Polymorphic Association with same model Ruby on Rails 4 - ruby-on-rails

Question

So I have an app in which users can create cars. They can also like cars and I want to create an association between both. Cars that they created belong to them and Cars that they have liked belong to them through the context of liking them. To do this I have set up my associations as follows:
User Association:
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :cars
has_many :cars, -> {distinct}, through: :likes
end
Car Association:
class Car < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :users
has_many :likes
has_many :users, -> { distinct }, through: :likes
end
Like Association:
class Like < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :user
belongs_to :car
end
The problem is that before I had my user has_many cars through like relationship declared. I used to be able to call #user.cars and it would present the user's cars. Now it returns the collection of the cars the user has liked. I need methods for each collection.
When I try: User.likes.cars
I get a
No Method error
and the console log looks through the likes records and still doesn't return the cars even though my likes records have a car_id field.
I have looked at a bunch of questions but have trouble understanding them. I've also tried to define methods in the model and nothing is seeming to work. Any help is appreciated.
How would I be able to change my associations so I can have a for query both User.cars (for cars the user has created) and User.likes.cars (for cars the user has liked)?

Answer 1

So the below answer from Oleg didn't work exactly but led me in the right direction. Thank you! I started by following the above example and doing:
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :cars
has_many :car_likes, -> {distinct}, class_name: 'Car', through: :likes
end
class Car < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :users
has_many :likes
has_many :user_likes, -> { distinct }, class_name: 'User', through: :likes
end
This returned the following error in console:
ActiveRecord::HasManyThroughSourceAssociationNotFoundError: Could not find the source association(s) "car_likes" or :car_like in model Like. Try 'has_many :car_likes, :through => :likes, :source => '. Is it one of user or car?
So I changed it to:
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :cars
has_many :car_likes, -> {distinct}, through: :likes, source: :cars
end
Car Association:
class Car < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :users
has_many :likes
has_many :user_likes, -> { distinct }, through: :likes, source: :users
end
It nows works for both models! Thanks and hopefully this is helpful to someone else with the same problem.

Answer 2

has_many :cars, -> {distinct}, through: :likes overrides has_many :cars because it redefines User.cars. Try the following:
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :cars
has_many :car_likes, -> {distinct}, class_name: 'Car', through: :likes
end
Car Association:
class Car < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :users
has_many :likes
has_many :user_likes, -> { distinct }, class_name: 'User', through: :likes
end
#To get them, instead of user.likes.cars
#user.car_likes
#car.user_likes
Please let me know if the problem persists. There might be another error.

Answer 3

I don't see where you are defining any model as polymorphic.
In the past I have done something like this.. actually I did this for tags/taggings and made "like" a tag a user applied to another instance. This is an ad-hoc modification and I may have missed something but it's a pretty common use case for polymorphic associations.
class Like < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :likeable, polymorphic: true
...
end
class Liking < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :like
belongs_to :likeable, :polymorphic => true
end
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :likings, :as => :likeable
has_many :likes, -> { order(created_at: :desc) }, :through => :taggings
end