Nuts ‘N’ Bolts…

In an occasional series of gaming posts today I’m going to look at Car Mechanic Simulator 2021. This may seem an odd choice given the age of the game and that a new version is timetabled for release later this year. However it is a £20 game that regularly goes on sale for £2-3 on Steam and its age doesn’t reduce the fun of playing. The other objective of this series is to introduce games to people who want something that doesn’t require the loan of one of NASA’s computers to play and this game will run on a ‘Potato’ 😅

Although I have done an intro to this game before, that was a long time ago – I’m aware that my readership has changed a lot since then and for many it will be new, so let’s get started…

The game revolves around repairing vehicles through Story jobs and Normal jobs in order to expand your toolset, garage and skills. As you improve the latter, you will become able to go to Auctions, Barns and the Scrapyard to buy vehicles and rebuild them to showroom condition. Maybe more on that in another post.

For this post I’m going to run you through the first ‘Story Job’ as it was quite well designed as an intro for new players…

…The text on the right gives a brief resume of how the job came about. Once I have accepted it I’m able to view the work that is required…

…This being the first job it spells everything out for you. Later on jobs won’t tell you what parts are faulty, you’ll need to work that out for yourself but for now the only real question is which brake pads need changing. On this older car they can only be the front ones as it has drums at the back but on some cars you’ll need to inspect the parts to be certain.

The first thing is to raise the car on the lifter and drain the oil before removing the oil filter – If you don’t drain the oil you can expect to be paying a clean-up fine! Then we can inspect the parts should we so wish – The inspection option can be found on a control wheel which you will access for all activities within the game using the mouse and keyboard…

…In this case I have inspected the right-front wheel and can see that most of this is worn but ok from the owners point of view…

…You will usually work to the car owner’s requirements – If they don’t want it fixed, you don’t change it or fix it. In this case, although the tyre is passable, the owner wants it changed so I’ll do that.

Replacement parts are purchased through the computer on a desk in the garage…

…though later in the game you can unlock the use of a handheld to save you walking away from the car you’re working on.

Lets get the job done! Here’s the front brake pads going on the LH side…

When buying the tyres, make sure you get the right type, rim size, width and profile…

…For work like this and especially when you’re changing parts on an engine it’s useful to note things down with pen and paper using a suitable code that you’ll be able to understand because putting a replacement part in the wrong place will prevent the job being completed until everything has been correctly located. Let’s put the replacement tyres on the wheels…

…After which we’ll balance them before fitting to the car…

…At this stage I’ve completed all the tasks that needed to be done under the car. Time to do the things that have to be done under the hood…

…That air-filter is in a sorry state😅 To complete the work I need to replace the Oil that was drained…

Finally, I move on to the Other Tasks…

…I’ll drain the brakes and power steering using the drain tool which is accessed through the control wheel’s tools section…

…Then top everything up and we’re done!…

…That’s the first job and it’s made us around 900 credits profit. We’ve earned our first upgrade point and you can spend that via one of the tools trays dotted around the garage. I suggest you spend that first one on getting a discount on your parts…

…and I suggest spending some cash on adding to your tools – The Multimeter is a good starting point…

Bigger and more complicated jobs will follow. Many will not identify what parts are faulty so you will need the test tools and often a degree of experience / guesswork to identify what part is causing the symptoms in the job notes. One of the worst things you can find in a customer’s report is ‘Ticking noise from the engine bay’ 😅

You have the use of a test track straight away which will come in handy for handling issues in the early game. Later you’ll be able to add a test facility to your garage too. Try to do quite a few ordinary jobs as these will boost your bank balance and allow you to buy expansions that you will need for some story jobs above level 10 and concentrate on upgrading your repair skills as you will need these too!

Some time down the road if you’ve stuck with it you’ll be buying and restoring old cars…