This article first appeared in the April, 2012 edition of SportsCar Magazine. SCCA members can read the current and past editions of SportCar digitally here after logging into their account; To become an SCCA member and get SportsCar mailed to your home address monthly in addition to the digital editions, click here.
Maximizing your garage or workshop space could be the winning advantage
When you decided to go racing, garage space was probably the last thing you thought about. You probably spent far more time picking out your car, choosing performance upgrades, selecting your personal gear and maybe buying a tow vehicle and a trailer. If you can afford an “arrive and drive” setup, garage space is not a big problem – but for most of us, the racing shop is whatever we have attached to the house.
Your racing workshop deserves some attention, because for every minute you spend competing, you are likely to spend tens or even hundreds of times more in your workshop. It doesn’t matter if you’re competing in H Stock or Formula Atlantic; building, maintaining and repairing a competition car is a big job, and you need functional wrenching space to do this work.
Even though a working space may be modest – and often shared with the rest of the household – that doesn’t mean your garage can’t be a pleasant and effective place to work on your car. You want to spend some time and effort planning and arranging your garage because a good, efficient working space helps your racecar turn out better.
What Do You Want to Achieve?
The best way to start your plan is by sitting down and going over what you want to do in your garage. Are you looking for a space in which to do basic maintenance on a lightly used sports car, or do you plan to start with a barn find and build it into a racecar? Will you need to perform exceptionally messy work like “fiber-glassing” or even painting the car in your workshop? These needs will tell you a lot about how you should set up your garage – or if you should be looking to rent shop space.
Try to find a balance between all the things you <I>might<I> want to do in your shop and what you know you need to do in the next six months. Sometimes you really just need a clean, dry space to store your car and parts. On the other hand, some racers will need bench space for fabrication tools and floor space to assemble an entire racecar from parts.
The guideline you want is easy: Design your shop to be as spacious and orderly as possible, and then work to keep it that way.
Take Stock of Your Space
If you ask builders or realtors, they’ll tell you that a standard two-car garage in the United States is at least 18 feet square. Most homes built in the last 50 years will have an “oversize” two-car garage – which is anything up to 24 feet square, and sometimes larger. Single-car garages are generally 12 feet wide by 18 to 24 feet deep.
By comparison, a Mazda Miata is almost exactly 13 feet long and 5 feet, 6 inches wide. So it sounds like you should have plenty of space, right? But that’s before you add in the washing machine, water heater, workbench, toolbox, bicycles and whatever else you’ve got stored in the garage – like maybe another car. Plus, the Miata is still small compared to a Ford Mustang at 15 feet, 6 inches long, and both an E30 BMW and a Corvette measure about 14 feet, 6 inches.
In addition to the basic dimensions of the car, you need more than just enough space to roll the car in and climb out the window. You need at least a couple of feet on each side to use a floor jack, and 3 or 4 feet is much nicer if you don’t want to dent the family wagon.
Efficient use of space is critical if you’re going to make your garage an effective place to get work done on the racecar. The first step is to know what you’re working with. Get out your tape measure and get the dimensions of your space from wall to wall. Then measure your car, or look up the dimensions if you don’t have the actual car handy. Be sure to get the width as well as overall length, and if you drive a production car, consider whether the doors are short (4-door style) or long (2-door style).
While you have the tape handy, don’t forget to measure the distance from the floor to the ceiling. If you hope to install a lift, your overhead space is critical. The ceiling and roof also affect your lighting decisions and your insulation and heating plans. If you have a lot of space overhead, you may want to create some long-term storage up there, too.
Armed with the relevant dimensions, you can start planning your space. This can be as simple as sketching things on a standard piece of graph paper, but there are also software solutions, like a free software package called Sweet Home 3D, found at www.sweethome3d.com. This software is downloadable from the web for the Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems, and it comes in 16 different languages.
The neat thing about Sweet Home is that it builds a 3D view of your space and even allows a point of view walkthrough of your design. You can plug in doors, windows, workbenches and all kinds of other shapes. You can adjust the size of any item and get a good sense of your plan before you start building benches and moving tools. Free add-on software lets you insert well-rendered cars and other features.
Place the cars first, because after the doors and windows, cars are limited in their placement. Then place your workbench and major appliances, like an air compressor, early in the process. If you don’t get the big items in first, you’ll never get them in at all.
With accurate measurements of cars and other large objects, you can create several possible plans and quickly see how things will fit. This is where the 3D view of the software really helps you visualize the space.
Don’t be afraid to get creative at this point in the process – it’s just a piece of graph paper (or some space on your hard disk). Take your time and really think it through.
Start at Ground Level
Most people start with a garage that has a concrete floor, but it’s not too rare to find older workshops with wood floors and, in some cases, people are starting with a pole building with a dirt or gravel floor. Obviously, it’s just about impossible to work on cars without a hard floor – jacks and jack stands will sink into dirt, and moisture will be a constant threat. Most garages are built with a 3-inch slab of unreinforced concrete. This is plenty of flooring for any car, or even for a four-post lift, but not enough for a two-post lift. For a two-post lift, you want at least 4.5 inches of high-strength concrete, and even then you should have the concrete tested.
One thing you should do with any garage is paint the floor. You want a sealing epoxy paint developed for garages or a polyaspartic paint for best results. When you’re choosing paint, remember that lighter colors are better because you can get some light to bounce off the floor and get more light underneath the car. It’s not enough to work with, but every bit helps. Checkerboard floors look sexy, but they don’t spread the light. Similarly, consider painting your walls, shelves and workbench white to help diffuse light around the garage.
If you are considering going with floor tiles rather than painting, try to avoid stick-on floor tiles. Sticky race tires have a tendency to rip them right off the concrete.
Juice It Up
Electricity is the most important service in your shop. Even if your garage is already wired with outlets, chances are you’ll want more circuits. You might need new dedicated circuits for a compressor, 240-volt welder, lift and any additional lighting you want to install. You may also want a separate circuit for your workbench outlets or for ceiling-mounted droplights and extension cords.
The best way to plan your electrical services is to get out your pad of graph paper and make another map of your workspace. You can overlay this map with your floor plan to make sure you’ve got everything located properly.
Don’t forget to take a look at your circuit panel and count the available number of breaker slots. You need one breaker slot for every 120-volt circuit and two slots for a 240-volt circuit. You should also find out whether your house has 50-amp, 100-amp, or some other level of service if you plan to run a lot of current in your garage.
If your plans call for installing an electric lift but you know that the actual installation is likely to be several years away, it doesn’t hurt to install the conduit and wires and simply coil the loose ends at either end of the circuit. Just don’t connect the wires to the circuit panel until you’re ready to use them.
A word of caution: Electricity is the most useful service available to you, but it is also the most dangerous service to install and work with. You can be killed if you’re not careful with your wiring, or you can set your garage full of cars on fire. Always use proper work methods, adhere to the building and wiring codes and, most of all, use common sense when working on your wiring.
Stay Warm and Bright
One key to a successful garage is to make sure the place is comfortable. That means heat and light. If your garage is attached to your house, it may already have a heater vent to keep it warm, or at least a heating duct nearby that you can tap for a heating vent. If that’s not possible, there is a range of electric heaters in various sizes that can take the edge off the winter cold. If you opt for a kerosene or propane heater, be sure you install a carbon monoxide alarm at the same time!
There are many different options when it comes to overhead lighting in your shop. In general, new is far better than old. When it comes to fluorescent lights, you do not want the old standard T12 bulbs any more. These are the old-style shop lights that hum and flicker, plus they don’t work well when it’s cold. The newer, narrower T8 fluorescents cost a little more but they use an instant-on ballast, and they take less energy to produce the same light. As a bonus, they don’t hum. T8 is really the budget choice these days, as T12 is being phased out of the market.
The other items to get are a few halogen work lights – you can get them cheap at the discount tool stores, and they double as heaters. At the same time, invest in a nice retracting reel droplight, or a retracting power cord you can attach a droplight to.
When you plan your lights it’s tempting to mount the lights right over the car, but it’s better if you put the light off to the side because it will spread the light better into your engine bay – and you get some reflection off the concrete.
You always want to err on the high side with lights, because while it’s easy to work in low light levels when you’re 20 years old, as we age our eyes need more light. The rule to remember is: You always need more lights than you think you’re going to need.
Prepare for Heavy Lifting
Auto lifts are wonderful because you can comfortably and safely walk under a car, or work on the brakes and suspension at any convenient height. But lifts are expensive, and the two-post lifts most racers want will probably not work in a standard garage both because the concrete floors are not designed for the stress and the ceilings are not tall enough – you need 12 foot ceilings for most two-post lifts.
However, all is not lost! You can usually fit in a four-post lift, which will cost far less, and with the proper options will allow you to lift the car enough to remove the wheels and work. Many four-post lifts can also be purchased with wheels, so you can move them around a little. Most four-post lifts run on a dedicated 240-volt circuit, so be sure your wiring is up to the task before you lay out your money.
The thing to remember about any lift is that while a 10-foot ceiling in your garage may look like plenty of room, even a Spec Miata is about 4 feet tall, so by the time you lift it up 6 feet, you risk hitting the ceiling with your hardtop. If your garage has a 9-foot ceiling, you’re limited to 5 feet. Luckily, most lifts allow you to put in a stop to prevent ceiling accidents. Also, remember that most lifts take up about 12 feet of width, by the time you include the posts and the power pack. However, with enough ceiling clearance, you can often park one car on the lift and another underneath for storage.
If you plan to do a lot of engine removal and installation, you’ll want to invest in an engine hoist. You can get these in the standard shop crane style, or hang a chain hoist from the ceiling in your garage. If you opt for the shop crane (which is much more versatile) your best option is the kind that folds up – even the lightest one is plenty for most SCCA engines and other heavy parts. If you opt for the chain hoist, you must be absolutely certain that your rafters are up to the task – you don’t want the garage ceiling to collapse on top of you, your racecar and your formerly suspended engine.
A Different Kind of Racing Budget
Any big project always costs more than you expect. Use a scheduled budget to keep track of each project with detailed costs for supplies and equipment and a time estimate for completion. Don’t forget labor costs if you decide to hire some of this work out. If you’re doing the work yourself, be sure to account for the cost of tools you’ll need to buy. Prioritize this list both in terms of what’s important to you and what you need to get done first. Don’t worry too much if you get behind on the schedule – everyone does. The trick is to enjoy the process as much as the results.
Looking for more workshop and garage tips? The author of this article, Jeff Zurschmeide, is also the author of How to Design, Build & Equip Your Automotive Workshop on a Budget. Pick up a copy is at www.amazon.com.
