Jonathan Bigaouette

That actually looks way better then I would have expected. One of my contractors painted his car with flat black spray paint. We laughed at him until he took a screwdriver and put a nice big scratch on the hood, then he pulled a $2 can of paint out of his glove compartment and made the scratch disappear. His paint job always looks brand new and he only spends about $6 per year to keep it that way.

^^^ Not to derail the thread too bad but why would you buy a smart car if your looking for efficiency? Don't they only get mid to high 30's?

The main problems you are going to have with trying to rig up a super efficient car is going to be longevity. If it were that easy to build something that got super good mileage, was safe, and lasted some car maker would already have cornered the market. And one did, just go buy a mid 90's VW with a 1.9TDI (diesel). I own an old one and a new one and they both get mid 40's low 50's for mileage and if you take care of them you will easily get 500k miles out of them. Plus if there is ever a fuel shortage diesel will be the last thing to run out (most people drive gassers) and diesel will be good for years (if not decades) whereas gas is pretty much useless within a year.

The main thing is to buy property that is in a county that wants the tax revenue from your improved property more then micromanaging you. When I bought my land I called the county before I closed and asked what kind of permitting I needed to build an off grid cabin (more of a house really 1600sf+ a 3 car garage) and they said "just pull an electric permit its state law and don' t piss of the DNR"

When you get a little ways out and in the right location they just don't care what your doing as long as you don't pollute.