There are many kinds of widows whose husbands are still very much alive. There are golf widows, soccer widows and increasingly these days, PlayStation widows. If your house is littered with car magazines, your weekends are taken up with car shows and a purring engine instead of a pretty lady turns your partner’s head, you’re probably a car enthusiast widow. This can be bad news if you’re not interested in torque, pistons, 8-cylinder engines and fuel injection. It can be good news if you’re looking for the perfect Christmas or birthday gift, as a kit-car would fulfill every childhood fantasy and provide hours of pure joy.
Kits can be ordered straight from the manufacturers via their websites. They can also be ordered online from a kit-car supplier. Choosing one can be sweet hell for a car lover. You can build anything from Big wheel off road vehicles to vintage cars. Two-seater sports cars are a very popular choice. Consider when choosing them what engine you would like to install, whether you want two-wheel or four-wheel drive and the kind of suspension you want to use. The beauty of them is that you’re not limited to any set specifications. You can use the base and add just about any features that you want.
Before your kit arrives, it’s important that you get a donor car. In some cases you may be able to salvage all that you need from one car, in other instances more than one donor car may be needed. Finding a donor car can be as simple as knocking on someone’s door and asking them if you can buy the scrapped car in their yard, or looking in your local paper. Ideally all of your donor car’s mechanical components should be in good working order. It’s more likely that most of the car will be in pretty poor shape, but you should be able to refurbish most of it, and exchange the rest.
Once you’ve stripped your donor car, and cleaned and checked all the parts that you’re going to use, it’s advisable to read the manual to make sure that you understand everything. Kit-car manufacturing companies have help lines so that if you don’t understand something or are having trouble, you can phone them and they will help you out. Another good idea is to formulate a building plan. You can follow the manual to the letter, or you can work to your own program. It all depends on how much knowledge, equipment and time you possess.
One of the highlights of building your kit-car is putting your engine in place. This should be done with a proper hoist and not manhandled in by you and some of your best friends. An engine is deceptively heavy and once it’s dropped, it can’t be salvaged. It’s best to spend a little extra money on renting a hoist, than a lot of money buying and refurbishing a new engine.
When yours is up and running and has passed the road safety test, there are endless hours of pride and joy before you as you drive around the country in a car that you built. There is also the prospect of building another car. You could also venture out of your comfort zone and try a whole new mode of transportation, such as a kit-helicopter or an airplane.
