I like many other people who started working on their own vehicles without the help of anyone else was scared to death of messing something up or breaking something only to be left stranding there with no way to get to the parts store or no idea how to start a project. For all the new guys that are just starting out working on their own vehicles try going to a pull-it yourself auto salvage. pay your way in and bring some tools find a vehicle like yours and start pulling whatever it is you need to replace even if your not going to be walking out with it (just don't hack things up and break stuff just because you can. some of us may want those parts). I've found this very helpful in my years of working on my own vehicles. There may not be a write-up on here for what your doing with helpful tricks but you can get a good idea of what your in for and what to be careful not to pry on to hard. Hope this helps some of you young guys.

 

Wear gloves. You don't want tetanus.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetanus

 

A Factory Service Manual helps.

But good advice. A three-dimensional FSM.

It would help even more if you didn't live in the snow belt where you'd have to dig through 15 inches of snow, in 15 degrees below zero, just to flip through the pages of that 3D FSM.