How did you get your job as a mechanic?
Did you go to college or did you have previous experience?
What are some of the pros of being a mechanic? Cons?
I am thinking about being a mechanic but I have little experience when it comes to cars/trucks. I know stuff like changing tires/spark plugs/oil/brake pads and things like that, and I learned it with relative ease. When I was a teen I loved watching my dad work on his truck and I am quite interested in choosing it as a career now.
id say in this day and age it'd be hard to get hired without having some sort of trade school diploma.
best bet would be sign up for a 2 year course or whatever, and at the same time go to the local garage, explain that youre doing the course, and ask to volunteer in the weekends or whatever. that way, by the time you get out, you have the piece of paper in your hand, a bit of experience, and if not a job lined up through volunteering, at least a reference inside the industry
Don't waste the money on college. It's stupid expensive (except maybe Jr. College courses). Just go to small shops and ask to be a shop boy. Be prepared to sweep, clean up, do oil changes etc for a while. Then after you learn more and more you will start to become a real mechanic. Usually within a few years.
Pros
>always a job somewhere
>great life skill
>decent pay after a while
>you can specialize in cool shit like race cars, tuning, turbos, etc
Cons
>it gets HOT as fuck in the summer (depending on where you live)
>cold as fuck in the winter (depending on where you live)
>you will spend tens of thousands of dollars on overpriced tools and boxes
>pay is okay for a young person but tops out pretty fast
>its HARD work
>you will be dirty every day
>you will never enjoy working on your own car (after a while)
>you will spend all day right next to coworkers in small areas
At my shop they guys always become friends and even when they move to different shops they keep in touch. Also, the resources from being friends with mechanics from different shops is great. I needed an arc welder the other day, called a buddy on saturday and he met me at his shop at midnight to weld some shit. Our dyno is open after hours to friends etc.
Overall, it's an OKAY job. You won't become rich (unless you open your own shop and for sure not then), but you can make a comfortable living. But it's not easy work.
Start applying for heavy diesel apprenticeships. It's the only mechanical trade that makes money worth writing home about.
I dont think there is a shop where I live that specializes in heavy diesel, do you mean like construction type of diesel?
Best thing you do is learning basic electronics. Learn how CAN-H/L works, learn what the fuck MOST is, and learn how to diagnose and fix faults in these systems. If you can do this, people will hire you regardless of you putting the pads on brakes the wrong way or not.
Learning how to wrench is great, saves money, always gives you work, etc etc. But knowing how to diagnose properly makes you worth your weight in gold.
>What are some of the pros of being a mechanic?
Umm......
>Cons?
Too many to list
>Usually within a few years.
So.....work for free for a few years in the hope of getting a job one day?
Are you high? Or just mental.
I am pretty okay with programming and I heard that a lot of cars are becoming more reliant on computer processing
Would it be a smart idea to get into this field?
Construction machines, bulldozers etc. Is a specialized diesel trade called plant equipment. You also have agriculture and road transport. Depending on where you live one generally pays more than the others. In farming type areas Ag mechanics make huge money during harvest season and the summer, areas with oil and gas or mining plant mechanics get the big money, and road transport mechanics get decent money all year round, but never amazing money. Like there are no truck mechanics making $85 an hour like plant mechanics working in mines are
Datanetworks, electronics, computers, etc etc, are the future. I work at a VAG dealership, and sure, tons of jobs still call for a mechanic. But the amount jobs sent off to the technicians who can diagnose electrical faults beyond the simple ABS sensor, are growing every day. You don't need to specialize, you can do it all. But technician is where the money is at.
Not sure how useful programming is though. The factory deals with those aspects, and I can't tell you what that field is like.
....Shop boys get paid you fucking moron.
How difficult would it be to get into plant/transport mechanic jobs?
Can mostly confirm. CAN is fucking garbage and I HATE dealing with it. Even experienced techs have trouble with some cars and their garbage system.
Go for forklift repair. The pay is great. A little tough to get your foot in the door, but good career.
>How did you get your job as a mechanic?
I'm an accountant. I just graduated college two years ago and I make 96k/yr working at GM.
I have some background in digital electronics so hopefully CAN H/L wouldn't be too hard to learn
How much can I expect to make in forklift repair?
Flexray is becoming more and more prevalent in newer cars, so pick up on that too. It's the same concept as the CAN system, however it's much faster. 10 mbits or something like that. CAN is around 500kbits.
There is also the LIN system, which is just 20kbits.
MOST is optical cables or what it is called in English. If I recall correctly, it should be fairly easy to diagnose and learn how it operates. But since it's technician territory, you should study that also.
Thanks, I'll be sure to read up on those
$35-$55k (high end)
I gotta head out, thanks for the good advice anons :)