Filed Under: News
What car to choose ?
Once you’ve decided that you’re ready to buy and restore. The next decision is which car would be the best restoration project for you. This is not the easiest decision one might think, especially if you’ve never fully restored a car before. An impulse purchase without proper research is not advisable for the beginner. We suggest that you put a lot of thought into it and ask yourself these questions before you hand over your hard earned cash.
You’d be surprised how quickly the desirability factor of a car can diminish under close scrutiny. Whether it’s the initial cost, availability of parts or the difficulty level of the particular car.Talk to owners about their car’s design flaws and what they did to remedy them. Ask how easy or difficult the car is to maintain and find parts for. Look at all the cars very closely, and you may find yourself admiring a make or model that you wouldn’t have considered before.
How Much of the Restoration Can You do Yourself?
If you are not handy around the house and have never changed the oil on your car, then be realistic about finding accomplished professionals to do the heavy work for you. This will make a very expensive restoration compared to buying an already finished car. Even the home mechanic can be intimidated with the mechanics found in vehicles produced in the 60’s and 70’s. First timers may want to look at the more straight forward 40’s and 50’s engines and electronics.
The key factors on the affordability scale are then driven from your ability to do the work, and what you think you should pay for the jobs that you have done, the availability of quality shops for specialized work at a reasonable cost and of course, the availability of parts or spares at reasonable prices. The reasonable price criteria is directly related to the numbers of cars built of the model you have chosen and the network of clubs from which you can gain intelligence for their sourcing.
Where Will You do the Work on the Car?
If you think you can just put your main transportation outside and restore your classic in its parking space, think again. Once you start taking the project car apart, you will find that it takes up much more room than your main car does.
Parts that come off need be stored in an organized and documented fashion. Before you know it you’ll have boxes, body parts and bright work with no place to put them. This can cause damage and loss to parts of the car you didn’t have in the budget.
If space is limited, consider a smaller car like an MG,Mini, Fiesta or VW Bug. These cars can offer some very thrifty thrills.
Why Do You Want to Restore a Car?
If you think this is a silly question to ask, you obviously have never fully restored an old car. Restoring an older automobile with the goal to get it back to its former glory and on the road again, is truly a labor of love and can be great fun. Every time you come up against a nut that won’t budge or find that part needs to be fabricated, you need to remind yourself of this.
We suggest you make the reasons for restoring this car a mantra to be repeated constantly when aligning your newly painted doors back onto its hinges and trying to get them to close properly. This helps curb the obligatory profanity usually used during this part of the restoration.
We’re not trying to scare you away from restoring a car, we just want you to understand that there are frustrating moments in the process. It’s similar to golf…when you shank the ball left into no man’s land, you have to remember that this is a game and you’re supposed to be having fun.
Subscribe Our News (RSS)