How can I be more mechanically minded, lets see, take one YC, a badly rotted SV, and a garage of doom. Spend many a day with him boring you to death with the ins and outs of why certain procedures are done in specific ways, get down and dirty and hand him many objects of destruction as he belts the carp out of your prized possession.
Then have the cheeky bugger bring you your brake calipers and make you clean and rebuild them yourself, and your left standing with two nasty brake calipers, a tub of red rubber grease and some basic info of what to do next!
Still only slightly mechanically minded, but slightly is much more than none at all these days, and I can almost deal with the boring bits! He is a great teacher, and much better in my quest for help when things break. Others have just turned and said, you've got a Haynes manual, use it...even though they know exactly what to do, and can help.