I built (assembled?) my Spec RX7 in a driveway way back when. I would drive it 250 miles to Summit Point, WV from central NJ all packed with tires and gear, race the weekend, and drive it home. Shortly after we bought our home, I bought a cheap 3/4 ton pickup and a decent trailer. As Keith pointed out, a trailer adds a LOT of overhead. I kept it at a local marina to make it extra annoying.
I've done the dirt, gravel, carport, garage thing. About 6 years ago we built a real shop, before we even started the cabin. In the summer I turn on the A/C and in the winter I fire up the wood stove. I'm lucky and appreciative of it. My current 1st world problem is having three cars that need to be inside. I need to get that down to two.
My garage is pretty limited, but having one is much better than not having one, based on my friends who are in apartments.
mfennell said:As Keith pointed out, a trailer adds a LOT of overhead. I kept it at a local marina to make it extra annoying.
Now that I have an enclosed trailer life is so much easier:
Everything but the Datsun is in it. I spent a full weekend arranging the trailer when I first got it and another one bolting everything in it.
I suck at backing up so that it takes me about 30 minutes to pull the trailer out and load the car. I have done it in as little as 15 minutes.
By contrast my open trailer out of town load up was a 90-120 minutes. Loading the Formula 500 for autocross was about the same.
With all that said taking the Mustang to autocross is about a 15 minute job to load up the car, move my wife's car and pull the Mustang out of the garage. So yeah the trailer is adding about 15 minutes and plus the at least anohter 15 minutes to unload it and put everything back.
When I lived with my parents, I was able to use the garage/driveway. I never did anything crazy but I did have a pair of quickjacks bought with my stimulus check that I used for track prep.
I wasn't doing track days just yet so I would swap in my performance tires at home and drive to and from the event on the performance tires.
When I moved out of state, my apartment came with two parking spots so I did minor work in the parking spot (installed my diffuser, for instance). I started doing track days so I would load the car up with the performance tires and had a nice compact support toolbox (jack, one jack stand, impact wrench, flare wrenches, track pads, etc) and I would arrive to the track early (it was only an hour away) and swap pads and tires. Most maintenance was done at a rent-a-garage. I installed my rear sway bar and brake ducts here. This would've been too much work to do in the parking spot.
When I moved again, we moved into the city and only got one parking spot. Coincidentally I stopped doing track days because I cooked my track tires and didn't have the capital to buy new tires. I also looked at how much money I was spending on track days and it was just insanely expensive (~$200 for the day/$200 for track insurance/$100 in gas), so I made the adult decision to stop doing them. The rent-a-garage also closed up shop (not really, they got bought out by Rivian IIRC so they just closed to the public), and at the time there were no other rent-a-garages available.
Then I moved again, to a new city, and I'm in the same parking situation. There are no affordable rent-a-garages here so I haven't been doing anything related to cars. I'm primarily focusing on purchasing a house with a garage so I can start up again.
tl;dr it is unsustainable for me to continue the hobby without somewhere for my car to be, I tried it and it was just too much work and was way too expensive.
I don't think I'll ever own a trailer - that just is too much work and requires a horse for the course. My goal is to have a street legal track car that fits tires, or can haul a little tire trailer, and take it to and from track days/autocross. But I need to get a place first.
In reply to hunter47 :
The Joy of the current Time Trials rules is they are aimed at street driven cars so on the rare occasion you might need a trailer you could always get a truck and trailer from U-Haul.
I have a garage, but it's a very small one car garage that's currently full of crap and doesn't have a car in it (that's a work in progress and will be rectified soon). I do not have a trailer, but know people who do. I also know someone with a lift, and if it's available, I can toss a vehicle on there for a big job if needed.
The thing is, just being able to work on pavement is fine with me. I grew up doing all my wrenching on dirt and gravel. That was not fun. Pavement is a big upgrade! The garage, once set up properly, is more or less to park something out of the weather. If I'm working on it, I'm rolling it into the driveway anyway.
I have a trailer and a 2-1/2 car garage. Both are full, so I still work on gravel.
Adding further to the discussion:
We have a three car garage and a RV slab on the side of the house.
The enclosed trailer goes on the RV slab, the Campervan gets parked next to the car in front of the single car bay, the Datsun is in the single bay. The Datsun is only 12.6 feet long so the motorcycles go behind it.
The Mustang is in the double car bay (off to the side) so if I want to work on one of the other cars in the garage I have to pull the Mustang out of the garage (The two car bay is my shop space).
My neighborhood doesn't have an HOA so we tend to work in the driveway.
Jerry said:When I went looking for a house in 2011 to get out of NKY & into Dayton, with my ex-GF, my only requirement was a garage. Hers was a decent backyard for dogs and a garden.
The only thing that will get me to move, short of fire/tornado/etc, is a much larger garage for reasonable price. And that's not happening anytime soon.
No trailer.
Our current house is 3/2/2, meaning 3 bed 2 full baths and a 2 car garage.
We wanted to get a 4/3/3 a few years ago since we both work from home. But just as we wanted to do something prices, even here in Oklahoma, went through the roof. So I refinanced our current place, so giving up a house we really like with a sub 3% mortgage means we will be here longer than we originally planned.
There are a lot of people moving to OKC for the COL and even though I get down on it sometimes, there are a lot of good things here.
I started out working in my parents' driveway, or occasionally getting to use the garage if there was an open bay.
In college I had covered parking at the apartment but lived on the third floor so had to carry tools down and all the way around the building, then back again. That helps me appreciate a garage!
I built the first race car in a one-stall garage at my (different) apartment. The garage was so full of stuff I could get a jack under the car only by running the jack longitudinally with the car, which is none too safe. One light socket and one plug, but I was delighted to have light and electricity, and to be able to close the garage door without putting things away or hauling stuff to the apartment.
Then I bought a house with a 2.5 stall garage and a gas furnace! That was heaven! I could fit either the Suburban or the tandem-axle trailer in there, along with the race car.
Then rented a house with a single garage. I appreciated that it was attached.
Then I moved to Phoenix, rented an apartment chosen only because, in addition to one covered space, I could rent two adjacent garages, one for the race car and one for a "shop" and also park my trailer in the far corner of the parking lot. Then the trailer got stolen. And its' replacement got stolen. But I got a lot of work done in those two rented garages. I only paid $50 a month for each garage. I never let management know how awesome that was.
Then a house with 3-stall attached garage. Race car was gone by that point but the third stall was perfect for the shifter kart and a little shop.
Then a rental house with no garage, and parking about 40' from the house. So I was back to schlepping tools back and forth. That was only for a year and I didn't have to do much more than change oil in two cars so it wasn't too bad.
No I have a wonderful two-stall attached. White-painted walls, high ceiling, it's sweet but only has two duplex outlets. What were they thinking when they built it?!?! But I love it anyway.
Going without really helps one appreciate it when one has it.
My dad and uncle liked to build garages, so our first one went up when I was 8 or so. 24 x 36 built like a bunker, this is where I spent my time learning. We moved when I was about 12, due to my love of wrenching on anything with a motor, dad built another garage 30x40 this time with provisions for a lift. I dug a hole and we put in a reconditioned single pole air over oil lift. This was my home from 13 to 19.
My first house had an old 16 x 20 strange thick cement building from the early 1900's, it housed my dirtbike and E30m3 or 89 4Runner but I had to remove the hitch to close the door. Still wrenched at dads at this point. Moving on at about 29 years old bought my current house with it's standard attached two stall garage. Shortly after that my grandfather passed away and I received just enough $ to start on my own shop. Shortly after that my father passed away, now I have too many tools and no one to work with. 20+ years later it is still not done but functional, 24 x 34, along the way it got a lift, welder and a racecar to store.
Car trailers are dangerous and I will never own one. They are not good for my addiction to old broken cars.
Anyone on here know or remember Ted Lathrop originator of Fastcars.net Ted Ed and Kelvin, my dad were the crew I hung out with. Ted introduced me to GRM back in 1994.
TLDR, mostly never with out a garage or two.
Neither. I've never had a garage to work in but working on cars at friends' makes me supremely jealous. It's the little things, like hauling five loads of tools and equipment up from the basement, or needing to somewhat button things up before a rainstorm that makes it so hard to even want to start a relatively minor project [now that I'm middle aged].
Sadly, we implicitly built our budget around me working on our own cars, but we didn't correspondingly prioritize getting a house with a garage when we moved to Michigan. The weather here makes that miserable or impossible for months out of the year. Oops
Started doing basic oil changes etc in my parents gravel driveway when I was around 12. Didn't get my current house with a 2 car attached 20x20 garage until 26. Bought a tow dolly at 27. Number of vehicles increased significantly afterwards. I've sold 5 cars in the past 6 months and bought 1. Need to sell off like a dozen more at least. Currently 2 non-running cars in my garage, so I'm forced to do car maintenance and repairs in my blacktop driveway.
A before garage story: I bought a not running '67 beetle from one of my friend's dad for $80.00. It turned out that the rockers on one bank had come loose. Drove it around but it was just a rusty heap so my buds and I (we were about 17) decided to pull the body in my parents drive way so we could drive the pan around. We got everything loose and the plan was to just roll the body over and off. We didn't think very far ahead and the SOB took an extra roll and went off the drive way, down the slope on the side, before stopping against a tree. My friends pretty much vanished at that point. Dad was not happy when he got home. It took a wrecker to get it out. We drove the hell out of that pan, though. I still can't believe we lived through that one.
It's easier to change a Spitfire clutch on the ground by just pulling the engine. Two 18 year olds a chain and steel pipe. I was the one who had to walk my end of the pipe and engine through the chassis and duck under the bonnet.
akylekoz said:Car trailers are dangerous and I will never own one. They are not good for my addiction to old broken cars.
A lot of folks here struggle with that.
My trailers have always been to small for most cars...........thankfully I didn't get the enclosed trailer till last year. I now longer want projects. I am content doing minor/moderate upgrades to the cars I have.
In reply to Tom1200 :
I only have one open spot in my garage if I stack em right, this keeps me at one project at a time.
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