I thought it would be good to assemble some tips or recomendations aimed at those who are thinking of embarking on a restoration project as a part time / weekend activity only in one thread. Those weekend warriors who do not have a permanent shop and who are doing this strictly as a fun project.
Please feel free to add bullet points from your experiences.
- Before starting any dismantling project have the engine bay fully professionally steam cleaned top and bottom. It will save you major irritation, time and money in the long run.
- Buy a box of disposable latex gloves and alwasy use them. Think of Edd China's famous orange ones...
- Buy a good quality 3M protection eye glasses with the flat side branches so they can be used under an ear protection headset. (3M Virtua Protective Eyewear)
- Before starting any project during the weekend, do a search on this board and read all of the posts about it during the previous week. There is a gold mine of information here that will save you hours and many dollars
- Make your worst case scenario best guesstimate on how long your project will take and how much it will cost. Then double it. If you are really lucky it will only be double.
- Realize that, unless you already have a well-equipped shop that can be left in work mode all the time, doing the restoration yourself will likely not save you much if any money at all in the end. By the time you get the tools you need, make all the mistakes one does the first time, have to re-order parts because you ordered the wrong ones, pay for shipping all those one item at a time, drive all over to pick things up or drop parts off, the final bill keeps creeping up in very insiduous ways. And if you ever decide to sell it later on, your car will be worth less to a new buyer then if it had the stamp of approval of well known shop X, Y or Z. The value is in the learning, enjoyment and satisfaction of doing it yourself. Not in any hypothetical savings.
- Pick a small number of sources from which you will buy your parts. And be faithful to them. Most of these parts are difficult to get and expensive to keep in stock for vendors. So we are lucky to have them and constantly switching to find an imagined savings of a few dollars is going to cost you and all of us in the long run. For example personally I try to stick with La Jolla, W&N, and BMW of South Atlanta for dealer only stuff. But there are others of course.
- Buying a cheap tool for something you will only do once DOES make sense. Even though the old adage of buying the best tool for the job and cry only once is great in theory, sometimes it is just not financially possible. And if it's only to be used once, a Harbor Freight tool may make your life much easier for this one task.
- Before starting on a specific project always print out the realoem schematic and a list of all the torque settings that will be needed prior to heading to the garage. Much faster and cheaper then realizing you assembled something in the wrong order later on.
- Before starting the reassembly, order an assortment of metric 8.8 nuts and bolts such as the one from W&N. It will save frustration and wasted time trying to look for the old ones and having to spend time cleaning them up.
Please feel free to add bullet points from your experiences.
- Before starting any dismantling project have the engine bay fully professionally steam cleaned top and bottom. It will save you major irritation, time and money in the long run.
- Buy a box of disposable latex gloves and alwasy use them. Think of Edd China's famous orange ones...
- Buy a good quality 3M protection eye glasses with the flat side branches so they can be used under an ear protection headset. (3M Virtua Protective Eyewear)
- Before starting any project during the weekend, do a search on this board and read all of the posts about it during the previous week. There is a gold mine of information here that will save you hours and many dollars
- Make your worst case scenario best guesstimate on how long your project will take and how much it will cost. Then double it. If you are really lucky it will only be double.
- Realize that, unless you already have a well-equipped shop that can be left in work mode all the time, doing the restoration yourself will likely not save you much if any money at all in the end. By the time you get the tools you need, make all the mistakes one does the first time, have to re-order parts because you ordered the wrong ones, pay for shipping all those one item at a time, drive all over to pick things up or drop parts off, the final bill keeps creeping up in very insiduous ways. And if you ever decide to sell it later on, your car will be worth less to a new buyer then if it had the stamp of approval of well known shop X, Y or Z. The value is in the learning, enjoyment and satisfaction of doing it yourself. Not in any hypothetical savings.
- Pick a small number of sources from which you will buy your parts. And be faithful to them. Most of these parts are difficult to get and expensive to keep in stock for vendors. So we are lucky to have them and constantly switching to find an imagined savings of a few dollars is going to cost you and all of us in the long run. For example personally I try to stick with La Jolla, W&N, and BMW of South Atlanta for dealer only stuff. But there are others of course.
- Buying a cheap tool for something you will only do once DOES make sense. Even though the old adage of buying the best tool for the job and cry only once is great in theory, sometimes it is just not financially possible. And if it's only to be used once, a Harbor Freight tool may make your life much easier for this one task.
- Before starting on a specific project always print out the realoem schematic and a list of all the torque settings that will be needed prior to heading to the garage. Much faster and cheaper then realizing you assembled something in the wrong order later on.
- Before starting the reassembly, order an assortment of metric 8.8 nuts and bolts such as the one from W&N. It will save frustration and wasted time trying to look for the old ones and having to spend time cleaning them up.
