[Jeroen]

Those of you who have followed some of my post are likely to have picked up I like working on my cars myself. Over the years I have accumulated a large collection of tools. I wrote about my tools in this thread: http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/techni...-them-too.html.

I did not have my cars, or my tools for that matter, with me during our years in Delhi. So when we moved back to my home country mid 2016, I started fiddling with my cars again. Since, I maintain a thread that shows what I like to call “fiddling” with my cars. It’s not necessarily about working on the cars, but anything car related I enjoy, (e.g. exhibitions, workshops etc) might show up. Have a look:

http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/diy-do...eo-spider.html

One thing you will have noticed, and I have mentioned it as well, I did not have a proper garage myself. My cars were parked in three different underground parking places in our village. I had to pick them up, drive them to our home and work on them in front of our house.

Recently, all of that has changed! Let me elaborate; Both my wife and me will be turning 59 in a few weeks. Whereas, at least in the Netherlands, most couples our age might consider down sizing, we actually bought a much larger house in the country. We owned a large semi-detached house in a small village just on the outskirts of The Hague. It was a long dream of ours to move to new place that would allow us to enjoy all our hobbies and entertain a lot. My wife is British, grew up in Barbados and during our 34 years of marriage we have moved 9 times all over the world. So we have a very large, international, friends and family social network. We jokingly say, nobody comes to us for coffee. Everybody will stay for at least week, because they come from far a field. So we need a lot of space to put up our friends and family when they visit. My wife is a very keen (and very good I might add) seamstress. Purely hobby. She is heavily into designing and manufacturing period dresses (mostly Jane Austin period), she has a huge Barbie Vintage Collection and collects doll houses.

I have my car hobby, photography, aviation, bicycling. Both of us are vivid readers so our homes tend to be crammed with bookcases. So, what with the visiting friends and family and our hobbies we need a lot of space.

Initially, we thought we do a complete new built. For various reasons, in the end, we decided against it. By sheer luck we found a gorgeous old farm house on the river Linge, which happens to be one of the prettiest little rivers in the Netherlands. Around here is very rural. Our new village has just over 800 inhabitants! There are no major towns nearby. Well, nearby being a relative term in the Netherlands of course. It takes 30 minutes to drive into Rotterdam! Which means we get the best of both worlds. We live in rural Holland but we are only half an hour away from it’s main cities!

Our new home is a so called Dijk-huis, which translates as Dike-Home. It actually consist of two homes, the front and the rear home that are interconnected. The front home is build into the dike. Almost 100 years old, an absolute maze with endless rooms, nooks, dead ends and stairs. It was in very good condition, well kept, just not our style and choices of colours, decoration etc. So we got a builder, plumber, electrician and a painter and put them through their paces. We did a lot ourselves too.

We exchanged contracts on 4th of October. By 4th of December we would be exchanging contract on our old home so only two months to get everything ready. Which turned out to be too little.

Of course, one of the non-negotatiable requirements we had on any new home, was it needed to have a large, at least two car garage, for me. Well, our new home has much more than that!

Let’s have a look:

This picture is taken from our rear porch, overlooking our drive coming down from the dike. On the right, a little garden/bicycle shed. On the left, my garage. All 70m2 of it. Walls and roof are fully insulated and it has a full sized loft as well!



We knew we would get ourselves into a time squeeze with only 2 months to get all building/plumbing/painting/electrical work done. We had to be out of our old home on December 4th, so we had to make sure the garage could take any overflow of furniture and removal boxes that could not go into the main house as certain rooms would not be ready.

We got the keys to our new home on the 4th of October in the morning. In the afternoon I was busy prepping our garage. The very first job I did was to put an epoxy coating onto the garage floor. This stuff is great. It ensures any liquid, including oils and fuel can just be wiped off the floor and it is very scratch resistant too.

I got my two sons to help me. First the primer. Took two of us two hours of very hard work. These primers are two components. Once mixed you have to get it out on the floor within 15-20 minutes. You poor it out, then spread it out evenly. Hard work!



Within 48 hours after the primer, you have to put the top coat on. Again, a two component paint. Mix it and make sure you get on quickly. You can order this paint in any colour. I leave all decisions regarding colours on anything to my wife. Again, she came through on this one, it looks really smart!



So with the garage floor in order we have been busy for nearly three months, packing, moving, working with our builders, lots of DIY jobs. From pulling out the old carpets, rewiring, hanging curtain rails, building cupboards, putting door handles on, etc etc.

In the end it was the right decision to ensure we could use the garage to put some of our stuff. The builders/painters could only manage the rear house to be ready on the 4th of December. It took them another 2.5 weeks to ready with the front house. that left about three days to move the furniture and boxes from the garage into the front home, get the TV going, hang pictures etc before Christmas. As for Christmas our three kids, plus their partners and my eldest sisters where coming to stay for several days!

So, I finally moved my cars into my new garage only very recently and I’m still working on unpacking my tools, figuring out where I’m going to put everything. Even so, it’s beginning to look like a proper Man Cave, so I thought I would share.

This is looking in from the main car entrance:

Note the fire extinguisher. The previous owners, very nice couple, we are still in touch with them, left us quite a few things, including this. I checked it does need a service though. But when you have a garage full of cars and shelves full of oil, thinner, fuel, rags etc it’s useful to have a good size fire extinguisher at the ready!



This is taken from the regular door, slightly different angle as the previous one:



By the way, this is how the “regular door” entrance looks like: I found the Royal Enfield plaque at a classic car show in Suffolk, UK last year. Although I don’t own a RE anymore, I still like the sign!



For various reasons these three cars do limited mileage. Or at least, they stand idle for many weeks. Which means, especially during the winter, the battery drains. So, I used to take the batteries out of the cars during the winter, put them in my garage at home on a trickle charge. These days, I don’t have to do that anymore. Every car is directly hooked up to it’s own dedicated trickle charger.



Tricky chargers come in many different shapes and brands. But I swear by my CTEK ones. They are capable of doing a proper deep charge as well as maintaining the battery through a special program of (re) charging the battery.



I have wired in dedicated plugs/connectors on each battery, so I can just plug in the chargers. No messing around with loose terminals with crocodile clamps or anything like that. Convenient and utterly reliable. I thought I would do a picture of each of the battery compartments as they are slightly different.

Here is the Mercedes. You will notice that on all three cars/batteries I have mounted a quick release on the (-) mass pole. On the Mercedes and the Jaguar you just unscrew the black/green knob and the battery is totally isolated.



One thing, if you isolate the battery completely, nothing will work. So on this one there is a little zener diode (it lights up red) that provides a very small current to power the clock!. These isolation fitting are mostly fitted as simple, but effective anti-theft devices! So you park your car, pop the hood, take of the isolated knob and without tools its not going to get started! The little zener diode provides sufficient power to the clock (and the memory of the radio) but will pop if any large currents are drawn.



The Jaguar has the same isolated connector fitted as the Mercedes, albeit with a green knob. The Jaguar has a proper immobilisation system as well, so this is a bit surplus to requirement. The main reason I put it on is it allows me to reset the ECU in seconds without any tools. Trust me, if you have owned an old car with electronics, you want to be able to do so!



The Alfa Romeo Spider has a slight different isolation arrangement. There is a little less room and I just happened to come across this little nifty clamp many years ago. By unhooking the little lever the whole clamp comes off!



One thing I noticed, since we bought the house which was this summer. All of sudden I have taken a keen interest in a whole new range of automobile stuff. Whole sections of classic car events I never visited before, all of a sudden have an interest as I might spot something that will look good in my man cave! To that effect, I bought these three nifty coat hangers the other day.

The red Alfa Romeo Coat is what mechanics used to wear. It’s similar to the one's shop keepers used to wear. We call it a stofjas (dust coat). I like it a lot. It’s long enough to cover my legs, nearly up to my knees. For most jobs I can just put it on top of my regular clothes and nothing will get dirty.



When you enter the garage through the regular door this is what you will find on the left side. This table I have had for several decades. It’s an Ikea one. Not sure if Ikea has opened yet in India? Anyway, they sell lots of great stuff. We have two of these we bought twenty/thirty years ago. It has been my office desk, it’s been my wife’s cutting table, it has held numerous fantastic Lego buildings and a whole lot more. Now this one sits in my garage. If I have little fiddly jobs, I can do them here. Also, I have my DC voltage suply and various soldering guns handy!

You will notice the posters on the wall. There are some more on various walls. It’s part of my other hobby photography. I am a member and treasurer of the Royal Photographic Society, Benelux Chapter. We organised a huge photo contest and exhibition in Rotterdam last year.

The goal was to take one creative photograph of every street in Rotterdam. I was one of the organiser and as it turned out, also the one who took the most photographs. We organised an exhibition, sponsored by the Rotterdam municipality. We displayed all 2800 images in the form of these poster. I don’t want to throw them out, so I have put them up in my garage for as long as they last.



The previous owner left a work bench and two steel cabinets as well. The work bench was already in the ideal position and bolted into the wall so I did not do change that. The first thing I did do to it, is bolt a huge vice to it. i love this vice, it’s pretty big and hefty. It’s got an anvil on it, also the base can swivel, so you can rotate it. In addition I found two very cool and handy protection aluminium plates. They have build in magnets, so they stick to the vice.

This vice has seen so much usage already for the various DIY jobs in and around the house. Looking forward to be using it for a job on one of my cars. The tools scattered all around the work bench come from the tool set of my Jaguar. I carry an extensive toolset in every car. But I had forgotten how extensive the Jaguar toolbox had become!



Here a good look of the work bench. The orange contraption is a VAX vacuum cleaner. These are great vacuum cleaners. They will suck up dirt, dust, rubble, water anything. However, after about twenty years of usage they break down. Things don’t last these days. We were using this hoover every day in a desperate attempt to keep our new home as dust free as we could. Not an easy job with builders ripping out walls, plumbers drilling into walls, painters sanding.

One evening my wife called in a panic: The bloody hoover has packed up!! After 34 years of marriage I know the correct answer; I will pick up a new one on the way home. The incorrect answer would have been: I will have a look at it when I get home.

So I bought us a new one. I did have a look at the old one later and one of the bearings has gone. So this is one of my little jobs to be done in the future and I will just keep this hoover as a dedicated car/garage hoover.

The USA plate belonged to my Jaguar when we lived in Kansas City. The Jaguar flag on the far right was a parting gift from the Jaguar club when we left Kansas City. Another nice sign I picked up at yet another Classic Car show in the UK somewhere

I havent bought to many new tools (yet). But I did buy myself a nice compressor and some pneumatic tools!





I always wanted a compressor for at least three reasons:

- it’s so easy to have compressed air to clean stuff
- it’s so easy to be able to check and adjust tyre pressure on the cars after weeks/months of standing idle
- pneumatic impact wrench is so convenient

So I got myself a very nice one. Other than the reasons I wanted one, I had a few other criteria as well. I did not want it to make it too much noise. Also, it had to be powered by just regular 220VAC. I don’t have 380 VAC in my garage, just a regular 220 VAC / 16A circuit.

So in the end I came up with this gem: It’s a showroom model, they actually used it to demonstrate to me. Gave me 25% discount. It’s an oil free compressor with a capacity of 270 l/h at 10 bars. That will do nicely for the impact wrench!

The fact that is oil free works well for me. If you are running pneumatic tools such as impact wrenches, grinders, drills etc you would be better of with an oil compressor. I use the impact wreck occasionally and will just oil it prior usage. But it means for regular use, blowing air and pumping up the tires, my air is complete oil free!. And it runs pretty quietly as well, less than 72dB.





Of course, I got myself a few special pneumatic appliances. Obviously the impact wrench. Nice little compact model, but packs a real punch, up to 500 NM!. Special colour coded impact sockets. An air nozzle gun and a real old school tyre inflator.

Not sure about India, but when I was a little boy, this is what every garage/petrol shop had to check and adjust your tyre pressure!





One of the things I really enjoy of having my own man cave is that at long last I can actually put everything out so I can actually see what I have bought over the years. The previous owner left two steel cabinets and I added two more (galvanised) steel cabinets as well. Here is the first one”

The steering wheel is the original steering wheel of my Alfa Romeo Spider. I replaced it with a smaller (and thicker) wheel when I got the Spider. But it’s actually quite a rare steering wheel as my Spider was an original Spider QV.



Let’s have a look at each shelve on what I keep/collect. Some of it makes sense, some of it doesn’t, but it works for me!

I like my three oil tins! In all honesty, I never used this oil. Got the tins from a friend of mine who operates a classic Jaguar workshop. He buys them by the dozen and I asked for a couple of empty ones!. The little Shell oil can is a real find! Found it at the Beaulieu auto jumble event earlier this year. Have a look here: http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/intern...aulieu-uk.html

I keep various oils, lubricants and some other stuff on these shelves.



Next shelve, a bunch of boxes with bolts, nuts, washers in all sorts of sizes. You can never ever have enough of these! So I keep buying these boxes wherever I go. Also, a vast range of different glues, some two components and some special glues, locktite etc.



Bottom shelves some bits and pieces of all sorts. Another of these battery isolator as I installed on the Spider, some exhaust gaskets from the Spider. I usually keep old parts. Not to use them again, but as reference.



Moving on along the same wall, again the three coat pegs, now a little more close up!



Moving to the other side of the garage. Another open shelve. I found these shelves in our local DIY centre. Dirt cheap, fully galvanised, very handy!



Top shelves are mostly empty bottles! I keep all the empty containers. Here in the Netherlands I have to re-cycle all oils, hydraulic fluids etc, so I keep the containers for that purpose. When I drain these fluids I put them back in old containers and take them to our local tip.



A collection of rubbing compound, cleaning agents and various other cans.



When you work on cars, at some point in time you will also clean them. Here is my collection of waxes and all kinds of special products to make my cars look shiny and new!

[Jeroen]

Continuing where we left with the next shelve: Again, all about cleaning up. I always use this special workshop paper towel. It is very absorbent, doesn’t split or tear which is important to me when working on engines!

I keep various hand cleaners, soaps and detergents as well. I don’t have a sink yet, but it is one of my DIY projects for the next weeks/months. I have to walk back to the main house to wash my hands, get my coffee. My wife doesn’t like it when I open the kitchen door with dirty hands and use her sink either. So my man cave, ultimately, has to be completely self sufficient!



Bottom shelve; a whole heap of rags. From old towels, sheets to high end fibre cloth. I keep them all. Once in a while, when my wife is out of town, I chuck them in our washing machine and run a quick cycle!



I’m particularly pleased with this little stool. My wife bought it for me as last year’s Christmas present. It’s very sturdy, hydraulically height adjustable and it rolls really well on it’s castor wheels. Ideal for working on the cars. At the back you can see some of the axle stands I use for when I need to work underneath the cars.





On to the next steel cabinet: I saw this sign at a Dutch Classic Car exhibition a few weeks ago. I had to have it. i wanted an A3 size, but this was the only size they made. It’s true too! I don’t like anybody handling my tools. I’m very picky if not to say secular about it.



I love this cabinet. It has all my special tools under lock and key!

Top shelve, various tools that come in these nice, strong storage boxes. My ODB scanner, digital camera etc. Also, two new drills.



Obviously, I have always had an electric drill and various electric screw drivers. But they were all getting on a bit. So when we bought the house I decided to get new ones as I had so many DIY jobs to do in and around the house. I’m a huge fan of Bosch equipment. It comes in these strong, very sturdy green boxes that I think are really cool. More importantly, they make very good tools. I am hugely impressed with this new electric screw driver. These batteries last forever and they provide the normal power/torque right down to the last minute!. It’s a very compact piece of kit. Powerful, tongue is adjustable and it has a little light as well!





Next shelve down; A lot of my measuring instruments, including another OBD Scanner to run on a laptop. You can spot the laptop in one of the other images on a little computer table stuck under the work bench.



This next shelve has all sorts of special tightening tools, various special sockets, torque wrenches, some special wrenches etc.



Another shelve with some special tools. On the left various pullers and pliers and on the right an array of tools to pry of the inside bits and pieces of your dashboard, doors, trim etc.



On the bottom shelve my trusted box with sockets and ratchet wrench, taps and a few other bits and pieces.



Onto the second and last steel cabinet. This one hold all my parts and various accessories.

The top shelve holds my Mercedes parts. You can see a cam cover gasket at the back. All sort of little clips and bits, a special tool for the steering box adjustment. And, pretty unique, an original W123 tool set!



Next two shelves are for my Spider. It’s Italian, it’s old so it needs a lot of parts!

Over the years I have bought a lot of stuff on mainly Ebay just in case. So I have most electronic parts including the various Bosh L-tronic ECUs. You can spot a slave clutch cilinder, master brake cilinder (2x), instrument binnacle and a hydraulic liquid reservoir.



The next Spider shelve, amongst other, boxes with brake pads, distributor. The rod for the clutch slave cilinder, thermostat.



Next my Jaguar bits: A complete throttle body (most expensive part in my collection, approx $ 2.400,--). Sump plugs. bit of trim that hold the sun sensor.



The bottom shelve holds all sort of generic bits and pieces, including copper rings, fuses, hose clamps etc.



A final picture of a few pieces you might have spotted in some of the other images. I bough a space heater for the winter months. I have used it a few times. It’s pretty effective. Within half an hour of switching it on you will notice the difference in air temperature. It won’t make it a warm cosy room, but it is certainly powerful enough to take the chill out of the air.

Next to it; The catalytic convertor and exhaust damper of the Spider. I took both off. It gives a few extra horsepower, it allows the engine to rev a bit more freely in the low rpm’s and it makes for a great sound!!



Nearly all of the tools I have shown here are shown in much more detail in my tool thread as I mentioned earlier. See http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/techni...-them-too.html

I have already started several jobs on the Spider and the Mercedes and will be uploading images and descriptions shortly to this thread: http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/diy-do...-spider-4.html

Let me know what you think. Feel free to ask any question about my garage, it’s equipement, how I use it or what for etc. I would be happy to provide insights into ‘fiddling’ with cars from my man cave!!!

Jeroen

[ampere]

Thread moved out from the Assembly Line. Thanks for sharing!

Only one who is truely passionate could get to this level! Thanks Jeroen for showing how its done!

[Leoshashi]

Hats off sir, take a bow. Rating this superb thread a well deserved 5*.

This is going to be the most viewed thread for me. I too have a 2000 sq.ft area dedicated only for my beloved Golden goose and DIYs. A few friends like BHPian Saket77 and Sumitsinha0280 regularly drop by, since we get the space to work peacefully without anyone disturbing us. It gives shelter to my tools, collection of spares and car care products(which I don't think are even 10% of what you have ). While I was away in college, the working area has significantly reduced and is a complete mess as of now(dumps of spares and stuff occupying a significant area).

Thanks to you, I've got a decent idea of how to proceed and how my version of cave would look like.

Regards,
Shashi

[selfdrive]

Congratulations and best wishes to you and your wife for investing in your hobbies. In terms of (ascending order of importance) money, time, efforts and most importantly heart!

Rating the highest possible for this lovely thread. I hope you take some time to continue updating this thread about what you are upto in that bunker of yours. It is just so tempting for a bhpian to say I would love to visit, if nothing else just to see how that floor is

Edit: no bikes (motor or pedal)?

[ajmat]

Am speechless, this is a dream for us apartment dwellers. It is great to have so much space - physical and mental for yourselves.

The only thing lacking is a hoist to raise the cars but I suppose you can manage this with axle stands!

[saket77]

Jeroen, I am literally speechless! That's a petrol heads dream. And not to forget the beautiful house itself. I have followed your posts since long and they are pretty insightful when it comes to DIYs. Your thread on tools collection ignited a spark in me; though I could manage to build up only a small (but useful) collection of tools to carry DIY in my cars and motorcycle.
It is amazing that you guys are doing exactly what you love. Keep going man!

Regards,
Saket.

[akshay4587]

Brilliant
Someday i shall follow your steps and create one of my own

Btw nice rides, i have a Alfa Romeo (159) and a W124, they are continents apart though!!!!

[AlphaLamb]

Originally Posted by ajmat

Am speechless, this is a dream for us apartment dwellers. It is great to have so much space - physical and mental for yourselves.

Share the same sentiment,

Congratulations to you and your wife on the new house, Jeroen.

Your man cave is a true testament to your passion for cars and all things associated.

[audioholic]

Wow, what an awesome place. As Ajmat said, it will be a dream for most people staying in apartments like me. I am searching for a suitable place for such a setup and mostly will end up in my native village, where space is not a constraint.

I knew that Germans or rather most Europeans were very passionate about such things and this just reconfirmed my feeling. This will be a role model for my long term targets

[Jeroen]

Thanks everybody for the encouraging and enthusiastic comments

Originally Posted by ajmat

The only thing lacking is a hoist to raise the cars but I suppose you can manage this with axle stands!

Actually, I would really love a proper hoist/lift. But this garage won’t take it unfortunately. The floor isn’t strong enough. The garage was build only some twenty years ago by the previous owner. It was never really meant or used as a garage for cars. in fact they used design criteria as if it was a house when it came to the strength. Which means I’m a bit limited as to how much weight I can put on the floor. I had the original drawings and I found the original designer and I asked him to redo the strength calculations for my three cars and possibly a lift. He came back to me that the three cars are fine, but advised very strongly against the lift. A lift itself weights easily 600 - 800 kg and loads up the floor in a very small area. So no lift for me!

Originally Posted by akshay4587

Btw nice rides, i have a Alfa Romeo (159) and a W124, they are continents apart though!!!!

Nice, they are very far apart. People always wonder how I ended up with an Alfa and a Mercedes. The 159 is a very nice car. It was the last of the proper Alfa Saloons until very recently.

The W124 is becoming increasingly popular as it is now becoming of Classic Car age. It was a worthy successor of the W123.

Originally Posted by selfdrive

no bikes (motor or pedal)?

For various reasons I left my beautiful 1975 Royal Enfield Bullet in India. So I don’t own a motor bike anymore. But being Dutch we have various pedal bike/bicycles of course. And in true Dutch fashion we have more bikes then persons living in the house. We have three bikes at the moment. I don’t want my bikes in my garage as they might scratch the car.

Luckily we have more than adequate space for our bicycles. The little shed you see on the right on one of the first photographs. Here it is in it’s full glory:



The shed is still full of some 250 empty removal boxes and some other stuff we need to shift, but as you can see it is quite roomy. It has electricity and a nice (another) workbench in it too. It has a loft too, so it is great for storing stuff.



I have not done much work on or in the shed yet. But I did mount two large hooks on the beam so I could hoist up my bicycle for cleaning / oiling.

We will be using the shed for our bikes, garden furnitures, garden tools and for some general storage.

Originally Posted by audioholic

W
I knew that Germans or rather most Europeans were very passionate about such things and this just reconfirmed my feeling.

It’s very much down to space and budget. In the Netherlands it is very difficult to find a house with even a double garage let alone anything bigger. If you want something bigger most will end up buying an old property, usually a farm house or similar that had barns that can be converted into a garage. We were lucky with our find.

A proper brick, insulated two car garage will easily cost you Euro 35-65.000. The sort of money that buys you a very nice saloon car, Focus - BMW 5 series. But as in many countries it’s also down to location. As the estate agents say; location, location, location! Even though our new property is considerable larger, has a garage and a shed and is built on more then 1000 m2 it cost about the same as what our semi-detached near the Hague sold for. They are only 45 km apart. If we had moved say another 50-75 km further east something similar would have cost Euro 50-100.000 less again.

If you want to see guys going completely overboard when it comes to these man caves you need to check out the USA of course. https://www.houzz.com/man-cave-garage. The Americans, of course, have the space and often the budget.

[R2D2]

Wow! This is a fabulous dream for an apartment dwelling DIYer like me. The setup makes me drool

Thanks for sharing Jeroen. This is another one of your threads that I'll be following closely.

[Engine_Roars]

That is a dream of many right there Sir. I am glad that you could build yourself this cave, which many of us don't even dream of. Congratulations to you & a big cheers to your wife(She is a keeper :P ).

P.S: Please do let me know if you ever need a caretaker for your cave!!

[V.Narayan]

Dear Jeroen, thank you for sharing this. Your passion and eye for detail is seen all over. And of course 3 great cars in there. Best of luck.

[dailydriver]

My upraised brow is yet to come back to its place!

You are blessed to be in possession of tools, space and time that many of us can only day dream of! IF I ever happen to visit the Netherlands, I know where to look for the auto enthusiast's heaven.

I can only tip my hat to you .