The trick to plumbing is to start with something that won't deny your family running water if you fuck up. Plumbing, at least within the limits of "weekend handyman", is pretty simple. You also have to not be a dumbass about it. I work with a guy who spent his entire weekend changing out two toilets and replacing the compression fittings under the sink with solder fittings. Then he bitched about how he'd barked the shit out of his knuckles and burned his hands with the torch.

I pointed out that maybe he shouldn't have changed out the compression fittings just for the fuck of it and that maybe, just maybe, it was the confined space/hot lead combo that led to compression fittings being used in the first place. He grumbled.

Modern cars are no fun to work on anymore without a full garage and a lot of time. And by "modern" I mean "newer than 30 years." The sun was setting on that particular shade-tree occupation back in '87; I pretty much backed away as soon as the RS232 ports started showing up.

But motorcycles? Oh yeah. You can still tweak the fuck out of 'em.

The trick to fine solder work is a decent iron. It's so tempting to buy a cheap shitty thing, especially when a couple dozen of them can be had for the price of a decent temp-controlled Weller. But it's the decent temp-controlled Weller that makes the hard stuff easy. Shitty soldering irons are the worst.

Also, always this and this.