Detroit resident Patrick Denny shimmies out from under his jacked-up 2006 black Ford Focus sedan. His hands are covered in grease. Rented tools are splayed out on the concrete floor around him.

Denny, 24, has replaced brakes before, but he now faces a new challenge: Replace the shocks and the trailing arm bushing in the suspension. He grins when acknowledging he's paying to fix his own car, knowing he'll end up saving a lot.

"It can be a pain do it yourself, but it's worth it to save $1,500 to $2,000," Denny said.

Denny is a regular customer at My Mechanics Place in Livonia, a massive garage on Plymouth Road with 22 service bays, a paint booth, a machine shop and U-Haul distribution. To rent a bay with a lift costs $25 an hour; one without a lift is $12. People can rent tools, too.

Denny's doctor told him about My Mechanics Place, so he started coming earlier this year, typically once a week, spending five to eight hours on each visit working on his car. He's learned the repairs by watching YouTube videos, he said.

"I live in an apartment in Detroit. I don't have the tools to do the repairs and apartments won't let you work in the building parking lots," said Denny. "And I'm saving thousands doing it myself."

'The other woman'

My Mechanics Place is the brainchild of Jay Rabaut, 55, a Livonia native who got the initial idea for the business in the mid-1980s while in the Navy and then envisioned the model for it nine years ago.

A plumber by trade and father to nine children, Rabaut was driving home in the fall of 2010 with a heavy heart.

"I thought I have no way to retire, I’m getting old, but I want to send my kids to college. I just saw no way out," said Rabaut. "So I said a prayer, ‘Lord, what can I do? What else can I do?’ and then it happened. I just had the vision."

Rabaut envisioned a compound where people can rent a service bay and tools to do their own car repairs. It took years to make it happen, and awhile for it to catch on and generate profits.

But go there any weekend now and the 18,000-square foot building buzzes with engines revving, metal tools clanking on concrete and impact wrenches humming. All 22 bays are usually filled, often forcing Rabaut to turn away customers. Each bay is occupied for an average of two to eight hours. If you want to get in, call ahead to reserve a bay, he said.

Rabaut said he gets 12 to 25 new customers each week. Many regular customers are there two to five days a week up to eight hours a visit.

"Some wives call us, 'the other woman,'" Rabaut joked, after a customer standing near him bemoaned that My Mechanics Place precipitated his divorce.

Big savings

Located across across from Ford Automatic Transmission Operations in Livonia, the bold letters across My Mechanics Place's roof line beckon: "Do it yourself."

Besides the lifts, the business has a "tool crib" containing thousands of tools to rent for $5 an hour. The tools are checked in and out similar to books in a library. More complex tools such as torches or grinders cost $10 an hour.

It's also a U-Haul distributor, a business Rabaut added in 2016 that brings in enough revenue to help when times are lean in the repair shop.

The savings to those who do their own car repairs is substantial, said Rabaut. For example, some tire stores charge as much as $30 to mount and balance each tire — $120 for all four tires. At My Mechanics Place, renting a flat stall for $12 an hour plus $10 an hour to use the tire machine brings the cost to mount and balance all four tires to $22.

Unsure how to do it? No problem. Rabaut has two certified mechanics on staff to advise customers. The mechanics can't do the repairs for liability reasons and Rabaut is insured. All customers must sign waivers to work on their cars, he said.

But, on average, a person saves 60% to 80% on car repairs, he said.

“It’s all about time too. If we can see a way to save them time, we will. If we can see a tool that’ll help them, we offer it," said Rabaut.

Waterford shop

My Mechanics Place isn't the only game in town. Gearheads Rent-A-Bay in Waterford also rents service bays and tools to people to do their own car repairs. It sees about 15 customers a week and charges $20 an hour to rent a bay with a hoist and $12 an hour for a flat bay. It offers tool rental for $10 a day, said Gearheads' co-owner Nathan Klein.

Gearheads, which popped up around the same time as My Mechanics Place, July 2015, is small with three bays with lifts and one without. It has a motorcycle lift too, said Klein. It has no certified mechanic on staff.

Klein said his partner got the idea for it in the 1970s because, "All the military bases have them and a gentleman in Oxford had a gas station and when his mechanics quit, he would rent it out to people," Klein said.

Some of the regulars at My Mechanics Place rent out bigger work spaces on a monthly basis for consistent repairs on a vehicles and even boats.

Of the 22 service bays, eight have car lifts, two of which can lift 43,000-pound trucks. The repair shop is a pit stop for the average Joe, but especially die-hard gearheads such as Jason Robertson.

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Robertson, 39, works at Ford Motor Co. as a clay modeler by day, he said. But on his free time, he is considered one of the country's top restoration specialists of AC Cobra sports cars, collectors car from the 1960s.

AC Cobra owners hire Robertson to work on their expensive and rare cars. He first came to My Mechanics Place two years ago to use its paint booth, which costs $100 an hour or $400 a day. That might sound steep, but Robertson said he'd have to pay someone $12,000 to do the work for him.

"I couldn't do it without this place," said Robertson, as he prepared a California man's AC Cobra's side panel for painting. "I don't have temperature control at home and this is very messy work."

Robertson has restored about 40 AC Cobras over 14 years. He typically takes a week off from Ford to do each car. He pays about $700 to use the paint booth and restores three to four AC Cobras a year, making about $10,000 on each, he said.

Fix and flip

Another regular at My Mechanics Place is Robert Vanorden, whose residence there comes at a fortuitous time. After seven years at General Motors Detroit-Hamtramck plant assembling Cadillac sedans, Vanorden was laid off on Feb. 28.

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But Vanorden, 52, had a backup plan. He started coming to My Mechanics Place shortly after it opened in late 2015. He rented a work space for $500 a month to start a side business. He bought a used Ford Escape SUV for $600. He made multiple repairs to it and in early 2016, he sold it for $3,200, making a profit, he said.

Since then, Vanorden and his 21-year-old son, Robert Vanorden Jr., have fixed and flipped about 35 used cars for a profit. They learn to do the repairs by watching TV shows and sharing tips with fellow amateur mechanics at the shop.

"I don't have a garage, I'm a dirt guy and I repaired on the grass, on the snow and on ice ... where the next day you have to dig the car out," said Vanorden. "So this place is a godsend. I get the knowledge of the other mechanics and the use of equipment. It's invaluable."

And until Vanorden can get a new job, it is also his income.

Early entrepreneurial idea

Even the pros use it. Dewie Smith, 58, is at My Mechanics Place at least three times a week. He works across the street at Ford's transmission center.

"I'm a mechanic by training," said Smith, who is an executive mechanic for Ford. "This is a hobby for me."

But Smith said he does a lot of car repair for free for friends, "When you're a mechanic, you have lots of friends."

Rabaut first went to a "do it yourself" car repair in the mid-80s, while serving in the U.S. Navy. A buddy asked him to give him a hand changing his car's transmission at the base's "hobby shop," a garage where soldiers could work on their cars.

"I was just floored," Rabaut said. "You can come here and rent a garage for the day. I thought, ‘Man, why don’t we have these outside?’ I thought if I ever get a chance, I’m going to do it.”

But he became a plumbing contractor and “never really gave it another thought" for nearly 25 years. After he finally wrote a 23-page business plan for My Mechanics Place, Rabaut had a stroke in 2011. That sidelined his dream until he recovered and found a building for My Mechanics Place in 2014. But, he was short the start-up cash.

“I showed the business model to my father-in-law and he thought it was a stupid idea," said Rabaut. "I told my dad about it and he asked if I seriously thought people would pay me to fix their own car? I said, ‘Dad, there’s a lot of people who would do that.’"

His dad helped him raise money for a down payment on the building My Mechanics Place occupies, which once housed the Hitch House, a truck-trailer hitch and trailer service business.

The miracle

My Mechanics Place opened in August 2015 and had three customers the whole month.

"The first year of business was expensive," said Rabaut.

In March 2016, he’d fallen six months behind on his mortgage payment. One day, the owner came to collect the debt. A woman waiting in the lobby overheard the conversation, Rabaut said.

“She said, ‘Did I hear that man right? Did he threaten to take this building away from you?’" Rabaut recalls, his voice cracking and tears welling in his eyes.

He explained to her the financial struggle. He said he was ready to give up. But she told him, "'He’s not going to get this from you. God did not bring you this far for you to fail. So don’t you worry about a thing. Whatever I pray for, I get and I’m praying for you, honey, and you’re not going to lose this building,'" he recalled.

It was the inspiration Rabaut needed. He secured financing and kept going.

"I did not lose the building," said Rabaut. "It was miraculous.”

More trucks!

In the fall of 2016, Rabaut finally had his first break-even month. That year he also added a U-Haul business, quite by accident. He'd agreed to take a U-Haul dolly and car transport from the company, but was firm with U-Haul that he did not want to be a dealer, he said.

One day, a couple dropped off a 26-foot U-Haul truck because U-Haul told the couple to drop it there, he said. He told his staff to get rid of it by the time he returned from lunch.

When he returned, the truck was gone. He asked how they got rid of it. They told him, “We didn’t get rid of the truck, we rented it.”

"I said, 'You rented it?! You don’t even know how to rent it.' They said they called U-Haul and, 'U-Haul told us how to do it and you made a $250 on it.' I said, ‘Tell them we want more trucks!'"

Today, his U-Haul business accounts for up to a quarter of his monthly revenue. The mechanic business peaks in October through May. The U-Haul business peaks May through September, so he has a steady revenue stream year round.

My Mechanics Place has been consistently profitable since the fall of 2018, said Rabaut. He plans to expand to other locations in 2020 and possibly offer courses on how to do various car repairs.

“It’s the best thing I’ve ever done in my life because I’m helping people help themselves," said Rabaut. "As a plumber … people treat you like a sub-servant. Whereas here, people are trying to get by and they need a break and we’re helping."

Contact Jamie L. LaReau at 313-222-2149 or jlareau@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @jlareauan. Read more on General Motors and sign up for our autos newsletter.