You'd be a good guy to have around. I have a friend who is like you. My windshield wipers stopped working and he helped me put in a new mechanism. The whole arm setup had to be replaced. Sometimes when you rip something apart, you want to track down the engineer that designed it and share a few thoughts. I dabble in small repairs. We had an absolutely bizarre issue on a road trip a few years back where the magnetic lock that released the key wouldn't disengage (it's an issue on Subarus from a certain year). It's easy enough to work around for the short term because you can just disconnect the battery. But before people get too overwhelmed or confused, I reassure them by saying that if you focus on the oil and the coolant, you'll prevent about 95% of the catastrophic problems.

Oh, I prefer manuals too, but these days I just look for cheap and there are fewer manuals available.