There's an odd feeling that sets in with me as I find myself winding down a particularly long and tedious car build. It's not a new phenomenon, I've dealt with it before, and it shows up about the time the car is being prepped for that first test drive. In years past, I was younger, and the natural zeal of adolescent enthusiasm overpowered the ****erflies and prodded me to jump into the seat and GO! To Heck with the 'what ifs' and the Things Left Undone...just turn the key, shake it out and see what happens! When you embark upon a project, you rarely manage to accurately estimate just how long it will take, and what it will cost. I figured on spending maybe a grand and getting the 49 from long dead hulk to driver in about six months time. I never expected it to take a year and a half and blow the budget threefold, but **** Happens, right?! It's within a month and maybe five hndred bucks right now of being 'Done' for a tick over three grand in about 18 months! With the engine in, the wiring done, the drivetrain bolted down, vital fluids added and the brakes somewhat operational...the car carries the illusion of a real, functional automobile at this point. The controls are all there and all work, so why not claim Victory and bask in the Glory of a completed Project...or at least spin it around the block??? Because I always do it...I get to the One Yard Line, then start to think "Man, I ****ed this up...I did this wrong or that isn't right, or why the HELL did I do this like THAT?!". As I obssess over those Last Minute details, I start to review in my mind the initial Plan I had for the vehicle, and compare that image to what I see before me. Dude, it ain't even CLOSE... but, does that make it WRONG??? No, not at all...but it creates that shred of self doubt that haunts you as you go over things for the sixteenth time finding more stuff that needs to be tweaked, reworked, adjusted, fixed or completely re-done. Your mind formulates questions that find you second guessing your work and wondering how things got so far off track while you were too busy working on the car to look at where you were headed. Course Corrections come harder the later you try to make them! Part of it involves that Line...the one you cross over when your thoughts go from "I can't wait to get this done" to "Gee, I really don't want this to be OVER"!! Some soldiers fear the end of the battle more so than the threat of defeat, I suppose! (Yeah, yeah...they're never DONE, but you know what I mean...once they p*** that point in the Game where they go from being that rusty eyesore that's decorated your driveway for so long to being a potential means of transport...the car builder experiences a sort of 'empty nest' (or empty GARAGE!) syndrome I guess!) I tried to fight that feeling off buy gathering up the motor, trans, rear axle, wheels and other stuff I'm going to need for the NEXT project while this one was winding down...but that didn't do the trick. Part of me wants this Journey to continue the way that it has...but the other half says "Shut up and DRIVE it, you dimwit!". A set of rear wheels is all that stands between me and the first Drive now...even though my mind has found about two dozen Little Things that "should" be done first! Like I said...Last Minute Obssessing! Looking back through my Mental S****book at the process of building this car, it's interesting to see what changes came about as I went along. My first inclination was to rip out the 216 and drop in a 250 straight six. I thought that would keep the car somewhat in character, yet bring it up to FAR more reliable and enjoyable standards. Always hated Stovebolts, so an engine swap was a Given from day one...the job would just take a while and bounce off a few weird roadsigns here and there! Then, I mapped out a plan to do The Unthinkable...I wanted to 'subframe' the car...only instead of running the typical Camaro/Nova front subframe...I wanted to go with a (gulp!) Celebrity front cradle grafted onto the stock frame! The track width on those cars is the same, and using one of those cradles would provide a complete 'modern' drivetrain and front suspension with disc brakes all in one fell swoop! I reasoned that the most challenging aspect would be making some type of 'hoops' to support the upper strut mounts...but thought that'd be workable by time it got that far! After carefull study of many Celebrity ch***is, and considering just how rusty my frame and floor were, I got to thinking that It'd be better to cut the body off of a Celeb, lengthen the wheelbase, construct a thin perimeter subframe, then drop the 49 body onto the new ch***is minus it's old rotted frame and floorpan. (Kinda what MercMan1951 is doing...smoothing an older body onto a newer frame and floorpan). That idea met with a tidal wave of static, as you might imagine, and somewhere amid the screams and protests, I resorted to heading for something of a compromise...I decided to keep the car rear wheel drive (sound of my boot hitting my *** inserted HERE!) and tough it out the "right" way. Keeping in mind that I used to drink...ALOT, the following Vega Incident doesn't seem all that outrageous, I guess...but for a month or so, I made long strides towards putting the car on the road with an mighty 140 cubic inch Vega four banger under the hood! In fact, if the engine I bought didn't turn out to be seized, it would have gone down that way! I got as far as making motor mounts and dropping the Vega motor into place to see how it fit. Actually, it's a slam dunk, and VERY easy...if anyone cares to know!!! But, with that motor being declared Anchor Status, I set about trying to keep a tiny spark of the dream alive, by opting for a 2.8 V6...commonly found in Chevy Celebrity cars and their cousins! Only, I was gonna use a rear wheel drive one and be done with it. Them that's been here a while know all too well how our own Choprods stepped up to offer me a complete 2.8 out of a Citation, along with an S10 automatic trans...and all about the road trip from Detroit to Elmer, Missouri that ensued! Long story short(er)...the Citation FWD engine is in, and has been successfully mated to the RWD ******, and runs. The trans seems to work, the brakes hold the wheels, and the electrical system is carrying it's end of the bargain just fine! Somewhere between Inception and Completion, this thing went from low buck goals, to some crazy, wild-***ed rollercoaster ride that didn't come out anywhere NEAR what I had envisoned...but is coming to a close, none-the-less! I still tell myself I shoulda kept on track with the whole Front Wheel Drive idea...could sling the car real low, have it ride like a dream, and go for years without troubles...but I hit a speed bump, spilled my drink, sobered up and opened my eyes as the train was rolling into the station. Blinking awake, I found myself gathering my wits about me and saying "Huh?"!!! Now, much trimmer and stone sober for several months, I sit and stare under the hood and under the car and ask myself "How did I get HERE?", and all those notions of 'woulda coulda shoulda' play their tune in my head. Is it regret? Nah, I wouldn't call it that...I love this old clunker and all of it's flaws, and though I've cursed it and tried to sell it several times...it's a part of me now...and always will be, for better or for worse! It wouldn't LET me quit, so I stayed in the Fight...not paying much attention to what would happen next. (Like the Marmaduke cartoon where he's holding a car up by the back bumper with a big question mark over his head as his owner exclaims "I knew if he ever caught one he wouldn't know what to do with it!"!) I live for the Chase, i reckon!!! So, do any of you find yourself second guessing yourself or obessessing over all the final details as a project winds down...or am I weirder than I thought??? What about "the ****erfly Effect" and The Road Not Taken? Ha Ha, damn, I could be drinking right now and not thinking about this stuff!! What a long, strange trip it's been!
**** dude, if you spent as much time on the CAR as you do WRITING about the CAR, it'd be Pebble Beach material. Congrats ****head. I better be the first to die, er I mean, ride shotgun in it! Jay
Find some wheels, drive it!! GIT ER DONE!! Good read. I guess I am lucky, living 3 miles down a dirt road in the country. Can drive a project without having to worry about traffic, cops etc. Working on my roadster last week, banging out at high rpm, drove it in low up to about 7 grand 4 or 5 times, neighbor(old hot rodder) who lives about 3 miles away heard it and came over to see what I was doing. Post pics when you are done.
God damn good read man. I obsess non stop. This is my first car project in years and the initial "hurry up and go" dissolved after the second or third test drive. Now....that the inside of the car is all over my garage...I keep wanting to just chuck it all back in and go for another ride. I know better though. Example: I spent two weeks getting my dash "straight" since the previous owner cut a huge *** whole in it to mount a wooden slat for the gauges. Welding, and welding and fixing the damn thing. Last weekend I realized that ....although the gauges would work and the hole was filled...I didn't like how it turned out. Broke out the cut off saw and nailed the piece to my wall. I wrote "Patience" on it. Started over.
That was great reading, and definitely reminds me(and I'm sure EVERYBODY)of MANY times I worried/wondered/stressed about aspects of a build "working". Or even wondered how I was going to tackle a certain project on the build. And I was totally stressed about how I was going to do that, and once I actually started the project, though I might have done it differently then the 4,176 way I THOUGHT I was gonna do it-it turned out great. And easier then I expected, making me wonder why the hell I worried in the first place. Anyways, thanks for the post, now get-r-dun!!!
Fat Hack, the road to the unusual always seems to go through the "Valley of What the Hell Was I thinking?" Any time a guy moves from the standard issue hot rod, things get complicated and more costly. My saving grace is that I have the ability (or lack of sence to know I DON'T have the ability) and equipment to do almost everything myself. I might not have the neatest rod at the show, but I sure have my fun with it. It probably doesn't hurt to have an at***ude of " I don't give a rip if you like it or not, I didn't build it for you. But you can buy it for $**** and do whatever you think should be done with it." As far as concerns about that first drive... Can't ever remember having them, but that first drive was always a pretty short one. Then it went back into the garage to make sure everything was done. I have never doubted my mechanical abilities, but occasionally interuptions happen where some things didn't get quite finished. For me, that first drive was/is the motovation to carry on with a project, and my projects were always driven long before they were "done." Probably my down fall to ever having a nice hot rod. But that doesn't really bother me too much. I am finding that as I get older, that first drive is comming at a higher level of completeness then it did when I was younger. I think I'm getting too lazy to walk very far. I like building cars, I like cruising the cars I've built, I grow tired of the same car after about 4 or 5 years and am ready to build what ever is going to be next. For whatever its worth, unusual cars are harder to sell and worth less money. Everyone might say they want something different, until they are faced with reality, then they want something "more like (insert any name here)", but thats OK because I really like some thing different. Gene
Very nicely written. Quick, copyright it and sell that essay to a car magazine! I kind of know the feeling, except I'm at the very, very beginning. And I've already overspent just collecting parts because I can't quite decide what to do and don't quite know what I'm doing. It's fun to brainstorm the possibilities, but hard to settle on the exact plan. I'm torn between putting in a commmonly available FWD (Buick 3.8 or Caddie 4.6) unit in the *rear* of my RPU and using the hot FE 390 / C6 from my parts chaser. Unique or conventional? That's the question. And I'm torn a**** the choices of keeping it as a chop-top Murray sedan, making it into a tub, making it into a hard-top pickup, or making it into an RPU. I'm 6'4", so that may force the roofed/roofless question. And then there's the choice of finding a 1940 banjo or just using my Dana 60 (full floating with 8-lug wheels) from a donor truck. How do we ever decide these things? Flip a coin? Go traditional? Go unconventional? Listen to our HAMB peers? Listen to our friends who know nothing of the hot rod thing? For now, I'm moving ahead with a 360/C6, RPU, and the Dana 60. That will probably get me on the road the quickest. Oh, and then there's the question of dropped front axle or suicide geometry. Oh, and the cowel steering. But I keep wondering what it would look like with an open-air transverse 4.6 Caddie with transaxle in the back, no driveshaft tunnel, and the floor-pan almost on the ground. I'd leave the full patina on the front half, but polish the heck out of the stuff on the engine and transaxle. Maybe the next project .
Great post, I think most of us can completely relate. Maybe thats why so many hotrodders build and sell, build and sell. Its the build, the challenge to create what we find in our minds eye that drives us. Paul
Holy ****! did you just say that your almost done with that thing? Well congrats man. Divvy up the pics. swaZZie
For me, it goes from one forum to the next. Getting the car driving and out of the garage isn't the end, it's a new beginning. Now, instead of trying to make it work, I try to make it work better. Actually driving the car opens up new opportunities for m***ive investments of time and money. How does it accelerate? You certainly need more horsepower. How's it turn? Surely you could fine-tune the suspension to cut corners better. How are the brakes? Ya know..some better pads and rotors would knock 20 feet off that 60-0 distance. ...and of course, it needs to be lowered more. Maybe its because I'm more of an engine guy, and designing motors in my head and then actually building them is great fun. But, nothing beats fine-tuning them in the car until they purr like kittens at idle and roar like lions at wide-open throttle. Building is good, but fine-tuning to bring forth the maximum potential ****ing rules. Exceeding one's own performance expectations makes the money spent seem like a better deal (11-second cars are worth more than 12-second cars, right?) and I think once you've spent some of your precious Michigan summer time behind the wheel, you'll inevitably develop a list of stuff you'll have to accomplish over the winter. Besides...you're a hot rodder. You'll need more horsepower before too long... Scotch~!
Great read Hack. Yea for me, I never have the empty nest syndrome. But I do get the ****erfly thing going. My trouble is... I love to be patient and take my time to do things correct. But I have always set a deadline on everything I do. It sometimes drives me nuts. When its the winter, i can't drive the car and doing the small things to improve is fun...But during driving season, i want to bear the fruits of my work and drive the thing. Getting the bugs out at this time makes me very impatient, and i sometimes skip the important things I should be doing. All in all....... I wouldn't want any of it any other way...otherwise I'd be golfing.
Greg, I truly admire your writing skills. As far as the car...the actual drive is the reason for the road taken. But do me a favor, while you are going back over the details while waiting for the rear wheels, deal with the brakes that you mentioned were "Somewhat Operational"! That does not set well with me. As a car builder I feel the safety items such as BRAKES, are the most important items to deal with. SO with that said, a test drive as far as my shop would be a good shakedown run for ya. And then if any of the parts that Bryan worked on fall off we can fix them while you are here. Good luck Bud.
I to procrastinated about the first drive having to do this that or the other thing first, but decided to head on down and insure the truck for the road and work the bugs out there rather than worry about little things done sub par or in a hurry like wiring the lights, how the seat fit, steering column to long etc etc, I been ****ing away on all them little things as I go and have no regrets about driving it before it was "ready" I probably got more accomplished now that I am driving it in them regards now than I ever would have had I kept flogging away on it in a cold dark shed wondering what it would be like to finally be driving so get some brakes and wheels on it and take it out for a spin likely you'll find things weren't to shabby when you did them the first time around!
The Jalopy Journal
