At 50 my wife told me she wanted to learn how to work on our seco d and third Gen prius. 3 years later she is the queen of brakes and has replaced an exhaust as well as a variety of other minor stuff we needed done. Doing some more serious work and it dawned on me we have a "school of hard knocks" 15 min from the house. She is now a proud member of our local pull n pay yard and it's become her version of disney world. We take a trip to get what we feel comfortable with second hand used and she learns how to remove and replace the parts we an on working on without the fear of "i might break it" on our cars doing the work "blind" If you want to tackle some more "serious" repairs I recommend going and buying a hose or something as the excuse at the counter for your learning trip. Just remember if you don't reattach your "learning part" put it in the cab of the car
We had a wrecker yard nearby. They were pushed out by the city, to be replaced by an over-priced park-and-ride lot, that's got a smattering of cars, any weekday.
Disneyland is a lot happier place than an automobile morgue... But then again, I don't know your wife that well.
