mine is a rolling restoration. LOL
budgets are nice if you'll willing to stick to them then they will simply cost you time.
Example lets say you discover a major issue and it will cost 2000$ to fix and you can only afford 1000$ well either you spend 1000$ a little at a time or save up a longer time and hit it in one shot. so it may take you 10 years of time to stick to a budget.
otherwise you get it done asap and pay lots of money.
reviving the car on a budget is going to depend on the car. this is why a lot of people look forever to get the right car. you look it over and evaluate it.
I take it you looked over the car and feel safe in what you see. sometimes your not sure what your looking at until its too late.
structurally check under the suspension arms at the frame rail, look at the shock tower bottoms at the frame rail engine cradle junction.
make sure the rails are 'not soft' make sure there are no holes in the frame rail tops in that area. our cars are notorious for cancer here.
road dirt builds up here because the rail has a lip here and traps junk, then the water absorbs into the junk and well 24/7 365 wet equals no more steel.
any cancer located forward of the shock towers isn't bad because the suspension will be resting on good metal you hope.
so long as the rad support can hold a radiator it can be replaced later.
any cowl rust just ruins the interior and can be fixed later.
the bolt on stuff is easy so long as the rust hasn't compromised anything structural.
5 years ago i knew nothing about cars, and told myself i would never have it in me to take a car apart and be able to assemble it back together. some things seemed impossible at the time, but if you break a job into 1000 little pieces then it can be done.
as your skills improve then you can tackle harder and harder jobs.
my car was a boat anchor and i was oblivious to that fact.
the hardest part of doing a front suspension is the spring, once you compress it and treat it like a bomb and get it out of the way, its maybe 14 nuts and bolts and the entire front end comes apart in pieces.
the hardest part of doing the brakes is dealing with the brake lines, trying to remove them, trying to install new ones, and then trying to reconnect everything, its 100% worse then anything else on the car seriously it can drive you insane stopping all leaks.
Frustration will be your biggest obstacle. bolts will snap, nuts will round off, things will need to be cut off nothing will be easy until all the old stuff is gone and your work area is a clean slate to start on, and once your there and you clean something up like new you want to continue and do more since your already past the point of no return.
take it slow, take pictures, you always have a shoulder to cry on here.
if you see this:
you will need more then bolt on parts.
