as well. But you also to appear know a lot about mechanics, how did you learn that ?
[b]Jommyc wrote:[/b]
[quote]That’s cool man. I think the reason why that course is so expensive is because they have a full-blown garage and body shop on site with all the newest equipment. But yea, it’s a lot. I have dual citizenship and would consider going to the states if I found something more affordable. Someone mentioned UTI and WyoTech to me in California. And there must be a ton of decent community college programs out there as well. But you also to appear know a lot about mechanics, how did you learn that ?[/quote] I have had guys come to my shops fresh out of wyoteck and let me tell you…they did not have it togeather.. ya they could tell you what needed to be done but could not perform the task….. In this trade I belive you either have it or you dont… my two year old can hold a screwdriver better than these guys could.. true story…you dont learn these skillz I belive you are born with them…I wanted to go to UTI and Wyotech, but the thing about them is that they are a college with no dorms. In order for me to go there I’d have to get a good job in order to afford an apartment, car insurance, phone bill, credit card, e.t.c. to pay for everything on top of going to school full-time. So I checked up on the local community college ( which has been growing ) and looked at what they offered.
I learned mechanics by kind of hard knocks. I didn’t have lots of money for shops to fix my cars. Luckily I had a friend who is very mechnicaly inclined and learned it all from his dad who just recently passed. Hes helped me out a lot and I learned from him and reading on the internet. Any forum would give me the answers of my questions, so it was just trial and error
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.