I’m pretty well versed in dealing with the public being in a two man garage where we each had our clientele. Long before that when going to school I supported myself by doing repair work out of my garage. I got the huge dose of who to avoid. I’m maxed out as far a biz with my online home biz so I’m not looking for more work. I’ve had to cut off the custom orders because of time restraints.
My “problem” is also a lack of space and the fact the universe keeps tempting me. A couple of weeks ago I caught a CL listing as it was posted just minutes before where a guy was getting rid of an old friends machines. It was a surface grinder, lathe and mill, FOR FREE. Yeah I can hear the groans and head shakes and “I’d be there in a second” but these were all full sized machines and the logistics alone and then having to turn them somehow kept me in check effortlessly. I know my limits.
I could see snowblowers(we have no snow) and boat motors etc because of the manageability. I appreciate you revealing your secrets.
No problem, If I didn't have to work I could support myself just working on outboard motors. Theres millions of good outboards out there that need a little work, but the marinas dont want to work on anything older than 15-20yrs old due to corrosion and issues relating to this.
This leaves Joebob stuck with the family boat that needs tinkering (Water pump, shifter adjustment, gear case seals) that he does not know how to do and the marina wont touch for liability. So basically his $4000 boat is only usable with a new $10,000 motor or farming out the work to someone capable of removing broken, work hardened SS bolts out of brittle dry cast Aluminum, zinc or magnesium.
Who has the skills to do that in their garage?
Sure
we can, and we seem legion here on the board, but out in the world we're rare as hens teeth.
I had a guy contact me through a CL ad for outboard repair, bring be a beautiful fiberglass reproduction of a wooden style runabout. This was made in the late 70s with a fiberglass hull, but looked like a 50s lake cruiser as the whole top was mahogany and teak. He had the local tech school go over the engine, and lets just say they were
NOT Mercury techs.
Now Mercury makes great engines, but their a German engineers wet dream and if you don't know the tricks or have the exotic specialized tools you're going to wind up with a pile of butchered parts.
I got it running easily enough, but it wouldnt shift into/out of gear. Heres a video of when I got it running after working on it for weeks that I sent him as a progress report.
You'll notice how its stuck in gear, so I had to hit the easy button and made a video outlining the problem and posted it to a boat forum.
When I got the lowdown on what was wrong I knew what was needed to fixit, but that led to further issues as #1 I needed a $400 tool to take the ring nut out of the lower unit gearcase to get at the problem, and #B, the ring nut and lower unit were groped beyond repair by a really bad mechanic back in the day using all the wrong tools, and corrosion between the two.
So it needed a serviceable lower unit which were made out of pure unobtainium at this point due to the design (Mercury, seriously? WTF were U thinking). At this point the owner had $4K into restoring the boat and desperately wanted me to buy it off of him for cheap just to get out of it, which I would have done in a heartbeat, but there was no way my gigantic self would be able to fit in a boat this size.
He wound up paying me for my time and we kept in touch and searched for a new lower unit to swap out. Took 8 months for me to find one and even at that I still needed to rebuild the lower unit and get that $400 tool.
What I wound up doing was making the tool (Its literally why we have these machines?) and after 18months he got a working boat.
I only made $900 on that whole affair, which worked out to about $3 per hour (Kidding, but it felt like it) and I literally felt like jumping off a bridge a couple times as I had to fit in, and work around other jobs, plus work 48hrs a week.
So yeah, find work, but understand fully there will be pitfalls.
That ends this novel. If you look in the background in those videos or at my other vids from that time you can see some of the other jobs I had at that time.
ETA: WTH is this thread about anyway?
