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@lae
It's pretty simple stuff to be honest. What car is it and how old is it?
Shop around the motor factors near you until you find the largest one. When you ask a motor factor for something and they say 'it'll be here this afternoon', they aren't ringing Ford, they're ringing the motor factor round the corner...
Halfords are surprisingly cheap if you can get trade discount (some staff will give you a card, some won't). Halfords Pro tools are also very very good. Excellent quality and have a lifetime guarantee, and very reasonably priced too.
As for tips on actual servicing - just buy a Haynes manual for your car and apply some common sense. Plugs, oil filters etc are piss-easy to do. Brakes are a little harder and you might need some specific tools (caliper windback tool for example) depending on model, and drums are fiddly. Just take your time and think about it. Ignition and fuel systems are simple enough if you work methodically, but on newer cars with fully electronic ignition and fuel injection, although they are much more reliable, they do need some very specific and expensive tools to fix. Suspension components are a little more difficult as stuff is usually rusted on solid, but a long breaker bar and having all your sockets in 1/2" drive helps, and it's much less fiddly than brakes or engine work. Stuff like wheel bearings or bushes is best left to professional mechanics who have the right presses and tools to do the job - but you can still take the component down to the garage and have them work on it for a significant saving on labour costs.
Source - I used to be a professional mechanic, briefly. Now I design the fucking things.