My apprenticeship was cut short, by a Mech Eng Degree. However my shop floor secondments and 6 months in the apprentice training school left me with enough knowledge to know I don't like getting my hands dirty. However as there is very little I cannot do mechanically I just need to be encouraged to do it.
Cars/Trucks are not a problem for me. I started helping my dad do body swaps from about the age of 8yrs old. By the age of 16 I was working as a mechanic for 2 racing teams on Chevron Formula Atlantic, Formula 5000 and B31s.
My favorite secondment whilst training was a small unit call teardown. That is literally what we did. Take a competitors vehicle, and tear it down to each individual component. Then the engineering bit. What is it made of?, how does it work?, why did they do it that way?, how does it go together?. Putting it back together was the best part. Now if I told you that we had done this with hired vehicles
Because the family business was consulting automotive engineering I had plenty of workshop experience. I and my brothers had saturday and holiday jobs in local body shops etc. I was doing full resprays and new body panels for the guys at college to subsidise my income etc.
Strange then when I still do all the work on my kids cars, that I had a little trepidation when it came to working on my bike. But once overcome and confidence gained I no longer have any issues as to my abilities. Now if only I had access to the resources I had as a kid.