A lesson to be learned...

I would head outside RIGHT NOW with a sanding block... but there are no streetlights, plus it's pi55ing down with a vengeance.

However, you have sufficiently motivated me to spend the next dry couple of daylight hours attacking my undercoat in preparation for a truly EPIC paintjob. Or something like...

I shall make an effort to get up tomorrow morning and make the senator better

i have a few of the bits for an epic car on my driveway but no time or money at the moment ... so i shall have to suffice with making one "tidy" car as a daily with parts from the "spare" and then slowly but surely the spare will end up getting mental ... and possibly turn out epic lets wait and see ...

a little spec of whats planned ....

e30 tourer lower then your nans tits 17" banded steels satin black or nato green not sure yet yellow lights and indicators and ither a supercharged m42 lump or a cossie engine ... if i go down the cossie route its first incarnation will be with a pinto while i build a cossie engine

I need a break after the marathon that was the Merc resto.

My big problem now is deciding what to do next:
- White Merc - rear axle rebuild
- Merc S-class - needs electrics, steering & small bit of welding
- Mini Clubman - needs everything
- Eimears Mini - needs lots of weldy weldy. Need something else for her to drive before this gets done.

Logic says to get the W115 roadworthy again, the do the S-class and sell it on

I'm going to voice this here, and if people don't want to hear it then, so be it.

The number of retro rides cars that looked like the could have been going for the scrappage scheme when they rolled into the show made me sad in my heart. Lots of half finished, half started, half bodged cars seemed to be the order of the day. Then the other clubs turned up with some fantastic looking machinery. It is my hope that we just caught people mid way through building their cars and next year will be an explosion of epic.

I'm proud of my forum (even when it has rough patches), I want to be proud of all the cars on the forum, not just a handful. So c'mon lets get all these things finished and looking fantastic for next year.

I include myself in this as well, my car has rusty door bottoms, slightly broken suspension, no extra power and hasn't been cleaned properly in 3 years.

Retro Rides right now : C- , Has ability, must use it.



Lets get ourselves up to an A*

Building an epic car with no constraints is easy enough. However trying to build one that looks epic but still comfortable enough for the missus and kid without spending a fortune is difficult. I could have dropped the Carlton months ago by chopping a load out of the springs but the ride would be curse word. Instead i've spent lots of time but not much money trying to work how to get it mega low but still comfortable.

Matt

but it isnt just about shiny really well put together show cars either is it


i was a ford guy thru and thru for a while and was and still am active on osf now i turned up to classic ford show in a mk3 capri with a 6 foot long bbq strapped to the roof rack 9tht i nicked off the landy so was fasr too wide) concrete blocks in the back at the stereo system out of my garage ...

the car itself was running like a bag of wibblepoo and had rusty rear lower corners the door skin was kinda hanging off and it hasd non matching wheels i didn't have a stand pass either ....
loads of ppl helped me try and get it running better they got me on the stand and we all had a good time ...

i cant afford at this moment in time to have an epic car i have a "work in progress" that will get there one day hopefully move faster when i get a new job but I'm 20 years old i live at home and will be moving out soon my money needs ot be saved for a house deposit etc and i don't wanna get myself into a debt building a car but ittl get there and untill it does i wanna be able to turn up to shows and it be appreciated for what it is a day to day work in progress thats moving towards something kool ...

I was always guilty of being overambitious financially with projects many years ago, learned my lesson these days and take things much slower and have less vehicles all at once, my Rangey isnt show worthy in anyway and being a Landrover its not even as if its unusally old or anything, but it doens the job for me and the family and i like it, it is being modded gradually and will get paint one day when the matching trailer is finished, but its slow going due to money and health issues.

The RR crowd help keep things moving i think and maybe encourage a lot of less experianced modders to try things with their cars so i reckon there are lot of people modding who maybe wouldn't otherwise, resulting in a higher proportion of slow projects.

Only advice i can really come up with is to pick something thats maybe been done before and put your own spin on it, take it slow, collect all the parts you need first and be carefull with your choices as to where you spend your money, i would have loved a Cossie YB engine in my Cortina, but choosing the 24v Cossie instead saved me oodles, and allowed me to use a whole shed load of much cheaper parts to get it finished and it was still to fast for its one good.

You don't always need the best or most expensive cars/parts to have fun, a cheaper vehicle to build and run will get used more.

Its hard to keep the mojo up sometimes, but keep plugging away, request help on here and things will move along slowly, the differences of opinion and arguments on here can still serve up usefull info and it is a forum after all, its main point is to allow people to air their views.

I like this a lot. It would be really helpful (for me at least!) if there was a section/sticky that could help with pointers to doing this. I'm not talking about "waxoil will cost you £xxx" but "have you thought about waxoil?, have you got the tools?, have you contacted your insurance to see what the mods will cost?" I'm hopefully going to be getting some sort of retro ride soon that I can start modding on a budget and I'm sure there are quite a few people on this forum that warn me about pitfalls before I fall into them! (I've been reading a lot, but for anew memebr like me there is a huge amount to read through and not all the interesting threads are on a level that I could deal with!)

(there may even be a section like this... and I've just been blind!)

Oh and a good inspiring thread suprisingskoda, I was thinking that I could put together a OK retro-ride, but your right I've got the imagination to make a great one, I just need to make sure thats what I do!

Dan