Not for the faint of heart - what are the brave, or scary cars/projects you've taken on?

Kenny_McCormic wrote: I have a Yugo, I've driven it like 7 times. I'm serious about being willing to trade it for a trabant.

My Yugo was just a warmup. It all started with "what's a Wartburg....?" and then a decent into madness.

97 Range Rover Vitesse HSE, 5 x Triumph Stags, 66 MCI bus that sat for 20 years, the list goes on

Quattroportes are getting CHEAP! Hmmmm....

McTinkerson wrote: I bought this as my first car for $1: Some consider wankels scary. Nor is one which suffered an engine fire for the feint of heart.

My first project was an FC I later sold to another forum member. I can't even count the number of times I was told it would blow up, and yet that car ended up being one of the MOST reliable I had ever owned. Having a freshly rebuilt motor and sympathetic previous owners helped.

Most of my scary cars had scary amounts of rust! 240SX, Impreza, Eclipse... they would only get enough love to keep them on the road for a year or two before I would scrap or sell them.

I just got my Alfa 164 back on the road after months of downtime due to a bent conrod, thanks to a leaky injector. That's the first time I ever tore into an engine that far. The 164's engine bay is very, very cramped.

1967 Fiat Dino, my descent into exotic car ownership. 7 years after this purchase photo, it looked pretty much the same. I'd spent a few thousand on parts, and was thrilled to almost get what I paid for the car. I no longer buy weird cars nobody has heard of.

By far, my open class rally Mazdog protege awd car. Did pretty well with it then started breaking things, like the unbreakable factory gpA rear diff, then ventilated the block the next morning. So we thought it would be a good idea to swap a Toyota Alltrac gearbox and halfshafts and rear end into it. The Intarwebz said go right ahead... but it was a nightmare. It's done and all, but I don't know what the heck I was thinkin...

ddavidv wrote: 1967 Fiat Dino, my descent into exotic car ownership. 7 years after this purchase photo, it looked pretty much the same. I'd spent a few thousand on parts, and was thrilled to almost get what I paid for the car. I no longer buy weird cars nobody has heard of.

Would you mind telling me how much that car went for?

fanfoy wrote:

Travis_K wrote:

HappyAndy wrote: I've seriously entertained buying an XJS-V12 and an Alfa Milano.

Alfa Milano isn't too scary. I had one as a DD for over 2 years.

I've also had a Milano as a DD, and it wasn't scary.

Oh. I see I misread the first post. When he said he wanted to buy a Jag V12 and an Alfa Milano, I assumed he was going to put them together. That would have been scary.

I once retuned an ITA 1985 Shelby Charger to daily driver road legal status. Worst car ever.

I bought a Phaeton because Jeremy Clarkson said it was the one he'd buy.

JThw8 wrote:

Kenny_McCormic wrote: I have a Yugo, I've driven it like 7 times. I'm serious about being willing to trade it for a trabant.

My Yugo was just a warmup. It all started with "what's a Wartburg....?" and then a decent into madness.

Laugh at me if you will but what is a wartburg?

ryanty22 wrote:

JThw8 wrote:

Kenny_McCormic wrote: I have a Yugo, I've driven it like 7 times. I'm serious about being willing to trade it for a trabant.

My Yugo was just a warmup. It all started with "what's a Wartburg....?" and then a decent into madness.

Laugh at me if you will but what is a wartburg?

Most of the info you'll want to know is here http://wartburg.misfittoysracing.com/

If you have access to back issues it was covered some time in 2011 I believe in GRM. I can find the exact issue if you'd like.

Thats awesome

Attempting to paint a very low production fiberglass bodied car. I didn't have a clue what I was about to encounter. As it turned out, the layers of glass were delaminating. I would have the "last" coat of primer blocked out ready to shoot the next day. Come into the shop and there were two or three bubbles that had lifted overnight. Repaired, re-primed, blocked back out, next morning, the same thing. Sometimes in a different location. This nightmare continued for days. I went on line, made phone calls, & dug out my books on the subject. Nothing worked satisfactorily. There were very few times in my career that I gave up on anything but I had to let that one go.

No pictures but my first E21. A 1982 320is. New nothing of the Bosch CIS system at the time and from the rockers down it was gone. Figured out the CIS system and fabricated rockers, floorpans and trunk floor. First time doing body work and first time painting a car. Big project that I never really saw to completion.

Here is a "Scary cause I did not see it coming" restoration.

Was going to be a quick cleanup on some rust bubbles on a "Solid" car.

Turns out that someone had beat me to the job and the original rockers were still under the new ones!

Brave because I was working with no real information on what I was doing, and no plan other than "someone did it before so maybe I can too, so start unbolting everything and then figure out how to shove the new bits in"

Scary because I had very little time to do it.

Woody wrote:

ddavidv wrote: 1967 Fiat Dino, my descent into exotic car ownership. 7 years after this purchase photo, it looked pretty much the same. I'd spent a few thousand on parts, and was thrilled to almost get what I paid for the car. I no longer buy weird cars nobody has heard of.

Would you mind telling me how much that car went for?

Woody, I bought the car for $5500 back around 1989. Owned it for maybe six years while I tried to collect parts for it. Couldn't buy pistons at the time, and it smoked, which usually meant it needed bored. The longer I had it, the more I really was able to look at it, and learned it had been wrecked once and feared what may lurk beneath the filler on the driver's side (it had a used door on it. Found out these cars all have VIN stamps on each major panel). The gas tank was smashed from the bottom and I found one in Virginia that I pulled by myself in a weedy field on Saturday, then tried to figure out what to do with the ten year old gas that was in it. Everything I did toward fixing it I either got ripped off by someone or had to pay through the nose for it (or both). I finally had to swap even up for a '65 Skylark convertible in about the same condition for it just to make it go away. All told, I think I probably lost a grand or two in the end.

Rusty 98 Daewoo built with middle school kids for track days.

http://bengarrido.com/gallery-of-ghetto-modifications/

http://bengarrido.com/the-art-of-ghetto-engineering/

Not mine, but there was an Aston Martin V8 coupe sitting at the indie Mercedes joint that some guy from Blighty bought for a princely sum and had shipped back across the big water. It was a cool looking car but the more I looked at it the less I wanted to even think about restoring it. The interior had been completely removed, don't know where it was, the body had a half assed paint strip started, the engine/trans were there but the wiring was a real mess.

$400 MK1 MR2. The MR2 was not what made it scary...ANY $400 car that spent 25+ years in the Northeast is scary!

The wife is requiring that her 90 stang GT be fixed now that I am out of school. It's been converted to carb rather poorly, needs both front frame rails replaced, has been in at least one accident in the pass rear or bondo rust repair, and has been baking in the sun for 10 yrs. This is going to be a $20k backyard "resto".....

Good lord help me. At least I get an open checkbook to buy the tools I need to fix it.

I wonder if she might be okay with the sort of restoration that means buying a different car and swapping over parts.

I added a second story to my house. As soon as the roof structure as off there was a "what have I done" moment where I realized that I had to get it back together and I had to do it quickly, because if it rained everything I owned was berkeleyed.