Selling up: best way

[FridgeFreezer]

4 hours ago, lo-fi said:

I may yet keep one, but... A mate of mine bought a Ford Ranger recently. Its so useful by comparison, it's quiet, doesn't leak, cheap and doesn't break all the time

Using an interesting classic as a daily driver is a curse - it means any problem has to be sorted and the novelty of the "character" quickly gets old and becomes regular old discomfort and inconvenience!

I daily drove a Freelander for ages and it was great, but as the 109 was off the road the FL got off-roaded and ended up suffering more than it should... now I drive a 2WD Jag/Mondeo,  it's quiet, comfy, quick, cheap to run & service and it means I only drive the 109 off-road and only have to work on cars as a fun hobby rather than to get me to work on Monday.

An ecobox or van / pickup might be a good daily, and you'll appreciate the 109 that much more when you get into it.

[Gazzar]

Are you looking for a 2a or a series 3 bulkhead?

[lo-fi]

1 hour ago, FridgeFreezer said:

Using an interesting classic as a daily driver is a curse - it means any problem has to be sorted and the novelty of the "character" quickly gets old and becomes regular old discomfort and inconvenience!

Ah, I don't daily drive it!! I've never understood how anybody copes with a series as a daily. I'd have set fire to it or been bankrupt a long time ago, I'm sure! Lol. I have a nice comfortable, mile eating A4 quattro as a daily. Poor old 109 hadn't been used for months until I took it out last week when the audi had a puncture I couldn't be bothered to fix there and then. 

1 hour ago, Gazzar said:

Are you looking for a 2a or a series 3 bulkhead?

2a, if you know of anything? 

Edited March 14, 2020 by lo-fi

[smallfry]

7 hours ago, lo-fi said:

I'm the tender age of 39.

Wish I was 39  You are far too young for flagging enthusiasm ! 

But yes. Steam. An interest of mine too, and for 18 months I was a volunteer at the Kent and East Sussex Railway doing building maintenance, and I only really wanted to drive the locos 

Before that, for a long time I was a volunteer at an aviation museum, and strangely I gave it up at 39. I had become bored with it to a degree, but mainly because I fell in that I was spending my own money and a lot of time to ultimately feather someone elses nest. Same with the railway really. Not that I did either of them for any sort of gain, as I enjoyed it and met some interesting people, but it did eventually leave me feeling somewhat resentful.  

[smallfry]

3 hours ago, FridgeFreezer said:

Using an interesting classic as a daily driver is a curse - it means any problem has to be sorted and the novelty of the "character" quickly gets old and becomes regular old discomfort and inconvenience!

An ecobox or van / pickup might be a good daily, and you'll appreciate the 109 that much more when you get into it.

Well there are some words of wisdom.

You will save some wear and tear too.

 

[Retroanaconda]

I wouldn’t recommend a Ford Ranger - I have twelve of them at work and have to keep a spare one to maintain uptime as they’re so unreliable! Big problems with electrical harnesses. A shame as they’re otherwise good tools.

[Stellaghost]

7 hours ago, Retroanaconda said:

I wouldn’t recommend a Ford Ranger - I have twelve of them at work and have to keep a spare one to maintain uptime as they’re so unreliable! Big problems with electrical harnesses. A shame as they’re otherwise good tools.

Had ours for a year now and it's never missed a beat, great car regards Stephen

Edited March 15, 2020 by Stellaghost

[Snagger]

On 3/13/2020 at 2:28 PM, Badger110 said:

My wife just looked over my shoulder whilst reading this, patted me on the head and said ' i know how that feels '  and wandered off....😂

 

 

What? She’s calling you a broken down, incomplete and frustrating project?  Seems a mite harsh... 🤔

[Snagger]

Definitely sell off two of them.  As you said, they should be a pleasure, not a millstone, and as well as making you miserable and poorer, they’ll only deteriorate.

Profit margin aside, I’d say try to sell the two projects as complete as they are - it’ll benefit those looking for a project, keep two more vehicles going and will save you a huge amount of time and hassle of stripping and selling bits of piecemeal and then dealing with the leftovers.  Dismantling vehicles which are already bringing you down is going to be as much fun as slamming your manhood in a door, and dealing with the bored chancers who don’t pay up is going to get very annoying very quickly.  Best a clean sale of a whole vehicle without any labour.

As for the V8, keep it and use the money from the others to buy a runabout.

I agree entirely with the others that too many projects becomes a source of stress, not pleasure.  I often feel that way about my RRC, as much as I love the car.  Having that, the 109 and a mildly problematic Lightweight was daft, though great when they were behaving.

[Stellaghost]

Lo-fi Just had a disconcerting thought so just to clear up things for me please tell me you are staying on the forum would not like to see your knowledge and insights disapear regards Stephen 

[Gazzar]

12 hours ago, lo-fi said:

Ah, I don't daily drive it!! I've never understood how anybody copes with a series as a daily. I'd have set fire to it or been bankrupt a long time ago, I'm sure! Lol. I have a nice comfortable, mile eating A4 quattro as a daily. Poor old 109 hadn't been used for months until I took it out last week when the audi had a puncture I couldn't be bothered to fix there and then. 

2a, if you know of anything? 

6 cyl?

[lo-fi]

46 minutes ago, Gazzar said:

6 cyl?

Yes please! 

My dilemma is actually not whether to break the projects, but whether it's worth assembling them. They're both currently in pieces. I do have pics of the SW as it arrived to me, and can obviously photograph the pieces. But... I'm wondering how attractive a disassembled project is... I'm likely to get the usual flood of vultures looking for the juicy/rare bits anyhow. 

Don't daily drive the 109, it's purely been a toy/utility thing. 

I've been through a few steam projects and never regretted putting all the work into something I don't own. The pride seeing it gleaming and alive, the experience, the skills I've managed to soak up and the people I've met pay ten-fold what owning it ever would. I have railway volunteering to thank in part for my skills set that's been so kindly commented on. Also: I don't pay the bills! I've got a few young chaps in my team - 19 and 21 - who are beginning the same journey I did. It's wonderful seeing them grow in skill and confidence. That being said, I do understand that not all volunteers gets treated so well as I have, which is very sad. I worked for years with a chap who actually owned his own loco. He was always super clear that those that help him get to enjoy it the same way he did. It felt like ours, not just his. It's a great shame not everyone gets that same experience. 

I'll still be around, @Stellaghost! Many interesting projects and talented engineers worth following here

[Troll Hunter]

I consider myself so very lucky.  I have a 1991 CSW that I've owned since 1995 and I'm now into a complete tarmac up rebuild.  I had the 3.5 V8 swapped for a 300Tdi in 2003 and never regretted it.  Now, during my rebuild, I am treating it as a hobby, not a chore. This is important, because if it becomes a chore you will come to recent it.  Sometimes I'll work in my shop for six hours, and other days I'll just enjoy going fishing.  I'm fortunate in that I have another vehicle as my daily driver, but I am under pressure from my wife to complete the project, since it has now been over 3 years, and she wants us to go on a road trip and camping.  By the way, I'm just past 77 yrs., and I had my first Landy in the early sixties, so Landy love doesn't die with years.

Mike

[Snagger]

I wouldn’t bother doing proper reassembly, just enough for them to be safely loaded onto trailers:

 a) you don’t want to waste your time and money on them, and;

 b) the prospective buyer will need to strip them again anyway, so you’d be increasing their work and hiding the condition.

As long as they can easily see how complete the vehicles are to make decent offers, I don’t think it’ll make much difference to a serious project buyer whether they fully assembled or not.

[Anderzander]

A couple of thoughts:

It took me 10 years to get the 80” done - and now I’m in a position where I couldn’t afford to buy it and I love driving it.

I also have a garage full of motorcycle projects and something funny happening with my health. Some of those bikes aren’t finished after 20+ years.... eek ....  BUT; I have the space to store them, I wouldn’t be able to replace them once they were gone, I do still like them (even if only in cycles!), and in 12 years I’m going to be needing things to do in my retirement...

Now I did sell off some projects - they were things I realised I wouldn’t enjoy doing, nor enjoy done... so they went. The rest I’m happy to stash and wait for the time/love/energy to return.

 

My suggestion would be - don’t make the decision when you are sick of them ... wait until that passes, then if they mean nothing to you - nor would their fully sorted state mean anything to you ... then I’d consider getting rid of them.

 

[lo-fi]

It's a good point, but sitting on all this stuff hinders my ability to do other things and the more I trip over it, the more sick I get if it. At least one project - the SW - is going for sure. If, once I've recovered some cash, space and head space from that I feel differently, there's a slim chance I might stash the 88 bits. 

However... One further issue I have is that once I understand something, it's boring. I can competently rebuild an engine or gearbox, fit EFI, restore a bulkhead, rebuild an axle, weld a chassis... But doing so more than once is just the grind of hard work as there's no reward in figuring how to do it. The value in anything to me is in having something to learn from it, and Land Rovers have no more secrets to reveal and no more intellectual challenges to face. It's a genuine curse in many ways! I wish I had the setting that would drive me to slog through because I covet the end result, but that's not how I work. It's the skills I carry with me project to project that are important, not the things themselves. I spent all that time building a winch for the 109, but I've not actually used it once! 

[Anderzander]

Fundamental question - do you enjoy driving them ?

[FridgeFreezer]

I find it hard to believe there's nothing left to tinker with, improve, modify or otherwise fettle on any Land Rover - I can think of tonnes of things to do on mine if I had infinite time & money... part of my motivation for doing the welding course I'm currently on is I can think of a load of neat stuff that could be fabricated in ali... same story when I got my lathe, and my tiny mill, and learned to lay out PCB's, and write software, and basic CAD, and, and, and...

I may never get round to most of it (and lot of it would be fairly pointless "just because" kind of projects) but I certainly don't think I'll ever look at any of my vehicles and think "yep, that's 100% perfect, nothing whatsoever left to do".

I definitely feel you on "project fatigue" though - some days I go out to the garage and it's just a wall of cr*p piled up, can't get to anything, can't find tools, not enough space to work, everything in the way of everything else and even small jobs become a massive ball-ache... but it passes. Best thing you can do is do something else for a bit - or just stop and do some tidying up & sorting out, which can include putting some junk on eBay to clear space. Then, next time you go out to the workshop it's a bit tidier, more organised, you can see the wood for the trees and get on with stuff a bit easier.

[Anderzander]

5 hours ago, FridgeFreezer said:

...some days I go out to the garage and it's just a wall of cr*p piled up, can't get to anything, can't find tools, not enough space to work, everything in the way of everything else and even small jobs become a massive ball-ache...

God it was so cathartic to read that ... 😅 

[smallfry]

1 hour ago, Anderzander said:

God it was so cathartic to read that ... 😅 

Yep. And me !

[Gazzar]

I'm sure I wrote that, I've certainly thought that.

[lo-fi]

10 hours ago, Anderzander said:

Fundamental question - do you enjoy driving them ?

In small doses. Not as much as I used to, for sure. I think my tolerance for "character" has diminished as I've aged. 

 

5 hours ago, FridgeFreezer said:

I find it hard to believe there's nothing left to tinker with, improve, modify or otherwise fettle on any Land Rover - I can think of tonnes of things to do on mine if I had infinite time & money... part of my motivation for doing the welding course I'm currently on is I can think of a load of neat stuff

I enjoyed that phase. Still a bunch of stuff I could make, but I'm still struggling with the motivation to do so. I've just set my mill up to cut helical gears, so maybe I'll make myself an ATB diff. Possibly manufacture a diff carrier that's not made of cheap cheddar and iron filings. That would be interesting... But doesn't help with the projects! 

Great approach having a tidy up, diverting to something else, keeping the workshop clear etc. Tried all that! It made space for machine tools... Which I'm quite enjoying, it has to be said. 

[jason110]

Hi, dropped you a PM with regards to the station wagon. 
 

jason. 

[FridgeFreezer]

3 hours ago, smallfry said:

4 hours ago, Anderzander said:

God it was so cathartic to read that ... 😅 

Yep. And me !

I think we all get it, just people don't often mention it - @Shackleton touches it a few times in some of his videos. A few occasions in the lab, even when we were madly up against it, we'd tool down, have a tidy up & sweep up and even just shut the doors and go get some sleep as you hit a point where you're just making noise and not moving forward with anything.

I tend to judge how the day's going by how many inanimate objects I tell to f*** off in the garage , and if I hit a certain point of zero forward progress or total frustration I close the door & go do something else rather than just push on and make things worse.

I have to say I'm finding TIG practice is a fairly zen thing to be doing in the garage, as long as you can get to the damn bench to weld on it

[TSD]

13 hours ago, FridgeFreezer said:

some days I go out to the garage and it's just a wall of cr*p piled up, can't get to anything, can't find tools, not enough space to work, everything in the way of everything else and even small jobs become a massive ball-ache... but it passes. Best thing you can do is do something else for a bit - or just stop and do some tidying up & sorting out, which can include putting some junk on eBay to clear space.

This is called a 'gumption trap'...

2 hours ago, FridgeFreezer said:

I have to say I'm finding TIG practice is a fairly zen thing to be doing in the garage

... named by the author in "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"