Thread: Apartment living + working on your car..how do you do it?

Hey All,

Just moved to a new state and am living in a fairly large apartment community.

Since I have no garage(although I could get one for $50/month), I was wondering for those of you that live in an apartment, how do you work on your car? I was thinking I could possibly go to a park or something to have some space and do some work there, but I'd probably have a bunch of people coming up to me and asking if there's something wrong with my car lol.

so what do you do? got any suggestions?

thanks!

-G

Before we bought the house I always rented apartments that were either duplexes, or formerly single family houses but converted into 2-4 apartments, that way I always had a garage. I never even bothered looking at places in apartment buildings since they didn't offer what I needed as a car guy.

I never had an apartment but have friends that did. Most of them would ask to work in my garage. I've seen those apartment garages and they are not that big IMO and from what I heard most apartment places would give you crap if you work in a car.

Not true. I live in a gated community renting with a 1 car garage ( not alot of room ) but as long as i work on my car INSIDE the garage and not in the driveway i'm ok.


Last April i replaced my clutch with no complaints, was using hammers n sh!t.


I would prolly try and hav a friend with a garage or maybe have a geekout locally with major jobs like engines , clutches etc.


Does it say in your lease you can't work on your car in the parking lot?

ive gotten bitch at about noise from my car altho i am running 3'' downpipe to side exit with 1500rpm idle so it is rather loud... just would be concerned with it if there was alot of noise involved in what your doing so ppl dont bitch

Ya, I tried looking for a place w/an attached garage, but they were too expensive. Around here, a place like that would be $900+ / month.



This might be a possibility. I'm concerned more about doing some small stuff like changing my oil and other things I can do by myself. I don't think it'd be appropriate to use someone's garage to change my oil every 2-3 months, or is it?



No, but there is no place in the parking lot to work on my car. The parking spots are usually full and getting the car on ramps or jacking it up would not work.

-G

I think if you got a close family member or friend you can get away with an oil change or even a brake job. Some people don't care as long as you don't leave a mess in their garage.

Rent a storage unit that u keep the key,with 24 hr access.
I know someone who did that to keep a showcar garaged.Went to the storage with tools and it is like a little personal garage away from home

Probably cheaper to just get the garage there for extra 50 a month.

I lived in my apartment and they would bitch and threaten if I did anything during the day... but I hated the place I lived at... they had no respect so I didn't care and did i t anyway.

I used to ask friends to do work at their houses... and I honestly got sick of depending on that, and the empty threats from my complex so I literally said "go to hell" and bought a house

I have a storage unit in a complex for $80/mo. Lots of room to work, plus the guy that owns it is a car nut as well. If it's nice I just work with the door open, and sometimes he stops by to see whats going on. He's glad to see someone giving proper attention to their car, and even helped me with a few things. But every owner is different, some might be pissed if you work in a storage unit.

Just a thought, if you have others in your area with the same problem, you could all chip in on a unit somewhere and use it when you need it. Kinda like garage-roommates.