INFO SESSION RECORDING: https://youtu.be/5wNeQzJ2WiE

By the time you turn 50, you'd have spent around 2 years of your life traveling in a vehicle.

Despite spending years in a metal cabin at high speeds, how much do you understand about the propelling mechanics of the very object responsible for your life's day-to-day transportation? What if your car breaks down amidst unfavorable conditions? You could bring the car to the mechanic, but after some gibberish, they quote you a whopping 5 grand. Insurance might be a good bet to cover the expenses, but you don't know how to file a persuasive claim. Knowledge of your car’s inner workings could be the difference between a happy road trip and a 6-hour wait.

But that's assuming you have a car in the first place. If you're interested in buying or leasing a car, what are your options? What do you have to watch out for? How do you register your car and apply for insurance?

In a world where cars are so important, understanding their components, economics, and bureaucratic structures are crucial to an adult's life. Throughout this course, we will be introducing and diagnosing a variety of different vehicle issues. We will use deductive reasoning and our knowledge of each affected parts' function to arrive at likely DIY solutions for common issues like flat tires, broken bushings, and spark plugs, and major issues like transmission failures, misfires, timing belts, etc. We will also cover non-DIY repairs, or auto shops, as our evaluations of auto shops based on factors like reputation, pricing, and location are essential to protecting ourselves from scams and dishonest mechanics. We will then examine the economics of automobiles; buying, selling, and leasing from dealerships or third-parties, and how to take the necessary steps to ensure ease of mind while driving down the road (i.e registration, smogs, insurance, crash aftermaths, and titles). Finally, we will take a look at the world of motorsports and the specific ideas and implementations that make different types of race cars so dominant in their environments. This section will cover World Rally Cars, NASCAR, F1, Le Man Prototypes, and Grand Touring vehicles.

We hope that through a semester together, you can familiarize yourself with the vehicles our lives are so intertwined with. But most importantly, we want to create a car community of friends that will last much longer than our years at UC Berkeley. We sincerely hope you can join us for the Spring 2023 instance of "DIY Car Repair and the Auto Industry”.

Class will be Thursdays from 6 - 8 PM in Cheit C330.

Please refer to our syllabus here for details on class policies: https://tinyurl.com/DIYCarSyllabus

The application for this course will be due on Jan 31th @ 11:59 PM, and is linked below. Late add/drop fees are waived for this decal.