I don't know anything about cars, besides components like

>>16548001
>How long will it take me to reach a normie understanding
you already have a normie understanding of how a car works

>I need a linear start and finish point for the basics
Not really possible.

How I leaned about cars when I was young was reading build thread on forums. Just go to google and search [car you are interested in] build thread. It will have pictures and a description of what it going on in the pictures. That way you will familiarize yourself with the parts and general modding practices. As for learning. Anything that you don't know or understand just google it. there is a wiki page or other articles for just about everything.

Ex normalfag here what u have to do is autismo study cars and engine tear downs on the jewtewb and games like automation and street legal racing redline taught me so much then go buy a shitbox and a bunch of tools and go nuts.

Worked for me

I barley knew anything about cars 3 years ago, what i did was start with learning how an engine works. Then i watched youtube videos of engineers explaining different functions of a car, and then i moved on to watching cringey mighty car mod videos. After that i ended up here just constantly making fun of FWD, automatic cars, and miatas.

>>16548001
Nothing beats experience. So when you can buy a shitty car you dont need to depend on. Look up on google whats up and go from their.
And remember to use common sense. Sometimes a problem that looks bad and expensive could be just a screw that needs to be tightened

>>16548288
>this
I can't stress enough on how stupid people do unecessary fixes on their car when it was just a small problem

For example

>changing your battery when its just a blown fuse

Knowledge goes a long way and it saves tons of money