The REAL Cost of Car Restoration | Extra Good

hi welcome to extra good this week is a little bit different because it's been so hot that we've decided that we don't want to work on the truck so what we are going to talk about is uh the cost of a restoration and with one of our finished cars that we have we can actually talk about that seeing as i'm just about done spending money on it i can tell you how much we've spent the truck is a never-ending project so we'll have that tally when it's finished what do you think about that yeah let's do it let's do it [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] over the years i found a lot of people underestimate the cost of restoring the classic car so we wanted to share with you what we've spent start to finish on bringing ethan's 57 ford back to life and by back to life i mean truly from the dead it was it needed everything it just needed everything and i needed it to work because i had to go to the lone star roundup i couldn't just go as a spectator i had to drive my car and that's really what got us into this mess in the first place yeah so start to finish we uh spent a year maybe 15 months on getting this active so i'm going to pull out my phone and give you guys a cost tabulation of exactly what we spent where it went and why we decided to use the parts we use sometimes so first thing breaks in wheels this seems like it's pretty straightforward well you know we had to go through and change everything about the brakes so it was originally all drums now it's all-wheel disk it was originally a single master cylinder we went to a dual power boosted master cylinder so now it's got modern brakes full power brakes all-wheel disc you know so that was to me brakes are the most important thing on a car because if it doesn't stop it's a death trap as we found out in the last episode yeah we've had this discussion haven't we so in total we spent 2 900 on brakes and wheels uh the spindles at 600 rear brakes at five that was a full uh disc brake conversion kit yeah so it was five for the back uh the fronts we actually went with the fat man fab lowering spindles and then that allowed us to do the disc brakes and the calipers so if you you mentioned lowering spindles we used on this and obviously that encompasses stance this is where you have to think about the stance of the car and there's going to be a difference in price between a stock stance and a modified stance what are we doing here uh this one's very very much modified um you know i didn't have to change the spindles but i wanted to because i wanted to really get the front of this car as low as i can get it while being comfortable to ride in if i were to just do a spring drop by cutting coils or lowering springs um it would have gotten the car very low but it also would have been the suspension travel wouldn't have been adequate and it'd be hitting its bump stops all the time really compromises ride quality so the lowering spindles what that does for me is it actually moves the wheel higher up into the car but it's not going to change any of the geometry of the control arm so i get that lowered stance but i still maintain full travel of the suspension so that was my real big motivation for doing that and then i even cut a coil off the springs on top too so it's low it's low [Music] the next thing is suspension and steering uh on that we spent seven hundred and forty dollars uh shocks springs bushings sway bars steering wheel steering column and steering box steering box vapes six hundred dollars it's the biggest item on the suspension and steering why did we need a new one uh the car was originally manual steering um which is going to be very difficult to steer at low speeds and then in parking lots it's really hard to turn the steering wheel i know studebaker has manual still and i'm all about comfort and drivability so you know i've got the power brakes now i've got power steering so this car has actually got a lot of modern options in it even though it's you know 60 years old almost so your goal on this car was really to have a nice driving very dependable car it's not crazy wazoo performance it's not obviously stock yeah reliability and drivability were my two priorities uh horsepower and doing smoky burnouts is not what i'm about though it is fun um i wanted something that i can reliably drive 3 500 miles in a single sitting and that's what i built this car does not have a lot of horsepower it's a stock motor it's a stock 5.0 roller cam board small block but since it is stock it drives like a stock lincoln i mean it just drives real smooth and it's reliable and gets good gas mileage and it lets me enjoy it by driving it not just staring at it and working on it so back one more thing on the suspension and steering is front and rear sway bars we spent 300 on those uh this car doesn't originally have sway bars i don't believe it had a front sway bar which was very very small very inadequate and no rear sway bar whatsoever so we've actually upgraded almost doubled the size of the front sway bar so it's a much stiffer front suspension and then added a rear sway bar to the back and like we talked about in the last episode of the benefit of a sway bar it keeps the car more level when you're going around turns less body roll and that means more control and more [Music] safety so moving on to the engine and exhaust our total for this area was 2 355 uh starting with a big fat zero for the engine where do we get that from babe my neighbor craig a like-minded car enthusiast with way too many parts and projects in his head so he had a bunch of spare stuff that he was able to give us and i pretty much just cracked the motor open took a look at it replaced gaskets and put it into the car and it's been running ever since it works great you just had to replace gaskets and stuff so why did we spend 2 300 on the engine and exhaust well again the engine itself was free but all the crap that you bolt onto the engine still costs money so we had to get power steering accessories also 450 for those brackets for brackets to mount the accessories 200 on the scoop on the scoop valve cover oil pan you know the gasket kit itself was about 80 bucks so you know we still spent 2 300 on a free engine so if you don't have a free engine you're gonna add a couple more thousand dollars to that thousand couple thousand we already spent um so going down our list we've got plumbing and stainless brake lines 350 dollars a lot of people might not really consider plumbing but you love your car plumbing and like to use the wazoo parts i went a little overboard when it came to the brake lines they are fighter jet quality so you know if it's what the military uses to build their weapons it's gonna work great for me it's extra good it's extra good it's all stainless no rust uh motor mounts 30 trans linkage radiator and overflow 300 battery 125 shifter 220 mufflers and exhaust yeah uh we did the uh hooker header mufflers the aerochamber mufflers um i was never seen or heard them i tried them on the car i really liked them and they're actually the same mufflers that we're using on the truck as well so they're a really neat sound i like them [Music] drivetrain uh so the the rest of the drivetrain sixteen hundred and fifty dollars this includes the highest item of everything out of our list and that's the differential rebuild for thirteen hundred dollars why is that part so expensive two wheel burnouts i completely rebuilt the differential the only thing that's still original from 1957 in that axle are the actual axle shafts the housing and the carrier all the guts all the internals the seals the bearings everything uh ring and pinion gears have been replaced um we went i think it was a 320 gear set we went to a 370 gear set with a um auburn limited slip as well so i really really beefed up the the axle really because i wanted to do two-wheel burnouts i just i wanted that's just not the same if you've only got one wheel yeah um so if somebody isn't doing you know a lot of engine modification do they need to rebuild a diff if they're restoring a car no no you don't if you just want to drive and cruise around you don't need to spend 1300 bucks so if you've got your 1964 ford falcon with a straight six uh make sure it's not leaking back there but you don't need to spend thirteen hundred dollars i would though address the wear items like the wheel bearings and any seals and stuff that's that's important but bearings is one of those items that goes out on a lot of people when they take their first road trip yeah gotta grease them yep cool uh drivetrain also we spent 350 on a custom new drive shaft and that has to be done when generally when you change the engine because the links or the transmission the links of the drive shaft change um anything else on that yeah well what happened is i was originally going to have the original drive shaft just modified have it shortened which is an option that's out there you can just have it cut by a shop they'll rebalance it and you can put it back in but when i went to the rebuilder they made note that it was a very thin you know a small diameter drive shaft and the money to have a brand new one made was slightly more than having my existing one modified so i actually went with a fully new drive shaft a three-inch diameter tube all new u-joints new slip yoke everything's new so from harmonic balancer to differential and everything in between it's all new stuff [Music] i did a lot of work on the interior uh 730 dollars was spent on that and most of that was for the seven hundred dollar stereo yeah so we've got thirty dollars in actual interior and seven hundred dollars in entertainment um look you're about to drive a car across country you best have a radio that's that was my thinking i actually made sure the radio was working before i even put sway bars on the thing like that was my priority was at least if i'm broken down on the side of the road at least i have some tunes now if you're on a budget you don't have to spend that 700 and even though that seems like a pretty hefty price that actually like the stereo box was built the front speaker enclosures we built so there was even some diy on the stereo but those components are going to cost you money however you slice it studebaker on the other hand i have zero radio i like to listen to her engine sometimes i try to use a little wi-fi bluetooth speaker on the bench which doesn't really work that well because she's so noisy but you've got options in that department uh the interior again so many options we spend thirty dollars on materials i have a lot of sewing background but i think that people even without sewing background i didn't use a lot of sewing on his 57 it was really just the hog ring pliers and a staple gun we did the door panels we did the back package tray we covered the stereo box components up in the foot front foot wheel wells and then we did a a classy mexican blanket on the benches but even with that we kind of what does the chef say bonjour that's right we put an egg on it yeah we put an egg on the upholstery mexican blanket upholstery uh because rather than just like tucking the mexican blanket in i actually used hog ring pliers it's like a 15 tool and we were able to really fit the mexican blanket to that bottom seat so it's not sliding all around and it just gives it a much more finished look even though it's temporary for now the exterior also abysmally small amount spent here 200 that consists of really uh from the firewall forward i had all the sheet metal taken off had it sandblasted and then just covered in a coat of paint it's not even the finished paint job it's just something to seal the metal and keep it from deteriorating so everything you see on the car from the windshield forward is really kind of out of state where it's ready for bodywork but i mean it's just my cruiser car i don't want to do 30 grand on paint and have someone scratch it in a parking lot so i'd rather just have it look all beat and run really good and look really good and not run at all yeah so obviously there are tons of options here if you have a stock car and you can give it a good wax and buff it can do a lot you want to of course get a project car that has good quality metal so it's safe and sound that can be one of the most expensive parts of a project if it isn't poor quality um but your 57 is not so back off you had that 500 paint job when you first got it in 2004. yeah i got a 500 compton paint job when i first got the car and it lasted about six months and now it's it's looked like this for the last decade plus um but i like i said i don't don't really care about the the aesthetics of the car it's not a show car yeah the color or the paint or scratches or dents have no effect on how the car functions you know it's just purely for visual pleasure so i don't care about the paint one day maybe when i'm retired but for right now i'm just gonna drive the piss out of it all right and then our last uh item here before we get to the total for our diy car restoration that was what we term expendables uh 550 for that that includes uh cleaning stuff sanding stuff wire wheels nuts and bolts liquids yeah all of that it seems like more than you might think you would spend on it if you've never done this before but it adds up very very quickly yes it does so all in drum roll please well before before we see the reason we're even talking about this is kristin in passing simply asked me hey how much do you think we spent on the 57 and off the top of my head i said 10 grand and she didn't believe me in my head i had maybe five grand so that prompted us to make the list that we just went over that's where that list came from is from her asking me how much i thought it cost and like i said i just guessed i was just going off of an estimate we added up that list and it came out to 10 125 so i was within a like a percent which just blows me away like if you asked me to ballpark something that i did five years ago i would be i i don't remember this kind of stuff but this guy's fine mr klein's brain is amazing i'm a smart guy smrt smart what's up so that's what we spent on our classic car hopefully it helps you a little bit ballpark the figures for your own build now that we've got the basic cost of car restoration broken down for you i want to just go over a few of the final things that we were doing to [Music] where i think we're calling this phase three of the 57 build uh so we need to do a few things we haven't been using the car much and i would really love to drive it since we've spent so much money on it yeah i uh i will continue to spend money on this car i mean i guess we've talked about the cost but really the answer is you're always going to be spending money just constantly you know we spent a fair amount of money to actually build the car but now i'm into the fun part of spending more money to maintain the car and people say a project car is never done and they're right because the work you did 10 years ago is now starting to go bad so you have to redo stuff you've already done but really with the maintenance for this car all we had was a thermostat leak so i had to replace the gasket and while i was there i went ahead and did the thermostat as well and then a uh really a drivability kind of working the gremlins out of the car was putting a fuel pressure regulator in i had a stock fuel pump i went to an upgraded fuel pump and when i did that i started seeing like 15 to 20 psi at the fuel rail that's no good for carburetors so i put in a pressure regulator now we've got that down to about six and a half on the rail uh there's no fuel leaks there's no coolant leaks which is important if you're driving a car with no hood because if there's a leak you're gonna know about it um but yeah there's just some basic maintenance stuff that we did this weekend and you know we spent about 150 bucks and four hours in the shop and i got to do an oil change she did the oil change we got new coolant in the car so you know just doing some maintenance is still going to be like a couple hundred bucks but what i'm really excited about now is it's been mostly sitting and now i really want to get it on the road on a regular basis so we don't have to do a whole wash and tune every time we want to take it out yeah that that fuel pressure regulator is really the clutch piece um you know i just didn't want to drive the car with 20 psi at a carburetor that's how you flood it and start fires and i don't want to have to rebuild a burned down car um so i'm happy with it i'm glad we got some work done it was nice to have a win in the shop the truck is such a long project that you just don't ever see the light at the end of the tunnel and it was really nice to actually get in the garage with the misses and finish something start to finish yeah i've really realized that in this whole truck rebuild i've been used to just doing bits and bobs on my studebaker versus whole car build start to finish frame off and so this was a nice change of pace for us but then we got to go out and have some fun and that's really at the end of the day what owning a classic car is all about yeah i got to take my baby and got a steak it was fun we interrupt this message to tell you about something that fine mr klein has been up to that's true i am fine and i am mr klein uh and we went out and we saw some drag racing got to watch some guys go down the strip uh racing against each other for a prize and as well as egos so it was a lot of fun can't wait to share it we're gonna link the video somewhere on this screen and down in the description so look for drag battles go watch it we had a good time yeah every now and then found find yourself at a track and that's exactly where we found ourselves today we're at texas motoplex finally got to figure out who gets to wear overalls to settle this once and for all i'm still going to wear overalls even if i lose it's okay i'm going to win today we've got ethan's daily driver 2015 ecoboost ford mustang i like this because it's not going to be a matter of whose car is faster it's not my my ford versus your studebaker what it is it's one car but two drivers so i'm gonna go i'm gonna lay down the fastest time and then we're gonna let her go you know for pity and then we're gonna see how she runs this is gonna settle at once and for all uh who wears the pants i'm not gonna talk too much crap before this race because this is his daily driver and it's manual i don't see myself winning honestly though i do want to point out before we go all this does down i hold the fastest time on the bonneville salt flats [Music] mr klein's going down i didn't drink so hot that was my first ever drag race [Music] well thanks for hanging out with us while we talked about our 57 ford uh hopefully the temperatures will be dropping and we'll be able to get back to work on that pickup truck which i'm real excited about because what's coming up on that truck we're dropping the engine in dropping the engine in yeah so join us you guys be sure you subscribe to drivingline's channel ring the bell so you're notified when the next episode of extra good drops on you and thanks for joining us today have a good time in your garage [Music] uh you

Channel: Driving Line

Views: 280,338

Keywords: Extra good, car restoration, classic car restoration, restomod, cost of car restoration, budget car restoration, low budget car restoration, diy classic car restoration, diy classic car door panels, 1957 ford build, 1957 ford restoration, budget classic car build, cheap classic car build, how much does it cost to restore a car, diy classic car build, Driving Line, 1957 ford 2 door hardtop, car couple, car restoration shows

Id: -J-ro3_1drs

Length: 23min 40sec (1420 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 24 2020