Good Advice and Best Practices

[AmoryBlaine]

Just my two cent here, from a humble novice, who has more automotive interest than experience and know-how. First off my cred's- I've changed oil, changed transmission fluid, changed brake fluid (did not bleed the lines), changed coolant, changed spark plugs and wires, rotated tires in my driveway, even changed a water pump on an 85 Tercel, and an alternator on a 2000 Accent, each of which probably took 4 or 5 times longer than most people reading this. So take my best practice tip with the proverbial "grain of salt".

For example, say you want to change your plugs, the originals are NGK iridium, but you want to know if Bosch is ok, and if platinums are good enough. Go ahead and ask here, take in what people say, have fun with it, then go verify. Gather information from multiple sources, just as the engineers do, not just one. Then make an informed decision based on multiple user reviews, actual expert articles from credible sources, and certainly your owners manual.

Although my recommended method has only anecdotal evidence, this has worked for me regarding the above. Maybe it will work for you too, but don't take my word for it, why would you do that? Have you seen my meager automotive credentials mentioned above?

However, most people probably do this already, and don't need me to tell them.

 

[raytseng]

The problem is I bet your of "multiple sources" is just using google and searching on the internet.
It's really common for companies to spend money on internet advertising and pay people to review or just spend on raising their internet profile. Unfortunately, the flattening of the internet makes it easy, perhaps too easy for ordinary joe to look credible, plus combined with the network effect drives the to the top.
Often the "experts" or "professionals" on the internet are only because they are paid to be an "expert".
The next factor is because it's so much cheaper or effective to pay for exposure, true "experts" lose their revenue stream and either have to relax their standards or just drop out altogether and get replaced by someone else.


I think you should just prioritize your info source perhaps 75% plus from your manufacturer and service manual or equivilant if you go with a 3rd party, perhaps some from other owners in your specific car's enthusiast forum.
If you want to give weight to the rest of the "sources" from what you find using google, that's fine, but perhaps only to things that you doesn't matter too much. If you didn't pay for the info, you got exactly what you pay for.

 

[JC1]

What I've found is that when you are first starting to repair cars yourself you think you know stuff. Most of us probably started way before the internet was a dream.

I didn't know much, but I was hungry to learn and even made mistakes, I learned plenty from that experience.

These days I've learned, when I need to do a repair and I've never done it before, there's a ton of information out there to help you out.

Unfortunately that information doesn't pop out at you from Google a lot of times, you need to do a lot of searching and collect those links and save those tips for when you're ready to tackle the repair.

There is a lot of information that you take with a grain of salt, too many people don't do that.

Other people post a problem and expect to get a diagnosis and resolution ASAP, which normally isn't going to happen.

Fortunately there are some excellent members on this site that have helped me a few times, which I am grateful for.

 

[HerrStig]

When working on old cars or bikes it's best to remember that oil technology, for example, has changed a lot since the manual was written.