The Ageless Mechanic

My neighbor, Jacque Foreman, is graphic artist who enjoys working on cars in her spare time. These days, that’s not so unusual--more than one-third of all women car owners engage in some form of do-it-yourself car maintenance or repair. What is unusual is that Jacque is over 60 years old, and she’s been working on her own cars since the 1960s, an era when far fewer women ventured under the hood.

Jacque is the kind of gal who knows her way around a junkyard. Look in the trunk of her car and you’ll find spare parts, tape, a 2-gallon supply of water for radiator emergencies. Look in her purse and you’ll find tools. (Her most recent purchase, a tiny ratchet, has proven especially handy for the tight confines of her 1986 Toyota Tercel’s engine.) She is, according to her mother-in-law, the kind of woman who considers tools a fine birthday gift.

"You Drive It, You Fix It"

Jacque hasn’t always been a do-it-your-selfer, though. Once upon a time, she used to ask her boyfriend, Bruce, for help whenever something went wrong with her car. "He got tired of that," Jacque says, "so rather than just fixing my car, he started teaching me to fix it myself. His approach was, ‘you drive it, you fix it.’"

Was she annoyed by Bruce’s tough-love attitude? "No, not really," Foreman says. The only thing that bothered her was Bruce’s knack for diagnosing car problems so quickly. "The troublesome part wiggles at him and he finds the answer in minutes," she says. "With me, it just takes longer."

Jacque soon developed a curiosity for cars that has served her well. She recalls one night when Bruce had the engine of his Fiat 600 scattered in pieces on the living-room floor. (This was the early 1960s, shortly after they’d met, and they both drove Fiats.) As long as he was rebuilding the engine, Jacque insisted that he show her how it was done.

Bruce and Jacque have been married for more than 30 years now, and in that time, Jacque has become quite a mechanic in her own right. She still loves small cars, too, though these days, she’s partial to Toyotas, rather that Fiats and MGs.

Sometimes You Win, Sometimes You Lose

Car repair is a science of trial-and-error, and even good mechanics sometimes have bad days. Recently, Jacque found herself stranded on the side of the road.

"It never occurred to me," she says, "that after removing the thermostat, I wouldn't be able to get the radiator working. Tightening the gasket didn't help, and it wouldn't stop leaking--on me, and on the ground."

She ended up hiking to the nearest garage, which was very busy that day. "I politely asked the mechanic if he could tell me where the thermostat on my model was located, since it hadn't been on top as I'd suspected."

In the end, she still wasn’t able to get the car running. "To make matters worse, I was on my way to a Rotary Club meeting. That was one day I broke down and called a towing service."

Jacque, who pens the local Rotary's newsletter, later wrote a piece explaining why she didn't show up for that day's meeting. "I had expected to run in at the last minute telling them how I fixed it," she says. "It didn't turn out that way."

The Two Secrets to Auto Repair

It’s not often, however, that Jacque finds herself stranded. After 30 years of fixing her own cars, she’s learned the two secrets of auto repair--conducting regular maintenance and always being prepared.

These lessons were hammered home by an MG 1100 Jacque used to drive. When the car developed electrical problems, she and Bruce replaced all of the usual suspects--spark plugs, points, distributor cap. Still the problem persisted.

It wasn’t until they removed the distributor cap again and looked very closely that they discovered a tiny fraying on one of the ignition wires.

"Now I replace electrical wires every two years, whether they need it or not," Jacque says. "And I always keep the old wires with me in the back of the car, because sometimes the new parts you buy can be defective."