how many play with cars for a living or work?

[wickedLT1SS]

pretty much what the title says. how many of you guys work (work as in performance and or mechanic. etc...) with cars for a living? and where did you go to school to get the education to do that? especially the performance guys. when i graduate highschool (june 09) i want to get into performance work. manily LTx and LSx or GM in genreal. and eventually down the line open my own performance shop. the plan as of now is to graduate highschool. go to a tech school for auto mechanics (manily to learn the basics. i know some but not all.) and then branch off into performance work after that. but where do i go to do that? just seeing how many of the guys on here do performance wether it be owning a shop or working for one. and the education you have or went to get to do that.

but if you do anything with cars (body, paint, restoration. etc...) feel free to post.

[Fastbird]

Not for a living, but I have my Line Lock and misc. parts biz as a side gig as well as doing installations on the side. Once I retire from the military (8.5 years and counting) I plan to go full time with a shop.

[Tyler Wheat]

I'm a sleazy car salesman. That count? It's GMC, Cadillac, and Hyundai that I sell new. We have a pretty big used car inventory, too.

[BrianEsser]

I have 5 ASE certifications (going for the rest next summer). Didn't go to a technical school. I've done diagnostics and drivability to heavy line work. Even ran a parts store for 7 years.

I'm saving and hoping I can one day open my own shop. I'd like to build custom conversions (LTX/LSX) and do custom EFI installs etc.

[Ponyhntr]

I'm in the performance industry. I went to a tech school in Ohio that offers a High Performance Degree. I have a Associates Degree in Applied Science with a Major in High Performance Motorsports- I swear, that's what it's called! :laugh:

The school is The University of Northwestern Ohio (www.unoh.edu (http://www.unoh.edu)), and I would HIGHLY recommend it to anyone looking for a good Tech School!

[Tyler Wheat]

I have got a couple of buddies that went up there. They're big roundy round racing guys. When did you graduate?

[Ponyhntr]

I have got a couple of buddies that went up there. They're big roundy round racing guys. When did you graduate?

Yeah, the school is big on roundy round dirt track stuff, but they are pretty good with drag racing also. I graduated in 2002.

[BrianEsser]

I live about a hour away from Northwestern. It's a good technical school.

I also live about 5 minutes from Eldora Speedway owned by Tony Stewart. I can sit on my back porch and listen to them running. :D :metal:

[Tyler Wheat]

Yeah, the school is big on roundy round dirt track stuff, but they are pretty good with drag racing also. I graduated in 2002.

I see. My friends graduated in 2005. They really liked the school up there. I've heard alot better things about that school than WyoTech or UTI. From what I heard from my friends that attended, it was mostly wanna-bes. I almost went up there to watch a race at El Dora with them, but I didn't end up going. Would have been cool though.

[BrianEsser]

Tony Stewart makes it up here often during the summer. My buddies father in-law used to be a sheetmetal guy for one of the Busch teams. He and his family have a ton of pics of them with tony, even having dinner with him. Pretty cool. Tons of racers up here during the Kings Royal.

[Tyler Wheat]

Yeah, he is a hardcore racer, that's for sure. I don't care what anyone says about him, you can't deny that he really has alot of talent. I watched him on the dirt at the Chili Bowl in Tulsa (Scored some skybox tickets with one of the owners). Dude can drive an Outlaw. That's for sure.

[wickedLT1SS]

I'm in the performance industry. I went to a tech school in Ohio that offers a High Performance Degree. I have a Associates Degree in Applied Science with a Major in High Performance Motorsports- I swear, that's what it's called! :laugh:

The school is The University of Northwestern Ohio (www.unoh.edu (http://www.unoh.edu)), and I would HIGHLY recommend it to anyone looking for a good Tech School!


thats pretty much what i wanna do. but i don't want it geared towards racing. i more into street cars and drag racing. not really into the nascar performance.

[Fire67]

I am currently wrenching on any car that comes my way for work. But I am also in the process of building a buddy's '96 TA and a '00 Cobra for someone else. They are both fairly close as far as build progression... With the Cobra being the closest to competion. Just some minor assembly and installation of an Accel DFI gen7 system to go.
I've put together several cars for local people, and have been slowly but surely working towards getting a business started up. The only problem is that there's alot of things that I'm good at, and alot that I like to do... So I need to decide what exactly I would like for the business to specialize in, and what the business is going to do for steady cashflow.

[wickedLT1SS]

i know what i want to do. i want to specialize in LTx/LSx or really anything GM. but im not afraid to wrench on a mustang. but my heart/passion and dream is to work on GM (manily camaro, firebird, corvette etc.....) my only problem is im not sure what kind of education i need to go after. where did you go to school fire67? or did you go to school?

[93_355bird]

i work with cars at a body shop and also work at a late model GM performance shop calld PSI in maryland. specializing in lt and ls motors.

[wickedLT1SS]

i work with cars at a body shop and also work at a late model GM performance shop calld PSI in maryland. specializing in lt and ls motors.


do you have any degrees or diplomas? or did you just end up with the job?

[KissMyWhtSS]

I've always considered cars to be a big hobby of mine, and did not want my employment to interfere with my hobby.

Firstly, I was scared that if I worked on cars all day I wouldn't want to come home and work on mine. I want that to be my freedom, to get away from stuff and wrench on my car alone (or with the help of friends)

Secondly, I figure cars are *ALMOST* too much of an impact on my daily life (another hobby of mine is photography, and 90% of the pictures I take are of cars) and if I was around them all day it's all I'll know.

So I decided that I wanted to work with computers (I'm a sophomore at K-State in Management Information Systems) because it's my 2nd biggest hobby and I'm also really good at it. There's also great job security there.

That's my opinion for my situation, you need to evaluate yours and figure out what you want to do. Any secondary education is a great start to a good future.

[93_355bird]

do you have any degrees or diplomas? or did you just end up with the job?

As of right now no. I took auto body repair for 2 years while in high school, which led me to the job in the body shop as an apprentice. The other shop i had gone to a few times for questions while working on my car and ending up comming by after work to help out on week nights.