A group of women crouched under a vehicle lift inside the Momentum Motorsports garage, watching as thick, dark motor oil streamed from an older model Toyota RAV4 into a drain pan. Some took notes on their phones while others looked intently at the SUV’s undercarriage as the group learned a new skill many had never attempted before.
“Once you know what you’re doing, it’s a 20-minute job,” Abbie Guard, the instructor for the oil change class, told the group.
For vehicle owners willing to get their hands dirty, or looking to skip pricey auto shop repair bills, Momentum Motorsports, 3906 S. Third St., provides customers access to professional-grade mechanic tools, workspace in the garage, and assistance, if desired, to perform their own vehicle maintenance.
But the community garage isn’t just for those with years of mechanic experience. Momentum Motorsports emphasizes education, with founder Nick Pirog saying, “the art of auto mechanics isn’t being taught like it once was.” His hope in founding the space was to create a beginner-friendly garage where “all walks of life” can get under the hood and work on their vehicles.
And as the price of vehicle maintenance and repair has continued to skyrocket, hitting a 10-year average monthly high in July of roughly $461, more people are turning to alternative methods for taking care of their vehicles.
That was on display one evening in late August when a small group of women gathered at the DIY garage and learned how to change engine oil in a class taught by Momentum Motorsports and the Louisville Tool Library.
For most attendees, the concept of opening the hood of a car was new, much less crawling under the car, removing the oil pan and filter and then installing a new filter.
By the end of the free class, though, the group learned the skills to change their vehicles’ oil at a lower cost than auto shops typically charge and gained more confidence in working with their hands.
“We empower people to fix their own vehicles and to ask questions, to actually put the tools in their hand, and to repair the vehicle at a fraction of the cost of anywhere else,” Pirog, a professional mechanic by trade, told The Courier Journal.
Building Confidence at a DIY Auto Garage
Pirog started Momentum Motorsports in 2019, after years of working as a tank mechanic in the U.S. military and then as a car mechanic at dealerships.
When debating what type of auto garage he wanted to open — a traditional one where customers drop off their vehicles to be fixed or a community-style garage where people can fix up their own cars — he decided to take the DIY approach because he felt there was a need in the community.
“Unless you’re fortunate to be a homeowner, there’s no real place to work on your car,” Pirog said. “If you drive by a Walmart at midnight, you’ll see people working on their cars. You’ll see people at AutoZone pulling a transmission out because there’s really nowhere to do it.”
Over the past seven years, Pirog’s garage has offered youth classes to teach kids mechanic skills and, more recently, partnered with community organizations such as the Louisville Tool Library to teach adult classes. It remains one of the area’s only resources for DIYers to tune up their cars.
It’s become a place where people like Alison Crossett, who works as a baker, feel comfortable coming to learn more hands-on skills.
“It’s a multi-thousand-dollar vehicle that you’ve invested in, so it’s kind of scary to touch,” Crossett said during the oil change class. “Especially when you’re taking off bolts and unscrewing things and stuff like that, you just don’t want to mess it up. But now I feel great. I feel confident and ready to go do it.”
Andrea Schultz, an automotive engineer who works at Ford, is mechanically inclined and has done some of her own auto work before, such as changing her brake pads. But she had never changed her own oil and was looking for a space to learn how when she heard about Momentum Motorsports.
“I definitely feel a lot more confident being in the space now,” Schultz said. “I learned that a lot of people are just wanting to know more about their cars. Seeing a group of women being here to learn together, the openness from the garage, and just how laid back the thing was being taught today, I think that just really helped with the confidence.”
By the end of the night, the class participants could differentiate between synthetic and conventional oil, knew where to find the dipstick and how to check the oil level, and knew how to use a filter wrench.
For Guard, the teacher leading the auto repair class, the satisfaction of watching the group go from timid to curious and comfortable took her back to the early days of her own DIY journey.
In 2020, she was living in an old school bus traveling the country with friends when the alternator went out and there wasn’t much cash to spare. Guard said she was fortunate that a stranger was able to teach her how to repair it on her own.
“It’s just been a journey since then of realizing, this isn’t rocket science,” Guard said. “It’s sometimes difficult, but it’s not something that I couldn’t just learn how to do.”
And now, when she isn’t working her jobs at REI, as an organic vegetable farmer or as a yoga teacher, she is sharing her six years of experience working on vehicles with others to show them it’s doable.
“I think an oil change is a really important step for people in kind of breaking through that fear barrier of cars are really important and it seems really complicated, and if you break something, that would be financially devastating, and things like that,” Guard said. “I think people get really stressed and they get really scared, but I think it’s really empowering for people to be like, ‘I did this with my own two hands.’”
How Fixing Your Car at a DIY Garage Can Save You Money
In addition to serving as a place where people can take ownership of vehicle repairs and maintenance, Momentum Motorsports also offers a cheaper route for regular upkeep.
The facility charges $40 per hour, or $215 for an eight-hour day, to use the garage, which is outfitted with “most every tool ever produced,” Pirog said. On top of that, the shop has many other supplies and will order parts customers may need at the discounted shop price.
“Having a car is giving you sovereignty in a city like Louisville, where you need it to get to work and get to school,” said Shelby Rodeffar, a founding volunteer at the Louisville Tool Library, a tool lending service that recently partnered with Momentum Motorsports to host the oil change class. “Having a dependable car is a big deal for people.”
And being able to repair that car, at an affordable rate, is just as important. Guard estimates she’s saved thousands of dollars in the past few months by doing some larger repair projects at Momentum Motorsports instead of taking them to a repair shop.
“Little things we can do that restore people having the power to control their situation, to improve their situation, benefits everybody,” Rodeffar said of the garage. “Even if they don’t have money necessarily to do things, if they have skills and they have time, they can kind of compensate for money getting tighter.”
Pirog said unlike a traditional mechanic shop that is looking to make a profit on each vehicle service, his garage isn’t focused on making money that way, which allows his seven-person team to spend time with customers, engaging and working toward a repair that is both achievable for the owner to do on their own and affordable.
“In our modern society, if you’re not already flush with cash and all of a sudden you need to pay $1,200 for a repair, maybe if you could do it yourself, it would cost half of that, maybe it would cost a fourth of that,” Guard said. “To some extent, it can change someone’s world to be able to save that money.”
Momentum Motorsports, 3906 S. Third St., is open Saturday, Sunday and Monday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Thursday and Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. It is closed Tuesday and Wednesday. Find more information about classes at momentumky.com.
Contact Business Reporter Olivia Evans at [email protected] or at 502-582-4144.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: How this DIY garage helps drivers save money on car repairs
Reporting by Olivia Evans, Louisville Courier Journal / Louisville Courier Journal
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