What Was The First Car You Built With Your Own Two Hands

[Jersey Joe]

With all the threads about movie and dream cars I was curious, what was the first car you poured you heart, blood and guts into....not to mention all your money. This was mine, I bought it for 1,500 bucks in 1986, a 1981 Z28 camaro ,it was faded silver and had a blown transmission and my buddy had run thru a highway sign and bounced off a telephone pole drunk. He convinced me to take it off his hands. This is actually the car I had when we purchased the fox I have now for my wife. I sold it to purchase the house i still live in today, miss it very much.

 

[Mstng93SSP]

I don't have a picture, but it was a '57 Chevy sedan. What a rusted out piece of junk it was, but it was fun. Had a straight 6 and a 3 on the tree.

 

[89oem]

I don't have a picture, but it was a '57 Chevy sedan. What a rusted out piece of junk it was, but it was fun. Had a straight 6 and a 3 on the tree.

My 70 Maverick had a straight 6 and 3 on the tree - it was my high school car, damn I loved that car...

 

[mikestang63]

67 mustang fastback with a 289, 4 spd. Bought it when I was 15 for $2300. At 17 I blew up the 289 at E town missing a shift and swapped in a jy 428, C6 and a 9 inch with 4.11's from a Lincoln. Needed a BFH to massage the shock towers and trans tunnel to make it fit It has manual steering, manual 4 wheel drum brakes,painted it in the garage with the old single stage enamel. Black on black with no A/C or P/S. Had Keystone Klassic rims and hooker sidepipes. lol That was all the rage back then.When you are 18 all you care about is going fast. With slicks I was in the 12's which was damn fast back in the day. It was my DD for 3 years

 

[Boosted92LX]

Sadly, I don't have any photos of mine. I never went thru the whole car, but blew the engine to bits and put it back together at least five times.

It looked like this one except for the wheels.

 

[Chuckman]

First vehicle I ever wrenched on was my dad's 90 F-150, same one in my sig. He passed when I was 15, so my mom let me have it when I got my license since she hated driving it.

First one I bought with every intention to build up, but never even really got started because I totaled it 6 months after I bought it, was an '89 LX sport, total rustbucket pos that I should never have bought.

Now the first one I've actually every BUILT, is, well, still being built. It's been upgraded and fixed and yadda yadda, but this go around will be, by far, the biggest project I've done yet.

 

[RaggedGT]

My first build(s) where actually my first two vehicles lol

I bought an 83 Ranger 2.0 5-speed that smoked like a freight train

Then I bought an 80 Mercury Capri with a 2.3 and a 4 speed. I swapped the 2.3 into the Ranger. And a junkyard f150 302 into the Capri and cobbled together a bunch of swap meet and junkyard parts into the Capri lol
I wish I had the actual pics of said cars, I may find them one day lol

 

[old_blue]

1965 Ford ranchero with a 289 v8 and a t10 trans. Thing weighed nothing and ran awesome.

 

[Mustang5L5]

My mustang is my first car I've ever owned, and the first car I ever built

Sent from my big ass iPhone 6 using Tapatalk

 

[CarMichael Angelo]

My first actual car that I cut my teeth on was the 69 mach 1 that I ended up being the 2nd, 4th, and 6th owner of consecutively.
( That's how bad I wanted that car in my life)

I cant say that I learned alot with that car,...Even though I rebuilt the 351 engine (3 times) Had three sets of 9" gears installed,...Too stupid to get rid of the FMX,.....2 custom paint jobs,..my first full set of Centerline Auto-Drags (when they were Uber cool), and my first time spent at the drag strip (where I learned to hate bracket racing)

Et's 16.50
14.70
13.29.

It was a slow. Meadowlark yellow 351W Mach 1 bought for $1750.00 in 1975.

 

[Jersey Joe]

69 mach 1 is pretty sweet, what happened to it ?

 

[Boosted92LX]

My first actual car that I cut my teeth on was the 69 mach 1 that I ended up being the 2nd, 4th, and 6th owner of consecutively.
( That's how bad I wanted that car in my life)

I cant say that I learned alot with that car,...Even though I rebuilt the 351 engine (3 times) Had three sets of 9" gears installed,...Too stupid to get rid of the FMX,.....2 custom paint jobs,..my first full set of Centerline Auto-Drags (when they were Uber cool), and my first time spent at the drag strip (where I learned to hate bracket racing)

Et's 16.50
14.70
13.29.

It was a slow. Meadowlark yellow 351W Mach 1 bought for $1750.00 in 1975.

....you sure that's a 69?

 

[CarMichael Angelo]

69 mach 1 is pretty sweet, what happened to it ?

That car became the Thundercolt. The Thundercolt got traded in on a 1978 Trans AM. I retraded the T/A back to the dealer a month later to get the Mach 1 back, and I sold it to a dumb kid 8 months later. Two years later I bought the car back, and rebuilt it again after he trashed it. I finally sold it to a guy in KC in 1981 and I lost track of it.

 

[CarMichael Angelo]

....you sure that's a 69?

Why of course it's a 69,...It's my all time favorite car......It Has to be a 69........right?

 

[CarMichael Angelo]

My mustang is my first car I've ever owned, and the first car I ever built

Sent from my big ass iPhone 6 using Tapatalk

Why does this^

remind me of this:

 

[Bullitt347]

1967 notch back Mustang. 289 2bbl, c-4 auto 8" rear with2.83 gears....what a hotrod...lol

 

[stpete]

I've always worked on my own cars/bikes. Had a '67VW and '77 F150 that needed a lot to keep on the road. My '86 GT was my nice fair weather driver at the time.

But, the first car I really tore apart and modified is my '90 Miata.

I bought it mostly stock and turned it into a track toy

[/IMG][/URL]

I put no fewer than 5 different suspensions in it over the course of 10 years:

Finally welded a cage in:

Turned it into a SCCA road race car:

Looks a little worse for wear these days

 

[Boosted92LX]

I've always worked on my own cars/bikes. Had a '67VW and '77 F150 that needed a lot to keep on the road.

But, the first car I really tore apart and modified is my '90 Miata.

I bought it mostly stock and turned it into a track toy

[/IMG][/URL]

I put no fewer than 5 different suspensions in it over the course of 10 years:

Finally welded a cage in:

Turned it into a SCCA road race car:

^^ that's cool. I want to get into scca in a bad way, but it seems I have too many irons in the fire currently.. An old friend of mine does that with a foxbody, very competitively. Says there are a lot of miatas tearing it up out there.

 

[Jersey Joe]

First vehicle I ever wrenched on was my dad's 90 F-150, same one in my sig. He passed when I was 15, so my mom let me have it when I got my license since she hated driving it.

First one I bought with every intention to build up, but never even really got started because I totaled it 6 months after I bought it, was an '89 LX sport, total rustbucket pos that I should never have bought.

Now the first one I've actually every BUILT, is, well, still being built. It's been upgraded and fixed and yadda yadda, but this go around will be, by far, the biggest project I've done yet.

I had a 1988 f250 in the early 90's, great truck, if you look close the fox is in the garage. Haha

 

[MustangIIMatt]

1975 Chevrolet Scottsdale 10 longbed.

It was in the family from around 1985 until 2011.
I re-painted it from the factory Willoway Green to Medium Bahama Blue Metallic in 2000. Replaced the tired 350 with a cracked block and hundreds of thousands of miles in 2003 with a 400 with a mild cam, Edelbrock intake, 750cfm Holley, HEI distributor, and Flowtech headers. Replaced the blown TH350 with a freshly-built one from Mace-O-Matic Transmissions in 2005, and replaced the busted original 12-bolt with one I rebuilt out of the junkyard in 2009. I wrecked it bad enough that I should've totalled it twice, replaced the bed on it after the second one. In the end it was so rusted out, so beat up, and so worn-out that I parted it out. It had been my grandfather's truck from the 80s until 2000, when it became mine, and I always wanted to fully restore it, but I came to the sad realization on the day that one of the leaf springs broke that when I was done restoring it, pretty much the only thing that would be left that had been my grandfather's would be the frame rails, so I parted it out. There's the last picture I took of it after unloading it at the junkyard (also the only pic of it I could find).

I had a LOT of good memories in that truck. It hauled, hauled ass, and only once ended up on the back of a tow truck to get me home, no matter what broke, we always made it (even drove it 30 miles home in 1st gear at 20mph when I blew the transmission). But it was also a miserable-driving old heap with no heat, no A/C, craptacular brakes (even with all new parts, they just weren't big enough, but that's what you had from the factory on those trucks), and a rough ride. I learned how to turn wrenches, how to hot-rod, and how to fabricate on that old hauler, and I kept a couple of things from it when I parted it out.