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October 20, 2003
David
I sympathise, I've been there.
My current restoration efforts are at the second attempt. I did start working
on the car about 13 years ago and welded in the new inner and outer sill and
footwell side panel and had the new floor in position but not welded. I soon
found other distractions and never went back to it!
I only really, early this year, garnered the enthusiasm to get back to it.
The only inspiration I can offer is to think of the car as 'sections of work'
rather than an entire mass of 'things to do'. Set yourself goals in terms of
getting a section completed within a loose timeframe, rather than trying to
think of completing the entire car. By breaking the work up into smaller more
manageable sections, you can get 'wins' under our belt. By sections I mean,
eg one side of the car welded, other side of the car welded, welding
completed etc.
Another technique I used is to mix up the nasty with the nice, and get smaller
wins under your belt and not focus too long on one section. If I found I was
getting bogged down with welding I'd stop and go onto something else more
enjoyable, such as cleaning up suspension components and painting them, or
stripping seats and painting the seat frame. It's amazing what seeing nice
shiny painted components can do for morale. These can also be made into
sections, for example, cleaning up and painting all the suspension
components, when this is done, just tick it off as completed and wrap them up
in newspaper and store them. Then get back to the welding again.
It's also important to take breaks I found, sometimes it can just get too much,
take some time off, just don't forget to get back to it!
This is pretty much what I've done, and whilst it seems to be taking a long
time, a lot of the ancillary components have all be renovated along the way
so hopefully it will all come together quite quickly.
I can't stress enough that if you look at the amount of work needed to be done
as a whole, it does become very daunting, and I think is the main reason why
many restorations fail.
Finally of course there's determination, failure isn't an option for me, so I
guess I'll just keep going till its finished!
Nigel
"amukdigiphoto" < amukdigiphoto@... > 26224
Posted on October 20, 2003 02:15 PM
Posted to category(s) Body | Cooling System | Exterior | Interior | Restoration | Suspension & Steering
