“Now I remember why I don’t like working on cars!” This was how my call with a good friend started a few weeks ago. They were his words, inspired by the frustration he was feeling after working on a Mustang he’d owned for quite a few years. Like a lot of us who find ourselves drawn to automotive pursuits, my friend has been wrenching on cars to make them better since he was a teen, and that was a few decades ago at this point. So why was he suddenly ready to throw in the towel?
The story that unfolded was a familiar one, involving a series of upgrade projects that seemed to go relatively smoothly during the installation phase, but which didn’t yield the desired results once my friend was back behind the wheel. As he explained what he’d been dealing with, a flood of similar recollections came rushing back to me, both from my own experiences and those of other people who have shared similar laments. It can be maddening to dig into a vehicle you enjoy with the hope of making it even better, only to wind up realizing you’ve instead made it worse.
In my friend’s case, he’d taken a car that was once a daily driver and decided to make it more of a “fun” ride once it had been retired from commuting duties. It’s a late ’90s model so emissions compliance in his area is required, leading him to install a smog-legal supercharger kit that needed to work with the factory electronics. He then moved to the suspension, adding upgraded control arms, springs, and dampers to make it a better handler. He finished it off with new, larger wheels and tires, then hit the road to bask in the glory of his now vastly improved Mustang. Only it wasn’t.
Instead, the car that had once helped to ease the tensions of a long day at work with a sporting-butcomfortable drive home was now punishing him, or so it seemed. A harsh ride with steering that tugged at every little groove in the road was paired with an engine that now surged and hesitated under stopand-go conditions. The Mustang had become the opposite of a fun car, and he’d gotten himself wound up enough to contemplate getting rid of it.
That was all too familiar. I’ve been there, and I’ve also watched plenty of other people dive into projects that ultimately left them wanting to part ways with the vehicle they’d previously cherished. Some of the ones who moved on are still looking back longingly at the cars they let go, wishing they had the chance to try again with a clearer head.
I could see my friend headed for that scenario, and hoped he’d take a moment or three to step away and rethink the issues. That’s easy for me to say but hasn’t always been as easy to do when dealing with my own projects. After making an investment in money, time, and effort, being faced with the possibility of having to start over can go beyond frustration and into a sense that starts to feel overwhelming. Bailing out entirely can feel like the best escape.
When these sorts of projects end up like this, you’ll often hear blame hurled at the makers of the parts that didn’t deliver, or the shop that did the work if the car owner didn’t handle that on his or her own. But I find it’s often the outcome of taking the bigger-is-better approach. We gearheads tend to do that, after all, and it sometimes leads to putting race car parts on vehicles that spend most of their time on the street. Or it may just be a case of setting expectations too high for a newly altered vehicle— one that hasn’t been dialed in yet. Making upgrades or other modifications, particularly if multiple alterations are performed at once, usually requires a bit of sorting, but sometimes we jump right to that first test drive looking for magic. When it isn’t there, the mind doesn’t always react favorably.
The passage of time and accumulation of experience ought to provide at least some shred of wisdom, one that hopefully helps us to take that step back to cool off and revisit with a fresh set of eyes. And to resist the urge to push the car off a cliff. Or even to list it in the local online classifieds.
My friend with the Mustang has the benefit of those years of experience, and despite the moments of aggravation he’d shared with me on the phone, he knows what he’s doing. I offered a sympathetic ear and suspected he’d find his way through. Sure enough, he stuck the car back in the garage for another day, then came back after thinking it through to make some changes with an eye focused squarely on the desired outcome, eschewing some of the racetrack-oriented bits for a touch more road compliance. He also invested in a chassis dyno session to tune the now supercharged engine for more than just wide-open operation.
The next phone call had a distinctly different tone. “Dude, I’m in love again – this thing is awesome!” He’d found the magic – sometimes it just takes a little longer to get there. I’m going to try to remember that conversation the next time I’m ready to find the nearest cliff or classified ad.
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