The wheelbarrow thing is genious! I think it was an old custom rodder I had where a guy recessed his firewall using pretty much a whole wheel barrow, I always thought that was a good idea. I used the cheapo hot water tank shiny bubble wrap on my caddy as insulation/temporary carpet, it killed alot of the heat too. I used to work at a industrial repair shop, and every few weeks we would build up little scraps of metal in our bin that the boss said were too small to hang onto. We would give them away to the first guy who would take the whole thing. If you have a truck, someone in your town has end cuts they want gone!
I just read the whole thread...Great ideas in here! I have never thought of using common household fixes on my truck, but through this thread have learned to look at things a little differently, so thanks. Always support your local businesses, mom and pop stores and restaurants whenever possible. These men and women make this country what it is. Same with Made In USA products. Keep as much of our money in the states as we can. To the asshole who thinks stealing is cool...your a dumbass. I may work at a McParts store, but theft has the same ripple effect at my store as anywhere else. I have personally watched prices increase across the board almost monthly, mainly to recoup lost revinue due to theft. When you steal you are really not putting it to the man or getting away, you are screwing yourself and all the honest people around you...you short sighted fuck. Should there come a day when you learn about theft first hand, you will understand how big of an ass you made of yourself. There is a group locally here that hits auctions for scrap hoods, rear quarters, whatever pieces may be laying for WAY less than scrap prices. The metal is already curved and usually off of a less than desirable car. I am yet to do much to my truck other than the engine/trans...so this helped a lot for ideas. I will start customizing sooner or later, and some of these ideas will be used for sure!
I've seen copper fuel lines more than once, especially on bikes. Tanks, too. Don't know the chemistry behind it, however.
Copper was used for fuel lines for years in the auto industry, but becomes brittle with the constant vibration and is therefore, an inferior (and possibly dangerous) material to use. There is a newer copper coated steel line that looks just as good as the original without all of the safety issues.
Geez.. feel like taking a stroll to Lowes or Home Depot just to see what I can envision now.. Like I needed any kind of motivation before! This is an awesome thread. Some of these ideas are shear genius! Love it. I used glass drawer pulls for radio knobs and they really turned out pretty cool. I like the fence post idea for exhaust too.. gonna have to try that one. Keep the ideas coming dudes! Love it!
How about 6 one egg T-fal frying pans for air cleaner covers. The rest is PVC Ts and 4 inch paper filters. $6.97 each for the pans and about $4.50 each for the Ts. I made the whole set-up for around $80.00. I still have the louvered tri-power air cleaners, I just like to change the look now and then. We used to use stainless steel mixing bowls in the 60s for bell type air cleaners.
I've just spent 30min laughing my ass off at all this .This is Great .The rod magazines used to pay for Tips like this .Walmart makes it funny .ButWalmart it is the Second biggest building in eastern Idaho.(sorry Joe) Here is a Low tech item from anywhere .Vac nozzles make great heat defroster ducts .I know I'm a panzy for liking a heater but Defroster is Nice !
Never pass up the bed frame / angle for projects. Made us a cheap, small sheet metal brake for use in a vise. I'm all for "budget sensitive" be it from Wal-Mart or the dumpster.
Aluminum flexible armored cable with or without wire can be bought cheap from any builders supply for a couple bucks. Polishes beautifully
At the first garage I worked at, we had a spell of Acura Legends come in with gummed up lash adjusters... sludgy oil. One of the owners or service writer got a product that worked great for cutting the funk. Pour in a bottle of this stuff, run the car in the yard 30 min; do oil change. Good as gold. Stuff was thick as honey, but looked and smelled like Pine-Sol. Even when it came out of the crankcase. BTW, I use whatever solvent I can get cheap (alcohol, charcoal starter fluid, etc) in those cast-off plastic food containers with screw-on lids for degreasing. Put parts and cleaner in, screw lid down, shake like hell for five min. Works great. Perhaps I should charge the 'leftover macademia nuts container cleaning system' with Pine-Sol. Might just be unbeatable. -Bill
We brought rubber cow mats at Farm and Fleet and installed it on top of the wood floor of the enclosed trailer. Used the longer cut offs that came from where the wheel wells are as a new sling on my wrecker and the smaller pieces as body mounts and exhaust hangers. Slainless food bowls from the pet department at the dollar store for recessed taillight bezels.
Brought several of those dixie stainless tubes that you pull your cups out of at fast food places new at a goodwill on half price day($2.50 each) while getting a dirty look from the wife why so many?. Cut some up for heat sheilds and the rest was sold on that auction site($20.00 a piece) so I was money ahead in the end.
.......I like to buy american products for my american car........most of Walmart is china made....why would you want to put that China shit on your car? Never seen a China car get a thumbs up
This thread is sweet. It was just what I needed to get the ol brain a workin. I gotta get scraping and get the budget beater rolling.
I think you might be missing the point of this thread. If you READ the first post in the thread the question is posed to ask for cheap parts from Walmart or Home Depot as an example,not limited to them.At least that is how I read it. I guess some people just see and write Red when the topic of Walmart comes up.Myself I'm always up to hear and consider some money saving ideas. Keep them coming guys good thread!
You can buy the braided water line cut off the ends and use it for the steel braid hose works great and is a lot cheaper I've been doing that for years and havent had one problem.I use it for gas line pvc and over flow line.
You guys would be killin each other over my scrap pile, to me those shower heads are worth 2 bucks a pound, stainless sinks about 75 cents a pound. I get loads of different hoses, some even stainless. You can only put so much plumbing stuff on your car before you put on the one part that makes it all too obvious.
shit this is a old but goodie thread!! iv'e looked at all the h/d, lowes, wally worlds for anything to usefor years. but when i walk though the parking lot i find myself looking at tail lite on cars that i think i can cut up and use for lenses,also small hidden parking lites. but i'm old i wander around in the parking lot a lot
I have one. I had an old set of headlights with bad reflectors. I used 2 of those clamp on heat lamp reflectors. They were made from thin aluminum so I polished them up and they fit perfect. Lights worked great.
Agree..great thread, American ingenuity and know how.......just how our hotrodder forefathers did it.
This is a little off topic I guess...but I was in Wallyworld the other day buying some oil and saw a $3.50 V8 emblem in automotive. Thought it would be ok on one of my old Snap On boxes.
A cheap wheelbarrow bucket cut down makes a good firewall or recess for a firewall. Short pieces of 2"ABS plastic drain pipe glued together side by side make a good underdash guages mount.I cut a hole in a hockey puck and fashioned a 3 pronged handle ( to give a bit of clearance) and use it for a seal driver. I cut up a piece of that interconnecting rubber tile for garage floors into 2 3/4 wide X 11 long strips and glued 4 into a stack with PL Premium.Makes a DANDY long board for sanding. A few pieces of Gorilla tape hold your strip of paper on. I made a shorter one while i was at it. Put an old sock over your pickup or welding magnet and you wont need to fight with metal shavings to clean the magnet off,,just whip the sock off. A salvaged shopping cart cut down to your liking makes a fine mig welding cart and station. Tired of pushing non running cars into my garage ,,I fastened a hand crank boat wench ( removable ) to my workbench ,now I can hook on and crank a car in.
Go to the plumbing section of your local box box store, or better yet, local hardware store, for some schome plated tubing... the sink drains section... they make them in different lengths too... also, try chrome shower rods as a cheap spreader bar... My deck lid latch is a locking garage door handle... the square rod size is the same size as Ford used for everthing. $7.99
The Jalopy Journal
