I know that when you take cars apart the space needed expands by about 3X so I'm sure the garage won't feel like it's big for long. I also hope to use the space as a photo shooting space after the dust settles on fixing the car. I have so many boxes of parts taking up space now.
I debated about the ceiling structure quite a bit. I thought of doing a vaulted ceiling, or maybe using trusses, but two things, well three things pointed away from that.
First, the current location for the main heat pump compressor for the house is right in the middle of the new garage bay wall so it will have to be relocated to the far side of the garage slab. Before the garage is built. I was thinking I could run the power and refrigerant lines under the slab, but an AC guy said that wasn't a good idea. So that leaves running them up the wall and then through the attic and down the other wall to the unit. So a raised ceiling would make that trickier. I'm thinking I'll have to build a boxed channel where the walls and ceiling will be, move the unit, and then pour the foundation and build the garage. Easy Peasy? Hmm, maybe.
Second, I was thinking of making the ceiling beefy enough to be able to handle pulling an engine with a hoist. I've got a nice section of I-Beam that a chain hoist could run on, but that adds further to the weight to be supported. Can trusses handle such a concentrated load? Five hundred pounds for a full dress motor with trans attached? I haven't had an appointment with a structural engineer yet to address that question.
Third, I've read different things about possible delays in getting trusses made and the possibility that they may actually cost more than stick building a roof. Now that timber costs have fallen to almost pre-pandemic levels and building demand has slowed somewhat, maybe that's not as big a concern. I wasn't going to store anything in the attic, so that's not a factor in the decision.
I've been thinking of installing a split unit after final inspections partially to avoid the required Manual J (heat load) calculations and making it one less thing to wrap my head around. I could simply run some conduit to a box on the wall from the breaker box, that might be a good way to avoid dealing with the insulation for a later installation.
I think I like that black and white image of my car well enough that I'll make it into a T-shirt. The master file is high enough resolution.