My wife and I have two very different trains of thought when it comes to taking care of cars. I am ocd and meticulous with maintenance, she on the other hand will wait for the car to be in a ball of fire and say uh maybe it needs an oil change. So when it comes to getting time to work on the rover its like pulling teeth to get 4 hours let alone the weekwnd . Its a battle for her to realize and justify me working on the truck because she sees that it runs and drives.

 

Yea I feel the same. Between work and woman it can be tough to find time. I mostly work 6 days a week so my off days are precious. Luckily I have a company vehicle I drive every day.

My girl is very understanding. Even comes out to the garage and hangs out with me. We work opposite schedules so when we have a chance meeting the rover gets put aside.

One of my main hold ups is the "might as wells". While I have this apart I might as well do this too... Suddenly I'm ordering more parts and doing way more work than I intended. Naturally the parts always take a week to get here...

 

I certainly understand the stress you guys are feeling, but it's just something you learn to handle. I have 2 kids (12 and 5), I coach their school's soccer teams and am their primary parent since I am the one who is there for them whenever needed.

I have 4 Disco's (2 drivers, 2 for parts) and keeping up with maintenance on the drive-able ones is a never-ending challenge. The key is having a wife who loves what we get to do in the Rovers.

If you depend on one to be a daily driver, then being stressed is just a state of being with these trucks. This fact is especially true for me because I have a habit of taking these trucks and pounding them off-road multiple times (each) a year.

Case in point: At the moment, neither my D1, nor my D2 are ready to drive (let alone off-road), and I'm planning to run in the Robesonia Trials this weekend, followed by Rovers on the Rocks 5 on 11/15-17.

How do I handle it? One thing at a time...

Tonight it will be replacing the brake lines, upper rear shock mounts, and rear shocks on my D1, then bleeding the cooling system and trying to massage the radiator core support into a position that will let me either open the hood when I want to, or installing a set of hood pins.

Tomorrow evening, (in the wet snow they're predicting here) I'll be replacing the water pump, radiator, hoses, fan, and airbox in my D2.

My advice: Remember, all you can do is try...set goals, and pursue them, but don't get stressed as long as you can make steady progress. Also consider this...don't get too attached to the truck. It can be replaced; time with you wife or kids can't.

 

I'm a family-man and my wife never had a problem with me being distant or un-involved. But when I was doing the bulk of the work on my Land Rover, it was consuming some weekday evenings and most of the weekends. I wrote before that was when I began to have some resentment for it. But I was home. I wasn't playing golf with some buddies, or out riding motorcycles.

I have boys but they were a bit young (preschool at the time) to involve in much of the work, but they'll get more involved in the work as they get older, and for sure they've been involved in the use of the Rover and what we do with it. But for that time, at least my wife could kick them out of the house to see me for a while. It's not like I was somewhere across town. When I took a break, I'd come in the house. My wife didn't really understand it, but she saw that it was a hobby that didn't take me away. Of course, that wasn't enough to justify it to me. I never wanted just some bucket of bolts to tinker on. The thing that kept me going was the plans I had to use it.

It's a "lifestyle accessory." That's how I believe Land Rover marketing intended it at one point in history. For me, it's the lifestyle that's important, not the accessory. I could have this lifestyle with a Toyota or Jeep. There's really not much that justifies the Land Rover by comparison, but it's the choice I made. What really counts is not the image I acquire by having Land Rover and a wardrobe out of an Orvis catalog, but the lifestyle that means I'm more likely to be found skipping rocks and catching crawdads on the river than standing in line at a nightclub. I'm jumping in the swimming hole full of snakes with my boys, and we're collecting insects for specimen mounts. We're hunting fossils, making maps, learning the names of all the stars and the moons around other planets. I'm taking my dog out to run the rabbits ragged and tree all the squirrels. We're fishing, and skiing and snowshoeing. We explore ghost towns and other archaeological sites. We're bagging summits and collecting arrow heads. We go birding, camping, and climbing trees. A few times we went on 4x4 runs with jeepers that don't do anything but drive over rocks and stuff.

I don't need a Land Rover to do any of this. But if I didn't do any of this, I sure wouldn't need a Land Rover.

 

No Brother I'm right there with ya. I have a 10 and 4 yr old both boys, both involved in sports. 10 yr old plays travel baseball and 4 yr old races BMX. Add to that yard work, time with the wife and any honey-do items she comes up with it don't leave much time to do the things I want/need to do to the Disco.

 

and here i thought i was the only one lol