Rev up your engines!
Today I'm going to talk about, picking the best project car for you to fix,
now when I was young and didn't have any money, every car me and my friends bought hey,
it was a project car, we had maybe $100 to buy a car,
so the project was, to go to the junkyards and buy the cheapest parts we could possibly
get to get that $100 car running so we could actually drive it around and get places,
but today most project cars are different, somebody wants a particular type of car that
they want to fix up for various reasons, either to show it, or to race it, or to just
have a cool old car they can use on the weekend, now over the years I've had many customers
that had fun project cars that I helped them out with,
but I also had a lot of customers that bought the wrong project car and they just got stuck
in an endless money pit, so you don't want to do that,
so the first thing you need to decide about a project car is,
one, how much money do you want to spend on that car,
and two, how far can you go for fixing certain parts of it,
lets start out with the car itself, lets say you got a limited budget well, your not going
to be going out and buying a 65 Mustang and fixing it all up, it's going to be too expensive
to buy in the first place and to get it really nice it's probably going to cost way too much
money, so in that case, say you were into Fords,
why not look for something like a 65 Falcon, find something that wasn't quite as popular,
it might even be a little more unique if it's an old car,
and you can still have fun with it but not spend a small fortune,
and when it does come time to buying a project car,
realize that there's one myth out there that people are always believing and I don't know
why, but they think that, all old cars are worth
a lot of money and even classic cars, they value them way too high,
it's very easy to say, this car is worth $60,000, but if your one of those guys that's planning
on fixing up a car and selling it for $60,000 you might think twice,
most of the people I've known that have done that,
all lost money, because it's real easy to talk how great these
cars are, but when you got to get money for them from
someone else, it's often very hard to sell those things,
the market fluctuates a lot and really, guys are very picky and the odds that you
have the exact one they want are pretty slim, and also talking about money, realize how
far can you go to actually fixing problems that your car has,
certainly your not going to have all the tools I have lying around being a mechanic for 50
years, so you have to decide what kind of shape is
the car going to be in that your going to buy as a project car,
a lot of guys hey, if they want an old Toyota they just find one that it seems to run good,
the engine and transmission runs and shifts, and if it needs a little body work and they
want to do that great, but as for actually rebuilding the engine
and the transmission, most guys probably aren't skilled enough,
don't have the tools to do it right, you don't really want to mess with a car like that,
because I'm warning you right now, I've seen it so much before in the past,
one guy will say, man I got this really good 460 engine and I'll sell it to you cheap for
your project car, and then you find out that engine isn't good
anymore, now if you're going old car, like 60's, 50's,
even earlier, hey the engines were a lot simpler then, maybe
you want to try to rebuild one, but in that case, you want to make sure your
buying a vehicle that you can readily get parts for and that parts aren't going to be
all that expensive, so in this case, buying something like a Porsche,
hey big mistake, the parts cost a fortune for those things,
and there's millions of Toyota's out there, parts are cheap there's plenty of them in
junkyards, same with GM, Ford, there's a lot of cheaper
parts available and there's a lot of new parts for the old ones too because people tend to
collect them and fix them up, but when it does come time for find a project
car, you want to know a little about it's history,
lets say you got a car that looks really good and it seems really cheap,
make sure that it wasn't in hurricane Sandy or some other kind of flood,
because one they're flooded the electronics get destroyed and it would be such a hassle
to fix that as a project car, and here again, you really have to have it
set in your mind, what your planning on doing with this project car,
if it's a thing that, your going to go drifting with on the weekends, hey you're going to
do a lot of modifications, it doesn't have to be street legal, so there's a lot of little
cheats you can do where you don't have to worry about it passing state inspection and
stuff like that, because you're not going to be driving it
on the street, and if your going to buy a car for a project
that you're only going to drive on the weekends, and you're going to spend a long time fixing
it up, hey you can take your time, you can buy parts
from say, China that will take months to get here on a boat,
but you don't care because you're not in that big of a hurry,
if it's a fun thing you're doing and your going to toy around with it on the weekend,
hey let your imagination run wild, but if you're going to do a project car and
your going to do it as an everyday driver, make sure you get one that's easy to get cheap
parts, pick a model that's sold widely so there's
a lot of them in salvage yards that you can get parts off of and save a fortune, as an
example, I had a customer that had a Honda Accord, he got it really cheap because the
whole back quarter panel was all smashed in, the tire was at a 90 degree angle, but he
found one in a salvage yard and he bought the whole clip and the axles and everything
and it only cost him $350 for all those parts, that's why it's a good idea for your area,
just take a trip to some of the junkyards and see what kind of stuff they have lying
around, then you'll know, hey if I get this particular project car I
know there's a bunch of wrecked ones I can get a lot of good parts off of,
and if you're serious about your project car, realize that welding equipment is a lot cheaper
than it use to be, this is a real solid welding thing, I paid
like $150 for it, it really does solid arc welding,
it's very easy to learn arc welding, hey you don't need to go out and buy a super
expensive tig welder that the pros use to make everything perfect,
if you got a project car and you need to weld some serious stuff on,
a stick welder works great, and if you're into that rat car look that
a lot of people are into now, hey the rougher the better, when you're done
sanding it all down and then you just clear coat all the metal parts,
so it's old and looks ragged but it's clear coated so it won't rust,
anybody can do that, it takes a real pro to get a good shine on
a normal looking car, but a rat car, hey anybody can do it, that's
probably one of the reasons they're getting so popular,
now here's some good advice, especially if it's your first project car,
don't let your eyes be bigger than your wallet, don't go out and say, oh I got get a classic
Corvette or a classic Mustang, those markets are just crowded with people charging too
much money with cars that are basically falling apart,
you're going to put too much money into one of them,
think a little bit lower for your first project car,
and especially if you live up north in the rust belt, but really cars can move anywhere,
so you want to go under the project car before you even buy it,
get a flashlight and a jack, and if you see the frame and everything is all rotted, walk
away, once the frames are rotted, it's really not
worth fixing up a project car, but don't be disheartened because there's
a lot of fun cars out there that you can make a project out of,
that don't cost all that much money, you can learn a lot and hey, you can have
a lot of fun when you're finally done fixing it,
so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos, remember to ring
that bell!