Before I take this ride out for its inaugural “get some thumbs up” spin I thought I would take you for one last trip around the car.
St art ing at the front of the car I discarded the front bumper to give the car a little more streamlined look. I also did away with the chrome on the grille and added a valance panel underneath.
On the sides of the car I welded the running boards to the rocker panels and the rear fenders. I think it cleaned up the look of the car by getting rid of a lot of body seams. I am p art icularly pleased with the outcome of having welded the rear fenders to the body.
Moving to the deck lid I opted to round off all four corners of the lid. This is a very rounded car and it just didn’t seem right to leave the squared off corners of the deck lid, especially the top two corners.
At the rear of the car I spent quite a bit of time hacking, chopping, and welding in search of the perfect hidden license plate housing. In the end I think this flip down door really completes the look.
Opening the door to look inside the car I decided to move away from the considered norm of painting the dash the same color as the exterior of the car. Instead I painted the dash a silver metallic color to compliment the gray interior and gave it a red stripe for the sole purpose of bringing the outside in. I think it worked out pretty well.
I could talk on and on about things I did to this car, the changes I made during the process of building this car, and whether the end result is worth all of the effort. Instead, I think I’ll discuss a few of the more important factors such as time, money, and budget.
I never enter into a project this size with a written in stone time line. I do know from experience roughly how long a complete rebuild such as this is going to take, but if that time frame comes and goes and the car isn’t finished I don’t get into a panic over not having the car finished. A build like this takes as long as it takes.
So how much time did it take? I spent roughly four hours a day, five days a week for almost two years working on this car. You can calculate the total if desired while I go on to the budgetary aspects of a build like this.
I won’t disclose how much money was spent on this build, but I can tell you that I know the amount right down to the last penny. Is the car worth the amount of money I spent building it? Yes, without a doubt.
I can’t tell you how many people I’ve talked to over the years who thought they could restore an old car or build a hot rod for a few hundred bucks. They seem almost shocked when I tell them the job they are considering will actually cost in the five figure range if not a lot more. What that tells me is that they never bothered to work out a cost budget, which is the easiest thing in the world to do, especially after the invention of the PC.
Most home computers come equipped with some form of spread sheet software. What’s a spread sheet? It is little more than a page filled with limitless rows and columns, each one of which can be summed and totaled to your he art ’s desire. P art names can be listed, p art sources can be listed, and p art prices can be listed. That gives me a proposed budget before I ever turn a wrench and lets me continually compare my actual spending to my estimated spending. You’ll be surprise d h ow thrilled you can become seeing the actual cost of a buil d h overing below the estimated cost. This is a wife pleasing moment.
What p art s should be listed? I list every conceivable p art the car will ever need. I’m talked about everything, including the price of solder for making wire connections and the cost of hand soap for cleaning up before dinner. Yes, I know listing p art s can be a daunting task, but list everything you can think of and don’t hesitate to add rows to the spread sheet as you move deeper into the project and find more p art s you need.
Once the initial p art s list is complete I browse catalogs, Internet sites, and even call my local p art s store for prices. Each p art is priced and the source is named. Six months from now when I need a pair of power window regulators it helps to know where I got the price listed on the spread sheet.
One thing I don’t do is include the cost of labor in the budget. I do ninety five percent of the labor myself and my labor rate varies depending upon my attitude on a given day. The remaining five percent of the labor cost is rolled into the cost of the p art . A good example is engine work. Engine p art s only cost so much. It is the labor to make all those p art s work correctly that drive the cost of a good engine through the roof.
Something else I don’t list on the spread sheet is tool cost. Those are considered capital expenses as they don’t leave with the car. But I do pay close attention to tool cost because every car built needs special tools, some of which may be used once then stored until the next car comes in. For that reason I never buy cheap tools. I purchase quality only. You can buy the cheap stuff, but you will be replacing it quite often. It doesn’t take long to over run the cost of a quality product. That’s one reason I keep an Eastwood catalog on my desk and another reason I so blatantly mention Eastwood product numbers at every opportunity. As I said, I like quality, and I especially like dealing with companies with quality people. Thanks Eastwood, and John, and Joe, and Nick, and John. This has been a pleasure.
Will I let Eastwood into the shop for another project? Maybe. I have an A/C Cobra replica collecting dust in the shop at this writing. Send some feedback and we’ll see.
Thanks for tuning in. Thanks for the e-mails. Thanks for this opportunity.
Project car provided by:
Larry Lyles
LPL Body Works, LLC
Amarillo , TX 79109
