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To be honest, I'm not interested with messing around with my daily drive, other than checking the fluids there isn't much else I can do with it. We bought the car new last year with free oil changes and it's got as much electronics in it as an F-16 and I'm not monkeying with one of them either. That's not to say I don't enjoy getting my mechanical jones on now and then, I have a 2002 S-60 Volvo as a second car, it runs beautifully and I enjoy working on it because I don't need it every day. So, I think it's a combination of people overwhelmed by the complexity of new cars, and fewer people who are mechanically inclined.
Neighbors can't enforce the HOA CC&Rs in my community. They can complain to the board and the management company, but the it's the management company that is responsible for everything. I wouldn't ever live in an HOA community that wasn't professionally managed by companies that make a living doing this and know when a complaint is a legit complaint and when it's an old man shaking his fist at clouds.
Regardless, as you said, someone doing an hour's worth of work on a Saturday afternoon is no big deal. Someone undertaking a major rebuild project is a big deal. Fair or not, having that kind of thing going on looks bad and is a potential drag on property values. I paid a lot of money for a house in a nice area that looks good when I go out and walk around, and I expect there to not be old cars on jacks or auto parts strewn throughout a yard when I look around.
I agree - I don't want to be looking at that either.
I change my own oil, batteries and other smaller jobs as I have has issue's with dealer shops etc. when they perform these simple tasks along with trying to pad their bill by acting like a whole list of other things need to be done but not really. One time I went in for a $25 oil change and was presented with a $500.00 estimate bill and then had a differential leak because the tech didn't tight the nut down enough when they had no business fooling with my differential.
My girlfriend hopped in her six year old Corolla and discovered the OEM battery had expired. I took her to Pep Boys, we got a replacement battery, she popped the hood and I walked her through the swap (I did the quasi-heavy lifting). An HOA neighbor walked by and thought it was "cool" that my girlfriend was working under the hood.
As far as other homeowners, we had an airline mechanic who used to work on his cars regularly, but other than that I haven't seen many people actually doing anything to their vehicles, and that includes washing them. Far cry from the neighborhood I grew up in several decades ago.
I know hard work bothers a lot of people in society.
Yes, yes it does, and they use bull **** reasoning like "de-valuing property values" as a means to try to control the lives of other people. It's stupid, elitist bull **** of the stinkiest order. MY property values have not dropped due to occasionally working on project cars, and neither has any of my neighbors'. IN fact, they are all still going up since the crash.
Speaking of which, those HOAs didn't do anyone any good when ALL property values dropped due to the banking crash of '07-08. We're all still recovering from that. But your neighbor building a hot rod in his driveway isn't going to make your house worth any less. it's just not, even if you try to sell it at the same time that he's finishing it up.
I would rather have the money to have someone else maintain my cars and still do it myself then to have to work on my cars all the time because I don't have the money to have a mechanic do the work. Either way I always tell my kids, go to school. Get a good education. Learn how to maintain everything you own, but have an income that takes care of it when you don't want to do the work.
Most of the people in my neighborhood are elderly, have late model cars and are not going to invest thousands of dollars in diagnostic equipment or other equipment when the local independent garage does oil/lube and other checks like toping off fluids, checking belts, checking brakes etc etc normally for $18.95, and this month they're running a special for all this service with their coupon for $14.95.
Who in their right mind would be foolish to waste their time doing it themselves when you can get service like that. And you don't have to worry about oil disposal or dirty parts to get rid of and to clean the stains off the floor and wash dirty oily clothes.
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