Learning the Lesson...Again!

Everyone has heard it a million times before. “The deal is never done until you’ve got the cash in hand,” or in this case the product. This is a story of learning the lesson again. After making hundreds and hundreds of deals throughout the years, I should have known better as I have yet again subscribed to the ten hard lessons instead of the one easy one theory.

As many of you are aware, we are documenting the retail price of the Project Shovelle build, but as you can appreciate, as a magazine we occasionally do deals on parts and labour for exposure in these pages to lower our cash outlay for the project. But in doing that, we still expose the complete costs to show if have stayed or exceeded the $40K budget we have in place for the build.

Back in January, I made a deal with a company on an engine for our Project Shovelle. When they offered the deal, it felt like one of those “too good to be true” situations, but they seemed genuine so we shook hands and made the deal. Fast forward five months and it doesn’t seem too genuine anymore as they bowed out of the commitment at the eleventh hour. Needless to say, we had to go back to the drawing board and change many of the plans we had for the project in order to stay within our budget.

One of the changes we had to make was how we were going to wire the car, which was going to be featured in this edition. So, long story short, this is your update on Project Shovelle for this month. Next issue, we will feature the complete re-wiring of the car as it is now in the capable hands of Hzemall Customs in Port Kells, B.C.

Ah, life on a budget. Mom always said nothing is easy and as you know, mom is usually right!