Your wisdom wanted

[johnny_k]

Steve,

I understand where you are coming from. I battled with the idea of attempting something like this myself for a long time. I know I am not experienced enough for this type of project, but I am not going to learn unless I start somewhere. The main reason that I want to do this right the first time is that I don’t like to part with my cars, especially if I have put some time, energy, and tlc into them, so I won’t be selling any vehicles. Also, I really can’t keep more than two vehicles with me because I have to move about every two-three years, so if I buy one I am going to stick with it. Then we get to the idea of working our way to a more glorious vehicle through stages. My apologies, but I am again going to use a stereo analogy. When using an upgrade method you run into one nasty problem. You have already modified the vehicle in some way when going to the second upgrade. Like for new speakers, you may have drilled holes for those speakers, and altered the grill specifically for them, or for new wiring, you may have already run patch cords all over the car to the various amplifier locations. So when you go to upgrade from there you have made your job ten times harder than just starting with something that is stock because maybe you want different speakers that don’t fit the same way, or maybe you don’t want to put the amplifiers and lightning caps in the same place. I just can't seem to get the idea in my head that it is absolutely neccessary that I start small and work my way up. I have some very professional people helping me out with this, and then I have this forum to better educate me. I may just be stubborn, but I like to think of it as determination. If you still think I am wrong, please continue to call me out (to you, and to any other readers), for maybe if enough people tell me enough times I'll be able to figure it out.

Tom,

Thank you for your input. I fully agree that researching is a job with no end, and will continue to do so no matter what I decide to do to the car, or when I decide to start the project. Here is one question for you though. I have been trying to get through a book about welding, but have hit a brick wall. One, it is a horribly long and monotonous read, and second, I don't think that reading this book is really inevitable going to teach me how to weld. This leads me to my more general question. As I am soaking in as much knowledge as I can here, what sort of things would you recommend for gaining skills? I have thought about this, and have looked for some options, but I can't really find much outside of going to a technical school offering some sort of fabrication course. Here is the hitch, I am in the military, and so taking a couple weeks off to go do something like that really isn't an option. I can't even really commit to night, or weekend courses, because I am never sure I am going to get them off either. So how would you go about solving that?

To all, thank you for your help and advice,



John