I love programming, but I want to learn *everything* about my van. Tips?

I'm in my thirties and never owned a car until I got this campervan.

So now not only do I have this magical machine that can take me places in ways that I never quite appreciated before, but said machine is also my home, magically offering water via an electric pump, electricity via a secondary battery that should but doesn't charge when driving, and various other comforts.

I'm sure this might sound silly to those for whom cars are a part of daily life, but when I'm driving, just the engine sound and the terrible smell of what is either the toilet/gray waste tank sloshing or something related to the engine, well, it's intoxicating.

And I don't know if it's because it's an older vehicle (late 80s), but I basically go to fifth and final gear by 80 Km/h, so it feels like the thing is on overdrive whenever I'm going 100 or occasionally 120 on the highway.

Mostly I just marvel at this thing that apparently relatively low-schooled mechanics can fix part by part, and yet somehow with a a few liters of liquid can pull a hefty amount of weight across highways at 100 Km/h. I knew this things in the abstract, but finally experiencing them with my own hands on the wheel is something else. I've been a very 'virtual' person since I was 8 years old or so.

Anyways, long intro, but being the hacker 'type' I am, it bothers me that I understand very little of how this whole 'combustible engine' works. Or for that matter the 12V electric system that I should get an expensive 'inverter' for charging my laptop at 230V instead of just a 12V-connector charger which so far has proven just as good.

I sort of vaguely get this, but I want to really understand it. So what would you suggest? What are the best resources for a pretty decent computery hackery guy to learn about the dirty real-world hardware of late eighties car engines and their shoddy electrical systems?

I suppose I could've just posted the previous paragraph but I'm bad at brevity.