I hear a lot of people give me a hard time about doing certain things a certain way. Like putting in a switch for my fuel pump instead of hard wiring it in, or spray painting certain things in the engine bay cause I dont have the money to have it professionally done. My most recent project was to carpet the interior on a small budget cause I got tired of looking at padding. I didn't have $200 for carpeting so I gambled and bought two black throw rugs from wal mart for less than $60 and carefully cut them into place. The end product actually turned out pretty decent and I have functional carpet now at a fraction of the price. I was just wondering what projects you guys have done on an extreme budget or "shortcutted"
I used to do "Marathon" paint jobs for extra $$...Drop off your rust bucket on friday night...Pick it up sunday evening...Yeah...Shortcuts galore but, the customers new what they were getting and had no expectations that they were getting a show car back...Commercially acceptable yes. No, no news papers/foil tape or cardboard was used.
Switched out the power glide in my 66 Malibu but couldn't afford a floor shifter at the time. We put a big, long slice in the floor pan and stock a flat piece of steel through the floor. We joked about it calling it a foot shifter turbo hydromatic 375! How's that for a scab job? That same car when I bought it had the floors patched with the bottoms of old screen doors, tar and linoleum. We changed that out for street signs once we found that. I had to use wooden shims like you would in construction for shimming windows and doors along with baling wire on the passenger side of the core support to hold it in place. The back bumper was rusted through so we used left over bondo to fill the holes and painted the whole mess flat black long before it was cool! It was a rolling death trap but by today's standards with what is available it could have been saved.
Oh wow Man this question takes me back.....when I was 15 my 17 year old cousin had a 1957 Chevy, it was a 4 door but hey this was in about 1978 and just having a 57 was cool especially for 2 young teens. We had sanded and filled with bondo and actually had it pretty smooth, only problem no money for a paint job.......WAIT a minute, we pooled our dollars, robbed piggy banks, grabbed or ask for any spare change (we spent about 2 hours collecting money)......Now I so wish I had a picture of that car that we painted black with white in the v on the rear fenders between the chrome strips ALL with the cheapest can spray paint we could find. When we pulled up to school on Monday morning you should have seen the 7th through 10th graders swarm our cool ride........it would never win best of show but we drove with our heads held high going down the road like we were somebody, lol
when your going through a "poor phase'' you are only limited by your will and imagination :bananaman been there several times in my life
