Personal Information on D.I.Y. Car Restoration Projects:
Lessons Learned
from
Sharing a Classic Car Project with a Friend
After a year and a half of co-owning the 1972 C-10, my roommate and I have sold it. First let me say it was a blast to work with my roommate and I'd pick up another project with the guy anytime. We had a lot of fun. This project had it all: head-aching frustrations, the glorious sound of getting the engine timing right, heart-skipping moments, and good-thing-that-worked-huh? moments.
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| Jenny put back together, with 4 good tires, finally timed, and with side view mirrors. |
Adventures began on the first day of picking up the truck. Our tow truck driver decided to use incline the tow ramp and let the C-10 roll down the ramp and onto the driveway on its own power. We got it down and after thinking about it, that was a terrible idea. The brakes could have gone out, the truck could have plowed through our rental house's garage, a number of things could have happened. My roommate took Jenny out for a test drive months later after finally getting the engine timing working. He said he was coming up on a stop sign and hit the brakes but the brakes were not working. It took a slow pump to engage the brakes and acknowledged that maybe it wasn't such a good idea to take the car out without checking out the brake system. After working on the brake system, my roommate and I discovered the rear brake line was dry due to rusted holes in the line. Thank you for front brakes and a wall divider between the front and rear lines in the brake master cylinder. No thank-you to the heart-skipping moments.
My top three lessons learned were:
1) Know the goal of the project at hand and do your best to research the pros/cons for any given project. The clearer the project the better and easier it will be to focus when the going gets rough. It is difficult and tiring to research everything that might go wrong, but research is the best gauge in how much risk you are willing to take in a given project.
2) Work with people who have a different skillset/experience and a different wrenching philosophy than you. This pays off dividends in learning new skills and acquiring new experiences. In addition to the obvious benefits of having multiple hands on the project, I found we'd be willing to try new things and invest in tools we might not have valued before.
3) Expect the unexpected. Projects tend to take longer and cost more than you expect. Few will value the efforts and costs you give into a project and looking forward to a buyer to give you satisfaction is not realistic. Be realistic about the situation and circumstances at hand if it is bad, and never stop having fun. Parts break, it gets frustrating. Great teams use that frustration and turn it into motivation to work through roadblocks well and have fun doing so. Celebrate each success no matter how small or large and thank each other constantly.
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| Before (left) and After (right) pictures of the same 3-speed transmission. See imgur.com/gallery/OP36R for transmission project details. |
To capture lessons learned, I asked my roommate to write his overall thoughts about the project.
The three biggest lessons learned from this project for me were:
1) Know what your goal is in a project.
This lesson may sound easy but it is important to follow. When starting a project you want to know what your end goal is for it. This doesn't mean you have to know all of the details but it does mean know why you are doing the project and stay on track to reach this goal. When we originally bought the truck we had a goal of just getting it running and able to drive. Along the way there were a lot of set backs and unexpected issues as with most projects. However, I think some of these issues caused us to slightly lose our original goal. We ended up going from doing a basic goal of getting the engine running to doing a lot more work than originally planned. This resulted in our costs going up higher than originally budgeted.
I also think this lesson is important so that you can make better decisions during the project. Our goal was to fix up the truck and then sell it. Although making money wasn't our ultimate goal we would obviously like to make more than we spent when we sell it. This influenced our parts budget and work priorities since we tried to spend as little as we could. If this was a project we planned to keep then keeping a low budget would not have been as big of a priority. We also learned that if you plan to fix up a car and sell it to know the market better. Know what your project is worth and what you can expect to sell it for. Looking at online ads is a good way to determine the market price as well as online pricing guides. With our truck we did not fully research the market before we bought it and as a result had a difficult time selling. We also learned that selling a project truck takes a certain buyer and most of the time those buyers are not going to pay market value to take on a project.
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| Before (left) and After (right) pictures of the engine bay from the driver's side. |
2) Understand what work is involved and balance that with your skills/tools.
When finding a project vehicle it is very easy to get in over your head. That is, it is easy to pick a project and then find out it was way more work than you bargained for. This was something that we were aware of at the beginning but did not fully understand still. At the beginning we knew the truck needed a lot of work but since we were not planning on a full restoration we did not worry about it too much. This turned out to be a problem as we ran into many more problems to just get the truck on the road than originally anticipated. Some of this was due to a lack of knowledge from not taking on a project like this before and not knowing what to expect.
Knowing what skills you have is important in knowing what problems you can actually expect to fix. This can also be extended to realizing what tools you have and knowing what tools are required to complete a job. If you don't have a welder or experience welding then you can't expect to fix and repair rust spots yourself. This was something we ran into where we required tools we just didn't have and buying wasn't practical. Without proper tools and a budget to have someone else do the work we were not able to fully address all of the issues we wanted to. Skills can also be gained during a project so taking on something out of your comfort zone can be good to help expand your knowledge and skills.
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| Before (left) and After (right) pictures of the engine bay from the passenger's side. |
3) Expect the unexpected.
Kind of a cliche but it is still true. Every project will have some type of problem you didn't expect or plan on. For this project we had several. Things like having a rusted gas tank or having to replace a section of brake line really took up a lot of time and money to address. Also things like having every one of tires go flat is another problem that you can't ever expect but need to account for in some way. Hidden costs will always be present so don't try to stretch your budget at the beginning. The costs will add up in one way or another and often in areas you didn't expect. Setting aside some sort of budget and time for things you didn't expect is a must. Although you may not be able to accurately account for these having any type of budget set aside can help alleviate things when a problem does arise.
Overall I was happy with the project and the way it turned out. We were able to meet our original goals of getting the truck running and mostly road worthy. We did as much as we could with our budget, time, and resources available. Although we did not have as much luck selling the truck as originally anticipated we were able to sell it to someone that was going to take on the project and finish it. In the future I will be able to better select a project and look forward to learning even more.
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| Jenny sold and being towed. |
Jenny, you were a great truck and we hope to see you on the road someday.
And to my roommate, thanks for a great time and memories buddy. Cheers to our next projects and car projects never getting old.
