Car Mechanic Simulator 2014 Tricks and Tips – Steam Solo (2025)

Overview

Some basic tips for those new to CM2014. Updated 1/30/14Thank you to Red Dot Games for the wonderful game!

Introduction

Hello Steam community. Dachshund here and I just wanted to share some tips for playing Mechanic Simulator 2014. The game can be a bit daunting at first if you don’t have a lot of car mechanical knowledge. But if your willing to put in a bit of mental elbow grease you can learn a lot about how mechanical systems of a car are interconnected and have a better understanding of how a modern car works. Though this game is no where near in depth enough to really train you how to actually preform a lot of these repairs. If you don’t know a thing about car mechanics I’d suggest you at least spend a few moments to an hour reading a basic how a car engine works article before you start up so you are not completely lost.

Intro to Menues and Moving around.

If you need some further explanation of the basic game interaction this part if for you. Consider it a refresher of how to get around. The game uses a standard WASD movement setup to move you the mechanic around the garage. The mouse controls the head movement/vision. Left clicking will allow you to access a point in the garage such as a car hub or the lift controls. Escape will bring you out of most menus. Right click can also back you out of some as well. They go over this on your first job in the career but it’s a good refresher.

There are three menus you can access in the game. The first from the escape key is the game options menu. This allows you to save the game and exit, restart a repair from the beginning (a new and welcomed feature for newer mechanics) and return to garage in case you hit the key by accident. Pretty simple.

The next two menus are both accessible from the right mouse button. When freely walking around the garage a right click will bring up four options. Top row/bottom row they are hide/show body and hide show part condition on top. Inventory and repair order on the bottom. The hide shows are useful to newer mechanics.

Hiding the body gives you super special mechanics x-ray vision. Hide/show car part condition is the visual aid that will let you find the problem parts. Some players looking for more of a challenge would rather mouse over the parts based on hunches then seeing every part’s condition all at once. Showing the part’s condition does not automatically show you the condition of every part. You have to determine that yourself by inspecting the parts or running the car through diagnostic tests. The whole car will start grey until you inspect the parts. Once you have figured out a parts condition it will range from a bright green which means new to a bright red which means broken/shot/done. Lime green means not new but still good. Yellow is a 50/50 and orange is still useable but will need to be replaced shortly.

You inventory shows you all the left over parts from previous jobs. Even really bad condition parts will remain behind. You can sell these to a junk yard for some extra money by left clicking on them. I try to keep parts 40% condition or above on hand to use as second hand parts. Some parts can be repaired at the bench which is always useful/cheaper. Finally the repair order option lets you review your repair order, self explanatory. This is also the way you access it to stamp it finished once you are done with the repair.

While accessing a hub on a car (to redefine it a hub is a point where you can access different parts of the car to repair, IE if you want to change a set of brake pads you have to access that wheel. The point where you get into the wheel well I call a hub, because all of the wheel and well related suspension parts are only accessible through that one hub.) the right click menu is only slightly different. The first change is that the option to disassemble/assemble is now the top left most option. This switches you between take the car apart and put it back together modes. The only other option is that your inventory is no longer accessible but instead you have the ability to turn on the part inspection mode which as stated is how you will generally find out how a part is functioning (or not!). That’s it for the menus. I hope that helps you move around in the game better so you can get to repairing those vehicles!

Basic Parts and Systems guide.

Car Hubs/Parts/Systems.

This is a quick guide to what the different parts of the car are as modeled in the game what types of problems they might present as if broken and what hubs they are generally accessed from. I’m not going to be too specific as learning this stuff is the fun of the game but if you don’t know some of this stuff it can be daunting.

A car has four wheels, each of those is a hub in this game. In every hub you’ll find that wheel’s brake system. You’ll also have two parts of the suspension. An axle of some sort that connects the wheel to the part of the engine that will turn it, as well as the shock system. Which allows the wheels to “float” up and down as you go over bumps in order to not jostle the car and it’s occupants like a whirl-o-gig. Think of this part of the car as the hands/feet arms legs of the car.

The biggest hub is the engine, accessible from the hood. Here is the heart and all the other main “organs” of the car.

The electrical system is composed of the battery, a starter, ignition wires and an ignition unit and the spark plugs. These are scattered around the engine block mostly on the top side.

The lungs of the car are it’s air filter. The flow tube which feeds the air into the engine the flow meter which controls how much air is let in. This is found on the right side of the car on top. A part of this system is the exhaust which takes the dirty air out of the engine and spits it out the back, the manifold which vacuums it out and spits it out through a series of filters commonly known as mufflers. The manifold aspect is accessible from the bottom of the engine block in the front. The muffles are piping are in the underside of the car and need to be accessed from there.

The car’s “blood” it’s oil is also located here. There is a filter which helps keep the oil cleaner for longer, an oil pan where the oil sits and the dip stick to check oil levels. You will commonly access this to do an oil change or change the filter. There is no oil pan repair modeled in the game at this time.

The last main system in the front of the car is the drive train. Modeled in two main parts. The belts or “Timing” system and the gears. The belts are a series of a few belts and the mechanical block and tackles that keep them spinning and not just sliding off the engine. Located on the side of the engine block the system generally includes two belts, a water pump, several tensioners that hold them all tight and together and the alternator which takes the motion of the belts and uses it like a hand crank to generate a turbine of electricity to recharge the battery while the car is running.

The gear system is one big unit in the game. Comprising of a gear box, period. To the side of the gear box but squished against the engine block between the block and the gear box is the clutch. The clutch is the mechanism that changes gears like CD’s in a car or records in a jute box. That’s it for the engine block as is currently modeled in the game and what is accessible from the hood.

The suspension is much tougher for me to go into details about. It’s the complete skeleton of the car. Metal rods and plates that hold all the parts in the frame and together. Just like in the human body where multiple pieces meet there is usually a joint. Many joints have a pad that act like the cartilage to keep them from rubbing together. Most of the suspension can be accessed from either the wheel hubs or from the under carriage by putting the car on lift. Under the tips section see conducting a complete diagnostic for tips on how to get the best view of the parts of the suspension.

In the rear of the car the only real part that isn’t covered by the wheel or the suspension units is the fuel tank. The tank it’s self is not yet interact-able but the fuel filter and pump are. The pump sucks the fuel out of the tank it passes it through the filter which gets out as much impurities as it can then it goes through mini pipes called fuel lines like veins to the engine block for consumption by the engine. This section has to be accessed from the lift as well as it is under the car.

The driver seat is accessible to run electronic tests or for chip tunning later in the game, no interior repairs are modeled at this time.

The underside of the car has two hubs, the suspension hub which is the undercarriage and the engine hub which lets you get at the bottom of the engine parts as well as the suspension parts that run into the bottom of the engine block.

That’s really it for a general overview of what the part systems are, what they generally do and where to get at them from.

Tips & Tricks

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD READ THE REPAIR ORDER! This one is simple. If the repair order says replace all the brake pads then that is what you do. Many missions in the career and even in open play give you specific instructions about the repairs that the customer wants done.

Also to be obtained from the repair order is a description of the problem. Some times they aren’t very helpful but sometimes they really are. Even in missions where the customer says just find the problem a description of the problem can be very helpful. Along those same lines please check the payment value for the job. If the job is going to pay $300 then you will probably not need a $1500 part to get the job done. (There is one exception to this. There is a mission with in the first few of obtaining the second level garage where you have to lay out about 4-5K for only a 2K payment, you make it up a few missions later so don’t fret.)

Eliminate systems based on the reported problem. Car won’t start? Probably not the bushings in the suspension. While many systems in a complicated machine like a modern car are interrelated there are general classifications of car systems. The suspension has nothing to do with making the car “go” in a propulsion sense. The brake pads don’t effect the starter etc. So when you are presented with a problem as yourself what systems could be related to that part of the way a car works. Car won’t start? Check the battery, starter, ignition system (wires, spark plugs, main assembly). Maybe the oil and air filters. Maybe a fuel problem? But I’ll bet you the suspension spring is not the issue, get it?

It doesn’t hurt to look around. Even if you play with out the part condition showing all the time you have to inspect parts. The game doesn’t allow us to hear and feel or even see problems the way a real mechanic can. So we have to rely on the visual aids the game gives us. Yes, some parts look degraded when they are in low condition, some might not be so obvious. If your not sure what the problem is it’ll take time but disassemble a system and inspect the parts conditions. It’s free to do that, which brings me to my next point.

Until you locate the problem don’t order parts! Unless you like running your garage in the red there is no need to order a part until you’ve found out which part(s) need replacing. Ordering extra parts is fine in the real world, a real mechanic shop goes through oil and spark plugs. You however do not. Some parts are okay boo boo’s because they are cheap. If you make that mistake with a thousand dollar part it’ll catch up to you.

Leave some in the bank. You have to pay for parts until the job is done, so leave a few grand in the bank at all times to pay for parts!

Develop a system. For instance if you are replacing calipers start with the driver front, then work passenger front, passenger back etc until you’ve made it around the car. Nothing is more frustrating than realizing you forgot to replace/check a part and having to take the whole wheel assembly off again. Also this can lead to you believing that you fixed the wrong thing.

Use the Bench. Not every part is repairable but those that are will save you a lot more money on a job then buying a new part. Unless the customer specifically asks to replace a part with a new one. Also try to repair parts from previous jobs, if you can you might be able to reuse that part down the road and save yourself some money.

Understand that every part is visible, but not all are accessible. Almost every part that is showing can be interacted with. But not always from the point of entry you choose. You can inspect the muffler, but not from a wheel well. You have to put the car up and look at the under carriage if you want to inspect or assemble/disassemble it. That just takes time to learn what parts connect from which access hubs. Be patient. Also understand that to get to some parts you will have to remove unrelated parts that are blocking others.

Run a compete Diagnostic. If you are in the second garage or better you can completely inspect the car by running it through the PATH test, and doing a drive test. Once that is done the only parts that need inspecting are the Timing system, the ignition system, the oil and air filter system, and the fuel system. You can also plug the car in to the OBD reader in the driver side compartment, which will give you some part info. By that point almost the entire car can have it’s part conditions known to you. This system is thorough but not fun if you like to problem solve the issue. It’s a good last resort though if your stuck on a repair. Even in the first garage a driving test plus visual inspection can give you most of the parts conditions. ( I am working on a video of this process so you all can see please be patient my screen capture skills aren’t very good as I haven’t done it before.)

Hope these tips help. Happy repairs! ~Dachshund

References

How Engines Work:

Internal Combustion Wiki[en.wikipedia.org]

Animagraffs[animagraffs.com]

How Engines Work[auto.howstuffworks.com]

Other Guides:

Guide by Mytrix

Game Publisher’s Site

Red Dot Games[reddotgames.pl]

Car Mechanic Simulator 2014 Tricks and Tips – Steam Solo (2025)
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