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#26 _cruiza_

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Posted 30 November 2011 - 08:45 PM

Just read this again and thought to myself a key thing not stressed often enough is being realistic, with planning
what you can afford
what you want
what you can afford
what you are capable of doing or learning to do
what you can afford
how much time can you give the project
what you can afford
how long the project will take
what can you afford

now go back and read the list again are you being realistic or are you just dreaming

#27 j...

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Posted 29 June 2012 - 08:38 PM

This is exactly what I an planning to do, I am lucky I have a doubled garage and a single car port! Question could you upload some pages of your workbook so I can see what format you are using to record things? jas

#28 _PB.72.LC_

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Posted 18 August 2012 - 10:58 PM

studricho, very impressive! ive been building my car for 4 years now. i can say that ive taken the exact same approach with my build. i knew it was not going to be a 6 month build, simply because of the money factor. i also didnt think it would take 4 years to get it done either. but i had my list and goals and stuck to them. and now im on the home stretch with 5 pieces of a4 paper with ticks on them and very few photos to remind me of what it was before (trojan horse thought it would be a good idea to crash my computer).
thanks for the read mate.

#29 _bumpy_

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Posted 16 November 2012 - 08:49 AM

studricho, great thread, and i know it's an old thread, and please forgive me for re-hashing it. Every car i work on, i have guidelines i always follow, and a way i do things, and most people say i do it all wrong, but in the end still works out the same.

* Clip lock bags are a must,
* 2" masking tape, is another must
* Permanent marker
* Tins with lids, I recommend baby formula tins.
* Milk creates are good, but anything that will hold bigger items is just as good.

I have a plan as studricho has done, car purpose, driveline configuration, brakes, suspension, even interior. The only thing i don't decide on is colour and wheels, but i work on the car as if it was going Gloss Black. I work one panel at a time, i remove one panel at a time. Everything i remove is marked on clip lock bag or bundled and taped and marked. After i have completed each panel, i prime with a good etch, or even prime the panel. I also work sections at a time, and i don't do anything else until that section is finished, and in primer. For example:

I remove the front apron panel, repair, prime set aside, same as guards, and bonnet, then i will do the entire engine bay, once that is primed, i place panels back on with a few bolts to hold them there, and move on.

I find if i go one panel/area at a time, i keep myself motivated as i can see progress, so it keeps the drive going. Sounds very boring and tedious, and slow, but it works for me. Being a panel beater also makes it a little easier to do things yourself, but i know there are people out there with no training etc, that can pull out some awesome cars, so having a trade might help, but there are people are truly gifted with their hands.

My big bit of advise, is to have a go at it yourself, i think you get more gratification out of doing yourself.

#30 _PB.72.LC_

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Posted 18 November 2012 - 11:29 PM

some good advice there rob. wish i had your trade behind me. and yes i would have to agree with the loosing motivation bit. im 90% done and ive now lost motivation, well atleast untill my garage is built.

#31 _A9X UC_

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Posted 24 January 2014 - 11:49 PM

Great advice

Did the planning with my project as you have suggested, have a 20K mechanical budget that includes the purchase of the car all mods and rego, must admit I'm still on budget.

Still have a clear plan to have it road worthy before the end of the year..

I do find myself rushing to get things done, just excited I guess to sit behind the wheel of the powerful classic.... I have a awesome wife that slows me down.lol

I have had some double handling regarding the wrong choice of gearbox but it was sorted quickly. Lost about $400 from the budget on selling the box and getting another box.



#32 _Lamo_

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Posted 17 February 2014 - 01:08 PM

Another valid point to consider is timing and season. Time what stage you will be at during what season. Up here in the tropics, you will need to time your body work and paint to happen during winter. I am currently stuck in between primer and paint stage due to the weather and wet season we are currently having.



#33 sibhs

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Posted 17 February 2014 - 01:51 PM

Here's my tip.
We all take plenty of photos while stripping the car. What I've done is use those photos as my computer screen background which change every 5 seconds. This already has prompted me on few things I might of forgotten about. It's also motivating to see how far you've come.
It's genius! :-)

Edited by sibhs, 17 February 2014 - 01:51 PM.


#34 _studricho_

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Posted 17 February 2014 - 10:27 PM

It's really humbling to see people appreciating my advice and also fantastic to see more ideas thoughts added.

Since writing this thread I've had some major personal battles and I was diagnosed with adult ADHD.

Now that I know why I think the way I do planning is even more important!

White boards are the best investment.

#35 TerrA LX

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Posted 18 February 2014 - 08:35 AM

Battling on solder, kudos to you mate.

#36 _A9X UC_

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Posted 05 November 2014 - 10:37 PM

Hi all

Just read through the thread again.

I must admit

My progress has been good.

Had some hidden costs which blew my 20K mechanical budget by about 20% which I'm not to fussed about, the hidden extras were not seen till almost completion, last minuite stuff.

But she's now legal and on the road in under a year, I had 2 years coz it's one of my wedding cars next year.

As per pervious suggestions I will strip the car in due coarse and prep for rust and paint in another 2 odd years, having too much fun driving it at the moment and the body/paint is ok at this stage

I have started taking detailed pics for the future strip down and making extra plans

Talking to one of the forum members about panel/paint, he told me he went to night school and learnt to do it himself, what a great idea, pick up some more skills and reduce the costs...



#37 Bigfella237

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Posted 06 November 2014 - 12:53 AM

G'day all, I just joined the forum and I still have much reading to catch up on but this is a great thread, some sage advice above no doubt learned the hard way in some cases.

 

One thing I'd add, before you do anything else, is research.

 

Read about others' experiences, go to car shows (take thousands of photos) and talk to people who have been there and done it all before, learning from their mistakes could save you a bundle of time and money. This also makes your planning stage a little easier, there's nothing worse than being almost finished a project and seeing a mod that you wished you'd done... "Oh well, there's always next time".

 

For me, the two hardest decisions in any build are what wheels and what paint colour.

 

For the latter there's nothing like seeing a colour on a car in the flesh, but if you're picking colours from a paint chart I'd suggest you prep a few spare panels (like guards or bonnets) for paint, get a litre of each colour mixed and paint/clear a panel for each choice so you can take them out into the sunshine and look at them side-by-side, it may also be worth looking at them under various other lighting conditions too (like street lights, neons, mercury vapours etc.), especially if you intend to display the car at indoor shows. Some colours come to life under certain lighting, others tend to bleed away.

 

There's an age old saying: "The wheels maketh the car"

 

Take the roughest beat-up looking car and bolt a nice set of wheels on it and it instantly looks tough. Conversely, you can spend $50,000 on a project but if the wheels don't suit then people won't give it a second glance.

 

Next up, it's been touched on here already but IMHO needs to be emphasized, if you plan on deviating from OEM at all, an engineer can be your best friend or your worst enemy. Make an appointment to sit down with a few different engineers for an hour before you commit to anything, take along your list of mods plus photos, sketches, diagrams, blueprints, napkins or whatever else you have and discuss what you plan to do with each engineer, then you can pick the one you like and you've already started a working relationship. This might cost you even a couple of hundred bucks but finding the right engineer will be worth their weight in gold later on, I can't tell you how much it sucks trying to get something passed by some cranky old German guy who has no interest whatsoever in what you're doing.

 

Depending on the level of modification you may even need to have the vehicle inspected before you start (chassis stiffness for example) and several intermediate inspections just to ensure you're still on the right track. Unless you're very experianced I do NOT recommend you just go ahead and cut up your car, then turn up and expect an engineer to pass it that day. Every engineer has his or her own interpretation of how things should be done, hell I've even seen one engineer fail something and another think it quite acceptable!

 

Lastly, and this is just the way I like to do things, once you have a plan and know what you want, try and purchase as many parts as you can before you put a spanner to the car.

 

There are several advantages here; first you get to keep driving the car instead of having a stripped-out shell sitting around while you save up the money; secondly you can save a lot of money due to price rises and being able to buy parts when they're on sale (as opposed to "I need it now so I pay whatever they're asking"); and perhaps best of all, once you start the build there's much less chance of losing interest because you can't afford to do the next stage, it's amazing how motivated you will be when you have all manner of fancy parts sitting on a shelf just waiting to be bolted on!

 

And if the sky does fall in and your pavement pounding project never sees the light of day again, I've found that the right parts never seem to lose their value anyway, in fact you may just find something you bought ten years ago is now rare as hen's teeth and worth three times what you paid for it!

 



#38 myss427

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Posted 06 November 2014 - 08:07 AM

I always plan and budget, but somehow it always takes and costs double!



#39 ben23

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Posted 11 November 2015 - 08:19 PM

Bought my Torana end of September 2014, was running and registered but little more than a month later the old 173 ate a timing gear. That was the biggest buzz kill and to be honest I wanted to go back and smash the bloke given how much I paid for it, but at the end of the day thats not something you can see coming, took me forever to fix it because I was just so disheartened. Was out of rego by the time I fixed it and now its in a workshop rented by 2 mates and I and we have our 3 cars in there now and pretty much it took me a year to get started on the car because of that timing gear. Now I'm jumping into it and hoping to have it somewhere near completed within a year. Bodywork and rust is the biggest hurdle. Seems I should have been a panel beater/spray painter, seems to be the most expensive part of a build. As an auto sparky I've done some pricey jobs on customers project cars but never in the range of 10k plus like paint and panel work.



#40 _kayesem_

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Posted 17 May 2016 - 07:03 PM

I like this little old thread.

 

Was also diagnosed adult adhd a while back. Still coming to grips with that. Living in the moment and finding a way to build your dream project are fairly difficult things to reconcile.

 

Step 1 - Money in my pants.

 

Step 2 - ???

 

Step 3 - Profit.

 

It's often tempting to just throw bog at everything and be able to drive the thing sometime in the next 40 thousand years.

 

I know if I spent 10k on paint and panel, I'd be to afraid to ever cut loose in the thing and that totally defeats the purpose of a nice car imo. An old mate has had a finished dream project floating around for ages and yet to me it's purely a rumour, so far as I know. Never even seen it once. Has his heart set on full comprehensive insurance or some such fluff. Can't understand why for the life of me. No amount of money will ever replace that thing if it goes.

 

Seems like a hard task to balance up; turning out something decent enough to cruise around in, without having to start everything all over due to rushed / lazy work. But then beyond that, to have enough restraint not to become so completely OCD with it that you never drive it and are constantly afraid of any harm coming to it use through regular use / accidents or what have you. Wonder how many people planned out a project that would result in something that barely turns a tire because it's just too precious?



#41 _Skapinad_

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Posted 17 May 2016 - 07:23 PM

Easy, accept the car for what it is.

Put a big dollar driveline in it and drive it like ya stole it.

;)

#42 _Tbann_

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Posted 30 May 2016 - 08:35 AM

This was a great read. Thanks for the write up Studricho.

#43 ben23

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Posted 19 June 2016 - 10:01 PM

An Econovan (of all vehicles, I have a thing for these particular vans which stems back to a van that belonged to my father up until I was 8) was my first project and after 4 and a half years I gave up. Had a nice little warm 2 litre built for it which still sits in my garage today, did about half a km work and cam bed-in. Motor cost around 3 grand including brand new weber 32/36 and other bits. Probably spent 5-6 on that van all up. I wish I had finished it, but it obviously wasn't meant to be.

Pulled the motor back out and scrapped the shell. Did my turbo Paseo project during which time I bought the Torana and didn't really touch until October last year. Now, June, and I still haven't finished the front end rust repairs. Bought a Express van as a new daily after selling the Paseo and had to tinker with that as well of course haha. I think being an auto sparky by day really kills the passion for cars by night though which is why everything takes me forever. Does anyone here work on cars/trucks for a living and find it hard to not get sick of your own?






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