> The question is "did I do the right thing"
>
> Why do I say this. Well I'm in the process of investing $6000 plus to do
> bodywork
> on my 69 tr6. (a loan from the bank) I'll need another $2000 for engine work.
>
> Help me I need some moral support!
The right thing, the right thing...
It depends on why you bought the car. If you bought the car hoping to make
a solid investment that you could stow away for a few years, then cash in
when it had matured enough to give you an obscene profit, then you got what
you deserved. But since you're on this list, I'll presume you bought your
car for the right reason, which is that you fell in love and couldn't help
yourself.
In that case, the *real* right thing is to do as much of the work as you
can by yourself. Bodywork is tough, because it shows and undoing bad work
can be more expensive than doing it right the first time. But your engine
is basically held together with nuts, bolts, screws, studs, and the occasional
bit of sealant. You can do the disassembly and reassembly yourself, spending
only what is required on new parts and machine work. I'd figure that even
on a TR6 you can probably get by with under $1000 worth of parts, and that
assumes that the head needs to be replaced or completely rebuilt.
And there is *no* feeling quite like tooling down the road, listening to
the hum (or purr or blat, as the case may be) of a motor you put together
with your own hands. Except the feeling of being pushed back in the seat
as you step on the throttle pedal, knowing that every link between your
foot and that pressure on your spine is doing what it's doing because of
your own sweat, blood, toil and tears, to coin a phrase.
In short: buying an old car because you think you can fix it cheaply is
foolish. Buying an old car because you think you can sell it to someone
else later for a fortune is wicked. Buying an old car because it speaks
to some inner part of you that longs to believe in fairies, the part that
looks into the night sky and sees, not clouds, but a pirate frigate sailing
across the face of the full moon on its way to the second star on the right
(and straight on till morning) -- the part that laughs back into the wind
and shouts, "There is nothing, absolutely nothing in the world, that is half
so rewarding as simply messing about with M.G.s" (or wherever your particular
madness takes you) -- if you buy an old car to appease that part of yourself,
then the money you spend is spent on keeping the faith, on appeasing the
spirits that live in ancient British iron and make it live, move, and have
its being.
And that money is not only never wasted -- it's a hell of a lot cheaper
than psychotherapy, vastly more effective, and infinitely more enjoyably spent.
--Scott "Sounds like SFisher has his car working again" Fisher
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