Quote Originally Posted by Crankin View Post
I'd like to chime in and say it is not exactly easy for some of us to "look at something and see how it works."
It is a skill. You *can* learn if you want to. And it's ok to not want to . It took years of taking every single math class at least twice for me to work my way up to calculus, but I did it. Mechanical stuff was easier since both of my parents are very mechanically inclined, so there were always things to play with.

If you want to start picking up mechanical ability, I'd start with something small. Screws are a good place to start. Many parts of a bike are held together with screws of some kind, so if you can screw and unscrew, you can make adjustments. If you want something safe to practice on, I'd start with a couple soft steel screws and hex nuts. Soft steel is easy to damage which is *exactly* what you want for learning. You want to learn the feel of when the threads (that spiral engraved on the screw) are hooked up right to the nut... and you also want to know what it feels like when you're stripping a screw. If you can tell the difference between those two, it makes a *lot* of mechanical work doable. You want the difference between "works" and "it's stripping" to be automatic.

One of the big steps for me in doing mechanical work was learning to trust myself. Sometimes, stuff really is put together wrong. I'll feel a screw stripping, or I can tell the wrong kind of screw was forced in, and I'll feel very uncertain. Usually, it was done wrong in the first place and I didn't do anything wrong. (there are a lot of bad mechanics out there, and the more you learn to do, the more you'll run into bad work)

And no, I still can't work a remote. But if you want a car radiator changed, I can do it! I won't remember the sequence without looking at a Chilton's manual for every step, but I can do the steps. Even the best machinists and mechanics I know have to check the directions, which is why there are so many repair manuals.