The Myth of the “Finished” Rig

There is a specific lie we all tell our wives—and honestly, ourselves: “I just need one more weekend, and then the Jeep is finally done.”

We know it’s not true. They know it’s not true. But we say it anyway.

In Episode 19 of the DPV Podcast, Alex and I tackled this delusion head-on. We asked the question that haunts every gearhead: Is your project ever actually finished?

The short answer? No. Absolutely not.

Unless you’re building a Concourse restoration where you’re measuring the gap on spark plugs with a micrometer, or you’re selling the thing, it’s never done. And honestly? It shouldn’t be.

The “Done Enough” Victory

We recorded this episode while I was in the middle of a full-blown panic prep for the Rubicon Trail. My Jeep, “Big Chief,” has been under the knife for what feels like an eternity. I finally got paint on it—a real, actual, one-color paint job. For a guy who usually deals in fifty shades of primer, this was a massive win. It looked perfect… from about 40 feet away.

But here’s the victory: We took it to an ORV park for a shakedown and immediately scratched it on a tree.

Alex laughed, but I was relieved. If it stayed pristine, I’d be terrified to drive it. Now that the first scratch is out of the way, it’s not a show car anymore(not that is ever was haha) It’s a wheeler. That’s the mission. We don’t build these things to park them; we build them to use them.

Skill Creep vs. Budget Creep

We also talked about a concept I like to call “Skill Creep.”

When I started wrenching on my old Grand Cherokee back in the day, my fabrication skills were… let’s say, “optimistic.” I was trimming bumpers with a hacksaw and installing budget boosts. As the years go by, you learn to weld, you learn suspension geometry, and suddenly you look at the work you did five years ago and think, “Who let this guy own tools?”

That’s why the project is never done. Even if the parts don’t break, your standards get higher. You want to redo that bracket you made when you didn’t know how to run a bead. It’s painful looking back at your old work, but that’s just proof you’re getting better.

The Takeaway

If you’re sitting on the sidelines waiting for your rig to be “perfect” before you take it out, you’re missing the point. It’s never going to be perfect.

Get it “done enough.” Get it running. Go break it. Then fix it again. That’s the victory.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go weld D-rings on my trailer and figure out why I decided to build a fuel tank skid plate two days before a 1,000-mile road trip.

Wheel it, wreck it, wrench it, repeat!

-Josh