Well, I think you are missing something. ;) Your stated goal of building the "best vehicle in the end" is what the previous posters were trying to address. Can one build a vehicle for $4K? Sure. But you'll not have a vehicle that will be as nice as the ones that I've seen for sale on Brickboard recently. To get there you'll need to spend more than $4K, and in all likelihood, more than the cars are selling for, which is the point that the other posters (and I) are making.

I built my car knowing that I would take it in the shorts when it came time to sell. Even then, when at one point I investigated selling my car, I still found I had overestimated its market value. No one here is even breaking even when it comes time to sell which ought to tell you something.

If you’re as interested in building a nice car as I think you are, your sub-$1K Volvo and 100K mile motor and gearbox is going to have a lot of stuff that needs tending to before you feel comfortable putting the car on the road. That $1,000 in “miscellaneous” is going to disappear way faster than you think it will. You’ll spend $4K and more before you even get to think about fancy wheels, tires, suspension and brake mods, freshening your drive train, modifying your drive train, etc., much of which had been done to a number of the cars I saw for sale.

If you can’t afford more than $4K now, then my advice is to save your money and buy a converted car. In the long run, and quite probably in the short run, you’ll save money. I enjoyed my conversion project, but it was a lot more work and money than I thought it would be. If you want to build it yourself, and want to start now, by all means do it. Just understand that ultimately you’ll be taking a more expensive path than if you bought a converted car and gone from there.

To answer your original question, if I was to build my car over again, the most important thing I would do differently is that I would buy an entire drive train donor car so I wouldn’t have to track down as many doo-dads at the wrecking yard.

Regards,

Peter