Abhorring a Blank Canvas
Reese and I drew up a budget a month back to finally get a handle on our rampant spending. Among the items, of course, was money spent on the Ghia for non-essential repairs.
I can bend the rules a bit and divert entertainment money or eating out money to Ghia parts. That just means fewer trips to Subway for lunch, fewer movies out or beers with the boys.
But, even before then I've been doing my best not to just throw money at any Ghia problem that comes along. I've stuck quite well to my self-imposed mandate to never take it to a mechanic except for oil changes. There's nothing wrong with paying VW Man $15 in labor charges for such a thankless DIY task.
It started with being told that I needed a whole new carburetor and distributor back in October by VW Man. I took his advice at face value and started pricing carburetors and distributors. Then, I determined that for just a little extra money I could get a perfectly acceptable set of dual carburetors. I'm already dedicated to spending $250-$300 for one new carburetor and distributor, what's an extra $100 when you're spending that kind of money, right?
Well, then the snow fell and that saved me a lot of money. I put Ghia projects aside and went skiing. In January I revisited the carburetor and distributor problem and decided to just rebuild them both and see what happens, spending less than $10 on a carburetor rebuild kit. The experiment worked and the distributor ended up not being a problem once the carburetor was cleaned out enough to send a vacuum signal.
So, I'd gone from believing I was quite rational in spending $400 on my car to only $9+shipping to actually fix the problem.
Amazing what you can accomplish when you put limits on yourself. I've always been like that. Read through the archives here and you'll find pictures of the Ghia chassis I made out of Legos. Those were really about the only toys I had as a kid. When all my friends had Transformers that changed from cars or radios into robots I just built my own Transformers out of my junkyard of plastic beams, gears and axles.
In college I studied English and Mass Communications, a general writing degree. Whenever I had to take a poetry writing class I did far better with a rigidly formatted, Shakespearean sonnet than more modern, free-form poetry. When I got into HTML and Web design I steered away from user-friendly, graphical Web page editors and did everything in raw code. Creativity flowed much better when I had boundaries.
Give me a blank page and say "Make something creative" and I'll be stuck, looking into a void. Give me a 10 page piece of writing full of red marks and comments on how to make it better and I can work miracles.
Now it seems the same is true for mechanics. Dirt Rag, a mountain bike magazine, recently said that 2006 is going to be the year of the 29'' mountain bike. Most mountain bikes have 26'' wheels, but in recent years companies have been coming out with their next big thing: an extra three inches of wheel.
Among the various models that have 29'' wheels in the front and back, Trek has come out with a "69er," which has a 29'' wheel only in the front with a traditional 26'' wheel in the back. This sparked something in me and I've been eyeing up my 1999 Specialized Rockhopper frame for a suspension-corrected, 26'' front fork with disc brake mounts that will have enough clearance for a 29'' wheel. The rest of the frame is too small to put a 29'' wheel in the back.
Again, I could just buy a whole new 29'' bike and be done with it, but the wife and I are on a budget. I am a grown up, of course, and I could very easily say "To hell with the budget!" But, I would honestly much rather just piece together an old frame and make something all my own.
The point isn't "I want it, so I'll buy it." The point is "I want to make it, and as a side-effect I'll have it."
I can bend the rules a bit and divert entertainment money or eating out money to Ghia parts. That just means fewer trips to Subway for lunch, fewer movies out or beers with the boys.
But, even before then I've been doing my best not to just throw money at any Ghia problem that comes along. I've stuck quite well to my self-imposed mandate to never take it to a mechanic except for oil changes. There's nothing wrong with paying VW Man $15 in labor charges for such a thankless DIY task.
It started with being told that I needed a whole new carburetor and distributor back in October by VW Man. I took his advice at face value and started pricing carburetors and distributors. Then, I determined that for just a little extra money I could get a perfectly acceptable set of dual carburetors. I'm already dedicated to spending $250-$300 for one new carburetor and distributor, what's an extra $100 when you're spending that kind of money, right?
Well, then the snow fell and that saved me a lot of money. I put Ghia projects aside and went skiing. In January I revisited the carburetor and distributor problem and decided to just rebuild them both and see what happens, spending less than $10 on a carburetor rebuild kit. The experiment worked and the distributor ended up not being a problem once the carburetor was cleaned out enough to send a vacuum signal.
So, I'd gone from believing I was quite rational in spending $400 on my car to only $9+shipping to actually fix the problem.
Amazing what you can accomplish when you put limits on yourself. I've always been like that. Read through the archives here and you'll find pictures of the Ghia chassis I made out of Legos. Those were really about the only toys I had as a kid. When all my friends had Transformers that changed from cars or radios into robots I just built my own Transformers out of my junkyard of plastic beams, gears and axles.
In college I studied English and Mass Communications, a general writing degree. Whenever I had to take a poetry writing class I did far better with a rigidly formatted, Shakespearean sonnet than more modern, free-form poetry. When I got into HTML and Web design I steered away from user-friendly, graphical Web page editors and did everything in raw code. Creativity flowed much better when I had boundaries.
Give me a blank page and say "Make something creative" and I'll be stuck, looking into a void. Give me a 10 page piece of writing full of red marks and comments on how to make it better and I can work miracles.
Now it seems the same is true for mechanics. Dirt Rag, a mountain bike magazine, recently said that 2006 is going to be the year of the 29'' mountain bike. Most mountain bikes have 26'' wheels, but in recent years companies have been coming out with their next big thing: an extra three inches of wheel.
Among the various models that have 29'' wheels in the front and back, Trek has come out with a "69er," which has a 29'' wheel only in the front with a traditional 26'' wheel in the back. This sparked something in me and I've been eyeing up my 1999 Specialized Rockhopper frame for a suspension-corrected, 26'' front fork with disc brake mounts that will have enough clearance for a 29'' wheel. The rest of the frame is too small to put a 29'' wheel in the back.
Again, I could just buy a whole new 29'' bike and be done with it, but the wife and I are on a budget. I am a grown up, of course, and I could very easily say "To hell with the budget!" But, I would honestly much rather just piece together an old frame and make something all my own.
The point isn't "I want it, so I'll buy it." The point is "I want to make it, and as a side-effect I'll have it."
posted by Chris Druckenmiller at 7:12 AM
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