Alternative to a project car?

I'm going to second the bicycle: no license required, no insurance, and you can ride it anywhere.

What picks your fancy? BMX? Vintage 10-speed? European tourer? Single-speed racer? Find something cool and used, and go from there.

Also, have you seen some of the project guitars over here?

https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/off-topic-discussion/

Speaking as a guy with both guitars and a BMX bike in his office, a guitar takes up even less space. It may or may not cost you more money, though. Both are fun, cool hobbies.

Along with bikes, maybe look at mowers or vintage garden tractors? Start with the bikes or mowers that get tossed on trash day for some minor issue, that you can do some quick fix and flip. If you need to get sign-off from the parents, consider things that will be useful to you or them after you've fixed them, or would be easy to sell at a profit.

Once you've built up a cash base, you can move on to something bigger, ie 80s/90s pickup that has huge aftermarket support, can then be used as a support vehicle for other things, and you can go get a truckload of mulch or firewood for dad as well .

Ironically, my son is also 16, and we're having family fight club this week about motorcycles. Pretty entertaining for my daughter. I think my wife may kill him. I told him what it was like when I crashed my first VFR and she had to leave work to come pick me up about 3 hours away .

Why not just get an engine stand and engine lift from harvir freight and buy a few crap motors and rebuild them. Maybe for a car you want when you're able to buy and drive it.

I started a lot of projects when I was your age. Didn't finish many of them, I think that is pretty common.

My advice is to find stuff you can fix in an afternoon or a weekend. Short projects are great because they get done or get out. Fix broken furniture, small engines, guitars, bikes, whatever. Guaranteed your friends or family is throwing out heaps of broken stuff all the time, and you can pick anything to try and fix for free. If you succeed, you can make a couple bucks, if you fail it's still trash, no harm no foul.

Most of the stuff in cars is just bigger versions of the stuff above.

Get a welder and start fabricating. I've made everything from, trailers to bumpers to wedding decorations.

NoPermitNeeded wrote: In reply to chiodos: I would love to take the kart off your hands. But as for the rallycrossing, our branch of the SCCA is trying to find a new location. We got booted out of our previous one. A kart would be fun to wrench on though.

Make an offer, its a 2006 yerf dog one seater with solid axle, 6.0hp tecumseh that runs good independent front supension and a swing axle like rear suspension. I had ideas of using ebay pit bike remote shock coilovers and that 212cc harbor freight motor with mods but im moving across country in 3ish months and its not coming with me. Oh and for size idea im 6ft 180lbs and it seats and pushes me around the yard very well as is

TheEnd wrote: Get a welder and start fabricating. I've made everything from, trailers to bumpers to wedding decorations.

Yeah this if your endgame is to getting into any kind of project car.

I never took any fab, wood working, machining, mechanical classes in school. Now in real life i have been playing catch up for 10 years trying to learn on my own. It would have been 10x easier if i wasnt paying rent and rearing kids.

kurt bulinski, a member on here and had a car on the cover a few years back, wrote a book "kimini" that outlines a ground up car build (also midlana his second build keep forgetting to pick that one up when i have spare cash).

He talks through a ton of great basic ideas that could be integrated into most cars. Lots of good book references shop layouts, machine suggestions.... On and on

If you like it start picking up basic tools/machines and most importantly books. Read up on where you want your money to go. You can spend years reading on forums and never learn what a few hours in the right books can teach you.

I know books sound boring but they are worth it when you actually have a project car in front of you.

In reply to chiodos:

That sounds like a recipe for fun to me. I can give you $250 for it. That leaves me a little money for some go fast bits.

In reply to jere:

Are there any books in particular that you recommend for fab work, and suspension tuning? I've already picked up a copy of "4-stroke performance tuning" and it's been extremely helpful.

In reply to NoPermitNeeded:

Authors Carroll Smith, Fred Puhn, Ron Fournier, Herb Adams should be a good start.

Dude you are in Birmingham....any local race teams that wouldn't mind an understudy?

Also a Locost may be up your ally with a little bit of patience and experience.

The point of them is cheapppppp

came here to say some kind of off road toy is a good way to distract you from the lack of a project car. There are plenty of dirt bikes and 4 wheelers cough or 3 wheelers cough cough on craigslist that run but need a little tinkering for pretty cheap with cheap parts and are easy to work on. I traded a bag of old power tools for my trike so there are deals out there, and if you fix it up some you will probably turn a profit or atleast break even when you're ready to move on from it.

and it looks like a 4 wheeler will fit in in a ridgeline

If you're also into music, I'd start looking around at www.parts-express.com and of course tons of other places on the web, for tons of different amp/speaker projects.

Every time my Mom got on my case about the car interest and the ensuing detritus , I would agree with her and drag home a motorcycle. That always shut her right up.

I was in a similar situation. Had to wait to finish freshman year of high school before they would let me get a car at all. I tinkered and tried lots of things with it, got a few done. By senior year I stopped asking. I had been driving something reliable and told them "I'm buying __ to fix it and sell it, I would appreciate it if you're on board but I'm going to do it either way."

Once they see that you're serious about wanting to pursue it, willing to put in the time to keep things moving, and don't require help from them they'll be more willing to relent. In the meantime, I'll echo someones suggestion above to find an engine you'll be able to use in the future and rebuild it. If you could get a project car, what would it be, out of curiosity?

In reply to classicJackets:

Of course everyone has their pie-in-the-sky car wants, but realistically probably a foxbody, sn96, 4th gen camaro, or similar muscle car. They are plentiful and cheap where I live. Parts for them are also very common and they're fairly simple machines.

I love all cars, but I have grown up around big snarly v8s so they hold a special place in my heart.

I have already done the suggestion about getting an old engine and taking it apart. Last summer I got a Porsche 914 engine and dissasembled it; hands down was the best learning experience I have ever had.

fasted58 wrote: In reply to NoPermitNeeded: Authors Carroll Smith, Fred Puhn, Ron Fournier, Herb Adams should be a good start.

Yes

These are a few I started with that are sometimes available in local book stores

"How to make your car handle" Fred Puhn is a good introduction to suspension mods and tuning.

Chassis engineering by herb adams gets more in depth and talks about design

Sheet metal handbook by ron&sue fournier sheetmetal is incredibility versatile, intake manifolds to suspension mounting points are made from the stuff.

Welders handbook by Robert finch is a good introduction . Once you decide what welding type you want to use there are others that are more specific to each process.

A metal lathe will save you a fortune on hardware if you learn to use them. They have been around for long enough that copyrights have run out, and there are free online manuals. Southbend put out some good ones that come up with a google search

Flight Service wrote: Dude you are in Birmingham....any local race teams that wouldn't mind an understudy?

This. Ask to lend a hand and start hangin' out, crew at the track. Be surprised what ya can learn and you'll make connections.

NoPermitNeeded wrote: In reply to chiodos: That sounds like a recipe for fun to me. I can give you $250 for it. That leaves me a little money for some go fast bits.

She's yours

A ridgeline is still a truck, or at least truck enough, to pull home all kinds of projects in the future. Don't write it off, especially since it's free to you.

Does your high school system offer any vocational training? I took drafting and CAD courses at ours instead of academic classes I didn't want to take, and I still got in to college just fine. My brother is currently in automotive tech right now.

Google MikeRoweWorks too. Lots of money and opportunities for kids willing to put out sweat equity.

Is a dirtbike as out of the question as a "motorcycle"?

In reply to skierd:

Sadly, my highschool doesn't offer anything like that; it wouldn't appeal to enough kids. I'm just going to have to find someone who needs an understudy this summer.

In reply to sesto elemento:

Yes, unfortunately anything with two-wheels and an engine is considered too "motorcycle"

It won't be at your current high school, likely you'd have to go to a magnet school or another facility part time. In my county, tech courses were offered at the Center for Applied Technology and you either went there in the morning and finished your day at your home high school or vice versa.

Ask your guidance counselor or if you have a shop class offered ask that teacher if something exists in your district. These programs weren't advertised to college track students in my district. Ask and if you get rebuffed make noise about it, push back when they tell you those kinds of programs aren't for "college bound" students.

NoPermitNeeded wrote: In reply to skierd: Sadly, my highschool doesn't offer anything like that; it wouldn't appeal to enough kids. I'm just going to have to find someone who needs an understudy this summer.