Nearly every vehicle I’ve ever purchased came to me because the previous owner ran out of money/time/inertia and could not finish their project. A 90% project sells for significantly less than a 100% project. Non-running cars that include nice parts needed to make it run are not worth a running car. Here are a few guidelines to keep yourself from letting one of your projects to be swept under the rug.
Save money first
Paying for a car project while living paycheck-to-paycheck is an easy way for a project to hit a major roadblock and get stuck. It’s also easy to do things wrong because of lack of funds to do them properly.
SmartyPig is a great free online service that helps organize your finances. It creates an online savings account that automatically deducts money from any bank account you set up and notifies you when you’ve reached your Goal. It makes saving completely automatic, and I don’t even notice the decrease in general spending money. I like to figure out what I’ll need for all the parts, fluids, pieces, and do-dads, add 10% to that cost for unforseeable issues, and set up a SmartyPig goal with that amount in mind. As I’m saving, I’ll keep an eye open for killer deals that I can snatch up. When I receive the email that my goal is complete and my online piggy bank is full, I make a bulk order of everything I’ve come up with that I need. I also arrange to borrow, rent, or buy any tools that I’ll need that I don’t already own. Then I call in whatever favors owed to me for friends I’ve helped while I was saving, and spend some time wrenching. If I break a stud, shear some threads, rip a hose, or do any of the idiotic things that often happen when working on old cars, I tap into the extra 10% I had set aside and send someone to the store for me (I don’t want to lose my momentum, and my car is probably up on jackstands so it’s not driveable).
Fight ‘Feature Creep’
Feature Creep is a software development term used to describe the addition of new features that weren’t in the original plan for a finished product. Also known as ‘While I’m at it’ syndrome, this has been the death of many many projects. Everybody wants their project to be the best that it possibly can, but Feature Creep shows a lack of focus with a project. Stick to the original plan, it was a good one. If you find that you absolutely MUST have a new feature, add it to the next ‘phase’ of your project and don’t worry about it until you’re finished with what you’re working on.
Budget for help
Somehow, I’m still surprised when I find myself squinting under the flourescent lights in my garage at 3am and realize that what I’m trying to do requires another set of hands. Plan to have a friend around for a day of work, and make sure your budget allows to make the experience pleasant. Buy them lunch, have some music playing while you work, and offer your time in exchange for theirs. They’ll be much more willing to help next time if they have fun memories of the epic project weekend they had last month, rather than the hellish time the transmission wouldn’t come off and nobody ate lunch that day.
Plan your purchases
It’s not hard to figure out what you’ll need ahead of time. Buying parts/supplies in local stores costs more than ordering parts online. When ordering parts online, combined shipping further reduces the price. Following that logic, it pays to plan ahead. Figure out what bolts, washers, gaskets, sealants, lubricants, priming fluids, and everything else you’ll need in advance. Put them aside in a pile, and make sure you have everything you’ll need to actually complete the project before you even begin.
Common example:
A few months ago, a friend of mine came to me to ask why his brakes were squealing and if I could help him perform a brake job. I explained that I had nothing in my garage but a jack, a set of jackstands, and a set of brake wrenches. I made the mistake of assuming he would plan ahead, but he showed up a week later with a bag from Autozone. I pulled his wheels, took the calipers off, and replaced the pads. One of the rotors had deep grooves in it and was mildly warped, so I sent him out to get another (in the spare car). He returned and I replaced that rotor for him. I asked him for the brake fluid, so we could bleed the air out of his lines and get the spongy feel out of the brake pedal. Again, he had to go to the local shop and buy something else.
At the end of the day, he spent just over $275 for a brake job. Admittedly, it was a pretty thorough job, with both rear drums rebuilt, all the lines bled, a new e-brake cable, pads, and a new rotor, but I decided I’d price it out online for him afterward. Summit Racing had higher-quality parts available for $180 after shipping. He could have bought TWO rotors (just in case) for less money than it cost him to fund our day-long project, it would have saved me hours of waiting for him to run to/from the store, and he wouldn’t have had to go to a single store. The parts would have been delivered to his front door or mine (whichever was more convenient).
When purchasing new parts, it’s much more financially sound to order them online. The downside is that you need to have your purchases planned out in advance, and need to be willing to wait until everything arrives to begin.
Plan the broad strokes of your project
Have a solid plan in place for what you’re going to do, how you’re going to do it, and when you’ll be acting on it. The more time you have before you begin, the more you can bargain hunt, watching eBay and Craigslist and Amazon for the killer deals on used/aftermarket parts that will get you to the end goal. I use a free online service called Pivotal Tracker for my cars. It’s officially designed to be used for software development, but I’ve found that all projects are similar in that there are tasks to do and requirements to get them done.
A little extra effort in the planning process can cut down the stress and cost to complete it, and makes it more likely to finish.
Good read. Great advice. I’d also add that if you’re not living paycheck to paycheck, but rather job to job like me, then you can’t set aside a certain percentage to your project since bills and life are taking up a random percentage depending on how much you made that week.
Instead what you CAN do, is do your best to sell all those little car parts lying around that you’re never going to use. It’s amazing what I see selling on ebay, and even more surprising is the price. When ever there’s something you replace that might be in ok or decent condition, you should be selling it. These funds aren’t “income” from your work, thus it should be relatively easy for this money to go back into the project before life snaps it up.
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