Can we say "I will take about 3 hours to repair my car"?

Question

Ok, in the dictionary

Take [transitive, no passive, intransitive] to need or require a particular amount of time

take something The journey to the airport takes about half an hour.

take something to do something It takes about half an hour to get to the airport.

That cut is taking a long time to heal.

The official seemed to take hours to examine my passport.

take somebody something (to do something) It took her three hours to repair her bike.

It'll take her time to recover from the illness.

take something for somebody to do something It'll take time (= take a long time) for her to recover from the illness.

+ adv. I need a shower—I won't take long.

This makes sense to me except the last line "I won't take long"

Normally, we say "it takes an amount of time to do something" but the sentence "I won't take long" implies that "a person can take an amount of time"

If that is the case, then can we say:

"I will take about 3 hours to repair my car"

But most people probably say

It will take me about 3 hours to repair my car

or

It will take about 3 hours to repair my car

Also, can we say "It won't take long"?

I am confused!

Answer 1

It will take me about 3 hours to repair my car.

it refers to repairing the car.

I will take about 3 hours to repair my car.

Here we connect the person "I" and the "3 hours" time. It is the amount of time you want, not necessarily how long the repair would take by some objective standard.

To use I and keep the meaning tied to the car repair, you can say:

I will need about 3 hours to repair my car.

Answer 2

• adv. I need a shower—I won't take long.

You wrote: This makes sense to me except the last line "I won't take long".

to take can mean "to require".

To lift 300 pounds takes great strength.

long refers to a considerable span of time.

Have you been waiting long?

And so, "to take long" means "to require much time".

It won't take long. ^{It won't require much time.}

I won't take long. ^{I won't require much time.}

It won't take me long. ^{It won't require, for me, much time = I can do it quickly.}