Two years ago I moved from Detroit to Los Angeles, and along for the ride were four cars — two driven the 2,300 miles, the other two towed. The truth was, all four were projects in need of significant work, and I was excited to wrench on them somewhere warm, finally. Los Angeles, I figured, would be where I’d get all my projects done quickly and efficiently. But oh boy was I wrong.
On the face of it, Los Angeles seems like an amazing place to wrench on cars, and in some ways, it has been. I can wrench pretty much 24/7 thanks to excellent weather, and the junkyards are full of rust-free gold that I can dismantle in no-time. Do you know how many Michigan-junkyard Jeep Cherokees I had to crawl under to find a decent neutral safety switch that would come off without breaking due to rust? Trick question: After about 20, I gave up.
Seriously, look at how miserable the conditions were when I removed this rear axle off a Jeep Grand Cherokee ZJ 5.9:
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And after yanking that horribly rusty axle, I had to use electrolysis to get all the crust off:
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Now look at what junkyard life is like in California:
Beyond the junkyards being filled with rust-free gold, a number of parts companies are based out of California; sometimes I can actually just drive to them. When I fix my brother’s 1966 Mustang’s suspension, my plan is to just head up the street to Mustangs, etc., literally four miles from my workplace in Van Nuys. When I finally get to fixing my Nash Metropolitan, I just have to drive 12 miles and I’m at the Metropolitan Pit Stop.
So the weather is amazing and the parts availability is out of this world. That’s all you need, right? You need to have decent weather in which to fix your stuff, and you need parts. Sounds perfect.
Not really.
No, what I have learned is that the single biggest factor in determining how much time one can devote to a car project is proximity to that car.
Obviously, I don’t really have an apples-to-apples comparison since I was a writer in Michigan and I’m an EIC (technically a COO) in LA, so in theory I have less time on my hands. But it’s not like I was half-assing my job in Michigan — I was writing a ton. And yet, I still got my projects done.
The reason isn’t solely that I had a less demanding job, it’s that my cars were close by. This allowed me to use even small amounts of downtime to fix things. If I was waiting for a video to upload, I could run outside and pop off a carburetor. If I wanted to take a little lunch break, I’d just run outside and weld a piece of 1/8″ steel plate to fill the hole in my Jeep XJ unibody rail.
Look at all this wrenching I was able to do
Yes, I spent many, many hours repairing cars in sub-zero temperatures, but at least I wrenched. I could do it, even if just five or ten minutes at a time. I rebuilt my Jeep J10’s manual transmission, turned a Postal Jeep from a stationary pile of rust into a reliable and mobile pile of rust, I refreshed a Jeep 4.0 engine, I replaced a Honda Accord’s timing belt, I swapped multiple Jeep 4.0 cylinder heads, I replaced multiple axles, I welded a bunch of floors and frames and I could go on and on. In Michigan, I was a wrenching machine, and things got done quickly.
Here in LA, I’ve got great parts availability (though the junkyards are kinda expensive), the weather means I can wrench all the time, the rust-free cars here are dirt cheap, and honestly, the driving is better once you do get your projects finished. But getting things done here has taken me so much longer than in Michigan, and it really comes down to proximity to my vehicles. This, to me, is the #1 factor — right along with project management (i.e. writing a list of steps, parts needed, etc.) — in determining how quickly I can get a project done.
I, like many Angelinos, live in a place that house only a couple of cars — maybe a few more on the street, though that’s also far from an ideal place to wrench. I live between 20 minutes and 90 minutes from my car collection — one way. So if I’m at home and I have a spare five minutes, I can’t just hop out to the garage/driveway and zip off an exhaust manifold. I’ve go to plan things out, and if I forget tools/parts at home, that’s it — that day of wrenching is over.
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This is the challenge of wrenching in a city like LA, where there are lots of people, and houses with garages and huge driveways aren’t exactly cheap. Yes, you can find really inexpensive, rust-free cars and good parts, but to actually put those parts onto those cars is really challenging unless you can live near those vehicles.
I haven’t even mentioned emissions restrictions in LA, which make getting post-1975 carbureted cars on the road legally an absolute nightmare. This is a big challenge, of course, for my 1985 Jeep J10, and there are the taxes and gas prices and on and on — but more than anything, my biggest wrenching issue is making sure my projects are close to where I live so I can just pop out and get things done on small step at a time.
I am able to do this when I’m at work here at Galpin, where my cars are stored (something I’m super grateful to be able to do), so it’s not all bad. But I don’t like keeping my tools unlocked, so I always bring those home; and finding time during work to wrench is just not the same as living near my project cars. It’s certainly not the same as having a garage, where I could store tools and keep warm in the winter and maybe cool in the hot summer. Hopefully that changes soon; even if it doesn’t, I’m just grateful to have a place to store my cars, and though I won’t be able to wrench during commercial breaks, it just means that when I do set aside time to wrench in the work parking lot, I have to be more diligent about making sure I bring all my tools, and I have to more efficiently utilize that time. Because time, in LA, is really the resource that I’ve found runs out faster than I could possibly have imagined.
Anyway, about three years ago, I wrote the article “As Someone Who Loves Cars, I’m Struggling To Decide If I Want To Move From Detroit To LA,” and in it I asserted:
Wrenching on junkers on the side of the road in LA sounds, honestly, no worse than fixing crap-cans in 20 below weather here in Michigan, but still not great.
I’d say that, especially in the summer in Van Nuys, wrenching in a parking lot is right on par with wrenching in 20-below weather, though being able to pop into your house to access your well-organized tools and to boil up some hot cocoa was clutch. So it’s a bit of a challenge, wrenching on cars in LA, but I’m sure I’ll be a bit more organized in my approach, and I’ll maximize what I get done when I make that 20-minute drove from my place. I have someone interested in buying my 1954 Willys, so I’m frantically trying to get that machine running and driving; this time a year, the weather (aside from the smoke) has been nice, so popping in a new mechanical fuel pump and fuel tank was actually a pleasant fix. I did have to do this over a period of days, since I had to buy fuel hose, and since I had left a part at home.
Maybe I’ll get used to slower wrenching here in SoCal, or maybe I’ll just step my game up.
I grew up on an old farm. Wrenching in the barn wasn’t too bad in the winter as you could shut the door and keep the worst of the cold out and if it was really bad, give yourself a carbon monoxide high from the kerosene torpedo heater. In the summer it was better as the majority of the first floor of the bard was below grade and actually kept it somewhat cool. The big plus was that all of the tools were in the barn, so aside from dropping that cursed 10mm socket somewhere you couldn’t reach, you had everything you needed there including the welder and the oxyacetylene rig.
Maybe it should be made clear that the -20 deg and “below zero” statements littered throughout the article are hyperbole. I mean, SE MI is not exactly Antarctica. Most of the winter so far, prior to this week, has had highs in the +30s with almost no snow. And then there are the other 9 months of the year where it rarely gets above the md-80s. It’s really not that bad, I swear!
I’m glad I can fit a car in my garage now. As a suburban parent I’ve had houses with 2 car garages and driveways for decades, but this month was the first time in 20 years I could actually park a car in my garage. While Central Oregon is not as bitter cold as Detroit I’m glad I can be in a warm place out of the wind.
I’ll second the need for a dedicated Autopian bay and tools at Galpin so David and the other LA area people have space and tools