Here we go again….recovering from a long period of project dormancy.
You might notice that Porsti is proudly perched on top of a fully restored lift, in a nice new shop. The shop while not finished inside, is completely functional. I still need to put up more lights, more outlets, run the compressed air system and insulate and cover the walls/ceiling. That can wait…it is time to get the Porsti running.
But first I must digress…
While building the garage I also found myself working on the ’70 C10 that we purchased so that we could haul lumber. Even in the middle of building an extensive shop and adding several new rooms to the house, which was essentially a second 50hour/week job, I was able make time to install power brakes, power steering, and a few other updates to a crappy old truck and have a great time doing it.
What does this have to do with anything?
The Porsti project has been stalled for quite some time, even before construction started on the new shop. Sure there were other priorities and distractions along the way but why could I enjoy making mundane upgrades to a $2000 truck during a huge construction project while the Porsti, with almost 10x the money and 100’s of hours of effort already invested, sat ignored so close to completion?
The remaining work in the Porsti project is adapting the complete wiring harness from the Subaru to the 914. This includes not only getting the Suby engine running (which I did Aug. ’09 with the entire wiring harness in the trunk) but also get the lights (including popup functionality), instrument cluster, windshield wipers (intermittent with the Subaru motor on the 914 linkage), radiator fans, new fuel level sender, new vehicle speed sender ….etc, etc, etc all complete and installed to my somewhat neurotic level of refinement. The approach I was taking was that the wiring was a single task like building the exhaust or cooling system or installing power steering on the C10. The goal for the wiring is that once complete, a turn of the key would result in a running engine with no faults and all other systems working and installed to a near OEM level. I spent hours, day after day, working on the wiring and at the end of each day all I had a mess of slightly less jumbled wires with no way to experience the satisfaction of completion. The task of installing the wiring is simply too large to be viewed as a single goal. The reward of completion was gone and with it the incentive to dedicate precious spare hours to the project. What is needed is a change of mindset.
Even though the car is a mess of jumbled wires, I am going to get it running. There are a few connections that that I need to make in order to achieve this and if I have to splice in a random colored wire because I don’t have the correct pins or colored wire, so be it. Just make a note of what needs to be cleaned up in the future and move on. Once it is running I should be able to drive it out of the garage and smoke the rear tires off of the rims. Then I can pull it back into the garage with a smile on my face get back to the task of getting all of the other systems working, one by one with a feeling of achievement at the end of each project. Once everything is working and the car is fully functional I can worry about cleaning up any esthetic compromises that I made getting it running.
Time to make some progress...incrementally!
Sorry for the non technical, somewhat philosophical and rambling post but I thought that it could help others with stalled projects figure out how break through the progress block.
It also helped me organize my thoughts and clarify my way forward.
Cheers,
Scott