Turning Trash Into Cash
Being a car guy isn’t a cheap hobby. If you sit down and add up the true cost to build a project car it can add up quickly. I am no millionaire or setting on a nice inheritance so I find other wats to make a buck.
There are a ton of ways to make extra cash so we won’t go down that rabbit hole. I try to stay close to my hobby of cars to keep it interesting.
The key I have found is to find something you are familiar with and figure out how to make money. It should be pretty easy to figure out what you like to do. The hard part is how to make money at it.
There are two wats to make money. Do something that someone else can’t do. Or do something that they don’t want to do. Start there and see where it leads you.
A part of my automotive passion is rust and patina. I love the look of a weathered old car or truck. Lucky enough lots if people like the “vintage look” now. I am not the first person to add pop art to a old car door, its a pretty common thing. But I didn’t buy the door to make the art.
I was on the hunt for a drivers side window regulator for another truck that I owned. All of the parts houses were out of stock and ebay was outrageously priced. So I found a set of doors and front fenders for sale for $150 locally. If I was able to buy a new window regulator it would have cost me $120 on its own. So I drove down and picked them up.
So after removing the window regulator that I needed I had $30 in a set of doors and fenders. With Christmas coming up I decided to finish one door with my dads old race car numbers. The color of the door matched his 1977 Ford Capri race car perfectly and I knew he would love to have it hanging on the wall.
So with the door I had left I decided to paint some pop art if our local soda brand then seal it with clear coat.
In total it cost me about one afternoon and maybe $15 of paint. The door was only up for sale for an hour before it was sold. I sold it for $150 and recouped all of my investment. So all in all I got a window regulator and my dads Christmas gift fir around $20. Plus all of the door glass, and latch mechanism is stored away and can be sold later. Or used on my next truck.
Moral of the story is to think outside the box! There is always a way to make a buck out there. You may have to spend money up front, but if you stick to things you know you should be able to make a safe bet. This is just one project among many iv done over the years. I have worked and traded my way up to thousands of dollars. My tig welder was traded up from a free go kart and a $120 harbor freight motor.
Thanks for reading along and drop a comment of the projects you have done to make some side cash. Or the crazy trades you have made to get something cool!
