Thread: Tell us how you managed to "finish" your project

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My 46 coupe took 7 years to get "finished". During that time I got divorced, but managed to keep the car. Mostly because my first wife hated the car and didn't want it. Luckily, she didn't hate me enough to force me to sell it. I considered it a personal challenge that the car would some day be on the road.

My second wife actually helped me do some of the assembly work needed to get it on the road as well as following me around to the salvage yards to get parts.

Most of the early chassis and body work was literally done under the proverbial shade tree using the fab tools on my dad's welding truck. I had to put it on hold again to build a workshop to finish it in. Not much bigger than a 2 car garage, but it was all I had money and space for.

We drove it in black epoxy primer over a sandblasted finish for 2 years before the rear main seal in the take out 350 started leaking on the way home from a show in Memphis. I pulled the front cap to get the engine out and decided to slick up the body while I was at it. That took another year, but the engine that went back in was a 383 with 3 two's.

The car has never had a real finished interior, just some really amateurishly done carpet and panels to cover stuff up. My 2 kids practically grew up in the back seat going to shows and I didn't want to always be fussing over a nice interior. It still has the leather Cadillac rear seat that I stuck in the night before our first show over 20 years ago. The leather still looks good, just doesn't match the front seats!

In contrast, my T bucket only took about 2 1/2 years, but was a much nicer built car. Better tools, more experience and no distractions made for a quicker build with better attention to details. I've got to really get around to redoing the 46 one of these days. It deserves it for all the good times and memories it has given us.

I will say that I have gotten disgusted many times on these projects (including the Healey I'm working on now) and have even threatened to bale out and sell them. It can be a real challenge to keep mentally focused and stay the course. It helps me sometimes to just walk away from a project for a week or two and do something else.