“For sale: 1965 Ford Mustang project car. All parts are here!” read the listing for what I hoped would be the deal of the century. “A whole V8 vintage Mustang for only $4000? With a rebuilt engine? That’s a smoking hot deal!” I thought. I hopped into my 1965 Plymouth Valiant daily-driver, and drove over to the neighboring city of Sterling Heights. I arrived to meet a disheartened Army veteran who had gotten himself into a deep hole with a Mustang he’d dreamed of someday fully restoring. He’d torn the whole car down, and was now in way over his head — parts were stacked everywhere in his garage, and getting the vehicle back together was a daunting task that just wasn’t going to happen, he’d recently realized. The car had to go. This was one of many similar stories that taught me a lesson — a lesson that I’ve foolishly ignored with my Jeep Grand Cherokee Overlanding build.
That lesson is: “Never let repairs stack up.”
I cannot emphasize enough how important this rule is.
It could be argued that I am among the world’s foremost experts on car hoarderdom, having covered many, many car hoarders during my time as a journalist (I broke the Ron Dauzet story above), and having practiced car hoarderdom myself to better understand the minds of my subjects. Yes, that’s definitely why I did it. For science. Yep. Look at the “research” I’m doing in this clip:
I have seen and experienced what it takes to get completely overwhelmed by a car project or nine, so I know that the single most common driver of hoarderdom is allowing issues to stack up. Oftentimes folks will buy up a bunch of parts. They’ll purchase a whole suspension, new steering parts, new wheels and tires, maybe some new seat covers, maybe a new winch bumper, and on and on. They’ll stockpile a bunch of parts, and then they’ll try to install them, only to realize: Holy crap, this is daunting. That’s what the Army vet felt about his Mustang project, and it’s what I’m starting to feel about my Jeep Grand Cherokee ZJ overlanding build (I consider the five-speed ZJ to be the best budget overlanding Jeep in the world):
I received notice last week that I need to move my Jeep from its current location, as it’s taking up prized employee parking lot spots. Unfortunately, the brake pedal isn’t installed, the shifter tower isn’t in place, the steering intermediate shaft isn’t bolted up, there are no driveshafts, and on and on.
I spent a few hours trying to work on the Jeep the other day (I’m pleased to say there were no cats in the cabin — see above), and I just couldn’t decide where to start. There’s just soooo much work to do. And I’ve amassed such a humongous pile of parts. Off the top of my head, here’s what I need to install:
- New coil springs
- New shocks
- New axles with 3.73 gears
- New control arms
- A new front track bar
- A new rear track bar
- Sway bar links (quick disconnects)
- A new grille
- New front and rear bumpers
- A new header panel
- Mudflaps
- New seats
- New door trim
- A new exhaust manifold
- A new water pump
- A new serpentine belt
- A new rear hatch
- A hyper-rare rear spare tire carrier
- A fuel tank skidplate
- A transfer case skidplate
- New headlights
- A front winch (I need to buy a skidplate)
- New tires
- New driveshafts
- A new radiator
- A new fan clutch
- A new brake pedal
- A used shifter
- A new center console
- A bunch of new interior trim
- New wheel center caps
- A headliner
This is all a bit overwhelming. Look at all the interior trim here:
Under that pile of trim is actually an entire rear axle that I snagged from a Michigan junkyard.
Incidentally, here I am with my friend Adam, wrenching that axle out of a Jeep Grand Cherokee 5.9 in 15-degree weather:
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That axle, by the way, underwent an electrolysis derustification process that I’m eventually going to write more about:
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That’s not the only rear axle I have, either. I also snagged a Dana 44 out of a purpose-build off-road Jeep Grand Cherokee I found at my favorite junkyard in Michigan:
While at that junkyard, I also grabbed some sway bar disconnects:
At a different junkyard I grabbed some rare factory mudflaps and a silver grille:
Update: Also snagged a mint grille! pic.twitter.com/3bMp4pgvsE
— David Tracy (@davidntracy) December 18, 2022
I imported some euro-style turn signals from Germany:
And I bought this gas tank skidplate for $100 off a website called deadjeep.com:
And of course, there’s that hyper-rare rear spare tire carrier:
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It’s all just incredibly daunting, and I should have known better. I’ve seen this play out a million times — people buy up a bunch of parts, and try fixing 100 things all at once. That’s not the way to do it. What I should have done is what I’m going to call The Number One Rule Of Project Car Wrenching:
- Get The Car On The Road
That’s it. Get the car running and driving.
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That means, after I’d bolted up the transmission from that donor Jeep (see above), I should have figured out how to get this red ZJ running, then I should have installed some driveshafts, checked on the brakes, installed the brake pedal and shifter, bolted up the steering column, and gotten the vehicle working. Sure, it’d have been very difficult for me to resist buying some of the parts I spotted at the junkyard, but the reality is that ZJs are still a dime a dozen; I could have nabbed the parts later.
Once the Jeep was running and driving, I’d have felt so much less stress, and I’d have been able to whittle away at the interior, then installed a lift kit, the thrown on skid plates, and on and on. I should have paced myself, but instead I made a critical mistake that’s making this build absurdly difficult to even begin.
And it’s not just a mental thing, it’s also just physically impractical to have all these parts clogging up the Jeep. That header panel you see sitting on the spare tire covers below — I could have just bought one of those later from a junkyard. Instead, it takes up space and reminds me of the humongous mountain of labor I have ahead of me.
So learn from my mistakes, fellow wrenchers. Get your car running and driving; resist buying up a bunch of parts until you’ve done that. Because working on a running, driving car feels a lot less hopeless than working on one that’s been sitting for years. Minimize hopeless wrenching — get your car on the road.
David, you know this all started with the i3.
Once you started spending quality seat time in a vehicle that wasn’t the poster child for “ran when parked,” it stands to reason you’d be out doing Actual Things with Real People, and not sitting in a garage muttering about ZJ transfer cases and eating pasta out of a bucket.
That’s good, though! This is progress! You deserve to be happy!
An idea: invite LA’s many and varied Autopians out to Galpin for a day of inventory-ing everything on the ZJ and helping you get it running. Many hands make light work, and they also make sweet, sweet content!
It could be worse, David could have started a land war in Asia. At this point get a U Haul, empty the Jeep, haul it somewhere safe, empty the U Haul, sort immediately needed to get it running from nice to have. Get Jeep running and driving and sort remaining items into modules to be installed short work sessions. For example spare tire carrier, rear hatch and accessories is one module, upgrade front suspension, rear suspension etc.
Has David been to a SoCal junkyard yet? Better send the video guy with him – DT is gonna weep tears of joy when he sees how rust-free those Jeep parts are…unlike the rusty junk he brought from Michigan.
Maybe, just maybe, common sense has entered the Tracy household.
Rare. usage: It’s rare these projects end well, or end at all.
Our beloved DT is growing up. Godspeed DT.
Just getting it running is called “maintenance”. If it’s to be a stand-out project, you have to establish a vision and collect parts during which time it will sit. That’s not a mistake.
Then you do marathon sessions working from a list to get it done.
It does need space and the company parking lot will not do.
I know of yard space in Santa Clarita, and Ramona near the Boeckmanns’ ranch.
Wait employee parking, is it Autopian that is evicting you ?
With 3 million monthly page hits they are gentrifying the place.
I would not be surprised if the first thing at the top of any paperwork David had to sign that was in any way affiliated with the Galpin Auto Group was a clause that David Tracy was not allowed to have a vehicle that could not move under its own power on any Galpin property for longer than seven calendar days.
Oh man, I’m in a VERY similar boat with my ’67 bug. I’d been planning to upgrade the fuel system for a while, and had most of the parts ready, but was putting it off for reasons unknown when the fuel line directly out of the tank sprang a significant leak the day after filling it up. Over a couple of months, I slowly whittled away at the project, getting the new pump and pressure regulator mounted and wired, building and running stainless braided -6 AN fuel hoses, and figuring out the plumbing for the engine compartment. About a month ago, I finally had it almost all done, just needing to clean the fuel tank out, when I decided this would be a good time to replace the valve springs in the engine.
Now the engine’s sitting on the floor, as doing the springs in-car was much harder than expected with the exhaust and heater boxes getting in the way, the new springs and 3/4 side valvetrain are all laid out nice and pretty on my workbench, and I’m waiting for a new muffler that will bolt up more closely to my new merged racing header. The car was running and driving great a few months ago, I could have just fixed the fuel leak, but instead I just let myself be convinced that this was the time for some deferred maintenance and upgrades. At least now that I’m done with school for the summer and have a nearly empty garage, I should be able to get it all done over the next few weeks. Keeping focused is the most important part, even now I’m finding myself thinking of other little projects I could accomplish, like moving my external oil cooler somewhere better, or fixing some rattles in the shifter linkage, but really I just want to drive my car.
You can do this, just stay focused on the task at hand.
I’m confused. If you’re going with a merged header anyway, why wouldn’t you pull the original exhaust and heater boxes to get them out of the way to do the springs, rather than dropping the engine? I mean, yes, the springs will be easier to do engine-out (as will the exhaust) so it’s moot, but still.
And try as I might, despite having owned a couple of air-cooled VWs, I cannot parse “3/4 side valvetrain” – what does that mean?
OTOH now that the engine is out you might as well do the clutch. 🙂
The header and heater boxes I was running are also extremely difficult to remove in-car, and since I’d already pulled the carbs and undone much of the wiring to prepare for the fuel lines, I was a solid halfway to having the engine out anyways. Now it can go on the swivel stand that’s attached to my workbench, hopefully making the springs easier still! The clutch is good, I last checked it about 1,000 miles ago and the disc seemed barely used despite a few solid seasons of drag racing. To answer your last question, the 3/4 side valvetrain just refers to the cylinder numbers, 3 and 4 are on the same (left) side of the engine/car, with 1 and 2 on the right.
Thanks for the clarification – thought it might be something like that but my brain was stuck on “three-quarters” and it made no sense. 🙂
I was also thinking that the cylinders were 1/3 and 2/4, but it’s been 30 years since I had the last one (’73 Squareback). The fog of age! 😀
Don’t have more vehicles than you have limbs.
DT, growing up and living in reality is a process and can be a real bitch at times.
Life is hard, shit happens.
Sometimes the best answer is to flush the can till shit becomes manageable again.
Now stop calling yourself Loretta, (Jo Jo) and get back to where you once belonged….may God have mercy on your poor rusted soul.
I made similar mistakes getting my house ready to sell. I would book a week’s vacation, strip the Home Depot shelves bare, and imagine myself powering through the to-do list in 9 days. It never happened that way.
I have a side hustle modifying Eurotrash primarily MBZ. And have a quite a few completed builds under my belt. My dad retired early to flip abandoned muscle car and hot rod projects. Others peoples projects are a family business at this point. What we commonly see are:
A.) being unrealistic with their time or mechanical ability. If you have nothing but time, you can figure shit out. These are cars, not the Saturn V rocket. People make mistakes, or weird stuff happens. Being able to stop and think about it is a huge luxury.
B.) Build a car with an accessible community. My entire hustle exist because both Indy shops in my state won’t touch non-oem MBZ. And no one in the community makes a decent video or tell you to buy an AMG on Benzworld. For example, an e46 on the other hand. Has twenty videos about everything. And do to drifting, every person below the age of 35 and can turn a wrench will be able to rebuild an old BMW from memory.
C.) One area at a time. I end up starting at one point, like a strut and end up replacing the entire ecosystem. Keep it to one can of worms at a time.
Overall though, realize it’s a car and you’re learning. Every builder to ever lose a 10mm has found themselves in car hell at least once. Really, us as builders we could be more transparent to our failures. YouTube has made it look to easy since they don’t show the part where your staring down 5k in uninstalled parts and you have stuck toe arm bolt because some German guy decided it should be a 10mm hex torqued to nuclear fission, and that sucker strips the moment you touch. The angels weep when an existential crisis causes another half finished Foxbody is posted on Marketplace.
But… what happened with that 1965 Mustang?! Didya buy it?
So I guess in this case you’d call it “Scope Greep”?
Pro tip:
Tow the car to a safe, secure place (Beau’s backyard?)
Then think of yourself like an archaeologist. You’re going to take one thing out at a time and immediately label it, categorize it and store in a secure place. It’s going to seem tedious at first but gets easier and very satisfying immediately soon after starting.
After you’ve done every single loose piece of the car and identified the remaining structure with labels, then you’ll see a roadmap to put it back together. Pieces will seem to fall into place on their own.
If you recall, this is how Laurence set up his shop in Australia with spare parts labeled and stacked.
Trust me. Time WELL SPENT.
Exactly this. Once you’re done sorting parts, rank the projects by ease of completion, the impact of completion, and group them by things that should be done together.
For example, If you’re changing the front axle on an XJ/TJ/ZJ, there’s no good reason to replace the springs and shocks beforehand. Shocks are easy to swap, true, but how much space do four shocks take up in the pile while you delay the project, and how much of that work will you have to redo to change out the axle at a later time?
The thing I try to keep in mind with my projects – cars are most space efficient when kept in one piece. Disassembly is the easy part. Don’t take apart more than you’re ready to put back together on short notice.
I think it’s Beau’s backyard that this Jeep is being evicted from, otherwise this would be a sound plan.
Alas, Project Creep, the bane of all DIYers. I am so guilty of planning the next project while failing to complete the last fifteen or more.
Did you get to try the Knipex yet?
Spreadsheets keep me on track.
Every project I have is on Google Sheets, and below that, there’s a list of everything I THINK I need to do to finish it (which changes a lot). Even my dailies are on there, because is a car ever complete?
Aim for 2-3 tasks a week, then be proud when you get 7 things done and ashamed when you get 0 done.
My problem is just like you describe, when I have too many tasks to do, I tend to do none of them. Other times, I get stuck on some detail and can’t move on. Getting started is the hardest part.
In addition to cars, I do some woodworking. I was supposed to make some bedside tables because our room is an odd size and most store bought ones would not work. It took me forever to just start measuring and cutting. Once I did that, the whole project went very well and any issues were dealt with as they came up.
You let David Tracy work on it?
Wait…who wrote this article? Well now, this just got a bit awkward.
“…ZJs are still a dime a dozen…” I wish! The few good ones here in the rust belt are all but gone now and the ones left are absolutely knackered with one foot in the grave.
What you’re describing is common; my brother is a licensed mechanic by trade with two project trucks and he has the same tendencies. While fixing one isolated issue, he’ll buy a bunch of parts and disassemble the car to supposedly do everything under the sun “while I’ve got it opened up.” It’s great to have such ambitions but it leads him down the same road every time where it just gets overwhelming and dispiriting to work on a car that’s sat in pieces for multiple years. Hard to see at that point what you’re working towards, and I think he’s starting to learn that lesson. Glad to see you are too.
That said, do you have any buddies out in L.A. that would be willing to consider going in on renting a shared garage space? This is daunting enough, but I can’t even imagine working on it in on the asphalt in the blazing sun, with the car haphazardly jam packed full of the parts you need with no organization, having to transport your tools back and forth each time and hoping that you grabbed everything you need. It sounds nightmarish. Now I know you’re David Tracy, a glutton for punishment who can thrive under the most uncomfortable circumstances. I have no doubt that you can do it. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve increasingly discerned that there’s a big difference between can and should. I honestly think you’d be much less stressed and finish these jobs much faster if you had a dedicated, covered space to work with everything you need organized and handy. Best of luck whatever you decide to do though, I know you’ll figure it out!
Number 1 is get it running and mobile.
Number 2 is find a covered working place for it.
Number 3 is get your inner engineer together and work out a critical path schedule for the whole project.
Number 4 is get ‘er done.
I’m still enjoying “Greep Jeep” in the stern govt letter.
In my mind, it’s like a hot wheels car, should be written across the side of it in appropriately off-roady looking letters.
Same thing in every hobby. Get it operational and it’s easier to keep working on stuff. I have a very nice RC plane sitting on a shelf not currently flyable because it’s broken in eight different places. Right now it’s seeing which one of thr other projects will be successful. Then I’ll work on the nice one after my DIY planes get debugged. Or end up as scrap.