Motor rebuild...

Excellent. I'm as interested in guys' shops as I am in everything else. Nice set-up.

That shop is an absolute showroom. Big ups on keeping it so well-ordered AND doing work in it. One demerit for Starbucks.

That is Saint Arbuck .. nice shop.  

Yes, great looking shop! I can only dream of having that much space. I am confined to almost (note the word almost) a full half of a smallish 2 car garage in our townhouse, sharing my side with the family lay down freezer- next time we buy an upright! But then I'll lose space on the tool board on the wall; hmmm. When you have such limited space available everything is a trade off. And I don't have a clue where I'm gonna put the table top milling machine...

.Although a lot of the guys here do varying degrees of maintenance/repair work on their cars, not everyone has rebuilt an engine (or even pulled it) and you'll have a bigger audience than you think. And even the guys that have will be watching. We all like engine ****! Will you be doing the cleaning/measuring/assembly yourself or will it be someone else? Do you know what the final combo (or specs) will be?

And am I correct in it's George? Al

Yup, that shop wins the "Shop of the Month Award" from the PCCA!

At this house, I built the absolute largest garage I could fit into available space without running afoul of the town's Building guys so ended up with a 26' sq. 2-car-plus-shop so I'm comfortable, but not a lot of free space.  Would love a sandblasting cabinet (I know of one for free) but no place to put it.  

Stan Galat posted:

Excellent. I'm as interested in guys' shops as I am in everything else. Nice set-up.

Me too Stan!  I love to see the kinds of tools guys are using to accomplish their builds.  Sounds like the start of a good thread.

Jeez !  Hollowell Steel work benches ?  Plenty of space ? You must be in Heaven !

All that space!  I am envious.  And I like the green tins.  I found that for air-cooled VWs, John Muir's book was money.

ALB posted:

. We all like  LOVE engine ****! 

Seems like the censors were at it again- that's engine p0rn!

I told my wife that after we are both retired I want to look for a four car garage with a small house attached to it. As of now I have a two car garage with a large house on a large lot that I can't put a big shop on.

Nice shop and it looks  like you've had a good time with the wall decorations, too. I think I could rent it out to a family of four of it were here in the Islands.

I have a huge garage but would trade some house for more of it. 

Robert M posted:

I told my wife that after we are both retired I want to look for a four car garage with a small house attached to it. As of now I have a two car garage with a large house on a large lot that I can't put a big shop on.

I have been saying that on my end but so far no takers.

Robert M posted:

I told my wife that after we are both retired I want to look for a four car garage with a small house attached to it. As of now I have a two car garage with a large house on a large lot that I can't put a big shop on.

Two miles from me sits an very large stone ranch style home about half a mile from the end of an airstrip (KEKN)  There is a hanger on one side of the home that has the same stonework , about the same size as the home . I told my wife it we win the Lottery that will be our summer WV home.... I will have the hanger area enclosed to store 20 or so cars and still have plenty of room .

Robert M posted:

I told my wife that after we are both retired I want to look for a four car garage with a small house attached to it. As of now I have a two car garage with a large house on a large lot that I can't put a big shop on.

I had this opportunity, and blew it.

In 2006, I build a giant house in a 1-street subdivision about a mile east of town. In 2009, I built a 1500 sq ft barn with a heated floor and a 14' x 18' overheard door behind the house. My kids got married and moved out within a year or two of building it, so my wife and I were rattling around in a 7 BR, 4-1/2 bath house.  We housed everybody and their uncle (3 different displaced families for 6+ months, students from church for entire school years, etc.), but Jeanie always felt weird living in the "big house". I did not. I always patronizingly told her if somebody pulled in my drive and made me an offer, I'd sell it.

In 2015, a friend did just that-- drove in the drive and made me a decent offer. It's a long, strange story, but the bottom line was that I sold with no plan where I wanted to go. Lots of cash in hand, free as a bird.

Anyhow, my dream idea was to build a carriage house-- 4 car garage downstairs, loft above. It would have been no problem in unincorporated Tazewell County, but Jeanie wanted to live in civilization, and we'd done it my way for 30-ish years, so... we built where she wanted to live (in town, in an older neighborhood).

The thing is: most municipalities lack imagination and frown on unconventional ideas. If I'd have known then what I know now, I might've pushed harder, but what I ended up building was not at all what I had in mind. I'll post pictures of the shop when I finally get it finished, but suffice it to say, I'm squeezing 10 lbs in a 5 lb sack. Many, many hoops were jumped though for a shop space that is very, very nice, but quite a bit smaller than what I moved out of. Jeanie's got her dedicated parking, free of metal shavings. I've got a shop that has a 2-post lift, and will hold 3 vehicles in a pinch. Space is tight enough that I hung a 2-stage, 80 gal Quincy compressor from the 12' 8" ceiling above the blast cabinet. You've not yet begun to spend money until you start doing crap like that. The cost per square foot was staggering.

The guy that bought my place is in high cotton, however. He put two 2-post lifts out in the barn, and uses the 3-stall garage on the house as a garage (where's the fun in that?), and is happily frolicking around in a house with 2x the floor space as what I built for similar money.

I've done it both ways now and my observation is this: fitting a working shop on a smaller footprint is exponentially more difficult than just having a nice (normal) garage attached to the house, and a big, beautiful, dedicated out-building as a shop. Squeezing stuff in a small space is expensive and super time-consuming. Good luck with the zoning for more.

There's a reason Americans like big stuff. Turns out, it's just easier and better.

Alan Merklin posted:

Robert M posted:

I told my wife that after we are both retired I want to look for a four car garage with a small house attached to it. As of now I have a two car garage with a large house on a large lot that I can't put a big shop on.

Two miles from me sits an very large stone ranch style home about half a mile from the end of an airstrip (KEKN)  There is a hanger on one side of the home that has the same stonework , about the same size as the home . I told my wife it we win the Lottery that will be our summer WV home.... I will have the hanger area enclosed to store 20 or so cars and still have plenty of room .

 

It's funny you mention that. There is a housing community 3/4 of a mile from us that is a fly-in community. There is an airstrip that splits the community and all of the houses have hangers for garages. The majority of them are fairly large houses. I need to drive through again and see if any of the smaller houses are for sale just so I can get a hanger.

I live on one outside of Vegas!

ALB posted:

Yes, great looking shop! I can only dream of having that much space. I am confined to almost (note the word almost) a full half of a smallish 2 car garage in our townhouse, sharing my side with the family lay down freezer- next time we buy an upright! But then I'll lose space on the tool board on the wall; hmmm. When you have such limited space available everything is a trade off. And I don't have a clue where I'm gonna put the table top milling machine...

.Although a lot of the guys here do varying degrees of maintenance/repair work on their cars, not everyone has rebuilt an engine (or even pulled it) and you'll have a bigger audience than you think. And even the guys that have will be watching. We all like engine ****! Will you be doing the cleaning/measuring/assembly yourself or will it be someone else? Do you know what the final combo (or specs) will be?

And am I correct in it's George? Al

Hi Al, my original plan as of 2 hours ago was to rebuild the 1600cc motor the Speedster came with and putt around for the rest of the summer. At the same time I would be identifying any other mechanical issues that popped up. 

I've now decided to install my 1776 motor instead. This motor came from my 1967 MicroBus. I will be performing everything except crankcase line bore, thrust cut and the heads valve seat and fly cut. Basically all the machining required will be done by a machine shop. The case will cleaned at the machine shop too.  

I'll try to post any somewhat VW specific mechanical processes along with tools that are handy for wrenching a VW motor. I'm very fortunate that I have 2 friends who have owned VW shops and probably a combined experience of 80 years. They have taught me a lot and continue to do so. 

Thank you for the shop compliments fellas. When my wife and I looked for our retirement home a nice shop was high on the list. My wife has her own 2 car garage with a full loft so the shop is all mine The size is 30x60 with 3 large roll up bay doors, I use 25% of the space for music and chilling out area. The rest of the shop is for wrenching. I'll post more shop photos later.

Let's see your shop/garage! 

By the way, it's called the "Manetarium, Fortress of solid dudes". LOL!!