6 Little Lies We Tell Ourselves as Car Enthusiasts

The thing about the lies we tell ourselves is that they are occasionally required to allow us to navigate the world without going insane. Little, or sometimes not-so-little, these untruths shield our brains from reality and keep us moving forward. They’re not always a bad thing, but it’s important to remember that they are still lies.

They can be based in all manner of good intentions—from self-preservation to simple blind optimism—but in the end, if we are honest with ourselves, we have to admit that we either don’t know the truth or would rather not face it. Think you are better than that? Well, have you told yourself any of these?

“That’ll fix itself. Or at least not get worse.”

Cars break. It’s a fact of life we cannot avoid. What we can actually weasel out of is fixing them when these failures inevitably do happen. Thus when a new little tick, squeak, or light knock appears out of nowhere while driving, our first assertion might be “that’ll go away just the same way it appeared.”

Oh, wishful thinking. Even wilder is when this “solution” actually works. For instance, my 1965 Chevrolet Corvair picks up a loud lifter tick whenever it is stored for an extended period of time. The solution is to drive the car for 10 minutes or so, and it goes away. Every year, my brain skips to the chance that this year will be the one that the lifter is actually collapsed, but seven years in, and this little lie is still keeping me on the road.

“It’s cheaper to fix that myself.”

After enduring a road trip where the steering wheel would shake while driving at certain speeds, I went to an alignment shop just to be told the truck needed about $2500 in repairs. On a truck I just paid $5000 to buy? Nah, I’ll be doing that work myself to save some dough. Especially when the parts order came in under $600.

And on Monday evening, when I was finally finishing up the project, I realized I had to rent one tool, buy another, and had spent two and a half days of my time working on a project I didn’t find enjoyable at all. Time is money, and while I did “save” an amount of cash that cannot be ignored, I also gave up a nice weekend with the missus and hit my bank account for more money than I expected. DIY can be cheaper, but don’t lie about the actual costs.

“This repair should only take an hour.”

Just like how many of us DIY folks are bad at estimating how much we actually spend on our projects, we also grossly underestimate the time we spend with tools in hand, poking and prodding our aging automobile into covering just a few more miles before leaving for the great junkyard in the sky.

“I’ve got a thing I need to fix tonight, but I should be in for dinner” is officially a joke between my wife and I, given how many times I have comedically failed to uphold my estimated time of arrival at the dinner table. Often, I instead stumble back through the door at 9 pm with three new bruises and a raging appetite from attempts at a liquid grain meal since that was all I could find within reach while working. No, the 1-hour DIY project is a myth, but if you are good at keeping track of time and being organized, it makes stopping mid-way significantly more tolerable.

“I can skip this gas station, another one will come right up.”

Not all time with project cars is spent under them in the garage. Sometimes we take our lies on the road, and one guaranteed way to become overconfident in your vehicle’s abilities is to do things like continue to run even while the gas gauge bottoms out on the empty peg. It’s easy to do while enjoying a road trip, getting distracted as the gauge begins to dip, and saying while you pass a gas station “Oh, that’s okay, another one will be right up here.”

How foolish to tempt the gods of fates like that. On at least a few cars I’ve owned over the years I could tell if I was in a position to be able to push fuel range by seeing if the gauge still moved when going around a corner or over a bump, meaning the float inside the sending unit was still bobbing on top of fuel. When the needle doesn’t even move at all… I start preparing to walk.

“Once I finish this project, I can relax and just enjoy my cars.”

No really, once I get the door panel installed, I’m just going to drive this car. No more working on it, just driving. If you are the type of person who bought a project car and made any amount of progress on said project car, it’s more likely you will work on that car forever. Or at least until you sell it.

It’s not personal. More so that projects are just never fully done. Our needs and desires evolve over time and often at a rate faster than we can get things done. At one time, all I wanted was for my Corvair to drive reliably. Now I want it to drive and handle well. Next, I’ll probably want 200 hp. At no point will the car ever be complete in a satisfactory manner, despite anything I tell myself or others.

“This cheap part will last long enough.”

Project cars are expensive, and often not in a one-time way. Instead, the project progress line has an inverse relationship with the line signifying how much cash we have in our bank account. Spend a little, make some progress. Spend a lot, make a lot of progress. It’s watching the bank account drain that lets the idea of cheap parts creep into our heads and shopping carts.

Cheap parts can be an instance of being penny-wise and pound-foolish, as the amount of time it takes to make a cheap part work right can add up, or even worse, can lead to additional cost via early failure and collateral damage. “Good enough” indeed has its place, but be sure to keep careful track, or this will turn into a lie just like the other five.