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May I first shortly introduce myself - My name is Richard, and I am living in Vienna, Austria (Europe). For the past two years I have been spending most of my spare time in a small garage, which is already nearly filled by the dust-covered carcass of an old car, that does not seem to change over months.
First question one has to face if involving in such a project is usually “why the hell did you engage in something like that?”
The answer is not so easy.
In any case it has nothing to do with economics - I did not assume that all the effort and cost will pay at any time. Now (at the time of writing I am nearly finished with the conversion), I even know that the efforts are much higher than I had imagined before.
“Because it's there” has some justification - the car, in pretty good condition, was standing around since my sister had sent it into retirement some years ago. I had been considering using a second car in addition to my old van, but this one would then have to be “greener”, with less fuel consumption.
And finally and for sure the main reason - I like doing “bricolage” and wanted to once have a project where something useful comes out (see e.g. |Richard restores a vintage radio (German text) or Richard restores another vintage radio (German text) - extra tedious! as an illustration of how you can spend 100+ hours on something that is finally only collecting dust on your shelf).
I have started the conversion in Autumn 2011, and am looking forward to snapping in the license plates in Autumn 2013.
Let me please provide a little teaser: the first meters - Markus drives the Astra up the trailer (right-click and save the file, if your browser refuses to play it). The short video clip shows the car in a still quite unfinished state and still with provisional lead-acid traction battery, returning from obtaining the axle weights on a scale.