NEW THREAD-Why we don't finish........
OK, this is a hard pill to swallow for most of us. But think about this a second; when you go to a car show, what do you see? One or two cars you could eat off, where the paint isn't even burned off the headers yet.But the majority have some paint chips, maybe even faded paint, dirty undersides, greasy suspension...well, you know. Now, when we are in the middle of our project, we close our eyes and picture the former cars, and move forward with that in mind on our Rather Large Rotisserie Chicken, and hence, it spends way more time in the build than would be necessary to get it on the road. Case in point; maybe your interior sucks, so you add that to the list and gut it, not taking into consideration that you could drive it to the shows all summer, and work the interior in the 'off-season'...if you get my drift. What I mean is, we start out walking around the block and wind up walking into the next county in our quest to have the 'perfect' resto or machine, rather than getting on the 'Drive and Wrench' program. Now, I'm not suggesting anyone sell their car or themselves short, only that you can do some restos in chunks while still enjoying the fruits of your labors.
Hiya ,
Good idea for a thread! Excellent responses. I’m definitely looking forward to reading more of how others approached their projects and their insight.
I’m a bit of an analytical person and tend to over think things a bit so keep that in mind as I share ….
Starting from scratch…
I’ll start off this post by stating that I am very to this hobby. In fact this is my first car project and up until recently I had been a biker, mostly sport bikes. After my last wreck I decided to try something new and instead of using the insurance money to buy another bike I decided to buy a car. Darts have always been a favorite since my childhood.
Being new to the hobby I was starting from scratch with very little experience to draw from. I wasn’t totally out in the cold though because I had done some bike projects and figured I would glean from those experiences.
The scope…
The scope to me is about setting up a goal. Determining what I wanted to do. Initially the scope of my project is to buy a running car with minimal rust that I could enjoy right away. I would make the car safe to drive and use every day. Lastly, I consider this car a keeper and would be open to increasing the scope as the project progressed.
The roadmap…
At this point I had some money from the insurance company and an idea. I was feeling good and for all intents and purposes it was a good place to start. However, one look through the classifieds, quick surf of the web and a day later I was overwhelmed with choices, possibilities, and scenarios. I knew at that moment that my approach was too broad and that I needed to stream line it if I wanted to get anywhere. You see with Bikes, I knew what I wanted or what would sell because I was focused and I needed to draw on that to get my arms around this project. I needed a game plan.
Still feeling a bit overwhelmed I figured the best way to get started was to develop a roadmap for getting my idea and the bit of cash I had to turn into something. The idea was that this roadmap would get me from Point “A” (cash and idea) to Point “Z” (bad *** car). After I established the first two points of the map essentially making the start point “A’ and the end point “Z” I needed to frame out the rest of the points of the road map and connect the dots. I felt like I was getting somewhere. Keep in mind I haven’t even picked a car yet lol.
My Roadmap started out at a very High level.
A. Money and Idea
B. Select a car type (A body MOPAR)
C. Establish criteria for the target car
D. Determine how much to spend on the purchase price
E. Set expectation
F. Create a preliminary budget
G. ….
Z. Completed project
I know the illustration looks vague but that’s how it started and then I built out each point making it more granular. Eventually, the road map turned into a detailed plan
Picking the target…
With the preliminary planning out of the way I zeroed my sites in on an A body MOPAR ranging from 67-72. I picked these years because I loved them since I was a kid.
The approach…
My approach is straight forward.
Baseline -Once I had the car home. The first thing I did was establish a baseline. Looked the car over to determine was need to make the car safe to drive then made a list of tasks based on major component assemblies and then a set of subtasks for each assembly.
Work flow- Break the larger project down into smaller projects. I chose to break it down by system, and then break the system down further into components. I would start and finish each component until A system was completed then move on to the next system.
Assumptions– I set up a few assumptions to help act as boundaries fro keeping the project rolling.
· I would work one system at a time to keep from spreading out to thin.
· I could work multiple components of a system
· Be prepared to farm out tasks that you are not set up to do or tasks you’re not comfortable doing.
I can illustrate my workflow by telling you that my first system was driveline and that the driveline (transmission to wheel bearings) was broken into several components transmission, drive shaft, differential and half shafts. I could work on multiple component sub projects concurrently or just one at a time but I wouldn’t move to the next system say electrical until I was done with the driveline.
In the end…
I know this isn’t very comprehensive it just captures some of the things that I considered. This is just one persons perspective knowing there isn’t a silver bullet because everyone’s personality and approach to work is different.
BTW, I’m not close to being done but this seems to be working for me so far.
Wish me luck!
AlV
