Well let me start off with some background. I'm 23, gonna be 24 in a month, and have owned a 2 FB's and turbo FC. Currently I'm RXless. Anyway when I owned my rx7's I had the benefit of my parents garage, (was a teenager and still living with them.)

Anyway I want to get a FD, but im a bit concerned about how I would be able to work on my car as im not yet ready at this point in my life to buy a house yet.

What have the rest of you apartment dwelling FD owners done for a solution to work on your car? I see apartments now and then that have a small one car garage, but I dont really know if that would be enough. And please dont tell me you just have a shop do all the work for you, I just have no respect for that at all.

 

You can rent out a garage space or something like that. I forget his name, zeke something does this. He has a space in Nutley NJ he rents out. It is a 2 car garage with parts everywhere hahaha. He pays next to nothing for it but he does have to drive there from his home to play with his toys.

I personally don't work on my car so I don't really have a problem besides find a spot to park that is safe and free of people who don't open their doors like morons.

 

Why not take the money you'd spend on an FD and buy a house? I doubt there's been a better market for the 1st time buyer in at least a couple of decades.

 

Car enthusiast come in all shapes in sizes. Just because someone likes cars, that doesn't mean they like working on them.... i.e. you like hamburgers, but you don't necessarily go slaughter a cow when you want one...


The one car garages are tight. I had one for a few years during apartment life and was able to do some work on the car. A guy that was two garages down from me had a full setup in his garage to work on his cars and motorcycles. There wasn't enough space for his workbench and his car parked in the garage to maneuver to do any real work. He would have the back the car partly out of the garage to have room to move. It can be done, but those small garages just don't offer a lot of space.

Here's an old shot with the car in the single garage:

http://mahjik.homestead.com/files/FD...s/TL_Night.jpg

Not really even enough space to open the doors fully.

 

When I lived on base we had a 1 car/carport. My buddy had a 93 auto and he used to bring it over to tinker with it. The neighbors would complain every time about the most stupid things you could think of.

"It's to early to start that up"
"Don't let that oil leak on the driveway"
"All that exhaust is going to get my car dirty...."

 

Doing so would easily prevent me from getting a FD for quite a long time. Id rather have an FD to enjoy when im in my 20's not wait till my 30s.

Furthermore, i hope housing prices continue to crash. They still aren't priced what they are actually worth. At least in this area of the country.

 

It is hard if you want to do your own work. When I first moved out and got my own place w/o a garage or with a small garage, I'd go back to the parent's house if I wanted to work on something. Now that I'm old and married, I rent larger places w/ garages that have some space to do small jobs. I wouldn't try pulling a motor, trans or diff though and I take steps to keep from getting the garage dirty or screwing up the walls.

 

Good idea.

I just got my FD last year in august and Im 29 .

 

I remember reading about some guy on here renting out a storage place to go work on his FC I believe. If you can get a 1 car garage with your apartment that's better than nothing my friend. Luckily my 1 car garage here on post is quite large and I have plenty of room for a workspace and storage and enough room for my FD. The only thing that sucks is lighting.....

 

Im renting a parking spot from a storage place. Some of the locations do have indoor spots and trailers that would fit cars. I was going to do this but my location had none of the cool stuff.

 

If you can find a place with a 1 car garage, just get that for now. I used to rent an apartment many years ago that had a 1 car garage and I did a full FC N/A to T2 swap in there (everything from the engine to the diff). What makes it even worse was that there was no electricity in there either! All my lighting was battery powered! I'm not saying that anybody should try doing what I did, but my point is that where there's a will, there's a way, and 1 car garage is better than no garage.

 

I do my work at night or during the day on weekdays when no one is home to complain. I haven't had an opportunity to do anything long term though.

 

Just take it over to a friends house to work on it. I work on mine in a parking garage where I live, lol.



All of my friends are in college, so none of us own a house or a garage.

 

OK, so I have done this two different ways. 1) When I was living in Steamboat Springs CO I had rented a storage (10x20 single car garage size) and I stored/worked on my FD in there. It is NOT the best of situations, but if that is your best option it will definitely do. I did tons of work including the addition of a greddy FMIC and battery relocation in there. It sucked, it was cramped, but it worked. 2) When I moved to Tulsa OK I was renting an apt with a 1 car garage and was in the same situation as before (space wise) but I was able to do my single turbo conversion in there. Again, of coarse none of this is ideal, but it is definitely doable. Now I have a house with a two car and I almost have that all filled up so I guess you will just take advantage of whatever space you have. The less space, the more creative you have to get.

On a separate note, I think right now is the best time ever to be a first time home buyer. Mortgage rates are at an all time low, and the government is GIVING you $8k... Not to mention in several years you should be able to buy an FD a little bit cheaper and I do not think it is going to set you back time-wise as much as you think. That is, pending you have a good/stable job. But that is just my .02 on that subject.

 

When I had my first FD I lived in a gated community and just parked it in a space. The only work I did there was installing a gauge pod and I got in trouble with management for working in the parking lot.
When I moved cross country I vowed to have a garage and paid a little more for a condo with a 2 car garage. I did so much stuff on my own it was great, even if it did take x4 time than suggested.

I lost my first FD and started living in regular apts again. I must say even though I missed my FD, I never wanted to get another one until I had a place to put it. Aside from working on it, things can happen to it. I just read 2 weeks ago how an FD was stolen from a parking lot near where I used to live in San Diego. My old roomie in 04 had the stock wheels stolen off his FD after just one night out of the garage.

Here a pic of our current setup. When my boyfriend moved in, we started paying extra for a garage in my complex, $75/mo. Since we had the garage perfect timing came along and after 5 years, I got another FD. The tandem thing can be a pain sometimes but its worth it.
I'd say look for a place with a garage.

 

I own a Turbo II (I rent a townhouse with no garage) and my friend's dad has an FD. We split a 20x20 storage place/workshop with outlets and everything. The $330/month rent is split 3 ways (myself, my friend, his dad). We keep my FC and the FD in there most of the time, and my friend's turbo Subaru Legacy GT will do projects in there. It works out well, we have a lot of room after carefully organizing everything. The garage is 15 minutes away. It's not super convenient but it worked for the money, and they don't care when we work on cars or how much noise/smoke we make.

 

i do my work at night when none of the neighbors or management aren't awake. i've been known to swap parts out at 2am. I have a car cover that reaches to the ground. The RX is often on jack-stands (which is against complex rules) but no one can see.... I've also crawled under there during the day and snuck some tuning in. (Next project is to drop the subframe and fix the oil pan)

I've often wondered if anyone has rented out a public storage unit the size of the rx and done work in there? I've thought about it multiple times.

 

When I first bought my FD I managed to find an apartment with a 1-car garage.

Fortunately FDs are not big cars so as long as the garage was built in the 70s or later it will fit. But no really big projects.

Dave

 

alot of ppl i know here in texas have a 2 car garages but it only fits the 7. the other half is parts and **** lol

 

my 2nd bedroom's closet and under my bed is filled with rx parts.

 

My personal experience is this, the last owner lived in an apartment complex and there's a nice baseball shaped dent above the drivers door >_>.

 

I agree. The most important part of thate statement is the stable job bit. ALOT of people THINK they have stable job though so you really have to be sure. I know its tempting to buy now but in this climate, I really think people have to be extra careful and have a back up plan if their job falls through.


Also to Meio, I totally understand the pain of being worried about whats going to happen with your car. My car got broken into and my GPS stolen in my apt. parking lot. The parking lot is tiny to with cameras and a door man always near by. I have no idea how that happened but it did, and its happened to alot of people in the complex. The good thing is that they only took the GPS. Whats really really funny is that they tried to take the FC commander to but since it was wired to the car they left it hahahaha. I hope nothing happens to my FD at the rental storage place . Now Im worried.

Oun...
hahahahahaha

 

i live in brooklyn and i park my car on the street.

it's a pretty safe area, so i'm not worried about vandalism/theft, but the car has gotten some dings and dents since i've brought it to this neighborhood.

the biggest threats are kids and just regular passers by. for some reason the kids in my neighborhood always play on whatever side of the street i park my car, and i always catch them leaning on it or playing handball/baseball right next to my car. the other thing i notice is that people always seem to find a reason to touch my car, even if they are just walking past it or crossing the street and cutting between my car and another parked car. even if they're not checking out the car or anything, i've noticed that when people walk near it they always either put their hand on the trunk lid or the side mirror or whatever - it's really strange.

i have had my car backed into, once - by a moving truck, which has been a royal pain in the ***. it was by a moving company and i've spent the past month going between them and their insurance company trying to get $$$ for the damage. i'm finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel though, as it looks like i should be getting a check in the mail next week.

last but not least, working on the car...well i've never had a problem popping the hood and working on the street. my block has trees all along it so i just park in the shade and start tearing things apart.

parking on the street hasn't been so bad, but i'm now going to start parking in a chained/locked lot half way down my street. a spot came up and the owner saw me parking my car one day and asked if i was interested. hopefully i can start parking there next week...

well, that's my apartment life / parking on the street story.

one thing i would definitely suggest - if you're gonna park on the street make sure you park somewhere that has security cameras! when my car was backed into, i wasn't there to witness it, but i caught the truck on security camera and used it as evidence in my claim. without that i probably wouldn't have gotten any money.

good luck to you OP.

 

I keep it in my parents 2 car garage. As of now I have fancier cars than them, if that ever changes I'm getting evicted though Btw, I own a garageless condo.

 

What part of brooklyn?

Brooklyn is a terrible place for parking on the streets . I used to live in Park Slope and saw alot of what you described. The biggest thing is the kids.