If I farm out a job on my hot-rod that I've otherwise done myself, have I betrayed my philosophy?
The why matters.
If it's because you cannot be bothered to do something because it's tedious, I think yes.
If it's because some other tedious task took too long and Power Tour starts tomorrow, then I think no.
If it's something you can't do and could never reasonably afford to learn how to do, then I think no. Hardly any rodders can do body work or paint.
I might be a little off base about my condemnation of Mr Smith from the Haggerty article, but Haggerty's is a great place to find people who don't wrench and own hot-rods.
He's a mechanic in a shop that does hot rods and restorations. Working in a place like that requires skills and time is money. Farming a job out when the cost of doing it yourself is more than a specialist charges is good business.
As a businessman, he's lost something about being a hot rodder.
There's a reason the "did it myself" is put on a pedestal.
Because too many people have paid for it and assumed the mantle of "hot rodder".
Time is money for a shop and having another shop do that cable means they save some time. Mostly because a shop doesn't have to down tools and stop working to arrange for the cable place to make the cable and sit around doing nothing until it gets back.
A shop lets that model A sit there while other paid work is getting done.
If you want to see a great example of this in inaction, binge some Car-Wizard videos and pay attention to the cars laying fallow in the background.
A shop gets to keep going while the farming-out occurs.
Depending on if you even have a local place to do that cable could mean the job is stopped for a week or more while you wait for shipping.
But even that ignores the central tenet: Hot Rodding is a hobby.
Hobby's are not meant to save time, and they certainly don't save money.
Putting a '96 Impala SS driveline into a '91 Caprice Classic was a lot more work and about as expensive as buying a different car. But I did it. With some help from my fellow hot-rodders, it was all did it myself. I am proud of that, and even more proud that what I did is still running with its new owner.
At Caprice / Impala events he still gets asked how hard it was or how he solved a known issue with the swap. He doesn't know. I do.
I guess it comes down to pride and how much of it you can swallow to get to the goal. I found that I like doing the work as much as having the car, so it's a no-brainer for me to blow the opportunity costs and do it myself.
Sometimes the path is the destination.
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