Ah, the project car. Who among us can resist the thought of buying a once-dreamy, now dilapidated car for cheap and restoring it to road worthiness with little more than wrenching skills and automotive know-how? A junker rolls into the garage, some weeks or months later a wonderful runner rolls out, and you triumphantly cruise into Cars and Coffee with a smile as wide as your resurrected runabout’s grille. The dream!
… But one must know one’s limits, and that brings us to our Ask:
How Much Project Car is Too Much Project Car?
I’m going to go out on a limb and say the high end of the “sure, I can handle that” spectrum is represented by the irrepressible David Tracy, who didn’t flinch at the thought of not only returning what most of us would consider un-rescuable junk to reliable runner status, but flying to Australia to do it. On a deadline, no less!
Oh look, an absolute maniac. Click the image to begin your Project Cactus experience.
As for the low-end of the “I got this” spectrum, there’s me. If the “project” is more than fresh fluids, brakes, tires, and simple stuff like a fuel pump, alternator, or thermostat, I’m out. The wrenching is over my head, but even if it weren’t, I haven’t the space or time for more than that much investment in a car project.
How about you—where’s your too-much-project-car line, and what factors draw that line? If those limitations could be magic-wanded away, what kind of projects might you take on then?
To the comments!
How long is a piece of string?
As a general thing how much is too much is on a scale of skill, fortitude and resources from David Tracy with an army of helpers and workshop to noob with carport and a,150 piece toolkit.
At the DT end even Project Cactus is achievable while an inexperienced wrench may hit the wall at replacing a head gasket, much less welding a rocker panel.
Personally I can handle some heavy mechanical work and minor trim and paint but I don’t have equipment to weld or spray paint. Something mostly in one piece but not running is doable, a box of rusty panels isn’t.
A motorcycle or scooter is actually a good starter project just because it’s small enough to easily see the whole thing, paint and body work is minimal and almost everything is a single person lift.
I’d agree with everyone who said rust. I prefer antique trucks and I live on the East Coast, so my pool of potential projects is small. That being said, I bought a non-running ’63 IH Travelall a few months ago with no brakes or clutch, and someone had cut the fuse panel out of the dashboard. It’s the least rusty IH I’ve looked at in ten years, and it was a sweetheart deal, so I took a chance.
Since March, I’ve gotten it running, overhauled the brakes, and prepped the roof (hail damaged) for paint. This weekend I’m putting a new master cylinder in. The goal is to have it moving under its own power by the end of summer.
I don’t think I’ve been this satisfied working on a project since we renovated the kitchen.
I seem to always start with garbage (being in the rust belt, buying cheap vehicles, especially British ones), and have to replace everything. The project 1970 Buick Skylark I am currently finishing was closer to project cactus in quality than most cars when I started (engine wasn’t toast, and the car was more complete, but more rust).
I guess my hard limit is complex modern electronics, non-availability of replacement parts and rust bad enough that you have nothing to even start welding to.
Since I live in the snowbelt, I’ve recently taken up small engine projects. Mowers, snowblowers, stuff like that. Having done literally dozens of project cars of various vintages and conditions, these are a lot easier because they take up less space, cost less for parts (mostly), they’re easy to flip, simple to work on and you can do it while sitting on a chair.
Currently I have a late 60s Gilson-made Montgomery Ward 524 and an International Harvester Cadet 826 I’m working on. I might even keep the 826 and sell my 3 year old Toro 1028 OHXE.
I have an International scout and a CJ7, so I cannot say I am fully outside of rust repair, but good body work is something to farm out. I am ok with setting carbs with vacuum gages and float levels, but I seem to have very little luck properly getting them to work if I rebuild them myself, so remanufactured or just bought new when it comes to carbs. Most everything else is not to difficult. though I will admit some cars and placement of stuff still frustrates me. Just swapping cats on a Hummer H3 Alpha was a real pain the other day.
To be Fair, David would have failed Miserably without help from a few really good car guys down under.
This is the correct take. The hard limit on my projects is directly proportional to the number of friends who are willing to help.
Definitely on the low end with you. Fluids, simple parts replacement I can handle. Beyond that no
I’m the first to admit that this is a very ambitious project https://instagram.com/p/CrnoZJPoDMh/
A car well known for disintegrating, converted to a shooting brake some time in the 70s and that has not been on the road for 30 years. It’s very rusty (Suprise!) and there’s about 1/3 of an engine, with the rest of the parts having been taken off by several previous owners who gave up on it. I have very silly plans for it, but it’s going to be a lot of work!
I’m at the Edd Chyna/Wheeler Dealers level of project cars. Give me a running car with a handful of issues needing to be sorted. As long as I can do 90% of the work myself in my garage, then I’m OK farming out a few tasks to professionals.
I was going to make a joke like “I hope you don’t have a Mike Brewer hanging around” but your last clause changed my mind. (Good thing we dodged that bullet, eh?)
For all of his other… qualities, one thing I really appreciated about Mike was his enthusiasm for finding local shops with absolutely expert craftspeople who could restore items to their original beauty, rather than simply buying a replacement part.
One episode sticks in my mind where he and Edd had an old Mercedes, and the polished wood trim piece around the shifter was in a bad state. The expert he found did an amazing job of repairing the damage and giving the piece a mirror-like final finish.
Mike said – quite rightly – that these craftsmen are slowly disappearing and some of the work they do will become lost arts. He’s not wrong.
Rust, frame damage, or body work that requires cutting and welding (rear quarter panel or radiator support as examples). Bad paint is almost a dealbreaker too. Anything mechanical I see as fixable.
My wife has put down this rule: if there is no discernable progress in one year, whatever it is loses its “project” status and likely becomes junk.
Too much project car is when you can’t complete most of the work yourself/with friends in the garage/backyard. Whether this comes down to personal skill levels, available tools, space, or time. I don’t think there’s a one size fits all answer. Cars I’ve working on in the past would be too much project car for me today simply because I live in an apartment with no garage. But when I had a garage and all my tools, I’d swap subframe in the driveway, pull my motor every few months for a refresh, and even turned the garage into a temp paint booth.
Drivable/running project cars for me. And really needs to basically have a straight clean body, ideally with decent paint. Even a crappy paint job costs a lot, body work is stupid expensive, and rust is hard to fix.Of course last summer I broke my own rule and bought a running 1983 BMW 533i that has areas of small surface rust, but otherwise had a ton of potential and now am stuck with the conundrum of glass out respray or just accept that the rust will slowly but surely get worse and enjoy that the car is a ton of fun to drive and most of the rest of the problems are things I can fix myself.
When I decided to go get a hobby car I originally planned on it being a project car. Then I found something in amazing shape for not much money where everything wrong with it I knew I could handle with the money and time I had available. I’ve never regretted that decision and I’ve actually had a lot of fun with the wrenching I have wound up doing on the car.
LATE ADD I think one key consideration for a project car is this: do I have the time, money, and ability to get this car where I personally want it to be? In other words, will the final result make me happy? For some people like David Tracy that’s getting a basket case to run but not worrying too much about aesthetics. For others it may be doing modifications, putting together a restomod, or a driver level restoration. For others it may be a show car / concours project. Those are all fine goals and dependent on the individual and situation. The sad part is when people bite off more than they can chew.
Rust, rust, rust. Nope, nope, nope.
To me, it depends on whether patch panels are available. If they are, it *should* be doable.
That said, structural rust worries me a lot. If I was to fix up a Jeep, it would have be one with a solid frame and good body mounts. Kits are available, but…I have not welded enought to trust the structure of a vehicle that I rebuilt.
Rust. It’s not worth it. Even if you cut it all out and weld in new metal, it will just come back from pinch welds and cavities, unless you wind up acid dipping the entire chassis, which is way above my paygrade.
Smashed/mangled: Nope. It will never be the same. Every car that’s been hit, I’ve been able to tell.
Also: It has to be financially viable. Look how much restored ones go for. Understand the costs in getting a project to that point. Double it. If you can’t do it for less than the price of a restored one, hard pass. I see too many people restoring things that aren’t worth anything, and I realize money isn’t the end all be all for everyone, but too many people wind up way under water then abandoning their projects.
If you have to pull out a piece of paper to plan the project, first sign that you may be in over your head.
If that is within your limits: if your wife divorces you, another sign you may be in over your head.
For those single: if a whole class of high school has been born and graduated since you started, you may be in over your head.
If you die while working on said project, you were literally in over your head.
Is it wrong I’m reading this comment with the Voice of Jeff Foxworthy doing “you might be a redneck?”
Respectfully disagree with this one.
Plans are handy, especially if there is an order of operations that makes sense when I’m thinking about it objectively, but that I am likely to forget while working because I’m focused on something else.
They’re also helpful if there is timing involved, e.g. painting panels while the outside temperature is appropriate for curing, or if parts need to go to a shop for powder coating or machining.
I agree with the others, but only if the divorce is directly and solely related to the project. 🙂
I have two hard limits: one is rust. Been there, done that, you can’t get rid of it all without completely stripping the car down. My MG has some rust here and there, but it’s livable, so I just ignore it. Any more than that, forget it.
My other limitation is defined by my property: I have a narrow driveway with a 30% slope at its steepest point (seriously!). A flatbed tow truck can’t back up it. (Found that out with the MG, too.) So any project car I get while I live here must be able to make it up the driveway under its own steam, so it has to run, however poorly.
Heavy bodywork is where I draw the line. I can handle most other things myself but I don’t have the knowledge or equipment to do bodywork and I don’t have the money to pay for it either.
What’s worse, is when you pay top dollar for an old but “well maintained” car, and then find out it’s a huge project. First one that happened to me on was a 95 Celica GT-Four I bought. Then had to replace or rebuild every braking and suspension component. Got that thing solid, then immediately sold it. And the engine blew on the next owner. I felt really bad on that one. Then I bought the current one, a Peugeot 306 GTI-6 that I found in England, even had the damn thing inspected and all looked good supposedly. Then 2 months after I got it registered the engine threw a rod, so full engine replacement. That has been a nightmare, but it should be back on the road by the end of summer.
Short version, I try to avoid project cars, but I will admit I find the challenge to be somewhat fun when I can afford it. I would never go project cactus, but finding something that needs moderate work is fun for me.
Yes, this. You buy something that’s nice, old, and well-kept. But then it ends up needing just about everything on it replaced or repaired. By the time you get it right, you’re ready to just wash your hands of it and end up taking it in the shorts.
Yep. That was definitely the case with the GT-Four, and I plan to sell the Peugeot once I get it running well again too. I just tend to fall out of love with cars that take too much work, but again both were supposed to be solid, and I paid more than I should have. If I planned a project from day one it would be very different.
Rust is the go/no go question for me. Mechanical can always be fixed by throwing enough money at it, but, as Neil Young famously says, Rust Never Sleeps. There is Fiat X1/9 for sale that I am seriously considering for a project car, engine actually runs great, transmission is bit of an unknown, only some of the electronics work, but what is staying my hand is the rust in the rockers behind both doors. And I know if I really poke around, I’ll find more.
For me, wiring is where I draw the line. My dad could practically do it blindfolded, but for some reason I have a disconnect there. I have cocked up guitar wiring more than once on muliple guitars, so scaling that up to automotive wiring seems unwise.
That’s because electricity is one step removed from magic.
For me, personally, a project car would need to be running enough to be able to move it as needed without major incident. In my current location, a project car would need to be functional, because I do not have room for a major project.
With how I budget my time, a project should probably require minimal work, because I am going to back-burner it too often and likely lose parts and pieces in the interim.
I’m a huge fan of zip-top bags and sharpies for that stuff. The 2-gallon bags will hold larger parts and bigger bags (e.g. 3.5 gallon) are available.
All the bagged bits then go into plastic bins with lids and labels. In theory.
I suspect that my failure at electrical work is an offshoot of me not being organized. I somewhat successfully did the intake manifold/water manifold/throttle body gaskets on my 97 540i6 and organizing everything in labelled baggies was vital.
My failure at electrical work is the result of me being terrible at electrical work.
Or at least very much out of practice. Rusty, as it were.
Oh, how I wish that worked well for me. Once something’s in a plastic bin, even if it’s labeled, it may as well have been flung into a black hole and I will likely forget it exists and purchase it again, possibly attempting to place it into the same bin as its predecessor. I do my best work when I get the pieces I need and use them when I receive them. If I can break a project into smaller projects, I have a chance.
Oh, how I wish it worked well for me, too. 😀
It took me a long time to get into some sort of process and there are still issues. The other day I opened a box I hadn’t seen for a while and re-discovered a pair of carbs, a bag of spokes, and yet another (4th? 5th?) service manual. D’oh.
I use 1qt freezer bags and a stack of 3×5 index cards. Whatever hardware comes from a certain step gets appropriately labeled and zipped into a bag. Bags are all stored in a clear storage container, or in a box with the larger assembly they belong to.
I lack the ability, patience, and skill to do any kind of bodywork, so I look for something that’s at least decently in good shape in that regard. Any other mechanical work is fair game, however. I’m not too proud to drive around in a car with crappy paint and some dents and some bondo and generally looks like crap but runs like a top. In fact, I frequently do.
This might be the golden standard (or, rather, iron oxide standard) for project cars:
https://www.artcurial.com/en/lot-talbot-lago-t26-grand-sport-swb-par-saoutchik-1949-2651-46
One needs to scroll through the entire photo gallery to appreciate the full extent of the work to be done (after recovering from seeing the auction result.)
I almost choked on my lunch seeing that price. I didn’t think my jaw could drop further but when you see the other side it went all the way to the floor. My god. Good luck to whoever is restoring that.
Yeah i think that one takes the cake lmao
The truth is on cars like that you’re buying the VIN and the provenance that it was a real car originally, and then you’re building an entirely new car. Basically a Ship of Theseus. Now that’s obviously an exaggeration but it’s not that far off and one intended to make a point.