well Wayne i've never done any uh auto repairs myself at all i mean i may have screwed in a little screw that looked like it was falling out on the door or something but uh i personally haven't done anything maybe
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i've uh changed wiper wiper blades or something but i have noticed since uh i got married that my husband
he hates to do auto repairs but he would rather do them himself than than to pay someone else i guess he can't make himself pay someone to do the repairs when he knows he knows how to do it
and to do it so he he hates the time that he takes but he has changed um
the brakes and he has done all of the tune-ups and the things like that and recently he changed the steering mechanism in our car
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i was really impressed with that we had to have it to get the car inspected it wouldn't pass inspection and
and so he priced around and everyone wanted several hundred dollars for it so he thought well i can get one in a junkyard for like fifty dollars which he did and then
he did it and i so i guess uh he's been pretty good about keeping our cars up what uh what's your experience been like
well i uh i
have a long experience with cars i uh when i was younger uh my brother had a Corvette and i bought a Corvette
when you have a Corvette you more or less do all the work and i've done everything from build the motor from the uh you know the bare block on up
and i i'm the same way as your husband is when it comes to my car i hate to go pay somebody good money
you know i hate to pay somebody twenty five dollars an hour for something i can do myself it just to me it makes absolutely no economic sense to do that in fact i um just this past weekend put new plugs in both uh my car an my wife's car
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right
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and so i uh
i pretty much try to troubleshoot and do everything i can do myself but i've i've gotten to the point in my life um you know i just crept over forty years old where
i don't want to crawl underneath the car anymore i mean it's uh
that makes sense
i don't know whether i've i've just reached a point you know it's it's real rough in the winter time
huh yes
and uh
and so i try to make sure that uh by the time fall runs around because we actually have winters here on the east coast um that uh i have you know the car's in pretty good shape enough to last through the winter
right
and uh then spring time i usually end up giving them uh a uh tune-up and make sure that they're running well and uh
yeah it's like i had the muffler go out on my on my car shortly before it was required to go in Maryland they have uh emission tests
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and you're required to get your car to go through the emission test well my muffler of course starting going bad right before i was supposed to go to the emission test so you know i had to do that job and of course that was back in December when it's nice and cold outside
yes i'm sure it was
but the thing was that i could do the job myself i mean the parts cost me
oh roughly a hundred dollars um if i'd taken it someplace to have it done it was going to be three hundred twenty five
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right
now like who's got that extra two and a quarter i know i don't so
yeah well that's exactly the way he feels is that
he really hates to spend the time it takes a lot of time if he if he thinks it's going to be two hours it's four if you know whatever it always takes him twice as long but then when he's finished he's he always says well now you owe me
three hundred dollars and then he thinks that he has the money that that he can spend on something and he hasn't given it to someone else so he gets some satisfaction out of that although
yeah
generally i think he he does not look forward to or anticipate there's some people that enjoy tinkering around on cars there's a lot of people and he just isn't one of them
yeah i uh i don't mind it um there was a time when i had my Corvette i mean of course i loved it um
but i've you know i've got other interests now and there's a lot other more important things i think i should be doing with my time
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and i have the same problem i mean you can tell him from me but it doesn't matter i mean i've i've had greasy fingernails for years and it still takes me twice as long as i think it's going to take to do the job
yeah
so but think i think the difference is that uh when you own the car you take more care in what you're doing
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and you want to make sure that it's done right and put back together right and
you know i've i've in the past i've had brake jobs done by someone that when i went back and
and looked at it some months later i'd find something drastically wrong with it
right
you know like a spring that was put in incorrectly which could have resulted in brakes failing and me having an accident you know those kind of things and when you have a vehicle that's being used by you know other members of your family you know you don't want
right
that kind of a situation to come up
no
and it's very very difficult to find a mechanic these days that you can trust i only have one guy that i know that i trust to work on my car and uh he's about uh sixty miles from here
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and so it and if i have something that's really major that i can't handle or feel i don't have the time to handle i'll take it to him to do it
right you know that it's uh really has a bad reputation is to feel that that people in general feel and have have rightly so i think been cheated many times and um
uh-huh yes
and well i know once when we had a we usually round inspection time we find out there's something wrong with our car but um once the muffler needed to be changed and uh
he had looked at it himself and but we saw a commercial for like fourteen or twenty dollars or something for a change he said that's really really good so he went in and uh but when
they quoted him a price they really wanted fifty or something anyway but the car that the muffler people had um my at least my husband felt that they had damaged the muffler
further you know they had punctured a big hole in it when it really could have just been patched or whatever and so since then i don't think he's ever even seriously considered a you know any kind of job he thought he could do himself
uh-huh
but i know from his childhood he says his father always buys and restores cars just as entertainment i guess and um so Kelly growing up he
uh-huh
he felt like that that was a good way on Saturday's that he developed a good relationship with his father
uh-huh
and so he used they used car repairs kind of as a way to have uh you know something that they did together
yeah
and he thought that turned out pretty good because it you know it helped him to understand and be functional now and it helped him to have a close relationship so
that's one one way he looked at it
yeah that's probably uh
uh something that uh
is is you know is good for both of them i know that uh my older son i could never get him interested in cars and i couldn't you know i just like you know you sure you're a boy i mean your not interested in cars i mean he he just
would not have anything to do with them and uh later on and uh like when he you know grew up got out of the house and got his own car um
he didn't know how to do anything to it i mean absolutely nothing i mean he couldn't even check the oil i mean that's that's how uninformed he was and disinterested
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and i guess there are some people out there like that um you know i always thought maybe you know if he took more of an interest and you know what i was doing and maybe we could have communicated better
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but uh yeah i i think that's great
yeah it didn't always work well i felt um i feel like i could myself do some things
but that i have enough responsibility that if i have someone like my father when i was living at home and my husband
that's willing to do it i go ahead and let them do it i don't feel the need to um
you know be a feminist on that issue and say i can take care of my own things i'm i'm happy to let them run run the cars because i have so many other responsibilities that um
so i haven't tried to do a lot myself
uh i i trained my uh my wife in the house in in doing things in fact uh when i uh first transferred down to uh Texas Instruments back in nineteen eighty seven um
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uh when i left here uh she had to change a set of plugs in the car because she was up here for a month or so after i was
uh-huh
and uh it was an interesting experience for her i mean she'd always assisted me and done some other things but for her to actually get in there and do it herself it was uh it was something a little different
hum
it's a good experience it helps you feel i think comfortable with your car and feel like it's
not so scary if um you're driving it and you might get stranded somewhere that you might you think well i've i've been under that hood and i know what's going on but
uh yeah
yeah i think it's important that everyone know you know basically how how the darn engine works it helps you figure out what's wrong with it you know i've i've been out with my sister before when
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you know her car died on the highway and i happened to be with her and managed to get her to the other side of the road because it was dark and all
