What did you buy or do as an adult cos you couldn't as a child?

I got down to my last savings and faced having to move back in with family. I decided to use up some of my last supplies and spend a couple of weeks getting my little project car in good shape before planning to drive it home. IIRC it was around February. One of the things I had was a large aluminum radiator that was much bigger than the original. I thought I had fully drained the block, but I had been making custom tubes and welding up all of the radiator support structure and ducting. So I had used water many times just to leak test the thing.

I also had just done aluminum heads, long tube headers, intake, and modified the engine mounts to set the motor back a few inches. There were a lot of potential issues to sort out.

When I got it running, it blew white smoke when it got warm. It wasn't terrible at first, but it was a major disappointment. Still I pushed through and put off the issue while finishing the paint work. Based on compression tests it looked like a bad head gasket and that is only a few hours of work for me to fix.

The whole car was still in primer and I was changing colors, so it was a huge job to prep, jam, and paint it. Plus, while I was sick of the chemicals all the time, my project car is basically my business card if I ever want to get a job in a shop as a painter for someone else. So that job is important to get perfect.

It came down to the last few days before I had to leave, I pulled the head, and apparently some water had been in the block still at some point from doing the radiator. It froze but didn't blow the freeze plugs like it should have done and instead cracked the block. I was out of money and options at that point so I wound up driving it to a friend's house and putting it in his backyard for a year until I could fix it All of that happened in Atlanta. My folks live in California.

I got a Pontiac Fiero for $400 because a person did not understand the suspension problem it was having but I did. I fixed it, got a job in a machine shop, and eventually a job porting heads for nostalgia dragsters. That let me build an engine over a few months. I replaced the Fiero passenger seat with the engine and drove that back to Atlanta. Tossed in the motor in the camaro, while sleeping a the snake infested shed, and without a cherry picker. Then I sold the Fiero and sorted out the camaro on the road. There were a bunch of problems that happened on the journey, but that is not unusual for so many new and custom things mixed together.

The sad thing is that when I was disabled on a bicycle ride to work in 2014, I had that motor apart again and was adding new pistons, rods, better heads, and a B&M mini blower to the thing. I had the heads off, and there was nothing I could do to seal it up. I never got in shape to fix it, and had to nearly give it away when I was forced by my folks. That was as devastating to me as the injury itself. That car was a part of me and my identity at that point. It was my battle scar from the hell of the times and struggle I had to overcome.