MIT Engineers

[eCat]

We have this Honda CRV - nice car, AWD with a sunroof, etc. Its my wife's "snow car" on days when she can't drive her toy to work. We told the boy when he started driving we'd give him the CRV , which I thought was an ideal car for a new driver - you sit a little higher, its a Honda, etc., etc., but apparently kids today don't want an SUV, they want a small car like a Civic or what not.

So I'm kinda partial to the CRV anyways and I'd pretty much decided that at some point he was going to wreck it, so his reluctance to drive the car we actually well received by me.

We started looking at cars and I stumbled across a 2001 Mitsubishi Galant - not a small car by today's standards but a damn site far from a Oldsmobile Delta 88. Paid $800 for it - 172K miles, bad alternator, rear brakes locked up, bad radiator, a few dents, a few rust spots, no A/C, window didn't work, interior trashed but no rips or holes - but all of it for the most part easily fixable.

Bought an alternator at a salvage yard for $40 and a new radiator on Amazon for $47 (free shipping). Paid a local guy $125 to put them both in. Bought brakes all the way around for about $80 and did that myself. Got a new window regulator for $55 and replaced that myself. Thought I'd have to replace the entire A/C system, ended up having to buy a pressure switch for $14 and connect a power wire back , put in some freon- and..ice cold A/C. We took the wheels off, painted them with some special paint, did some simple bondo and sanding, bought some matching paint for the body online and did touch up - not a dent on the car now and all but the smallest scratches are gone. Had a steam cleaner and had my son go over the interior steaming the dash, the leather seats, the carpeting - then we put leather cleaner and a separate conditioner on the seats. I taught him to change the oil, jack up the car and change the tire and gave him some basic lessons on how things work on a car. While we were under the hood, I had him clean the engine really well, and then I painted various pieces with heat resistant paint I had laying around to give it some bling. Car even has a sunroof.

Altogether we have maybe a total of $500 we put into it on top of the $800 - and this car is transformed. Its still a 13 year old car with 172K miles but the car is really nice. It was a great project for me and him together. And if he puts it in the ditch, who gives a fuck, its an $800 car. As long as he isn't speeding and has a seat belt (and doesn't kill anyone) I won't lose sleep over it..

Also, just to be the "cool" dad, I had a Kenwood MP3 car stereo lying around so when he was at school one day, I put it in to replace the factory radio, installed a 200 watt amp in the trunk with a 15" sealed subwoofer. He saw the radio but he doesn't know about the subwoofer yet.

He has two friends that are trying to buy cars now so they also think they can buy an $800 car and turn it around like we did. I told them I'd help but you have to work pretty hard to find the right car. They think its easy because we did it.

Anyway, the kid is pretty happy with life right now and all it cost me was $1300 and we've spent a bunch of time together introducing him to my world of "fuck it I ain't pay that much for it, I'll just get a shitty one and fix it up"

[crashcourse]

definitely becoming a lost art

working on your own car

[eCat]

I am mad we didn't take before and after photos. I honestly didn't think it would turn out as nice as it did. I kept telling him it would because when he first saw it he had serious reservations, but I am honestly blown away at how much this car has changed.

[crashcourse]

have a toyota PU 1994 220K on it I still tinker with
had a dodge daytona shelby I did most repairs to until I sold it last year
anything newer then 2005 they pretty much figured out how to gouge you by making the simple repairs need simple tools or throw so much crap in the way you cant get to it or to diagnose it you have to run it on a computer.

[sardis]

My daughter is turning 16 in June and unfortunately, or fortunately, her father does not have the ability or desire to deal with a fixer upper.

[eCat]

have a toyota PU 1994 220K on it I still tinker with
had a dodge daytona shelby I did most repairs to until I sold it last year
anything newer then 2005 they pretty much figured out how to gouge you by making the simple repairs need simple tools or throw so much crap in the way you cant get to it or to diagnose it you have to run it on a computer.

that toyota has the R22 engine in it which is generally regarded as one of, if not, the most reliable engine ever made

I bought an OBD reader off Amazon for like $30. It has saved me several hundreds if not thousands dollars over the past 6 years or so.

[eCat]

My daughter is turning 16 in June and unfortunately, or fortunately, her father does not have the ability or desire to deal with a fixer upper.

I'm not sure that whole fixer upper bonding thing works with girls. My daughter turns 16 in turns in 2 years. She's getting a 2010 Kia

[crashcourse]

yeah it is a R22E

I have 35 inch tires on it. loaned it to the kid when he was in college --He claims the sun ignited the bed when he had a gallon of gas spilled back there but Im pretty sure he was smoking and flicked a cig back there scorching the bed and a little of the body otherwise it does pretty well. bought it in 98

[Bklyn]

I am mad we didn't take before and after photos. I honestly didn't think it would turn out as nice as it did. I kept telling him it would because when he first saw it he had serious reservations, but I am honestly blown away at how much this car has changed.

Just post afters and we'll fill the rest in with imagination.

[hedge]

That's why I love eCat. That Optimus dude posted pictures of his kidney pool and cars with handwritten notes to Rat, trying to prove how rich he was. eCat wants to post pics of his $800 junker that he and his kid fixed up...

I actually would like to see some pics of that car now...

[hedge]

I don't think I've ever paid more than $2K for a car. I ride em til they won't go anymore and then get another one...

[eCat]

I'll take a picture this evening and post it.

to show how absurd I've gotten with this car, it didn't come with the key fob that locks/unlocks the door so I bought one on ebay but you have to program it yourself.

In order to program it, you have to put a wire in the pin 1 and 4 of the OBD port, press the hazard light switch 6 times within 10 seconds upon which the car will lock and unlock the doors to signal it is in "program" mode and then you press the key fob 3 times to program it.

The OBD port is under the dash and my 47 year old ass isn't a contortionist so I'm lying on my back with a flashlight and my reading glasses trying to see these tiny holes, and then when I get them in have to move like a cheetah to crawl back out and up to the hazard lights.

I'm sure if my neighbors were watching me they thought I had lost my mind.

[hedge]

You better make sure they never come in here, lest any remaining doubt be removed immediately...

[eCat]

here is the $800 car

it had a football size dent in the rear quarter panel we beat out and bondo'd, the rocker panel had a rust spot I grinded out and filled in a quarter size dent by the headlight on this side.

The passenger side front bumper had a huge scuff on it that had these big white marks and there was a about a 2 foot long scratch along both driver side doors. The wheels were scratched and rusty and missing the center caps.



I literally had to get a putty knife to scrape the built up crud from the interior -a collection of years of coffee spills, mortar mix (the previous owner was a brick layer and used this as his work car) and cigarette smoke. He had like 120 pennies that were rusted together in the cup holder. The power window switches and door lock on the driver's side was just hanging down in the door and nothing worked. Also all the Air vents were broken and pushed back into the dash. The carpet is about as good as its going to get but its badly stained. New floor mats help hide it.



The motor had 14 years of grime. The A/C wiring was just hanging in the engine bay

[hedge]

Damn, for your kid, driving that is probably akin to what driving a '66 Impala was for us at his age. Throwback! Good work. Not as much room for fucking in the backseat as a '66 Impala (you could house a fambly of 6 in that car), but I'm sure he'll figure out something. Looks great...

[Bklyn]

Yeah, nice. I have none of that skill.

[Dave23]

Same here...I could handle scraping the pennies, and buying the floor mats...but that's about it.

[eCat]

you guys could do it

you just have to decide to.

that's the biggest hurdle

[AlabamAlum]

eCat is like a redneck Yoda.






Hmmmm...car repairs you must. Do or do not. There is not try. Y'all.

[eCat]

heh

I remember a story my brother told me and its kinda stuck with me. Back in college, he and a friend went hiking in the Red River Gorge (beautiful place to hike if you ever get a chance). They'd been smoking weed all day, hiking and generally enjoying the day when they got lost on a trail that led upward along a cliff ledge with them thinking that just getting over the hill would result in them finding the path back to the car. Near the top they reached an impasse where the cliff ledge turned into rock climbing, something neither was able or prepared to do.

So their only option was climb back down the trail which took them a long time to get up and it being late in the night before they got back. At least that was the only option the friend saw. My brother's weed infused decision making led to option 2. Jump off the cliff onto one of the pine trees that was growing parallel to it and climb down turning a night long hike into a relatively short one.

The friend refused claiming it was too dangerous and began walking down. My brother grabbed his backpack, threw it off the cliff to where it would land at the bottom of the trees and said "welp, we're committed to it now" - and with much protest, him and the friend jumped onto a tree and climbed down.

That's my approach on stuff like this - just commit to it, and hope that either my desire to live or in this case my pride in not letting it end up looking shitty force me to do it right.

Of course if it turned out shitty, chances are you guys would have never heard of it and it would just be another "that's my moron husband" story my wife tells her friends at work.

Sadly she keeps them entertained regularly with those.