I was thinking the other day when I was blasting small parts in my blast cabinet, This is relaxing and kind of fun. What other jobs are mundane to most guys but you like to do.
Painting. Not the masking or block sanding part. But I will put a rattle can to work. I get in the zone
Going to a swap meet and buying something, bring it home, open a box to put it in and finding two more of the same things you already bought that day.
I've never minded the block sanding and long boarding to get a panel as perfect as I can for some odd reason. For me that is when I can see actual progress. When I first built the 48 in 1973 I did one panel at a time usually working about 4 hours a morning first sanding off about four coats of brush paint jobs and getting down to either bare metal of what was left of the factory paint and then working on a panel at a time priming, blocking and a bit of filling and more priming and blocking and sanding all while driving it to work every afternoon as I worked evenings in a Ryder truck shop at the time. I was on a quest to have it as close to perfect as I could get it and pretty near met that quest.
Were you ever 100% satisfied? I never am. I just say "I'm the only one it makes any difference to anyway!"
Cleaning away years of grime and crud... I prefer to get dirty once and then be able to work with "clean" parts. I hate getting dirty every time I work on the car if I dont have to. I also like to wire wheel small parts and get them painted or polished. Chappy
Yup, this is it for me, too. Up to your armpits in dirt, tracking it all over and THEN spending TWICE as long cleaning up the mess. Probably should just buy one of those dustless blasting setups and blast anything that comes within a 100 yards of the property....
Hello, I was the daily maintenance kid for my brother’s first cars. I could drive both of them in those years, but not legally. He gave me the jobs that he did not want to do and at first, I was a happy kid doing something to his hot rods/cruisers. For me, it was exciting as being part of a daily routine of doing something on a real car. Plus, when finished spray washing the Impala, I had to clean out those drip weeping holes under the door and body panels. The best way was with a hole punch and drive the Impala around the block. “Hey, mom, I am just going around the block to drain out some water from the Impala…” Early approved driving techniques... Now, when my brother got the Impala dirty from a road trip to the desert or local mountains, then the cleaning called for driving the Impala a few more blocks to the power spray wash machine location. The more driving I was able to do, made the mundane job of washing a car more rewarding. 58 impala out for a "dry" run to rewards My brother showed me how to do a lot of the daily or weekly items that were fairly simple. I was the expert wax, the car wash and detail guy. I could change the wheels and tires in a snap and do the basic bolting and unbolting of various attachments, etc. (side pipes, header bolts, etc.) My only mistake was to drill great looking holes in the Oldsmobile sedan rims. Then attaching the Moon disc with screws. The only ones I could find were some that were in our garage drawer. But, they were not the ones that came with the Moon Disc Kit, I found out later. The reason I found out was his car was sitting in the driveway lowered more than normal. I had used sheet metal screws instead of the flat end screws. The sheet metal screws went right through the rubber bead and caused a small leak. But, hey, I was not even a teenager, yet and made my first mistake. Luckily, my brother yelled at first, but gave me a bag of flat end screws that he had in his jacket. (his mistake, too.) I changed all of them and put in flat tire repair glue in the holes. That did enough to get us to the gas station for some new inner tubes for the tires. Lesson learned… Jnaki So, the mundane jobs that I learned as a little kid was based on several things: 1. My brother knew he had a slave to do some work so I could get rides to various places instead of taking the bus. 2. He like hot rods and vehicles of any kind, but would allow me to do the daily routine or simple stuff that he did not want to do to his cars. 3. He taught me well for the skills I needed to complete the jobs. 4. Then it became a routine that had to be done, but was getting to be a bit much. I realized that those tasks were necessary part of any build or maintenance for all hot rods or cruisers. When we were building our two versions of the 1940 Willys Coupe for the B/Gas and C/Gas classes, nothing was mundane. Everything was exciting, seeing what we could do and did finish. It was coming together slowly, but we were learning and wanted to do a good job in what repairs or additions were needed to make the Willys Coupe run well. This part had no daily simple stuff as it was something new every day or week. We were creating a hot rod for the dual use of street driving and mostly drag racing at Lions Dragstrip. similar 671 motor, carbs and drive… B. Balogh In the years and cars that followed, it wasn’t necessarily the dread of doing those simple things, but a job(s) that they were always sitting in the garage waiting for some completion. Once completed, then it starts all over again.
Cutting out out bad old repairs or rusty panels and welding in new steel , that´s it for me... but cleaning and assembling a perfectly machined engine , that´s pretty relaxing to me aswell.
For me it's always the incidental stuff. It's so easy to forget that doing something like an engine swap is so much more than physically mounting the engine in the car. All of the plumbing, wiring, linkages, etc., that make the engine actually work, are what the the most time. The only saving grace about those parts of the job are that there are so many tasks to perform, but they're comparatively small, that you tend to move through them quickly and give the impression of big progress.
I used to enjoy the hunt for hard to find parts or better prices on new parts. Now I guess I like sitting in the garage listening to good music, sometimes drinking cheap beer or more often iced tea thinking about what needs to be done( but not doing it)
Over the weekend I faced one of the task I dread the most, duplicating my own work. A couple of weeks ago I modified my running boards on the 41 ford truck and sunk a header dump/lake pipe into the left side. I have been putting it off but I cant got the exhaust shop with one pipe so I spent most of the day yesterday trying to knock off my own work in mirror image for the right side board. It is not as much fun as the first side, just tedious measuring, cutting, welding, drilling, grinding...oh the humanity!
Drilling and chamfering lightening holes using a drill press. I pull up a stool, and get to drilling. I'll even use different size bits and intricate patterns just to make it last longer.
The Jalopy Journal
