So it's been almost exactly 12 years since I essentially lucked my way into 'winning' an auction for a non-running 1983 DMC-12 DeLorean on eBay for which I was not the highest bidder- and that EastSideTim had essentially initially sent me the link to as a joke knowing how much I had always wanted one. Restoring it and getting it running and drivable took several years and a significant amount of what it cost to buy in the first place. I drove it around a modest bit for several years, taking it to car shows and simply driving it- including a trip down to Florida and back with it for a DeLorean Car Show (they're more like DeLorean owner conventions in reality).
Unfortunately, around the time that The Dancer and I got married and moved into our new house, I started noticing some unpleasant clunking from the front end of the DMC and upon closer inspection found that part of the front frame extension where the front sway bar attaches had rusted through, and that there was a good chance that at some point if I kept driving it and putting stress on it, the part would fail completely and compromise the front suspension- something that would obviously be catastrophic at any kind of speed (and Very Bad at any speed). So, the DeLorean got parked behind the house waiting for when I would have time to get everything else out of the way (and out of the garage) and I could put it into the garage to pull the body off the frame and repair the rusted portions. Almost 7 years later and nearly a dozen other vehicles spending time in the garage- and I'm finally at the point where the other vehicles (currently my E46 convertible and Infiniti QX4) are in conditions that what might need to be done on them can be handled in the driveway... so the DMC was finally able to be moved into the garage to begin the likely multi-year process of repairing and upgrading it.
Getting it into the garage in the first place was a bit of a challenge- it had sat without being started for some 2 years... I believe the last time I had it running was around when we got the hot tub that was supposed to go out to our cabin but eventually shifted to being kept here and a smaller, lighter one going out to the cabin. The good: the thing's carburetor-retrofitted PRV engine, while far from anything to write home about when it comes to performance, is stupidly hardy- and once I had enough power to the starter turned over without any issues and didn't take very long to built up enough pressure for it to fire over. The electrical issue took some doing- it eventually required a second battery in parallel to the DMC's (because it died once I disconnected the jump pack after starting it) along with my jump pack cranked all the way up to get it fired up. Also challenging is the fact that at the moment I can't get it into first gear- to put the transmission into reverse, you pull up (literally, pull the knob up toward the roof) and back and to the left , essentially below where 1st is. At the moment, the selector is frozen in the 'up' position- and it's designed to not let you put it into 1st in that state (so you can't slam it from R into 1st). So I have to use 2nd or 3rd to move forward, which requires revving it pretty high to keep it from stalling. Still, I made it work...