Polo engine article

For those who couldn't care less how their 356 left the factory!
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Adam Wright
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Re: Polo engine article

#16 Post by Adam Wright »

Justin Rio wrote: Mon Nov 08, 2021 2:55 am Adam, I love your optimism about time being on your side at the tender age of 47 but in reality it is the enemy. As my mentor use to stress, " its always much later than you think it is". Unfortunately I'm not younger than you, I've got you by about 4 years and I can clearly remember beginning my build post here as I was just anticipating turning 40... now look. :( You are correct, the more you change and modify a car the more complicated, time consuming and expensive its going to get. If you go too wide with other car projects (which I have done) your time, money and effort becomes spread and diluted too thin and in return meaningful forward progress on everything gets reduced to a mere trickle if you're a one man band like I am. I've bounced around over the last several years between my old coupe and several other projects I'm interested in. I have now moth balled all other distractions to see my old silver coupe to the end but its still a challenge to leave my other cars alone. I have seen both of your projects and they are about as involved and one off as it gets. Building body skins and dream mock ups are certainly instantly gratifying and most essential in keeping the fires lit but the required engineering and fabrication of all the far less glamorous stuff like substructure, closing walls, latch and hinge mount placement, final body fitment, flow and gaps; the list goes on. It makes my head swim. Your focus, will and/or staying power is going to be truly put to the test during those phases. With that said I would highly recommend choosing just one car to finish to completion or it could quickly turn into another 5 years with very little forward progress to show. I'm not recreating the actual body on my car but I still had to drop back to refocus on this one project to get any meaningful progress again. Maybe you have some help I don't know but this is the hard lesson I've had to learn and relearn as time has gone on. As our old friend Bruce Baker has stated "its amazing how long it takes to finish something you're not working on"

Phil as always, thank you!
I just feel sad I have two projects I haven't even begun yet, both waiting patiently in my barn. I figure I have about 20 years of work between all 4 cars and I don't plan on taking on even more. Recently a very interesting project popped up and as much as it hurt, I let it float by, keep my eye on what's in front of me.
My overall plan is to retire in 12 years at 60, then have more time to devote to what I want to do. My financial guy said I can, so that's the plan.
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Justin Rio
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Re: Polo engine article

#17 Post by Justin Rio »

Sounds like a plan...

Mark Erbesfield
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Location: Atlanta, GA

Re: Polo engine article

#18 Post by Mark Erbesfield »

I too am one of those long term project folks. I will finish it "someday". My issue is I have too many projects and too little energy, and the old I get, the less energy I have.
57 356A
68 912
73 911S
66 Land Cruiser FJ45LV
71 Land Cruiser FJ40
79 450 SL

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