Working on cars can be fun. In a world of complex problems with multiple solutions that are rarely zero-sum, there’s a certain healing in doing a simple task absolutely right. Torque specs followed, good parts installed, satisfaction in a job well done. It can also be a huge time-suck. Between work, family, a social life, and extracurriculars, taking on a big job can seem daunting, until you start eating the elephant bit-by-bit.
If it’s not your daily driver, there’s no use stumbling into a morning meeting bleary-eyed from a late-night fight with a spring compressor if you don’t have to. Likewise, getting bogged down and overwhelmed only pushes that completion target further and further down the road. Instead, I like to take a relatively unambitious approach: Half-an-hour at a time. So, when my reasonably priced Porsche Boxster desired some labor-intensive work, I just broke the off-season down into chunks. Here’s how I’ve got on so far.
The big project was a sort of major suspension refresh. A few properly crumbly bump stops were a good enough excuse to swap in some Koni Special Active dampers, and I figured I might as well replace any arms with noticeably cracked bushings since the easiest way of changing rear dampers on a 986 Boxster without removing the hub nut involves unbolting the CV axles and removing a few control arms. While I was in there, I noticed that the rear brake pads looked to be, well, disintegrating. Some were cracking around the holes for the wear sensors, some were crumbling at the edges. I wouldn’t be surprised if the pads were original, so a fresh set of Pagid discs and pads were in order. Call it cheap peace of mind.
Next came addressing what 26 summers can do to dash-mounted speakers. Unsurprisingly, once I pulled the speakers from the dashboard, I noticed that some of the surround foam on the four-inch drivers was simply missing. That would explain the earbud hiss I was hearing when trying to crank the stereo up. After considering the modest power of the factory Haes 4x40w amplifier, I settled on a pair of Hertz Cento CX100 speakers mounted in, um, massaged adapter rings. Plug-and-play jumper harnesses made the speaker swap a cinch, and now I have vastly improved sound for far less than what a new OEM pair from Porsche would cost.
Finally, I’ve already thrown a few other sundries at the Boxster. A new cabin air filter because the cowl plastics needed to come off anyway to access the strut towers; a new interior door light bulb to replace one that had burned out; giving the carpets a proper clean; and ensuring that the convertible top drain holes remained clear of debris.
So what’s still on the to-do list? Let’s start with the big one, because it is a little intimidating. I noticed that one of the foam drip trays under the tonneau cover was beginning to dry rot, and that’s something I’ll want to tackle sooner rather than later because holes in that could let water into the cabin, potentially frying the immobilizer module. Although a new tray feels rather exorbitant at around $232, that’s a drop in the bucket compared to a new immobilizer module. Mind you, I will need a helper for this because it requires removing the convertible roof mechanism. Old car things, am I right?
Secondly, there are a few minor maintenance items I’d like to attend to. A new engine air filter is a given, although it’s also a game of patience. Soft plastic windows and sub-zero temperatures don’t usually make kind bedfellows, so I’m just waiting for the mercury to rise on that one. What I can do is flush the brake fluid. It’s been two years since that was last done, and a power bleeder ought to make the process far easier.
While I’m in there, I might as well add a new toy, right? The beauty of having a head unit that supports a CD changer is that clever people have made things that plug in where a CD changer would normally go. I scored the Bluetooth module above for less than $30 Canadian, and while the audio quality of Bluetooth pales in comparison to a hardwired connection, a convertible sports car is about as ideal a reference environment as the cargo hold on a C-130. My only real expectation is that it solves the issue of the existing wired connection dropping out from time to time, and if it does that, it’ll be mission accomplished.
Once all that’s done, I’ll be taking it to a shop for an alignment before swinging by a few trusted body shops for quotes on some cosmetic rectification. You know how it is on a 26-year-old car: A few chips, a few dings, just little upkeep here and there. Oh, and that’s before I get into the big goal project.
See, last weekend, I filled up the 335i and phoned up a recently unemployed friend for a buddy day trip to Montreal. The goal? Some excellent creole food on L’Île Perot, along with picking up a reasonably priced OEM-plus upgrade: A set of M413-spec Turbo-look 18-inch wheels measuring 18×7.5 inches up front and 18×9 inches out back. Those with a keen eye will spot that two wheels are silver while two are PVD chrome, but at the price I paid, that doesn’t matter. Besides, I have plans for these wheels that are likely to be a bit controversial. Porsche nerds will know that code XD9 signifies color-matched alloy wheels, and while my car was never equipped with that option, who says you can’t have a little bit of fun with aftermarket solutions?
Okay, it’s been a big list so far, but apart from the drip tray, which will require a second person, just about everything else on this list can be broken down into 30-minute sessions. Get the back end up in the air? Good enough for tonight. Change a disc and one caliper’s pads? Good enough for tonight. Remove one strut, ensuring everything’s supported? Good enough for tonight. Getting the speakers to fit in the brackets? Good enough for tonight. Already, it’s been enough to crunch nearly 20 hours of billable labor into easy bite-sized sections.
Considering the going independent labor rate around me is somewhere around $175 Canadian or around $128 U.S. per hour, going half an hour at a time has effectively saved me more than $3,300 Canadian or $2,400 U.S. over getting someone else to do everything, and that’s a number I can get behind. Plus, it hasn’t consumed my entire life for weekends at a time. So, if you’re tackling a big thing on your project car and can afford the time to have it laid up, just go section by section. It’ll still fit into your busy life, and things will come together faster than you’d expect.
Top graphic images: Thomas Hundal; DepositPhotos.com
Nicely done!
And why, IMHO, the right number of cars to own is at least one more than you actually need. One of my cars was tied up for a week waiting for a part to show up last year. No big deal, just drove the other one.
Though having a 335i and a Boxster as your two cars does rather up the chances of both being down at the same time. Might want to buy one more. I suggest a Land Rover product to diversify the fleet a bit. 🙂
Thanks! Funnily enough, my strategy for the 335i is a little unhinged, but it makes sense in a weird way: A specialist takes care of the bigger stuff, and so long as the annual repair bill works out equivalent to the lease payment for a 36-month term on an Elantra N, I’m happy. So far, it’s largely exceeded my expectations.
Both of my N52-engined BMWs have been Toyota-reliable averaged over the 20+ combined years I have now them (especially my wagon that lives in a nice cold climate but never sees snow). Even late N55 BMWs aren’t THAT bad to maintain. You will probably be fine for a long time, and at the end of the day, IMHO the reward of driving these cars is well worth the investment.
I love color matched wheels and yellow cars but I’m not brave enough…do it!!!!!!!
Doin it right. Feels good to treat one car really well over time and have a social life leftover
I just snagged a bluetooth adapter for my Saab 9-3 that will take the wiring place of the Aux port, a fine tradeoff in 2026 in my opinion.
The only problem is that it got stuck in customs coming from the Netherlands for like six weeks, I love how well everything is working in the US these days!
But yes, the Saab is not my daily, and I should be able to pop in the bluetooth adapter in under 30 minutes 😀
Are we winning yet? Sigh.
I just paid $36 for a 3/4In square of plastic for my BMW. I have no doubt tariffs were a nice chunk of that.
Yeh just got some JDM springs shipped from Japan for my Legacy and tariffs added on even more than expected because the seller couldn’t give me a clear calculation(if anyone even knows smh), was like $150 on a $300 set of springs.
That sucks.
But I also figure that tariffs have added a GOOD $50K to the cost of my new (largely steel) house. Along with either scaring off or rounding up and deporting a LARGE fraction of the construction workers in this state. I figure overall the current Administration’s asinine policies have cost me $100K.
Oof sorry, that’s truly rough. I know the steel thing has been a real pain for a lot of people, my wife’s an architect and has been having to deal with angry clients who have seen their project budgets blow out thanks to rising steel (and other) prices.
The really frustrating thing is the build was supposed to be done just about when Trump took office. But it’s almost two years behind schedule. And $100K over the original estimate.
Damn, sorry to hear that! Everyone’s getting squeezed, but fortunately it hasn’t been that bad for me so far.
I’m privileged in that I can afford the hit in both time and money – I saved up about that overage over the course of the delay. But I feel for the more typical situation where a person needs to sell a house to afford to build the new house, and is paying for temporary housing – eek! I was able to pay for this from savings and equity in my existing home and rental property. Still sucks biggly, and the interest rate on the money from the rental property REALLY sucks, but should be pretty short term.
Hindsight being 20:20, I wish I had not done it, or pulled the plug at least temporarily a year or so ago until the nonsense was resolved.
30 Minutes is enough time to get into the garage, turn on the music, pick up all the tools from the last job and stare at the project for 5 minutes
The KEY concept is “Not your daily driver” and next important one is “You have the space to store it, indoors, while you are working on it.” With those 2 conditions met, then yes car repair can be fun.
This sounds magical, I would absolutely have some sort of project/hobby car if I had access to that. I’m constantly looking at listings for K5 Blazers and 80-Series Landcruisers, but I have to keep telling myself I have nowhere to store or work on one.
It’s going to get less and less common as the US becomes a nation of renters.
That’s me, unless something drastic and or unexpected happens.
I used to rent a house with a garage. It’s not impossible
I lived in a downtown apartment with three cars – I still worked on my own cars as much as I could – lucked out and had an apartment with both a parking lot and not everybody in the building owned a car. Where there is a will, there is a way (and being poor incentivized finding the will and the way in my case). Just avoid apartments that ban working on cars – but even then, there is always the Autozone parking lot or the side of the street.
Meh, my car sat on the Quickjack for a week out in the driveway last year while I waited for parts. Indoors is a nice convenience.
My indoors is finally progressing though:
https://photos.fife.usercontent.google.com/pw/AP1GczOSr31PIFDIbJ76YF8UXlToK4RKtaKdHJCnh2WvGdM-QLzVz-W8i-2Tmg=w1644-h1233-s-no?authuser=1
It is usually below freezing for 6 months of the year where I live so I cannot.
Was where I used to live too – didn’t stop me (did get me to smarten up and move though). And in some ways, I prefer working in the cold than 95F and 110000% humidity. Hence the very expensive building project next door I linked to. That 1000sq/ft garage is going to be air-conditioned.
Our house has a very well-built but completely uninsulated garage with nothing but shingles, sheathing, and studs between me and Canadian winter, so it’s been tricky. Our upcoming house has a finished, well lit, and AC’ed garage because it was used as a kids’ room by the previous owner, so that’s pretty exciting.
That was my garage in Maine originally. I insulated, sheetrocked, and added a kerosene monitor heater. Then moved to FL. 🙂
The nuclear option!
Thank you for resetting my attitude on wrenching Thomas. I got my NC Miata onto jackstands, have the broken transmission out and am removing the turbo kit from the swapped 2.5 motor. I have the new 6speed manual and clutch ready to go in, but when the garage is 20degrees, it is hard to get motivated. I will apply this 30 minute rule and see what happens. I need it buttoned up for the season, so I will have to get cracking. Thanks for the push to get going again.
This is exactly why I’ve set up my detached garage as I have. It’s comfortable, and I can drop what I’m doing and call it a day whenever.
Not having to restore the space you’re in to perfect each time you walk away is indeed, key. The house projects I work on, I probably spend more time mobilizing and cleaning up than I do on actual work. Sort of makes the 30 minutes at a time concept impossible.
This is so true, and doubly so for the house projects, I have some paint touch ups and a little but of mudding to do in the bathroom we hurriedly remodeled last year so we could actually move in and it’s so much set up and clean up time relative to the actual work needed that I keep putting them off to lump them in with a bigger project where I have everything out already-meanwhile our bathroom feels perpetually stuck at 95% finished.
I started the upstairs bathroom 4 years ago. It’s been at 90% completion for like… 3.5 years. I sooooooo get this, lol.
I can relate, my hall bathroom went 7 years without baseboards. Also the master bath had bondo in the subfloor when we sold the place
It makes me wonder if someone on staff had a shitty house to write about, if the occasional Housetopian post would be successful here. Seems like there’s a lot of overlap between the people who buy craptacular cars and the people who buy craptacular houses.
I think Mercedes’ RV articles fill the niche,, but we’re missing boat content. I sidestep the boat issue because a Pelican kayak is low cost and low maintenance
I also stick to kayaks. Friends and I rent a boat for one day a year, at the cost of about 100$ per person. For a boat not a single one of us could afford on our own, never mind the cost to dock or transport.
Speaking from experience, it’s also good to set aside a chunk or two a month to go back through and clean up.
Typically my short project windows end with needing to lay the tools down on the bench instead of putting everything away properly. If I don’t need that specific tool the next time I go out and I’m not using the space it’s sitting in, it could be out there for months if I didn’t set aside 30 minutes or so just to put everything back.
Absolutely. I’m an enormous fan of putting tools back where they belong as I go, plus setting aside a small chunk of time every month to break down boxes, organize old parts, and decide what goes into storage and what gets thrown in the bin.
At less than $20, one of those Dymo embossing label makers is a game changer for organizing a tool chest. It is so nice to know where all the 1/2″ drive sockets belong, or what drawer the pliers are in. I highly, highly recommend one if you are trying to manage anything more than what can fit on a table.
I have one of those, and it straight up refused to print a label for a drawer for 10mm sockets.
This is so very true. I love my <60min wrenching sessions making progress on a larger task. Pop out to the garage for a bit between work and late dinner. BIG thing to recommend, though – document where you are in the process. Some photos, a note, something.
The only bummer case for me is that I dislike leaving my car on jackstands, etc for days and days, since it is an active 2bay garage.
Documentation is so helpful, especially now that we all have cameras in our pocket. In my earlier wrenching days I used to take a big sheet of cardboard and tape everything I took off in to it in order and label with a sharpie.
Omg – I did exactly this when I did my first semi-significant piece of engine work on my 2CV a year ago: the carb teardown and cleaning/rebuild. So many small parts.
Oh man carb rebuilds are so easy to mess up, I’ve seen a couple friends tearing their hair out redoing them bc they got something wrong-or to your point weren’t meticulous enough. In high school shop me and a buddy rebuilt a ford carburetor for one of the shop engines they had and had to re-do it at least once lol
Luckily, despite my manufacturing year of 2CV calling for a double-barrel carb, my Spanish-built car somehow has a single-barrel, which was kinda like easy mode
My go to is the bottom side of a pizza box. Draw an outline of where the screws, bolts etc came out and stick the screws bolts etc into the box in the proper place in the outline. Works for tiny electronics to large mechanicals.
Ah yeh I’ve also done that, works really well to get a box with some depth when doing head work and they can just dangle into the cavity
Thomas you are working on a similar skill to myself. Since having a kid, I am having to learn that doing even 5-10 minutes of a project (as long as it isn’t too technical) can get it done. I am sure once they are more independent, I can devote more time, but at this point in life, that’s often all I have.
Once I got old enough to have my own garage and a separate daily driver I realized how nice it is to be able to walk away from the project when you’re tired, frustrated, or just have somewhere else you want to or need to be. Its amazing how easy a problem becomes to solve when you walk away, sleep on it, and hit it with fresh eyes a few days later.
So true! I’ve made a ton of stupid wrenching mistakes because of impatience or an artificial, self-imposed “deadline”…that was never a real deadline at all.
we’re gonna lose the shop!
Love these wrenching articles. I am no mechanic, but also take my projects bit by bit. Thinking about the whole elephant is often too daunting. But nibbles here and there make for easier work.
Excellent work and bravo, my friend!
Great piece.
It’s good to have multiple beaters so there’s typically one in operable condition. I’ve found that local auto parts chain stores have gone crazy on pricing so the budget plan is RockAuto or Amazon which takes a few days to arrive.
I did something similar to clean out the furnace room in my basement: set a 15 minute timer and work only that time. If you are midway through something small when the timer goes off, finish it, but aside from that, you’re done. It worked great. It forces discipline, and it’s hard to get overwhelmed with all that needs to be done if you attack in it small increments.
This spring, I hope to do that with my garage. I might expand it to 30 mins each day on a weekend. But one can do a lot in 15 minutes.
This is great advice, and worked for me. I started a project to restore my Suzuki Cappuccino, and I realised I’d not touched it in two years, so I resolved to spend 20-30 minutes on it each week.
Now, I’ve managed to strip it back to bare shell, and make a rotisserie so I can weld the floor, and started sand blasting and powder coating all suspension parts.
Its a great feeling seeing how that odd 20-30 mins adds up over a year.
Great way to break out a plan into digestible chunks. I use a rolling checklist for things like this, and trying to keep them broken down into ‘same day’ chunks maintains visible progress without frustration and burn out when you can see it moving smartly along.
Please tell me that you’re not going to paint them yellow.
This is great advice. I’m in the midst of refurbing a ’73 Volvo 1800ES. Just got the head back on, still need to finish hooking up the new harness in the dash, do something about the bumpers, finish up getting engine operational again. 30 min-1hr increments are more doable in my house than 8-10 hour marathons.
It would help if my garage was somewhat organized.
This is why, when I finally break through on the house expenses (holy shit is it expensive to rewire an entire house laden with knob and tube and illegal splices seemingly everywhere) I want to have a third car to work on that I don’t depend on. Working on my daily back in the day was a nightmare, what with the obvious deadlines. Being able to calmly and methodically work on a car would be a big improvement over me cursing at rusty fasteners at 11pm on a weeknight.
We just recently sold our 3rd (fun) car and it was super nice to have it if one was in the shop or, like mentioned, you start a project, something goes funky and you have the ability to go “yeah, I’m going to stop here, grab a beer and do this tomorrow/the weekend.
We went in reverse – sold due to needing a new roof……oh well, life comes at you fast.
Yeah, the house has unfortunately taken up all of my opportunities for mistake-making. It’s greedy like that.
I need to learn from your experience. Going to bed on an unfinished wrenching project makes me squirm. If I plan for it to be unfinished, I can just relax.
Maybe I’ll try this for my Bug. I’m just trying to make it run. Then maybe drive properly.
As Derek Bieri says, “ya gotta keep the feet movin'”.
Side note: the AC-130 is the gunship version of the cargo-focused C-130.
This sounds very Zen. My kingdom for indoor wrenching space, that I could live by this example.