© 1998-2008 Joe Weaver

 

Improving What You Already Have

By far, the majority of those who work on and restore Falcons and other cars must do so in a standard one or two car garage which is attached to a home in a neighborhood. Often the size/shape of the yard, or neighborhood covenants/restrictions, will prohibit adding on to the existing structure, or funds are not available to do so. In this case one must make do with what he or she has. The purpose of this section is to explore ways of not only making do, but making do efficiently and enjoyably.

 

While one can do restoration work in a one car garage, (or in one bay of a two car garage while the other bay is used to house a daily driven car), it is far less efficient and less enjoyable. If you have a two car garage and can dedicate the entire garage to your restoration or other project, (which means parking your other car(s) outside till your restoration or project is completed), I highly recommend it. In doing so, you can make the entire garage your workshop with the car actually inside the shop; you can seal it from the outside to keep out dust, dirt, and weather, and you can have a place where you can leave the project and return later with it staying undisturbed. The remainder of this section will concentrate on using and optimizing the entire existing two (or three) car garage for a restoration.

The exact positioning of the car is not so important and can be adjusted for other items in the garage -- just make sure you can get both doors of the car open fully without hitting anything. If you are doing a complete from-the-ground-up restoration you will eventually be removing all suspension from the car and have the body on jack stands for an extended period of time, so make sure you get the car where you want it since it will be difficult to move later. If you are going to pull the engine, make sure you do so before you remove the suspension. When pulling an engine you generally need a lot of space in front of the car to maneuver the engine hoist around during the pull. If you get the car into the middle of the garage and remove the suspension before the engine, you may find that there isn't room maneuver the hoist sufficiently to get the engine out. Hence, pull the engine first, then position the car where you want in the garage before removing the suspension.

 

Of high importance, in my opinion, is to make the garage as comfortable as possible. As mentioned above, if you live in an area of extreme temperatures, I recommend either installing an insulated garage door, or buying insulating kits for already installed garage doors. Get a garage door weather stripping kit also to seal around the edges. This is both for temperature conservation as well as keeping dust & dirt out of the work area. Some have actually locked the door closed and caulked around the door to seal it better, and this is a good solution (especially if you expect your project to take years), but there are times when you may well want to open the door to take advantage of a nice day, or to vent fumes from painting or smoke from welding, etc. In addition, you will want to make sure the door to the house from the garage is well sealed to keep fumes & smells out of the living area.

 

Also, if you live in an area of extreme temperatures you will want to consider heating and/or air conditioning. Heating can be as simple as an electric fan heater or a kerosene heater. You need to be careful and use common sense with any heating device in a workshop. For example, don't use the heater/furnace if you plan to work on any part of the fuel system or spray paint. Gas fumes can still be strong even if the gas tank has been dry for some time, and often there is residual fuel in the lines or bottom of the tank which can spill and create a fire hazard. Air conditioning can be a window unit (if you have a window and can mount the unit so the condenser is on the outside).

 

In many areas of the country it is common for builders to install the water heater in the garage. If the water heater in this case is gas you will need to observe the same basic precautions mentioned above for heaters when you are working with the fuel components of the car, or painting parts.

 

You may desire to wall off a portion of the garage for a small shop, but before you do consider what long term advantages or disadvantages this would offer you when you are done with your project, as well as how much it will reduce the workspace around the car. You may well be better off to simply make the whole two-car garage your workshop and have the car inside the workshop, rather than try to make a separate walled-in shop. There are several items to plan into your garage shop including a workbench, storage shelves, place for tools, and a place for large parts of the car such as the engine, transmission, rear end, hood, fenders, glass, etc.

 

If you have a solvent tank, I recommend putting it in a separate shed outside (with the lawn equipment). If you put a solvent tank in your workspace, the smell of the fumes will end up permeating your upholstery and carpet and will linger with the car for quite a while, long after you have finished the project. Even more to think about are the health concerns of repeated prolonged exposure to these fumes. After spending an hour washing off parts in the solvent tank I usually have a headache and my eyes are stinging some. Having those fumes in the workspace where you will spend hours at a time cannot be good. In addition, with fumes that strong, they will also eventually permeate the walls into the house.

This is just an example of one way to set up a dedicated two car garage. The second set of shelves on the left can be larger and made ofýÿ wood for larger items, or it can be a second workbench for bench-top tools with storage below. A good place for the compressor is under the workbench (as cited above, if you can add an air line from the compressor to the other side of the garage you will avoid the clutter and danger ofýÿ tripping over an air hose stretched across the floor).ýÿ Of course, everyone's situation is different with different tools and needs, as well as garage dimensions, so take the time to experiment with all your individual tools & cabinets to get the prime layout in your garage. Some garages are oversize from the standard which gives you even more options & flexibility. The above is what I consider the minimum requirements for a full restoration. Anything extra you can work into your design will only increase your flexibility and efficiency.

If you have a three-car garage, and can dedicate the entire garage to the restoration, you have some flexibility that you don't have with just a two-car garage. For example you can separate one bay from the other two with a wall to make a separate workshop out of the single bay, or you can simply spread out a little and enjoy more space to work in, as well as add more shelves and tools, etc. The above illustration shows a sample layout if the third bay was walled off from the other two bays. The advantage here is that you can heat/air condition just the walled off single bay so you can go with a smaller heating/air conditioning unit and save some money both in the cost of the unit as well as the additional cost on your utility bills. One problem, however, with just heating/air conditioning the walled-off single bay is that if the outside temperatures are severe at the time, the temperature in the portion of the garage that is not heated or air conditioned won't be far behind the outside temperature and working in that space will be less than comfortable. However, having a separate sealed off workshop can be a great plus, especially since about half the total work of a restoration is done on a workbench in the form of restoring, refurbishing, and reassembling previously removed parts that will be installed on the car at a future time. You may be able to plan your work so you disassemble the car in mild temperatures, do all the workbench items during severe temperatures in heated or air conditioned comfort, and then reassemble the car again during mild weather (this is particularly true if you send the bare uni-body out to have the body work and painting done at another location). One thing to keep in mind though is that if you are doing a complete restoration, extra space to put items removed from the car as well as tools & shelves can be a true luxury. You must balance your desire or need for a separate (possibly heated/air conditioned) shop against the desire for more open workspace.

 

As an alternative with a three car garage, you can dedicate two bays to the restoration, and wall off the single bay and use it as a regular garage for a daily driver car to keep it out of the elements. This approach allows you to still keep your restoration project isolated from outside elements while also giving a sense of normalcy (for at least one driver) while your restoration project drags on. If you choose to use wall off one bay for a workshop, be sure to add adequate lighting both in the shop and garage, and to add electrical outlets, and (if you have an air compressor) add several lines for compressed air both in the shop and in the garage. Painting all the floors is a great plus too, even when the projects are done. Also, after you are done with the restoration, you can either pull down the wall between the bays, or you can keep it up and have a separate walled off area of the garage to keep your newly restored Falcon sequestered from the daily driven side of the garage. The illustration above also is representative of how you can add-on to an existing garage, or add to existing plans if you are building (but that will be covered in greater detail later).

Designing & Building a Better Home (oops, I mean Workshop)

Now lets discuss optimizing the design and construction of a standard two-car garage home by adding more space to the garage, or by adding a dedicated workshop to your plans, or both. First of all, as mentioned above, if you need to do a restoration in a two car garage, you will probably want to park your other car(s) outside till the restoration is done. Whether you are able to do this or not is a decision you (and perhaps your spouse) need to make. I recommend using the whole garage. Now, if you are constructing a new home, any workshop or workspace you can work into the plans will be to your benefit. Some builders refuse to modify their "pre drawn" plans at all, some will do minor modifications, and others will do about whatever modifications you desire within reason, in which case your only limitations are physical space on the lot to fit the house/shop on, and of course, money. The simplest and easiest workshop add-on to plans is to extend the back (or side) wall of the garage between 6 and 10 feet out, and add a new wall where the original garage wall would have been as shown above.

You may need to get inventive with your builder to make such an add-on work by cutting down the size of the room behind the garage where the new shop will go, or adding on to the back part of the house and shifting the other rooms back, or making the garage stick out the front some, or any combination of these. Your builder and/or architect can help you work a small shop into the plans. Most residential lots will have more than enough room for such a small expansion. Keep in mind though, that even this small amount of space for a workshop will be extremely beneficial for any and all work you do on your car(s) as well as other household projects, and (depending on your builder) it is generally quite inexpensive to do. If your builder is unwilling to change his plans or is willing but gives you a price that seems unreasonable, check with other builders. If you live in an area with climate extremes, be sure you insulate, heat and/or air condition even this little shop. And, as mentioned above, you will do yourself a favor to use a separate unit from the rest of the home so the smells from the shop do not get sucked into your living space. This small a shop could easily be air conditioned by a standard window unit, or heated by a small fan heater on the ground. As an alternative, you could add a standard one or two ton heat/AC unit and have ducting added into the garage so you can heat and air condition the garage if you should ever desire (I did this very thing in my garage and it has been nice in the winter months, but the unit is too small to effectively cool the entire four car garage and workshop in summer months). If you can't make this design work due to interior limitations, try extending out the side for the shop.

An additional improvement to the above plan would be to also "stretch" another outside wall (or portion of an outside wall) and make a room for lawn equipment and a solvent tank to keep fumes, smells and dirt out of the garage & shop, as seen above.

If you are building on a cul-de-sac (a pie piece shaped property with the small portion in the front and the wide portion in the back), consider a variation of the design above. This is a three car design, wider in the back than the front. This gives you the advantage of being able to park a daily driven car in the single garage during the restoration while you still have a two bay garage dedicated to the restoration.

If you have a deep lot to build on consider a variation on the above design. In this case leaving all four bays open to each other gives you flexibility. Building a wall to separate them gives you two separate dedicated areas, one for a standard two car garage, and one for the restoration. If your climate is a colder one, leaving all the bays open to each other gives the advantage of extra "free" heat from a car that has been driven recently and pulled in the garage (of course, you do loose some heat while the door is open pulling the car in or out). On the downside to this obviously is that if you live in a hot climate, the heat from a recently driven car will only make the heat problem in the garage worse. Keeping all the bays open to each other however gives you a great deal of flexibility. My garage (which will be discussed later) is similar to this design above. While it would be nice to have a wall up, I have really enjoyed the greater flexibility of a full open design.

 

Using your imagination and working with your builder you can explore all sorts of variations on these simple basic designs to get an efficient yet enjoyable workshop at minimal cost. Also, look at some ideas from the "perfect" workshop below and see if you can incorporate some of them on a smaller scale into your design.

The "Perfect" Garage / Workshop?

Several years ago we built a new home. We purchased a building lot just a bit further out so we could get one a little larger (for about the same money) than we could find closer in to town. Restoring my Falcon had been on my mind for a number of years and the larger lot would allow us to add a nice workshop and a large garage to the house plans so I could get started on my car. I tried to make this the ultimate residential workshop, and I gave it a great deal of thought. And I did many things right in the design. However, I did not foresee some very critical needs as well as many niceties that would have made the design much better. My present garage and workshop is shown below.

What Is Right About This Design

The main advantage to this design is that it has a large "drive-thru" garage with a separate but attached large workshop that is both heated and air conditioned. There are also many little things that add to the enjoyment and productivity of the garage/workshop combination that will be discussed below.

 

The garage is fully insulated with insulated garage doors. This is a big plus, especially for working in the garage during winter months. Even after the restoration is complete an insulated garage is much kinder on cars and protects them from severity in temperatures. In the winter time, the heat alone from a car, after putting it in the garage and closing the garage door, will very quickly heat the garage into the 70's (mid 20's Celsius) and is enough to keep the garage in the upper 50's to low 60's (10 to 15 degrees Celsius) all night long even when it is below freezing outside. Not only does this add life to your car, it adds greatly to creature comforts when getting in the car on a cold morning. With this garage style, I use two bays for my Sprint restoration (right in the middle on stands) and still have two bays for two family cars to use normally. I have, a time or two, put one car dead in the middle of the four car garage to do work on it, and I really ended up with a feeling of spaciousness during those particular projects (I did this while I dismantled my Sprint). Also with a "drive-thru" design came the ease of keeping the garage clean. When leaves or grass clippings or other debris from the out side clutter up the floor (or debris from working on the car gets on the floor), I simply open both garage doors, pull out the cars, and turn on my electric leaf blower and blow it all outside. Takes 10 minutes tops. For deep cleaning I use a hose, a stiff push broom and some floor soap, start on one end and move to the other hosing it all outside.

 

Probably the most valuable aspect of this design though is the heated and air conditioned workshop. Having an "indoor" climate controlled place to take a part into to work on is truly nice. In addition, often I am forced to stop in the middle of a project and leave on a trip for a few days and it is nice to have a place I can leave work in progress, knowing it will stay clean, and be undisturbed (especially important is that it is kept undisturbed by the kids) until I return. A separate dedicated work room or workshop also gives you a place to do work on "smelly" projects (like overhauling a carburetor) without getting the smells into the living area of the house. As mentioned above, I have seen several "workshops" attached to garages over the years which range from a 4' x 5' room walled off inside the garage, to ones similar to mine and even larger. More important than the size of the workshop, is the fact that you have a "workshop". A door going from the shop into the garage is also nice so you don't need to go "outside" to get from one to the other, which is especially important during inclement or severe weather. I've been able to work on my car, freely moving from the shop to the garage uninhibited during severe thunderstorms, ice storms, 115 degree heat, etc. This is probably the most desirable plus in this or a similar design.

 

Another plus is the separate "electronics" or "clean" room. In jr. high and high school I was quite an electronics buff. One of the first things I learned is that electronic items can be sensitive to dust & dirt. I decided that I didn't want to be in the middle of a several day electronic project or repair, and then find the need to repair a wood item that was going to make a lot of dust. So I made a separate, walled off, area in the shop with a door that I can close and keep things inside clean no matter what I was doing in the shop. This, however, has not only been nice for electronics, but I have discovered there are many needs to keep items clean such as storing an engine on a stand during assembly, keeping a carburetor clean during overhaul or storage, etc. Such a room is also a nice place to store the kids Christmas presents (the wife's too for that matter -- all I have to do is put them in Summit Racing, or Jeggs High Performance boxes and she leaves them alone...I wonder if she's going to read this....).

 

Another plus is the separate "paint" booth with an explosion proof exhaust fan. (Important Disclaimer: Although I show a room labeled "Paint Booth" in these illustrations, and while I personally do use this room for painting, I do not encourage or recommend anyone else doing exactly what I have done here, and I take no responsibility for anyone else who decides on his/her own to do something similar to this design. The reason is that code restrictions in most areas require something like 50' distances from a paint booth to any electrical outlets, light fixtures, electrical switches, electrical panels, etc. My entire shop is only 20' across -- in which case I wouldn't be able to have anything electrical in the whole shop. However, I will state that I did install explosion proof light fixtures, as well as an explosion proof exhaust fan (which cost several hundred dollars) in the actual painting booth itself. These are an absolute necessity if one is actually going to spray paint and use a fan to exhaust the fumes, or have any kind of lighting installed in the booth itself. A conventional fan motor can and often does produce sparks which could easily ignite the explosive fumes from spray painting. If you plan to setup a paint booth in your shop or garage, do it right and get professional advice. Do not install standard light fixtures or an exhaust fan not rated as "Explosion Proof". The proper ones are expensive, but necessary and worth it. While spray painting, one spark from a loose wire, a running fan motor, or a broken light bulb can, and probably will, spell disaster for anyone in the area, and possibly the destruction of the entire structure. In addition to explosion proof fan & light fixtures, you need make sure they are hooked up according to explosion proof codes which isolates and seals all wiring and wiring splices in junction boxes.) With all of that said, having a place to prime and paint parts after media blasting them is a necessity (even if that place is outdoors) When I do use this room for painting, I am very careful not to be using anything else electrical in the shop at the same time, even going to the extent of de-energizing all other circuits in the shop by tripping the circuit breakers, including the heat & A/C unit (which is all electric) before painting. Even though I have never had paint fumes in the rest of the shop when the exhaust fan has been running, this is a good precaution to prevent an explosion if the fan should ever fail, or if fumes for some other reason do enter the shop. If spending a few hundred dollars for such explosion proof fixtures is not practical for you, I recommend painting outside. I also use the booth for welding which is ideal as the same exhaust fan removes fumes & smoke that are produced during welding.

 

Two final thoughts on this design; Having some cabinets above and cabinets & drawers below one of the counters in the shop has been nice for storing everything from caulk and plumbing supplies, to hobby items and shop towels. The shop sink in the garage has also been indispensable.

 

One major advantage has been the separate room for lawn equipment. It keeps the equipment out of the garage, along with all the dust, dirt, grass clippings, and gasoline smells. In addition, I have put the solvent tank in that room so that I can keep the "smelly" stuff all together.

What I'd Like To See Different In This Design

The lower right corner is what I would add to my present design. The large storage room and the two smaller storage rooms with built-in shelving are the two most important additions, along with a bathroom that has a toilet, sink, and shower. I also would not have the staircase taking up the room it does in my present plan so I can have more free standing tool floor space. Also note the double doors into the garage are wide enough for a car (this could be a roll-up door instead). In addition I would make sure any weather stripping between the bottom of the doors and the floor are on the doors rather than the floor so I could roll items easier between the shop and garage. The windows at the bottom of the illustration in the shop, and the ones in the garage are nearly floor to ceiling to match the rest of the windows on the main floor of the house. The windows are nice and let in a lot of light, but they take away from wall storage in the form of peg board, and they let in a lot of heat in the summer. But, certain compromises must be made to make such a shop fit in with the rest of the house and look nice from the outside in a residential setting. There would probably need to be windows in the storage room as well for exterior looks. If, of course, you are building in a pure rural setting, you can do whatever works best for your needs. The only thing I might add to this design if money and space were no object might be another bay or two on the garage (making it a five or six car garage) and putting an electric lift in one bay, and perhaps a painting booth (car size) in the other.

While this design is certainly nice, it lacks two major items; one is storage, the second is open floor space against a wall for free standing tools like a belt sander, drill press, or table saw. The storage issue is far more serious than I ever thought it would be. I use the shop for woodworking, household repairs, occasional light metal fabrication & work, and general car maintenance, in addition to its current major use in restoring my '64 Sprint. For all these uses, storage is paramount. For example, there needs to be a place to store wood such as 4' x 8' pieces of plywood, sheet rock, paneling, etc., hardwoods, moldings, conduit, PVC pipe, supplies, paints, etc. Of course, for a restoration you need tons of storage space. In the first edition of this web site I outline the need for organization during a restoration, and recommended getting shelving to put refurbished and new parts on to keep them organized and clean. A separate storage room would be ideal for such shelves. In addition, there are numerous larger items that cannot easily be stored on shelves such as engines, rear ends, transmissions, bumpers, etc. Consideration should be given to accommodate these things in the storage room too. My garage, in addition to being the place where I am restoring my Sprint, is also the garage where the family cars are parked and the kid's bikes & trikes are kept. There just isn't room to store other items there. In addition, since the garage doors are open much of the time (so kids can get to their stuff) a lot of dust & leaves end up getting inside. This makes my garage a poor storage area. Actually, I did start with the shelves in the garage, but all the parts began to get real dusty & dirty, and even though the garage is fully insulated, they were still constantly exposed to extra heat and humidity in the spring, summer & early fall months. I realized that I either needed to park all the cars outside till the restoration was done, or move the parts into the heated/air conditioned workshop, which I did. This has worked well, but it has also taken up valuable floor space in the shop. A separate storage room, also heated & air conditioned, is the best way to go. Closet-type storage is also something I wish I had for storing things like supplies & tools. I would make sure I had more free "wall/floor" space for free-standing tools. Finally, a bathroom, complete with shower is something else I should have insisted on. After a day of working on an engine (or even just cutting the lawn), I know I don't smell rosy. I would like to get showered before I enter the living space and bring the car smells & body odor with me. Lastly, I would make a bigger double door from the shop to the garage. The reason is that there have been times I wished I could push the car into the shop (even in cramped quarters) so I could work on it in air conditioned comfort. I do have the ability to heat the garage somewhat if I need to and along with a jacket I can work on the car comfortably through the coldest days. But, living in Dallas, summer can be unbearable. Even with an insulated garage, on the hottest days (well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit -- 42 degrees Celsius) it gets to the mid 90's (high 30's Celsius) in the garage, and it does get fairly humid here making work on a car nearly unbearable in the middle of the afternoon. If I could have just pushed the car into the shop to finish hooking up everything on the new engine, or to do a brake job, etc., life would have been much nicer. And I could have done so if only the doors were bigger. With all these in mind, the ideal workshop for me is shown below.

 

Optimizing

Your

Workspace

Part 2

Workshop Layouts & Designs

The best setup for me is to put the car in the garage sideways as shown above. This gives you ample room to get to all sides of the car while leaving some space for a workbench or other tools.

This is the end of the

Optimizing Your Workspace Edition

 

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Feel free to save this page to your computer for your personal use and future reference--no other use is authorized without prior written permission from me. All illustrations from the 1964 or 1965 Falcon Shop Manuals used pursuant to permission granted by Ford Motor Company. Disclaimer: This site is not intended to instruct or teach anyone in proper or safe methods of working on or maintaining any type of vehicle or use of any tool and the author takes no responsibility for the use of the information contained herein.

If you have comments or suggestions, email me at joe@joesfalcon.com