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How anal are you?


Tetsu0san

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Hi all

My Wife thinks I am bordering on being an OCD when it comes to my Land Rover, and indeed all the cars me and the wife own. I hope I am not the only one...

Basically, I have made spreadsheet upon spreadsheet with regards to each car, the biggest of which belong to the Land Rover's that I have owned. We have a Renault Scenic and a Citroen Picasso which are out main cars, and these spreadsheets contain servicing information such as mileage, date, what was done etc. And for each car I have a section in an A4 binder where I keep all the paperwork, receipts etc. I think this is reasonable. We recently bought a Beetle to get running again and this also has its own section in the folder with receipts and details on the rebuild too, as well as its own spreadsheet.

BUT, on the current Land Rover I have a spreadsheet that goes a little further. As it had done 296K when i bought it I duly filled this information into my new spreadsheet (purchase date, mileage and any servicing work I did on it) and drove it for a bit. But then I changed the engine to one from my Discovery which had only done 118K, so I made the spreadsheet have 2 mileage columns, one for the car itself and one for the mileage of the engine. So as I fill in details for the next service or job on the spreadsheet based on the odometer it will also increase the listed mileage of the engine. And when the odometer was changed for one with 73K on it the spreadsheet has this as an additional column which again increases the mileage for the other two.

I also create spreadsheets on work that needs to be done on each car and parts that need to be purchased or acquired, and these also have a priority column and a 'got' and a 'done' column. This proved very useful when I was doing my engine upgrade in the 110 as I could keep track of where I was, and if something else came up during the build I could amend or add this to the list of stuff. It almost tells the story of the build.

But after all this the Wife thinks I am mental and I need to get out more. Do I? Am I really that bad?

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I've finally got 'round to putting a sticker in the cubby with the last oil change date on. Prior to that, I just relied on my memory... That's as planned as it gets.

There's a mental to-do list, with a rough order of "really need to do", "must get 'round to, sometime" and "that'd be nice"...

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I've finally got 'round to putting a sticker in the cubby with the last oil change date on. Prior to that, I just relied on my memory... That's as planned as it gets.

There's a mental to-do list, with a rough order of "really need to do", "must get 'round to, sometime" and "that'd be nice"...

I'm just like that. And in the end things often only get done when I can't put if off any longer.

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I keep my 110's vital documents in a loose leaf binder, my chassis change papers will be added to this folder [in there own folder at present], I keep a record of every end of day mileage & when every fuel load is put in [cost & amount of fuel & mileage reading] other info noted in my mileage book is due dates for MOT/Insurance & road tax & next timing belt change & when the 20Tdi/current R380 & LT230 gear box were fitted, , so not as detailed as your records but enough to maintain a record.

as your going to completely rebuild the beetle I'm sure a detailed history record of things needed/bought will be very useful.

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I had a similar spreadsheet on the go, but since I decided to join the 21st century and get one of these flashy smart phones I've been tracking stuff using an app called Roadtrip.

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Very cool, and because I can just put the info in on the station forecourt I never forget to put in mileage and fuel data - which was the main flaw with my previous system!

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If you don't fill the tank right to the top you can't really measure the MPG accurately as you don't have a fixed point each time to reference from (ie. the full tank).

The app can allow for fill ups that don't fill it completely, there's a flag you can select which discounts it from the overall MPG calculations.

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Spread sheets as well as my black journal that records all those stupid thread sizes and prt numbers it takes you forever to find... the sad thing is I've pretty much got it with me all the time! never know when you need to jot something down... kinda comes with the territory of owning a nice LR... I bet 99% of this forum's vehicles previous owners didn't record such things thus they needed to be rebuilt when entering our care!... :moglite:

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Well I saw it in Russia in 2009 if that's any help.

Mike

Thats the blue one, which I still have. The new red one though, god only knows...

No when it comes to being anal about paperwork, not at all, I am captain chaos with regards to paperwork. But I like to keep my car in good shape.

Daan

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I just like to have paperwork and it really annoys me when people just throw it all away. My 110 has done nearly 300,000 miles and is nearly 30 years old. Can you just imagine how much history that is? But when I bought it there was no paperwork apart from one previous MOT and the v5. That is just such a shame.

But perhaps I am going over the top in making paperwork for it.

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I have a black book detailing all the alterations and new part No.s for the upgraded parts and in that is a photo copy of the CoC, reg doc and currently expired keuringbewijs, all will be brought up to date and correct photocopies will be put in the little plastic slip I stuck in the front cover when I had a blue peter moment.

For the consumption I will get an app to go on the tablet to keep an eye on that, I did start to do an excel spreadsheet with costs so far but abandoned that about 3 months ago when I hit the €3000 euro mark, decided that I no longer needed to know how much was being spent just as long as I knew the new part numbers for future replacements,

I do know a guy who has it as bad as you Tet, he has everything you do and also does a tyre depreciation chart too :blink:

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I run notepad files with 'stuff-done', with a milage next to it. They are grouped into years and months.

A binder has all the Beast receipts in it, so I know where stuff came from and when. I don't fuss for the car or van.

The beast also has a cost spread sheet just to scare us ;)

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I don't tend to keep receipts for things or track costs, that would just depress me!

It would be different for a vehicle I intended to sell sure, but there's no reason to hang on to stuff indefinitely the way I see it. For example I only keep the latest MOT "certificate" (called a receipt now I guess). The rest get shredded, except for ones that pre-date the online record system as it's useful to have a record of mileage over time.

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I don't consider it particularly mad to track costs and, more importantly, vehicle performance over time. Nor do I consider it mad to own a Defender at all, as that thread would seem to indicate.

For example, the way I see it MPG is a half-decent indicator of the general condition and health of the engine/drive train. If I suddenly start getting 25 or lower without good reason then I would look into it - as the last 7,500 miles (and indeed other data collected informally prior to that) has shown it sitting well above 30mpg under normal conditions.

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I just like to have paperwork and it really annoys me when people just throw it all away. My 110 has done nearly 300,000 miles and is nearly 30 years old. Can you just imagine how much history that is? But when I bought it there was no paperwork apart from one previous MOT and the v5. That is just such a shame.

But perhaps I am going over the top in making paperwork for it.

As far as my Defender is concerned I have complete OCD, which is a bit spooky as I cannot even remember the reg number of my Morgan plus 4that I had in the nineties, and at the time was my ultimate dream must have motor.

Luckily for me my Landy came with a lot of old paperwork and although I am pretty much computer illegitimate and don't do spreadsheets I keep a file of every invoice, MOT, Tax disc etc....and sometimes have a glance through it for light reading.

Sad but happy!!!

Barry

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I just make it up as I go along! The total antithisis of keeping spreadsheets etc. I know there is some work that needs doing - but, cannot remember what for the life of me. I'll worry about it when it breaks.

When I'm building something (LR or otherwise) I draw a sort of 'project plan' on the whiteboard in my workshop split into jobs of 1/2 hour or more. I try every day to cross one off - that way I tend to cut through projects fairly quickly, and can pick whatever interests me the most on a given day, and that I have time for. This has just enough randomness for me, but enough analness to get stuff done.

Si

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I had a similar spreadsheet on the go, but since I decided to join the 21st century and get one of these flashy smart phones I've been tracking stuff using an app called Roadtrip.

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Very cool, and because I can just put the info in on the station forecourt I never forget to put in mileage and fuel data - which was the main flaw with my previous system!

Ok, what app is this?

John

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