Where do you take your car to wrench on them? Obviously if you have a house, you put it up in the backyard and get to it whenever you want to, but what about you folks who don't have a garage, can't work on it in the street, and can't work on it in your apartment complex without violating your lease agreement?
How do you keep your car in tip top shape without becoming a slave to unscrupulous auto mechanics?
small task? autozone parking lot, all you need is handy if a problem arises
i mean, changing an alternator, oilchange, hell, ive seen someone do a headgasket at one before.
QuasiMondo wrote:Where do you take your car to wrench on them? Obviously if you have a house, you put it up in the backyard and get to it whenever you want to, but what about you folks who don't have a garage, can't work on it in the street, and can't work on it in your apartment complex without violating your lease agreement?
How do you keep your car in tip top shape without becoming a slave to unscrupulous auto mechanics?
Go to a friend's place. Go to my dad's place.
Or more likely, just work on it in the parking lot, lease agreement be damned.
Always worked on my car in the parking lot/garage, or taken it to a friend's house/apt to work on.
I've used the parking lot at work many times. Even did my shocks there once.
I have done two open-air engine swaps, more driveway clutch/trans swaps than I want to think about (one in a downpour), and a couple engine swaps in a storage locker, one of which after I'd built the engine in it.
Where there is a will, there is a way. Especially if you have a friend with a driveway, and another friend renting a huge storage locker... :)
The secret to getting away with work in the underground parking lot of your apartment is to always make it look like a car whenever you shut 'er down for the night. Put the hood on, keep the wheels on. Don't make it look stripped out or abandoned.
Terminology always said "no major auto repairs," which is very subjective. Major to you might be very minor to me. Put the car back together, keep it tidy, and people rarely complain.
G
SkinnyG wrote:Terminology always said "no major auto repairs," which is very subjective. Major to you might be very minor to me. Put the car back together, keep it tidy, and people rarely complain.
Obey the spirit of the law, if not the letter. They're trying to prevent people from buying cars, fixing, and flipping them, stripping them out, or otherwise making a persistent nuisance by constantly fixing cars.
And yeah, make it look like it's just parked for the night. I made the mistake of doing otherwise once, and had to finish a diff swap in the street in from of the tow yard.
Nearly got kicked out for putting washer fluid in the car in the parking lot of the townhouse. Working on car included anything involving having the hood up.
When I first moved to Charlotte many years ago, I rented a storage unit and worked out of that for quite some time.
I work in the parking lot of my complex at odd hours when there is less likely for someone to be around. I've never been told that I can't work on my car here so I plan to keep doing what I'm doing until someone tells me otherwise.
noisycricket wrote:Nearly got kicked out for putting washer fluid in the car in the parking lot of the townhouse. Working on car included anything involving having the hood up.
What a bunch of idiots. In that case, I'd make a fabric hood (think of the BMW GINA concept, the hardest part would be choosing a good fabric) that rolls up and do major messy jobs in plain view with impunity. I could even make a quick draw-string system to close it quickly if someone shows up. 
One time, I grenaded the transmission on my FC RX-7 and it sat in front of my house for about a month while I sorted everything out. Although the car had current tags, the transmission was sitting in pieces behind the front seats and you could literally see the ground through the shifter tunnel. I came home one day to find a very polite note from the Homeowners Association stating something to the effect of “we have some reason to believe this vehicle is inoperable which, if that is the case, would place it in violation of the CC&R’s…”
Bhahaha…it would have been completely worth the effort to rig something up so I could drive over to the community clubhouse Fred Flintstone style and walk in holding the note with smoldering feet and a bewildered look on my face.
I don't understand why house freaks, as I call them (generally defined as people who think HOAs aren't pure concentrated evil) have such a problem with cars. Maybe if we can get rigid car covers that look like garden sheds or maybe giant fake lawn rocks, they'll get off our case. They especially don't like broken down cars, which is even stranger as they're so interested in immobile structures.
My favorite place to work on RX7s is Tim Suddards back yard.
HOAs are pretty much just anal people concerned about "property value." Broken cars looks so lower class. They all want to be upscale, and it doesn't fit their perfect little world image.
The predecessors of HOAs existed to enforce race based deed restrictions in neighborhoods. They forced home buyers to sign documents stating they would only sell to other white people. I live in an older neighborhood that once had an HOA (decades ago) that did just that. After passage of the Fair Housing Act of 1968, the HOA evaporated shortly thereafter.
I got butt-pummelled by the park manager for fixing the red XR4Ti in the driveway. The very next morning his car broke down in front of my trailer... I gave him the heat before helping him.
I've replaced an alternator pivot bolt that fell out of my dsm in the parking lot of a TSC.
RX Reven' wrote:One time, I grenaded the transmission on my FC RX-7 and it sat in front of my house for about a month while I sorted everything out. Although the car had current tags, the transmission was sitting in pieces behind the front seats and you could literally see the ground through the shifter tunnel. I came home one day to find a very polite note from the Homeowners Association stating something to the effect of “we have some reason to believe this vehicle is inoperable which, if that is the case, would place it in violation of the CC&R’s…”
Bhahaha…it would have been completely worth the effort to rig something up so I could drive over to the community clubhouse Fred Flintstone style and walk in holding the note with smoldering feet and a bewildered look on my face.
I lived in a neighborhood with a Homeowners' Association exactly once. I have a very large problem with paying $200K for a house and then being told what I can and cannot do with it. My tow rig & race car were clean, and I met them half way by painting the trailer. When they started bitching about property values, I reminded them that I bought it to live in, not to sell (this was before the bubble burst). It never really came to a head, because I divorced soon after and ended up selling everything (including the house) anyway...
