When to delegate

As you will know if you read the last post, I've contracted the services of John the Mechanic for next week, to do the bulk of the work on the braking system on the Red Lady. The benefit of adding a professional into the equation is, in addition to having actual work done, a large incentive to produce results of my own.

Since the car came back from the panel shop, painted, looking like a car but really just a shell, the work has been all my own. Only one smallish task has been done by a professional in the past 5 years, which was the installation of the headlining, a task beyond my experience if not my ability.

I noticed back when that was done (September 2009) that I was incentivised to do the tasks that necessarily preceeded the work of the upholstery man that did the headlining, such as sanding, painting the roof, and installing sound deadening material, because of the looming deadline of his arrival. Not wanting to waste the time of a professional by rescheduling or cancelling, I was forced to knuckle down and get things done, and this upcoming appointment with John is the same. Really, I could do this work myself. It's not beyond my ability, nothing about the car (except maybe the paint and body) so far has been beyond my capability. The difference between myself and a professional is the speed with which the task is done, and in some cases the quality of the result (and that difference can go in both directions- the 'professional' job of installing the exhaust manifolds on the Dodge demonstrated how shitty a job someone can do when they don't have the personal motivation of owning the car and caring about the result). The point I'm circling here is that I can keep deadlines when someone else is involved, but I slack off when I'm on my own schedule. The risk associated with taking this train of thought to it's logical conclusion is winding up with a chequebook hotrod, the idea of which I find most unpalatable.

Happily, I've done enough work myself on this car to be pretty confident that scenario is no longer possible. The hours and hours spent on my back underneath it sanding back 40 years of road grime and leaked oil can attest to that. However, I'm not willing, nor is my budget able, to allow the remainder of the work on the car be done solely, or even mostly, by paid help. I forsee one big task, and one lesser, that will involve a third party, and these are the wiring and the window channels, respectively. Both of these tasks I could probably do on my own, but every time I think about them I internally groan and roll my eyes. They're not fun, and that's the essence of it really, I want to enjoy the car, not suffer it, and though I see the logic in some suffering in exchange for the big payoff of finally driving it, under it's own combustion, out of the garage, the bottom line is it's been too long and I just want that day to hurry up and arrive.