Anyone upgraded M54 to M62/N62 or anything else?

[workingonit]

I see that you're another "shade-tree mechanic" (but without a shade-tree for cover) like me. My 3-car garage is so filled with:

• my wife's precious Lexus,
• my precious home-made camping trailer (a 4'x8' unit),
• with a zero-turn and two push mowers,
• a wheeled string trimmer,
• a lot of home repair, auto repair, and lawn-use hand equipment:
  • polesaws,
  • brush-cutters,
  • trenchers,
  • T-post puller and installer tools,
  • air compressor,
  • wheeled charger,
  • two welders, bicycles,
  • wheeled generator (another one is installed inside the trailer),
  • circular saws, sawzall, table saw, hand saws,etc.,
  • some antiques,
  • coolers,
  • jack stands,
  • 17 gallons of 87 octane gas, a can of ethanol free gas, and two cans of white gas,
  • Rhino ramps (a set of steel ramps live in the driveway/car corral area,
  • a convection/microwave oven I never installed,
  • and a Chevy 327 engine,

that if I was to try a car-rebuild project there, I simply couldn't. Last time I did, my wife made me push the car out to put her car inside, before a hailstorm came through.

Oh, since that occasion, I sold my engine lift to the neighbor that I got the X5 from, since I knew I'd not likely ever use it inside the garage again. I have a different lift that I used to have mounted in the bed of my '04 Chevy 2500HD (used to lift engines, and generators, when I was building race cars or actually racing), that I could re-mount and use if/when I might need to, but probably won't, as I'm getting too old to be doing that sort of heavy lifting stuff, alone in my driveway.

So, since I'm forced to work outside on car projects, on a sandy/gravelly/leaf-strewn driveway/car corral area in front of the garage, behind the house (out of sight from the street), I put down 2.5 sheets of 4'x8', 3/4" thick treated plywood over the sand, secured a 4x4 with rebar to the front of the plywood "work surface", used two flat cinder blocks placed against the 4x4 as a front barrier to keep the steel ramps from sliding forward into the garage, and voila, there's my outdoor workspace.

the old way I worked outside, circa 2022

new "workspace" platform, from 2023 onwards

I'll use a 8'x8' pop-up canopy (from my camping gear) if I'll have a multi-day (once a multi-month) project going on, or even for some one-day projects in rain or excessive heat. I had one canopy get destroyed in a major storm, after it was up for months, but since I had two, bought for $50 apiece, it wasn't a big deal.

Also, since I'm working outside, and don't want to lose anything, I'll put parts in one box, tools in another (usually puppy pad boxes, since we go thru so many). We've got squirrels, possums, raccoons, semi-feral cats, free-ranging chickens & roosters, sometimes a neighbor's dogs & goats & turkeys, and occasionally his nosy 20-something kid coming into the workspace, so tools and parts MIGHT go missing, if I let them stay outside, unwatched.