How to maintain your Delorean for less than $500 a year and put 10,000 miles on it

[David T]

I am all for thinking about and exploring "out of the box" solutions. That is what this thread is all about. When I give advice I try to be conservative, not everyone has the same level of abilities and I can't know what any particular reader's skill level is. That is why I tend to give "conservative" advice, it is more widely useful. On this thread there are some basic accounting procedures that should be followed to do a fair comparison. Teaching or giving advice on accounting is way beyond what you can expect on this forum. BTW, when I give advice I also have to be sensitive to possible dangers that a novice can get into and try to help the reader avoid them along with the obvious stuff we all learn from experience. Take this as a positive critique, I am not trying to criticize you, it is a worthy attempt which we can all learn from. Maybe your problem is your initial conditions. If you start off with a well maintained car it will be easier to keep it running (and cheaper) than a car that is not in good condition. This can be a big trap for any new owners. They get a car and spend all of their money on it to buy it and don't have enough left over for the inevitable repairs an old car requires. It becomes a "Rolling Restoration" and is unreliable and gets them stuck everywhere. Eventually they get so disillusioned they give up. What your experiment has revealed is that you must overestimate your repair budget or you will be disappointed.
David Teitelbaum

[thirdmanj]

Please direct your "inside the box" solutions to the following thread:

dmctalk.org/showthread.php?5420-How-to-maintain-a-Delorean-for-more-than-500-year-and-put-under-2-500-miles-on-it

Stevedmc, Troll level: God...

[stevedmc]

... It becomes a "Rolling Restoration" and is unreliable and gets them stuck everywhere. Eventually they get so disillusioned they give up....

A "rolling restoration" is not unreliable. In fact quite the opposite: it is very reliable, but cosmetically challenged.

Bill Robertson's car has been a rolling restoration since 2002. But that never stopped him from driving it, including driving 1,200 miles round trip to New Jersey twice a year to see you. Bill's car may not have had headliners for several years, his seats didn't get recovered until 2008, he had to rattle can his fascias (then decided that worked pretty well, so they've been rattle canned ever since), etc, but Bill's car has never been unreliable. His "rolling restoration" has actually been one of the more reliable DeLoreans on the road.

A rolling restoration is arguably better than an attempted start to finish restoration in which the owner runs out of money or interest before completion. The sordid annals of DeLorean history are full of examples of that.

[stevedmc]

In about two hours I will be leaving for Atlanta. It would be silly to embark on a 2,000 mile trip without a little prep work.

I just installed 6 new intake O rings, put 3 helicoils in my intake valley (I did one earlier this year and was too lazy to do the rest back then), and installed an emergency hood release cable.

I've got to cut grass and pack some clothes before I leave. I'll update the exact cost sometime during my journey.

[Jeff K]

Hey Steve - can you post a link to the "vibration reducing steering column" you mention?

Thanks
Jeff

[David T]

Not all rolling restos are "just" cosmetically challanged. All too often I see many mechanical things that should be attended to and the owner says he just hasn't gotten to it yet. I agree cosmetic items don't affect the car's reliability but that is not what I was talking about. Using Steve and Bill as examples of reliability is not good because I would guess in most cases if they had a problem on the road they would be able to get themselves going again. Most owners are not as capable.
David Teitelbaum

[Nicholas R]

I have to say that to a certain degree, I agree with Dave. Presently we have ambiguity in the term "rolling restoration." Clearly there are many different types of rolling restorations.

My dad has a 60 vette that we're restoring that starts, runs, rolls, and even moves under it's own power... but the fiberglass body is still in the paint shop. We consider it a rolling restoration.

My buddy has a 73 charger that cosmetically is in great shape, but mechanically, we still have trouble keeping it running and setting into idle. Also the brakes need serious work. Despite the fact that its unreliability, we can move it around and drive it short distances. We consider it a rolling restoration.

Before my engine swap, my car was always far more challenged mechanically than cosmetically. It was a beautiful car show car but I certainly still had plenty of bugs to work out; a few that bit me in the ass. I always considered it a rolling restoration. Hell I still consider it a rolling restoration.

Bottom line is that all "rolling restorations" are not equal. Some are rough on the outside, some are rough on the inside, and some are rough on both.

[stevedmc]

... Most owners are not as capable.

They could be. There is nothing special about Steve and Bill. They are not rocket scientists.

What Steve and Bill do have is:
- Paucity of cash
- Intimate familiarity with DeLorean design
- Willingness to think outside the box
- Limited time to devote to the car
- Extreme aversion to putting something badly designed back in its original configuration if/when it is apart
- A marked habit of driving long distances in the middle of the night (hence the real spare tires -- it's kind of hard to buy replacement DeLorean tires at 2:00 in the morning when you're thousands of miles from home)
- No preconceived notions about DeLorean right or wrong, no beholdeness to DeLorean dogma, no concerns about ruffling DeLorean purists' feathers
- Low cost, reliable, and out of the way carburetors instead of K-Jet (you don't hear Steve and Bill moaning and bewailing about changing their distributor caps, accessing their slave cylinders, pulling spark plug #4, etc)

Every single person on this forum could have that same list if he wanted.

[stevedmc]

Hey Steve - can you post a link to the "vibration reducing steering column" you mention?

http://www.borgeson.com Ask for Gil (he's the Borgeson rep who fills Toby's orders).

Our U joints aren't on the website. These are the part numbers you need:



Vibration reducing U joint is on the left.

[Jeff K]

Thanks!
Jeff