Just remember that no matter what you do, you will always know what is wrong
with it. Even if no other driver or observer will ever spot the defects you
will know that they are there. Maybe find some comfort in the fact that you
did a good job regardless of the knowledge that it isn't perfect. I'm sure
the other things that factory engineers have going for them is that they get
used to projects not being what they envisioned and they learn to cope. I
think the only ones that get to do what they want are the concept car
designers, but since most of them aren't fully functional cars either I'd
guess that they have to cope too.
When I lived on Colorado, I spent almost 3 years as a software engineer and
test engineer. I can attest that, there too, we always had to make
compromises; all the testing and bugfixing that I could do and we never got
anything as good as we wanted. The customers loved our product but we
always knew what was wrong with it. That is the biggest problem with
building something.
James Nazarian
71B Tourer
71BGT V8
85 Dodge Ram
----- Original Message -----
From: Larry Colen <lrcar@red4est.com>
To: james <jhn3@uakron.edu>
Cc: Larry Colen <lrcar@red4est.com>; <mgs@autox.team.net>
Sent: Monday, March 31, 2003 12:33 AM
Subject: Re: Xeno's Garage
> On Mon, Mar 31, 2003 at 12:09:24AM -0500, james wrote:
> > One thing that I have learned after building my V8, is that everytime I
look
> > at it I just want to tear the whole thing apart and do it over. It
isn't
> > that I did it poorly but I have so much more insight now into building
cars
> > that I have enough great ideas to do the car at least 3 more times.
> > Sometimes I forget that I have a car 99% done; the nagging little bits
that
> > aren't sorted sometimes make me forget all of that.
>
> Yeah, I feel that at this point, if I were to start all over, with a
> fresh MGBGT, I could do a half decent job of building what I
> theoretically have. When we go and hotrod a production car, what we
> are doing is basically competing with guys who went to school for four
> or more years to learn automotive engineering, then have umpteen years
> of experience on the job and the resources of GM, or at least BL
> behind them.
>
> The other thing, is seeing the forest for the trees. A few years ago I
> tore out the carpet in my living room, sanded and restained the wood,
> and urethaned it. When I was done, I was horribly depressed about the
> job. There were runs in the urethane, gouges in the wood, I felt that
> I had put in months of work to end up with a totally botched job. Then
> for the next year and a half, anytime someone showed up at my house
> they were practically agog at the floor and commented on how wonderful
> it looked.
>
> Even so, there are certainly times that if someone were to offer me
> anything close to a fair price for my car, I'd sell it, just because I
> realize that no matter how good it is, it'll never be as good as I
> want it to be. Oh well, I just need to figure out how to come up with
> about two weeks of free time between now and Thursday to get it ready
> for the track next weekend.
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