Here it is. Yay.
After selling the beater Beetle, I spotted this thing for sale cheaply. It was really cheap, and it looked OK aside from the rocker panels…an opportunity to make a few dollars. So I bought it.
I got it home, and looked it over. It worked good, and didn’t have a ton of kilometers on it. I figured I’d fix it up and just pound around in it until I sold it. It, like the 2005 Civic I owned previously, was not a terribly fun car to own, but was very good on gas, and reliable. This car had a few issues to be addressed, though.
Not the Civic, but you get the idea.
Having a MIG welder is so handy. A Hobart 135 model built by Miller, it’s given years of service, with the control board relays dying this past spring. I picked up a set of premade rockers, and set out tacking them on. They turned out OK, and with a coat of rocker guard and some black paint, you couldn’t tell the difference. Anyhow, with the floor and rockers welded up, a new set of shocks on the back, and a decent set of tires, it was all set to go. I set out driving to and from work. With the fuel prices at $1.40 per litre of gas, it was much, much better than the F150 on fuel.
A stock photo from the Internet. Mine was a stick with wind up windows and no tach.
Alas, it was no more fun or interesting than the 2005 I had. It was also a step down from the Beetle – it didn’t handle as well, and the 1.7 lacked the wide power range that the 2.0 in the VW had.
Eventually, a young guy contacted me via the ad I’d posted on Kijiji, and he bought the car. I made a few hundred dollars in the process, and was happy to sell the car.
I wish I knw how to weld. It seems tough that there is quite a learning curve to take and the initial investment in equipment – that includes the safety gear- is somewhat substantial.
And now I have a question: what pays better, flipping Civics or flipping hamburgers?
I daresay flipping burgers would! It’s the last one I tried to turn a profit on. My time’s more valuable than that. I’ve gone from an office job to one more hands-on as a sort-of diagnostic technician on heavy equipment. I work on stuff all day – I don’t really want to do it when I get home.
As far as the MIG welding goes, I was fortunate enough to have an uncle who’d taken the evening course at the local community college who showed me how to do it. The welder was around $600, and another few hundred for the extra bits. But it’s paid for itself in being used for repairs and making tools and equipment. It isn’t tough at all to use.
Yep great tools to have, a MIG has been with me many years, I took a pre employment course in Alluminium fabrication and welding to work at Incat in Hobart building those fast ferries, The skills aquired have been really handy repairing cars and nearly anything else, To make money flipping cars you need a good supply of cheapies to flip and a steady supply of customers, almost doing anything else is a better source of steady income.
Flipping burgers can provide a steady if not lavish income. Job advancement can be a concern, though customer service can provide satisfaction. Flipping Civics, on the other hand, typically implies possessing superpowers, whereupon one must make the choice of joining a team or being self-employed. The Avengers or Justice League offfer full benefits at the cost of long hours and some risk of alien invasion. Your more entrepreneurial superheroes can set their own schedule but offer lower salaries (see Spider-Man) and incur the same potential for super-villain conflict. Of course, you can choose to BE a super-villain, and the sky’s the limit.
Paul, I wish you a speedy recovery!
I am right there with you. I have thought about signing up at the local vocational school for a beginning welding course, but have never found the time.
Plus, I kind of know that after learning how and buying the equipment I would probably use it once or twice more before letting everything just sit in the garage.
As others have alluded to you might find classes at a local community college/vo-tech that you can try your hand at it w/o a large investment in equipment and you’ll hopefully have an instructor that actually knows how to teach someone, not just know how to do it themselves.
If that goes well then you can consider if purchasing your own equipment is right for you. Many welding supply shops do have rental units too, so if you learn how to do it and find a need you can rent a machine.
As far as flipping burgers vs flipping cars you can do both but if you do it right flipping cars is much more profitable on an hourly basis if you know what you are doing. The problem is doing it in the volume that is needed w/o running into various legal problems.
I have never spent time in one of these. But I understand your lack of enthusiasm. I had spent years in love with the silver 98 Civic my daughter eventually got. But then I spent a summer driving it and most of that love evaporated.
My Fit is so much more fun to drive (not to mention the Miata) and the Sedona is so much more relaxing to drive. The Civic is good at lots of things but not really great at any of them, unless we count its excellent and drama-free durability.
This article is near and dear to my heart Marc, I’ve cycled through a number of cheap cars over the last 3 years, I’d say I don’t generally make enough money on them to really call it a “flipping” operation (especially once my time is taken into account), but it’s enough to drive for free so to speak: I never suffer the depreciation of a newer car, and the profit I make on the sale generally covers my repair and running costs aside from fuel. The one time I did make a pretty penny was a ’03 Pilot with a small but structural rust issue that I bought for $500. Incredibly good condition aside from that and some worn shocks, I outsourced the welding to a guy I found on craigslist for $500, put on new KYB shocks and struts, some swaybar links, rear brakes, and a control arm ($another $700 or so in parts), drove it all winter and into the spring, then sold it for $5000.
My daily driver for the past year has been a 2005 Civic, and all I really have to say is: it’s a car.
Where is it still a $1.40/litre of gas? Or was this a while ago? Today gas in my town in eastern Ontario was 92 cents/litre.
Would be handy to know how to do body repairs, that’s a skill you can make $$ from.
Oh, this was probably about 4 years ago or so. I might be a bit off on the price.
That answer highly depends on the generation. Current gen Accord and Corolla are more boring than the current gen Camry and Civic. 2001 though, I might say the reverse for all of them, these Civics fell hard from their previous generation
Being born and raised on Vancouver Island I am always amazed at how rusty cars get back east. There are lots of this era cars still plying the streets here with minimal, usually surface, rust. So good for your ability to fix these in a simple and effective way. I am enjoying this series of COALs.
I bought this same car, a 2001 Civic 4 door with a 5 speed trans brand new, and I can honestly say that while it is not an exciting or flashy car, it is very dependable, economical and durable; after 230k miles, it gets me to work and back every day. Despite having the personality of a toaster, it grows on me every day, I can only imagine what the next decade or so of commuting will bring.
Noticed that the featured Civic had the green tinted shade band on the windshield. Always curious why some did and some didn’t. Wasn’t an option you couldn’t order.