It’s Terrible Idea Thursday: Ask Our Advice About Your Awful Automotive Plans

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Hey everyone! With David maybe driving across the country this weekend, I thought I’d skip Wrenching Wednesday and try on Terrible Idea Thursday! This is where you can pop in and share your awful ideas for cars, car projects, really just anything that’s been on your mind and we can encourage you.

I, for instance, am about to purchase this lovely BMW E39 from a reader and I want to throw some snow tires on it. Initially, the thought process was I’d just find some cheap BMW wheels, but it turns out that E39s have slightly larger hubs than every other BMW and thus can’t just easily swap in other random BMW wheels.

Screen Shot 2023 02 02 At 5.34.54 Pm

To get that perfect, unadjusted fit you need E39 wheels. Now I’m looking for Style 5s, maybe, or Style 33s that are cheap and then maybe I’ll rattle-can them black with silver caps so I look like a German cop car? I don’t know. You tell me. Also tell me your worst ideas.

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86 thoughts on “It’s Terrible Idea Thursday: Ask Our Advice About Your Awful Automotive Plans”

    1. Please, no. Not another fucking EV conversion. I swear, in ten years time there won’t be any damn ICE cars left because they’ve all been made to work on (insert preferred sex toy here) fuel. Please no…

  2. Last Saturday around 8 AM, I was standing in my driveway with $16K in $100 dollar bills in my hip pocket. My best bud was waiting by his F150 with a car hauler trailer. The weather was terrible thus the trailer as we were on our way to buy a 2011 Miata MX5.

    The car was a low miler and had been serviced and detailed regularly. It had very good tires and best of all it was very red. Unbelievably my wife was very enthusiastic about it.

    Then I changed my mind.

  3. This may be one more in a string of terrible ideas, but here goes…

    About 12-13 years ago, I picked up an early 70’s Honda CL350 scrambler that didn’t work with a few friends for $300. We all wanted a simple project to screw around with, do a little riding etc, so that wasn’t the terrible part. We got it running reasonably well (one of the carbs was a bit screwed up, but hey, there were two of them!) and had some fun with it for a little while.

    After a little while, one of the friends got himself a nicer bike and the others lost interest or moved away, and so I bought them out and now owned this bike that I really didn’t have much use for, nor the time or money to do much with given the RX-7 always had priority for work. Time for terrible idea 1… lets take the whole damn thing apart, thoroughly clean & repaint it etc, basically because I’m bored one winter weekend.

    Terrible idea 1 leads to terrible idea 2… you know, it wouldn’t be too hard to fuel inject this thing and not have to deal with these carbs again… get some throttle bodies with injectors off of a newer bike, say a CBR600 F4i or something since I had some experience with those from FSAE, use a megasquirt for control since that’s what I’d become adept at from FSAE and the RX-7, and add or adapt other sensors to fit. Well… that spirals into buying parts, another build-it-yourself megasquirt, wiring, sensors, etc, all worth about double the initial purchase price of the bike.

    Well, part of the way through that, I realize that there is no way I’m going to have enough generator capacity to run the fuel pump, coils & injectors, let alone the MS itself or any lighting, with the measly 55W stock generator. That brings us to terrible idea #3… lets fit an alternator from a newer bike, in this case also a CBR600 F4i, machine up a tapered adapter to mount the rotor to the end of the crankshaft where the old rotor used to be, and cut up and machine the engine side cover to fit a new casing that holds the new stator. With this comes a serious upgrade to the stock wiring and harness, relocating other components to fit the throttle bodies and fuel pump etc, and the bike is apart for a lot longer than originally intended and can’t be put back to stock easily anymore.

    Along comes a serious girlfriend, more commitments at work, more vehicles, moves through 3 different apartments, a wedding, buying a house, house renovations, a kid, getting my PhD, rebuilding the RX-7’s engine, the death of my wife (breast cancer at 34, RIP) & all that comes with that, dating again, more cars, COVID, getting married again another kid, rebuilding the RX-8’s engine, and finally… here I am staring at this bike, wondering what to do with it.

    – Put it back to stock (which requires buying a lot of parts that I’ve modified) to sell it.
    – Part it out (at least the stock parts)
    – Finish it (which will require a little bit of wiring, NBD, a little welding, tuning, testing etc), but then what?

    I don’t really have a need for it with 2 project cars, and I have a hard time envisioning when I’d have time to ride it even if it were complete today. Heck, the RX-7 sits a lot more than I’d like, and I at least feel comfortable driving that to work 50 miles each way when I need to go in. I also have a hard time envisioning a buyer for it as it’s very much a project, even when completed. On the other hand, I feel bad giving up on it, but maybe that’s just being stubborn and not wanting to admit defeat. Is it time to make Terrible Idea #4 and double down, or part it out?

    2. Oh man – just finish it, I think the emotional “I got it done” would be an awesome feeling and then you will have more options on the “then what” anyways. You are so close and it’s something you have carried with you emotionally and physically. Get it done and ready for its next adventure, with or without you – that seems healthy to me?

  4. So, I know I’m getting to this thread on a Friday morning rather than Thursday, but….

    I’ve been watching a lot of SuperFastMatt videos on the tubes lately, and followed his Jaaaaaaag build with interest. I also watched a fair chunk of JNH classics work on a Model T. Then, there was the article here about converting a classic to electric power. Finally, Facebook advertised a 50’s Chrysler Imperial coupe with little body rust and no interior for just $2k not far from me.

    If you haven’t already connected the dots, the terrible idea is to buy that Chrysler and swap a Tesla drive unit and modified pack into it along with an interior and some light body work. What’s stopping me? Space & time.

  5. A couple of terrible ideas I been kicking around.

    Buy a 1969 Ford Ranger F-100 and relive the “fun” of my first car. Tank in cab, power nothing, manual choke, 3 on the tree, 390 motor. It was smelly, liked to flood, high torque with no top end speed, but it was mine. The problem is I would use it like a truck and the $30000 show vehicles they have become.

    Update my Crosstrek with a mix of useful and useless items. Auto dimming mirrors, blind side monitors, LED interior map lights, blue foot well lights. Just because I can and they are all official Subaru add ons.

  6. I need help with what terrible idea I should focus on planning for an upcoming transmission swap!

    I have an ’86 CUCV army truck and the gearing is terrible, max speed is about 55. This calls for an upgrade from the TH400 to something with 4 actual gears and overdrive.

    I am unsure where to go with it…

    4L80 swap is pretty simple but kind of pricy with a stand-alone controller and it’s a lot of work to get it to play nice with my ancient analog engine. I am going to need to add a lot of sensors and figure out the electronics.

    700R4 swap is a lot easier but also nowhere near as strong. No computer is needed and the price is a lot less but there is a very real chance I’ll nuke it eventually.

    6L80 swap, pro is 6 gears and it’s fancy; con is it has all the problems and extra cost of going 4L80

    NV4500, the biggest con is it will be a ton of work parts-wise because I will need to get all the stuff to put a clutch pedal and master/slave cyl in the truck. The only real pro is manual which I’m not even sure is a huge plus….

    The last option is an SM465 swap now with a future upgrade to a Gear Vendors OD unit when I find a used one. The Pro is the trans swap is cheap but has all the pedal issues the NV4500 does and in the long run it’ll be expensive to get he OD unit.

    I could also just install a OD unit on the existing transmission but that just seems boring….

      1. The issue there is the whole point of the truck is the low gears; turning a 37-38″ tire with a 6.2 diesel needs some mechanical advantage.

        Plus I think a decent highway gear would put me on the other side of the carrier break for the diffs so I have to spend a bunch of money to keep the locker and LSD.

  7. Well if I can’t find a new car I like before 2026 that is sold in the US I plan on making a custom rig.

    The rig I’m thinking of is A Vanagon Syncro with a naturally aspirated air cooled engine.

    I’d probably lower the gearing to account for the difference in horsepower between the wasserboxer and the 1.8 liter air cooled Vanagon engine.

    Anyone see any issues with this idea besides the obvious that it’ll be slow?

    Another idea is I want to find a post war 40s Beetle chassis with the cable brakes and slightly Baja it.

  9. You want a terrible idea? Here’s one. I’m supposed to be going to David’s going-away party on Saturday (which he’s recently indicated may be attended by over a hundred people, and I can’t see how that ends without some police intervention and people spending the night in jail, but hey, content, right?). He’s on the east side of Michigan, I’m on the west-ish side, so no bug deal to make the trip.

    Here’s where the terrible idea comes in. I’m very tempted to drive my ’66 Plymouth Fury over there, just for fun. The body has semi-significant rust, so driving it on the road in the winter, while not something I would normally do, probably wouldn’t make a massive difference in its condition. Doesn’t sound that terrible, you say? Well, what if I told you it currently only has a 6-gallon boat tank in the trunk instead of a proper fuel tank, so I have to either stop every 50 miles or so for gas, or carry a couple of 5-gallon cans with me to refill. Still not that bad? How about the fact it currently has no heater, and the high on Saturday is 30 degrees?

    I’m going to either do the sensible thing and drive the boring 2010 Fusion hybrid and wish I had brought the Plymouth, or drive the Plymouth and spend the entire drive yearning for the heated seats and functional heater core in the Ford.

    2. Hat, gloves, warm socks, snow pants…

      I once drove a TR6 top down in -10 degrees. Got pulled over twice so cops could ask if I was ok, or needed to talk to somebody…

    1. Upgrade the clutch immediately. The power GTIs come from the factory with is already close to the limit of what the stock clutch can handle. If you’re tuning a manual GTI beefing up the clutch is a must. However the DSG is quite robust and I believe they use the exact same unit on both the R and the GTI.

  11. This is probably not the typical answer you’re expecting for Terrible Idea Thursday, but I’m going to share it anyway as a sort of therapy.

    At the end of last month I stumbled on an auction on Hemmings for a Lotus Esprit V8. Now for context, understand that I’ve wanted an Esprit since I was probably 11, so about 41 years now. This was my car. Black, stock wheels, the big wing, tan interior with black piping. And it had less than 20k miles on it. Story was the guy died so a neighbor was selling it for the family.

    Like I said, this was my car. I also know what these are going for these days, but early on the bid was low (of course). So it kept taunting me. But I don’t have liquidity to buy it.

    So here’s my bad idea(s). I could take the money out of my 401k. Yes I know. But I don’t think you understand, a black Esprit takes up most of my bucket list, and like I said it’s been something I’ve dreamed about basically since I was into cars.

    Bad idea number two: I’m going to ask my wife first. Yes I know. But the last two cars I acquired, I didn’t let her know until they were on the way to the house, and you can imagine how that went. So I figured the only fair thing to do is let her know ahead of time that this is what I want to do. So I wrote a long missive about how I’ve wanted this car forever, and if I do it this way then we can afford it, and it won’t directly affect our daily finances. Maybe she would understand that cars are my life, and this is my Everest.

    Uh, no. Not at all. And I suppose I need my wife in my life to keep me from doing stupid things like taking money out of my 401k to buy a car. So, I didn’t bid on it. But I did watch the auction to the end anyway, just to twist the knife a little. It sold for $38,800. A week later I saw a similar (red) one listed elsewhere for $55,000.

    My Lotus dream died that day. Because I’m 52 now and they’re always increasing in value just enough to stay *that* much out of reach for me. And I don’t know if enough in my life is going to change to allow me to spend that kind of money on a car, with a 9-year-old in the house and everything else. And quite frankly I don’t think I’ll see MY car go for that much under market ever again.

    It’s not my wife’s fault, she was just being reasonable. That would have probably been my worst Bad Idea ever. But it still hurts.

    Thanks for listening.

    2. That sounds like it would have been quite the dream come true for you. I’m sorry it didn’t work out. It’s tough to say if taking out 401(k) money would have been the worst thing to do right now. The market hasn’t been fantastic recently and I am not in tune with that enough to know what to expect this year. I know I used to be able to take money out of mine and pay it back with interest to myself.

      I think the FD RX-7 is my Lotus Esprit to use your example. Values of those have absolutely skyrocketed the last several years. I have an FC and an RX-8 though, so I suppose I can’t complain.

      1. The worst part of this is the Esprit pro lab would have outperformed the 401k.

        Unfortunately like I said I know what the market is, and I never expected it to go for that. Had I known that, I wouldn’t have asked her in the first place and done the stupid thing.

        She’s still sore about the 924 I got for free though so it would have been rough for a while….

    3. Ah man this is a bummer. On one hand this is absolutely why we have our better halves, and early withdrawals from your 401k are pretty firmly in the “never a good financial decision” category. The taxes you wind up having to pay are just nuts.

      But damn, what a car….and it went for one hell of a price. Unfortunately Esprits are skyrocketing in value, probably due to the video Doug put out where he praises it as one of the best attainable exotics. Nice ones are pretty much 70+ at this point. I hope another one pops up for you later, but it’s hard to feel optimistic in this market.

      I had a similar-ish experience in 2020 when the market bottomed out. I was looking to buy my first new car and randomly stumbled upon a black Nissan GTR. It had 40,000 miles on it and was priced in the high 40s. The payment on it would’ve been a big stretch at the time, but hardly an “it’s either the rent or the car” deal…so I went out and bought a GTI for 30ish.

      It turns out the wife and I each got a series of raises after it and 30 was further under my budget than I thought it was. Obviously I didn’t know any if this at the time, but it’s hard not to look back and ask some what ifs. Now even GTRs that have been hooned into oblivion are $70,000+ and nicer ones hover near 6 figures. Oh well….our days will come.

    4. I get it. I’ve always wanted a Mustang Boss 302. Preferably the 1970 version with the inboard headlights, ideally in Parnelli Jones orange with the black striping. I enjoy the oddity of a pony car that ran road courses.

      If I’d been born maybe 10 years earlier, I’d have been old enough to have the money to pick one up when they were cheap, before the boomers reached peak income and started the classic domestic performance car frenzy. But I wasn’t, and so they’ll likely always be out of reach.

      I have a framed vintage ad for it on my wall by the front door, and I always think what if when I look at it.

    5. If you were referring to a 401K loan, maybe. As to actually withdrawing the money and taking the penalty, particularly with the market still off it’s highs, now that sounds like a bad idea. Sucks to miss out on a car you’ve always wanted at a good price though. Sucks watching the market move on something you like as well. For me that’s a decent ’59 Cadillac. I sold the one I had years ago when I decided I was going to buy one that didn’t need a full restoration. Now, I’m kind of in a position to do so, but even driver-quality ones have went way up past where they were at the time I sold mine.

  12. I mean, I don’t think I have any terrible ideas for cars.
    There may be terrible execution of the ideas, but I love all my ideas.

    Right now I want to get a late model Crown Vic, chinese twin turbo it, and when the motor blows just pull another one from the junkyard. Rinse, repeat till I get bored.

  13. I daily drive a 15 year old RX-8. Some may say it’s a terrible idea, but I’m arrogant enough to 100% believe this will work for the few years I need it to.

      1. I knew I had wanted one for a while, but my wife was strongly against me having two fun cars and a daily driver. I wasn’t giving up my FC, so the only way to make it work was as a daily driver. The bright side to that was I could justify a higher budget and got a lovely low mileage example in Connecticut. It outs a smile on my face every day. It truly is an amazing chassis.

        2. Best of luck with the RX-8! I’ve also got an FC and an RX-8, but the 8 isn’t on DD duty most of the time (I am still working from home most of the time, so no need). Just had to rebuild the engine over last summer, but the rewards behind the wheel are worth it!

  14. Ok so I need some advice here, my car normie sister is moving to Darwin in a couple of weeks and is looking to get her first car and of course as her car loving brother has come to me for advice. (For those not familiar with Australia, Darwin is a small city massively isolated from the rest of the country, there are effectively three roads out of the city and the nearest big city (ie population over 1,000) is 1500kms away and the nearest truely big city, Adelaide, is approximately 3000kms).

    Darwin itself is really close to many amazing camp sites and off road trails, and I figure she should get a proper off road SUV so that she can take advantage of this, but I’m not sure it’s necessarily a good idea if she gets in trouble 100s of KMs from the nearest person from help.

    So TLDR, my question is should I keep pushing the Suzuki Jimny that I think will be reliable and off road capable, or tell her to get a normie hatchback (Mazda 3 or Subaru or equivalent) and just never drive out of Darwin itself?

    1. Jimny IMO. If she’s like the rest of you Aussies, she’s eventually going to try to get to those campsites anyway, right, so better she’s doing it in something ready for it I’d say. And from what I’ve seen, the Jimny doesn’t seem to encourage getting too far beyond one’s limits in the same way something like say our moronic Hummers of the previous decades did.

      For what it’s worth, your hatchback option would work fine here in the States for most of the buying public. Except they wouldn’t want a hatchback. 😉

  15. Would love some advice on my next terrible idea – I’m trying to decide which of the following bad ideas is the least-bad idea:

    2003 Montero – https://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/cto/d/san-mateo-2003-mitsubishi-montero-sport/7584223193.html
    2005 Toareg – https://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/cto/d/south-san-francisco-2005-volkswagan/7583268193.html

    I realize both are going to cost me a hell of a lot more than $3,500 when the dust settles, so the question is which method of bankruptcy should I choose?

    1. The Montero Sport is probably going to be more reliable, but the Touareg is really nice if you can put up with its quirks. I’d recommend the Mitsu as far as consumer advice goes, but the other side of things is that cars aren’t rational, so whichever one you love more is probably the one to get.

      1. Thanks Thomas – I’m really lusting for an Isuzu VehiCROSS but they’re pretty much unobtanium at this point (especially given my budget) so I’ll settle for something that is reasonably happy on forest roads and won’t strand me in the wilderness too often. I’m leaning Mitsu too.

  16. I had a 2014 Volt until last year. It was great car. For $3000 it’s probably worth the risk, especially since you aren’t dependent on it working. Just know the battery could last years or days, and it won’t work if the battery goes (or on the really early one, if even the temp sensor in the battery pack goes). The cost to fix will be way more than the car is worth.
    What bothers me is peeple thst are buying and sometimes financing a Gen 1 for $10,000 and up, but it’s their primary vehicle and they can’t afford it if the car becomes a brick. It’s a risk with any car, but batteries only have a finite life. At $3000 it’s a much more tolerable risk. There are a few paid Android apps out there developed for the Volt. Check out the “mygreenvolt” app. With a Bluetooth ODM reader it can check the cell pack voltages for any big imbalances and at least give you a good indication of pack health. There are a couple Facebook groups for the Volt that are worth a search too.

  18. I now have several hundred pounds of high purity magnesium and alumag alloy and the appropriate tooling to machine it.

    … there are zero good ideas here.

      1. What on God’s green Earth would make you think I don’t already have thermite?

        Oh. Right. The part where I said very loudly into the houseplant that I definitely do not have at least 25 pounds of magnesium and aluminum shavings in coffee cans.

  19. I didn’t wind up going through with it but my terrible idea prior to getting the Kona N was to trade in my then GTI in on a pony car. I hit a weird early 30s crisis point when I realized that I’d passed the stage of being able to drive a dedicated sports car as a single dude and that with kids on the horizon and my wedding in less than I year I needed to do it NOW.

    I tracked down a cool dark gray V6 Camaro with the adaptive exhaust and a bunch of cool styling add ons that had been sitting on a lot for months and was heavily discounted. I made an appointment to go out and drive it that weekend but somehow someone came in and bought it hours later. It truly was not meant to be…and yet I found a similar spec used with only 1,000 miles (red flags? Where?) at a Mazda dealership that I went and drove instead and got down to numbers but didn’t make a deal. There was also an SS I was considering.

    At this point reality dawned on me and my then fiancée/current wife. I realized how ridiculous the costs to own the damn things were (gas and insurance baby!) and my wife basically said “haha you’re not serious right? RIGHT?!” so I backed off for a few weeks. But damn it, I couldn’t shake the urge. So at the end of 2021 I started talking to a Ford dealership and was ready to go out that Saturday and try out a well spec’d HPP ecoboost (yes I know, V8s are mandatory, but I found the weird zombie nature of putting the Focus RS engine in a stang to be cool) and a lower spec’d GT side by side.

    Wellllll my wife had finally had when I told her my plans and she said we were at an absurd point in our lives for me to be considering a pony car (true!), that it wouldn’t work for our needs (mostly true!), that it was impractical for the city (true!), and that she thought I’d wind up regretting it and want to switch cars again and that it would be financially unwise.

    I snapped out of it, and 6 months later she semi-enthusiastically approved of the Kona N because CUV=practical in her car normie mind, and I haven’t looked back. I still lust after pony cars though, and weirdly spec’d ones in particular. I rented a Camaro SS as our honeymoon car (this was booked before the Kona N purchase) thinking I’d prove to her that pony cars are more practical than she thought and uh…it was a blast to drive but an absolute logistical nightmare when it came to parking the damn thing, fitting our luggage in it, etc. I wasn’t even sad to give the keys back at the end.

    So…she was right. I’ll still occasionally see interesting Mustangs and Camaros pop up locally at heavy discounts and smile. But alas…my hot hatches have served us well. Really well. And my next move will probably be an extra spicy sedan.

        1. A certified M550i is definitely on my radar. That twin turbo V8 is a monster, the sleeper status is off the charts, and it’ll have room to spare. It kind of straddles the line between sports sedan and luxobarge which for my needs is a mighty fine place to be.

            1. It’s also a detuned version of the exact same engine. Honestly I think BMW has gone so far with a lot of their M Performance products that the full Ms don’t always make sense anymore. I know that sounds like sacrilege but a lot of them are so extreme at this point that it’s overkill for street driving.

              Other than the M2, which will also be on my radar but a haaard sell for the wife, I’m not sure if there’s another full M I’d spring for over the M Performance variant…especially when they’ve all got B58s or the twin turbo V8, which are probably BMWs best current ICE powertrains.

    2. As much as I sometimes hate to admit it, one thing 10 years of marriage has taught me is that, when my wife tells me something, she’s almost always right. Like, not just the kind of right where you’re going along to keep the peace, I mean actually, genuinely right. Drives me a little crazy sometimes, but I’ve learned to liaten.

    2. As much as I sometimes hate to admit it, one thing 10 years of marriage has taught me is that, when my wife tells me something, she’s almost always right. Like, not just the kind of right where you’re going along to keep the peace, I mean actually, genuinely right. Drives me a little crazy sometimes, but I’ve learned to liaten.

        1. Oh, keep it. Maybe it’ll save some of the newbie hubbies on the site some major pain. As someone coming up on his 33rd anniversary, you’re right, Dude.

  21. Putting the EJ22 motor from a 95 Subaru Outback into a 1971 VW Superbeetle. I have already acquired most of the parts needed, including an unobtanium OG transporter transaxle, except the clutch and adapter plate to put it all together. After EJS this year I plan to start the final conversion from 44hp aircooled nugget into a 160hp water cooled sleeper.

      1. it is going to be mounted at an angle in the frunk. SB has air inlets for the optional air conditioning in the nose so I am going to reroute it to the radiator. Some people just mount it below the rear window like a wing, but having something that important/hot completely exposed makes my anxiety fire up.

        1. Basically it is going to replace where the spare tire is currently located. I forgot to mention this and just realized you can’t edit comments….

      1. Those aren’t the ones that get a free new battery. Those are the ones that just quit working. And also have to be reprogrammed at a cost of $200+ if you don’t drive them for like a month.

    7. No. I feel like these are cars that are meant to crush miles daily. It’d be my perfect car (50miles round trip daily). It’s the type of car that will not enjoy just sitting. You, with all due respect, do not fit this profile, and this car is not meant for you.

      BUT, the boss said yes?!? So, go for it.

    8. Go for it! Particularly if you can talk them down to $2,000, and that price just works better with 200,000 miles – a 2 for 2 special of sorts. As of the owner of a 2012 Volt, I can say they’re great – or at least mine has been. They money savings is real, although at this point I’m guessing the range has diminished a bit, but even on gas I generally see 40mpg. Mine used to get 36 miles on electric regularly. And that was driving it in sport-mode most of the time. Now, at least in the winter, the guess-o-meter shows 20 miles after a full charge, and I only get around 14 of that since I run in Mountain mode these days. According to the forums, that’s a method of possibly extending the battery a bit more. One of the these days I should get that App that shows the battery cell health.

      And there’s the reason to get one! You can try out the various apps and software available for it and show us your findings. However it does kinda suck is that there is that chance of it bricking at some point and being prohibitively expensive to fix. And from what I understand, this is an eventuality. It’s not like the ’95 Escort in our fleet that I seem to be able to keep throwing sensors and misc. other parts at to keep on the road. I actually thought a person could run the thing on the ICE alone when I bought it, but turns out that’s not the case. At this point, all the miles are gravy for me – mine paid me back it’s purchase price sometime around the 4 year mark. They’re fascinating cars – go for it!

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