Lets hear some project purgatory stories

Ranger50 said:

Let’s see... it’s my project by proxy but not truly mine either. SWMBO’s rusty junk Mustang currently doing its best wheelie in the driveway. I pulled the motor to freshen up the heads and swap the exhaust around... Then I found two rotted front frame rails at the shock tower, known problem in rust belt cars. It has sat since ‘04 and she refuses to let it go even as it’s a cobbled up POFS that’s even been partially flooded. Oh well...

Call a scrapper and tell them to come while she’s at work/sleeping/store and then pretend you have no idea what happened.  Feign hope and “call around” to several junkyards to see if anyone brought it in.  Really just walk around the backyard with your phone on your ear making gestures of disappointment every few seconds. 

I had a DSM that ended up in project hell, last one I ever owned.

97 GST, bought out of a storage barn, was blown up and parked very early in its life so never saw any winter, super low miles, just a gorgeous time capsule.  My friend bought it and put it back to running, drove it around for a year, and then parted it out again.  

I bought the shell and decided to AWD swap it.  Bought another car as a donor, pulled all the guts out of it, got everything powdercoated, new bushings, the whole stuff.  Got the AWD swap done.  Had a motor and a trans built for it.  Bought a bigeee stage eleventeen turbo and manifold for it.  Sought out all the rare goodies like HKS cast manifold, HKS purple cam gears, old school NOS super sequential BOV, etc.  Bought a DSMLink and installed it.  

Get it all together and I can't get it to fire.  Go through it 100 times.  Realize the DSMlink was a 95 ECU so firing order was reversed on the coil pack.  Swap wires and it fires up.  Still jackstand ballin.  

Decide I want my garage back, and one weekend in a fit of activity I strip the whole car down and part it out.  Took about 6 weeks, netted me enough pesos to pay cash for a 2002 C5 Corvette which was a pretty spendy car in 2009.  

Last DSM I ever owned and second to the last I ever worked on.  Once in a while the bug bites me for another first gen, but after living with an 04 WRX for two years, I don't think I want another 15-20 year old tuner car to daily drive.  

In reply to Patrick :

If it was only that easy..... She knows better.

1993 Katana. Bought from a motorcycle scrapper in Colorado 2001. I did lots to it. Tubular dirt bike bar conversion, new seals everywhere, Paint, new tank, seat, streetfighter treatment, V&H exhaust,bought a parts bike, got it running. I took it for a spin around the block, and realized too late that it wasn't so much hesitating as the front brake was locking from just a little drag from the junkyard lever I'd fitted. I wrecked, low speed, but very public at an intersection. I have built this thing 3 times, ridden it maybe 10 miles. And it's a stinking 600 Katana. I got fed up with my inability to make it run right, paid a shop 400-some-odd dollars to NOT make it run right. Parked it outside for a couple of years, complete with its new o-ring chain, fork seals, progressive springs, and new tires (now too old to use). And it is a 600 Katana. Now I'm so upside down on it that I won't sell it. I'll either do a full custom, or cannibalize it for other projects. Maybe burn it.

My first car, a 1986 Monte SS. I bought it summer of 92, drove the wheels off it until about 1999.  I started taking it apart do fix a bunch of damage and repaint. I hung new doors, fenders and nose from GM, my old boss painted it, and then it sat in my parent’s driveway while I got married. A few years later I bought a house and it got tucked into the garage still disassembled as a never ending parade of problems get in the way of putting it back together.  

2000 Porsche Boxster S.  Quoting from my 'Garage'

This one was for sale on Craigslist for $4,500. It looked a little rough, but I had parts and was looking for a project. I made a low-ball offer and the seller immediately agreed. I wasn't until the day after I bought it that I realized that it had a 1997 2.5L engine in it instead of the original 3.2L engine. Oops. I ran it on the track at Hallett a few times, hoping that it would die in a dramatic cloud of smoke and flames, but it held together. ...at least until they flagged me to get off the track for a coolant leak. The car is now in the process of getting a 4.2L V8 engine swap with an '03 Audi A8 as the donor. No build thread at this time.

In the Summer of 2017, I was excited about this car and expected to have it back on the track by October. I gave a detailed description, photos, and a cut rear end of a Boxster to a local fabricator so he could build me an engine cradle for the V8. He said he'd have it ready in a week. About six weeks later he finally had it done. Heavy steel, nothing like the pictures or description, but he was proud of it and it looked like it would work. I paid him about $1,000 and took it home. It was off by INCHES and completely unusable. I went back to the shop and may have thrown it at him (about 100 lbs of steel).  I don't really remember. I think his assistant was about to call the police when I left. Over the next week he made a few corrections. I finally made it fit the car with some bushings and decided to let it rest.

Since then I have attempted to get to work on it again. Little bits of progress, but the motivation is gone. The engine is in and I have the wiring mapped out and splicing started, but as soon as I get it in the garage, I am ready to roll it back out and work on anything else. I am not stuck for difficulty or lack of direction. Some day I may want it done. It could be a very fun car. For now, I am happy to see it as the shape of a Porsche under a car cover.

What I wanted:

What I finally made work: