There are just 168 hours in a week. That’s seven days to work, play, wrench, and live your life. Often, it seems those 168 hours pass faster than they should. Still, you have work to do and you somehow have to fit everything into your schedule. So how does one somehow juggle being a productive human while also keeping one, or a few, or a fleet of needy cars and other conveyances mechanically happy?
I had an easy answer to this for many years. I would work Monday through Friday, spend nights wrenching, and spend weekends either wrenching or driving. This was easy for me because vehicles very nearly defined my life. Some people wonder how I’ve owned over 30 motorcycles over the course of six years. Well, this is simple when buying, fixing, and selling bikes is your hobby.
In years past, I was an IT jockey who printed out Java code and SQL queries as my day job. Admittedly, I was never a huge fan of IT work, but computers were what I knew and I was able to score jobs quickly right out of school. Couple that with my personality and my customers loved me.
Yet, it wasn’t fun. So, I would go home, fire up Facebook Marketplace, and find an old motorcycle for sale for $500 or under. These bikes usually had an issue that was easy to fix. I gravitated toward bikes with descriptions like “ran when parked” or “no title.” Vermont still handed out registrations like candy back then, so I fixed title issues swiftly. Those bikes that ran a year or two ago just needed their carbs cleaned.
Fixing those motorcycles produced a kind of euphoria. Sure, they were easy fixes, but I got those bikes back on the road and eventually to new, happy owners. I never did it for the money but for the gratification of fixing something with my own two hands. And it was easy because I was usually single and I didn’t have many friends. Weekends were fixing things.
Things changed about four years ago. I moved from repairing motorcycles to spinning wrenches on cars and a school bus. Unfortunately, cars are harder to hide than bikes and I caught the attention of a nosy neighbor. That neighbor then made things hell for me by getting my project cars illegally towed. I fired off lawsuits and after over a year of fighting I won against everyone, but I came out of it a changed person.
I now have a wife, a pair of cute birds, and a long list of dreams I want to see fulfilled. I want to race a Smart around the Nürburgring. I want to finish getting my pilot license. I want to experience global car culture. One day I even want to start a car museum. Sometimes I just want to do nothing but find a body of water and go for a swim. I just discovered how awesome hiking is, too, and that needs even more time. I took the picture below while exploring Indiana, of all places!
All of this needs time, and time is a hot commodity. I have the most time on the weekend, which means two days to inch closer to my goals. For the past couple of years, I have been favoring dreams and experiences over wrenching.
Here’s how I divide time today. If a repair is something that will take most of a whole day or longer, I will usually farm that out to my handy mobile mechanic. Yes, it costs more than doing it myself, but I think of the price paid as buying myself time to spend with my wife, time I could use out on the road, time I could spend discovering new things, or time working towards my goals.
If a repair takes about 5 hours or less, like getting a Suzuki rotary running? Ok, then I’ll do it and bring Sheryl along for the ride as a teaching experience. Unfortunately, owning German cars means few DIY repairs fall into that timeframe. I mean, I need to replace the blower motor in my Phaeton and the process seems to involve removing the windshield wipers.
How about you? How do you juggle being an adult while also making sure your car still works?
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my house is a mess, all my cars are some form of broken and I need a nap
Cut the daily B.S. down so you have time to focus on the projects. Why do we own an EV as our family primary? Because there are ZERO headaches from it. We use it like an appliance and it does what it needs to with no interaction from me. That takes care of my wife’s car and leaves me time to screw off with whatever hair brained project idea I have for my daily. With 19 gas cars beyond the EV I can make a decision on what I want to work on/upgrade/fix/dream about/etc.. At any given time 2 or 3 of those are functional and in driving rotation so that keeps me on the road without HAVING to fix something. Add in a large workshop with lifts that gives me freedom to get work done quickly if needed, or tie up a bay with a project, That means I can always walk away for a bit (order parts, cool down, etc.) without having to get crap out of the way to park the daily back inside. My barn gives me space to store things on the back burner and never look like a junkyard outside. That’s three stages for cars: barn for project storage, workshop for actually working on something, and the house garage for dailies. It works very well.
This is what I thought I was doing when I bought a 35k-mile CPO JSW TDI for my normal car. Once car that doesn’t need fixing! LOLOL. It was that way for three years until the warranty ran out, since which it has cost me (because I in fact don’t have time to wrench on it thanks to all the old cars, so it goes to a shop) more than every other car put together for three years or so.
Shoulda stuck with a Honda 🙂 At least my partner drives a Prius.
You’re living the dream!
I’m working towards having a home and income that can support a project car rotation like that ????
Case Study: SageWestyTulsa, 47 years old
Current projects: 1964 VW Deluxe Transporter, 1975 VW Westfalia
Shop setup: Two-car home garage, off-site 12×20 rental workshop space
Family status: Married, two children under 10 at home, one 19yo away at college
Career status: Salaried creative director and freelancer, working from home full-time
Okay, with the basics out of the way, the current situation is that I’m actively working on both projects. The ’75 Westy is on the “sell” list with a buyer on the line, and the future status of the ’64 (recently acquired) is yet to be determined. The ’75 is located at my rental space, along with the vast majority of my tools and equipment. The ’64 is in my home garage, but will be relocated to the workshop once the ’75 is officially out the door.
Working from home has afforded me a number of options for making progress on both of these projects. I often go to the workshop over my lunch break, for example, as I find that making even small incremental bits of progress helps to move things along and keeps me motivated. Earlier today, I took a break from my desk and went to the shop to plumb new fuel lines into the ’75, ahead of anticipated first stat on Friday evening.
For longer working sessions, I do my best to work around family obligations, date nights, hanging out with friends, etc. The workshop location is open until 11p, so I’ll often wait until the kids go to bed (8:30ish) and then head to the shop to work for a couple of hours. I also find that being mindful of the amount of time that I spend wrenching affords me the opportunity to schedule longer sessions periodically (like the upcoming marathon session planned for Friday evening), or just take some time to putter around in the garage on a Saturday afternoon. I should also add that my daily driving duties are divided between a ’79 VW Westfalia and a 2005 Escalade, which also require their fair share of maintenance and upkeep. My wife’s 2019 Alltrack is still under warranty, and gets serviced at the dealership.
Anyhow, I certainly have plenty to keep me busy these days, but I also really love owning and working on the vehicles I’ve been lucky enough to acquire to this point, and I’m lucky to have work and spouse situations that have made this feasible. And like I’m so fond of telling people that wonder aloud how I manage all of this… it keeps me out of the titty bars.
PS – I’ve also got to figure out how to make space for the ’86 Vanagon Westy (sitting for 15 years) that will arrive later in the summer…
I purchased a car with 175k on it last week, here is how I decided what to fix myself and what to pay someone to do. Comes down mostly to (a) do I have a high degree of confidence in tackling it (b) how dirty/messy is it, and (c) how big a PITA is it. I’m at a point in life where I can afford to pay for almost anything car repair related, so here is what my 2013 Volvo C30 needs and how it is getting done:
timing belt/water pump service – need some special tools and huge consequences for getting it wrong – shop is doing itboth CV axles need to be replaced – dirty, messy, PITA – shop is doing itrear brakes almost gone – easy, I will do it next weekendrear sway links – easy, but cheap for shop to do, and I don’t have a lift. Shop is doing it.spark plugs – easy and about $40 for me to do, I’ll do over the weekendfilter and fluids – shop is doing the coolant flush, I will do everything else
It depends on the time of year and what needs done, this winter more than any other I spent many nights/weekends in the garage. In the summer I like to spend more time outside and with my other hobbies. It’s real tough though. I wanted to keep my projects moving on weeknights but there was always things around the house to do, and I felt sad thinking about my puppy being alone while I worked in the garage.
Perhaps I see the other way, working on a car is often easier for me as I really dislike the “through the fuel tank” path that is required for too many motorcycle repairs. Drain the tank, remove the tank, take off airbox is all reasonably simple but seriously annoying for so many, seemingly, simple tasks like changing spark plugs on an inline engine.
Cars seem to have much more space for reach/working on the simple tasks. And parts, especially when needed last minute, are so much more available.
But, then other things, like doing a quick brake job on a motorcycle is a comparative breeze. Just take the caliper off.
Funny, I love working on motorcycles vs cars. They are generally clean. They’re small. There are not too many parts. Pulling a tank for plugs, for example, is no worse than the stuff that has to come off the top of the engine in my VW to complete the same task.
There are some things I don’t miss about my old VW. Like the removal of all the covers/panels/air filter etc…
I also don’t miss those larger engines that hid regular-access engine hardware like cylinders/plugs/etc… under the dash.
I’m newer to wrenching at a late-ish age (late 40s) for starting to work on cars so the limiting factors are many:
Do I think I have the tools?
Do I have the skillset?
Do I have the time?
How much will it hurt my back?
Can I do it in the driveway?
What’s the weather going to be like?
Family obligations, work, and living in the midwest limit my wrenching capacity to maybe 6-10 weekends a year. So I have to plan certain things out, and if something pops up out of nowhere I may be months away from my next window of opportunity.
For example, I have a new to me 2010 BMW e93 convertible. I used one weekend to install carplay and a review camera. I used another to grease hinges on and lubricate seals on the convertible top. Next free weekend I’ll attack the oil filter housing gasket and a couple of “while I’m in there’s”. These are all relatively predictable from a time standpoint and I can schedule my other life obligations around them.
But it also has some electrical gremlins that I really don’t want to commit to tracking down on my own because that will take anywhere from 1 to 100,000 hours based on my limited skillset. So I’ll be sending it to the professionals for that one.
The older I get, the more I weigh that same list.
With a similar: “what’s the risk it won’t be operational by the time I need to drive it?”
Perhaps from lessons learnt: I also schedule to start on Saturdays in case I need to order new parts/tools/etc… later on the weekend and give myself Sunday to finish.
Yeah, that’s a great point – Logistics… I have also learned to make sure it’s not blocking the wife’s car when not operating, make sure my wife (and her car) are not going to be gone for a long time for if/when I need to run out to get a tool or a part, etc.
About $500 in labor is my threshold for DIY or send it out to the mech. If the job takes me under 5hrs, I’ll DIY. If it takes me more than 5hrs and under $500, I’ll send it out. Important note is what it takes me to do the job, an experienced mechanic can do the job much faster than me. I’d rather be out enjoying my free time vs under the car.
Right there with you, buddy. Install a Motorola radio and antenna through easily accessible panels and with absolutely one cut to the back of the center stack? Sure.
Install rock sliders in my slanted driveway? Nope.
I guess I would also add “How safe does this need to keep me” as a parameter between me and an expert.
Hold up, tell me more about this rock sliders in my slanted driveway, because that’s on my list of DIY.
These were for a non-traditional off-roader (2012 Pathfinder). I am up on 35’s, which gave me room enough to lay on my back and work, BUT….
These things are probably 100 pounds each, and I needed a buck that wouldn’t fall over while I marked the drill spots in the pinch weld. Since I couldn’t get them to stay in place because they wanted to rock backwards and crush my skull, I was hot and frustrated, and I didn’t want them to be janky, I took it to my local 4×4 shop for two hours labor.
If I had two scissor jacks, I could have used some scrap wood to make a buck/jig and be precise, but I didn’t, and the slope made me throw up my hands.
Ah you had to drill, mine would be bolt on.
Yeah, pinch weld drilled and already available frame holes.
If yours are bolt on, can you ‘get the first one’ and then rotate the second one up and into place? That sounds super-doable.
Good luck with it; they are worth it.
“How about you? How do you juggle being an adult while also making sure your car still works?”
I bought CR approved 4 cyl cars, a Honda and Mazda, both with timing chains. I maintain them by the book, no more. I don’t fuss over dings and scratches. Rust is not a thing here.
I don’t have “projects” other than (way too many) bicycles.
That’s worked pretty well to keep my auto life nice and boring.
I used to wrench all the time just for the joy of doing it. Now I work in the sun all day, and don’t even want to get in the convertible even for the 15 min drive to the Blue Ridge Parkway afterwards.
It’s 94 here, and I’d bet the roof I just came off of was 115 or more. I’m going to sit in this cool back hall and let my core temp come down while I drink cool water before I tackle the drive home. No wrenching today
I find it very hard to get any wrenching done. I did manage to put a new radiator in my Frontier during a single nap-time for my 3yo. Not sure how I pulled that off.
I have a 5 and 8 year old so my time is limited. If it is going to take me more than an hour or involve fluids I have someone else do it. Thankfully there is a trustworthy shop a 15 minute walk away.
I much rather use the car fixing time for other projects at this point in my life. I find it far more rewarding to do something with my kids than spend it cursing out a stuck bolt.
This is a tough balance that I’m still trying to figure out. I used to spend pretty much any waking moment not spent at school or work under a car. Then I had a family, bought houses, and moved up the corporate ladder. Now finding time to wrench between family activities, long work hours, and home renovations is a challenge. Working on cars and going into the mountains are my stress-relief mechanisms, so I try to combine the two by improving my vehicle’s ability to take me into the mountains. I generally tackle things a few hours at a time, but every once in a while I’ll plan out a Saturday where it is just pure wrenching bliss…
Id like to hear more about the illegal towing story. I recall you hiding vehicles out in the woods but that was the last I heard.
I love stories of people deemed counter-culture winning against mainstream.
I have not had much time or encouragement to work on vehicles lately besides routine maintenance. Been have bad back pain and since I was working out in VA the last year and we were getting ready to move out there but decided to stay in Indiana and changing jobs in the process there has just been so much crap around the house that needs to get done. I am hoping things settle down and I can get back to working on car projects.
1 new / reliable car.
1 ‘dog’ car.
1 fun car.
I have physical space for more, but not the time. I enjoy working on cars, and this is manageable even with a crazy work schedule at the moment.
New / reliable car is used for a decent commute, so service issues are addressed quickly.
Dog car is used for transporting the dogs, Home Depot runs and as my main commuter (~6 miles, back roads). It has essentially no retail value, so I don’t worry about cosmetics. As it gets older, I know it’s going to need things replaced. I stockpile parts and then take a few days to refresh it before annual state inspection. Last year it got wheel bearings, exhaust and a couple of other things. This year it’s getting valve cover gaskets, front control arms and ball joints and new shocks / struts.
Fun car only sees about 5000 miles / year. Used as nice day commuter and for fun rides. Since it doesn’t see much use, it doesn’t need much maintenance. It spends the winter resting, so there’s plenty of time to do anything big while it sits. This also becomes my main commuter while dog car gets its annual refresh.
I do most work myself. I send out machine work, any air conditioning stuff, alignments and tire mounting / balancing. I’ll do engine or transmission swaps, but a rebuild of either is outside of my comfort zone.
I work a corporate job by day and split my evenings playing bass for a band and doing stand-up comedy, all while making sure to set aside time for my family. I also just got the BRAT project and it’s ridiculously hot outside.
So I squeeze in the wrenching when I can. I managed to find a cool evening on Monday to make a parts run and change out the oil. Next up is a new water pump, fresh coolant and draining old gas from the tank. My band is playing Saturday, so hopefully I’ll have some time Sunday to try and get it started for the first time.
Am I good at balancing things? I don’t know, but I have a really twitchy eye right now.
The daily drivers are on a fix-as-fail plan and I simply put in the time required. With a family that includes a toddler, it just needs to roll.
My project car, I ebb and flow. Some weeks I’ll spend an hour or two nearly every night. Then I may not even open the garage for a month.
When I get particularly stuck, sometimes I’ll book a day or two of vacation and just push hard to get it done.
It also helps to make the space comfy. My detached garage has internet, a 65″ TV hooked to a laptop for music/videos/wiring schematics/service manuals, a beer fridge, a couch, and a coffee table I made from one of the blown engines from my Genesis Coupe (yes, multiple engines).
I learned long ago that if I’m not comfy, I simply won’t do it. I lost one bay out of two just to BE comfy, but it was worth the trade-off.
I can’t allow myself that much comfort in the garage, it would cut into my productivity.
Also, my garage is an old barn that I borrow from the squirrels. If I had upholstered furniture in there it would just get shredded for their nests.
It definitely reduces output, but I refuse to suffer needlessly for the hobby. I enjoy working on cars, I wrenched professionally for 18 years on trucks & coaches, I wanna be comfy, dammit!
I do that by ensuring the daily is well maintained and relatively new – and stock. As a much younger person I realized that the pressure of wrenching on / tinkering with the DD is not the fun kind of pressure. I don’t want to be in a position where Sunday evening rolls around and the car is still in bits (though I WFH so that’s more philosophical).
The wrenching fun goes to the fleet (gaggle?) of motorcycles. As with the car, there is a modern bike that works; the rest need work. Although there is one particular machine I want to get back on the road this year, and selling the modern bike may provide the motivation to do that.
Captain Ramius: “When he reached the New World, Cortez burned his ships. As a result, his men were well motivated.” 🙂
Outside of that, life comes first, then work, then wrenching. Sometimes it’s a distant third, but part of adulting is getting a handle on one’s own priorities.
Captain Ramius: “When he reached the New World, Cortez burned his ships. As a result, his men were well motivated
Somehow you never hear about the captains who did the same and ended up slaughtered by the natives instead of safely offshore on their floating, mobile fortress.
Hah. Up to 6 motorcycles now. All interesting (IMHO) in their own way. Only one (2020 Husky 701 Vitpilen) is fully modern so I always have something to do.
This is why we own an EV for a daily. It requires ZERO effort on my part to maintain. It may not have a “soul” like my others, but it doesn’t ask for me to do anything which is why I have more time to work on the projects. HAVING to wrench on a daily to get to work is the worst.
Simple, pay someone to work on the cars. I can utilize the time towards other aspects of my life so the trade off is worth it.
Weekdays are for research and planning for the weekend. I rarely get to wrench in the evenings because, well let’s face it, there’s always an excuse. But I can go internet shopping or find answers to questions on forums and stuff, even while I’m at work. I’m also doing CAD design for custom parts or 3D printing some experimental crap.
So weekends are the days I can spend quality time with the cars. Wrenching, racing, driving, whatever. I really hate it when I buy something on Monday and it still hasn’t been delivered by Friday. Really throws my weekends off…
I used to be able to hobby on the evenings and through most of the weekend. but now we have an 8 month old and another on the way, so I’m cutting back 90% simply due to the lack of free time. Kids and the wife need me more than the cars. My plan is in 1 year, to start ramping back up as I still have a large sundry of projects and my hobby is my mental stability controller.
2 kids under 2? You’ll need some luck, sync’d up nap times and early bed times to get much done.
It’ll get easier once they’re a bit older!
We only have one, but now that’s he’s 4, we’re starting to get more time for projects and other fun stuff.
There’s like a whole mental matrix to it. You have to balance how much your time is worth, your physical capabilities, and how much you’re willing to pay to not deal with certain things. I’m not going to spend all day on my back underneath my cars to do a transmission and diff service when my indie will only charge like 3 hours labor to do the same. I won’t get covered in trans fluid and gear oil, I don’t have to worry about disposing of it, I don’t have to spend hours underneath a car on Quickjacks or jackstands, which no matter how much detritus I shove under the car it’s never enough to make me feel safe.
You’re not less of a gearhead for paying someone to do some work for you, you’re a well adjusted gearhead that doesn’t let the hobby run your life and take you away from what really matters.
I agree. I would rather make it some else’s problem to fix vs hours and headaches then pay someone to undo what I did and do it right. Value of time is a forgotten resource now.
My experience is the exact opposite. I have given into the “have the professionals do it” view at least 15 times in the past 20 years (either to a shop or a dealer); I can count on one hand the number of times where I have not had to undo the work they did and do it right myself. Add in the fact that there isn’t an auto repair shop within 130 miles of my home and it simply isn’t worth the hassle, especially if you cannot wait in town for the repair. I even do sub $500 warranty work myself because the time hassle and workmanship hassle is not worth the aggravation.
I cope with the work/repair balance by having back-up vehicles at home for when I am out of town (45% of my life) or waiting for parts. I also no longer follow the drive-till-the-wheels-fall-off philosophy by driving newer cars and starting to think about dumping them in the 200,000 – 250,000 mile range.
That works for you and it is good you are in the position. In my area I can’t throw a rock without hitting a good shop.
Plenty of choices and the one I frequent warranties the work for 2 years (and lives up to it), replaces small items at no charge if they are in there anyways, and you pay cost for filters.
In fact they have damaged my car in a test drive (cut a corner too fast) and replaced the rim/tire after owning up to the mistake.
That is the type of place I like. Also the prices are reasonable.
I would suggest that I have saved myself probably $100,000 worth or repair work over the 30 years I have been wrenching.
With that said, you are very right. And, I constantly remind myself of the fact that because I wrench, does NOT make me more of a car guy than the next. Same goes with driving a manual. (NOTE, I admit to thinking that I feel that I am more of a car guy cause I do my own wrenching, but I also know that is wrong. How do I fix that, therapy??)
I just did brakes on my Q7 at all four corners. It took a few hours and probably saved me $2k (brakes are stupid expensive for this car). A few hours of time to save a shit ton of money is on the DIY side of the matrix. The trans flush, though, will only cost me about $400 more than DIY. That’s on the “pay someone else to get dirty” side of the matrix. I will always DIY my oil changes even if it’s cheaper somewhere else. I know what I want to use, I send samples to Blackstone, and I have an oil extractor, which combined with a top oil filter means changes are an absolute breeze and take about 15min.
Wrenching is a hobby for me. I like completing projects and learning more about my cars. After decades, I generally know where a new noise is coming from and whether or not it’s something to worry about.
I also like being able to spot future or pending issues in the course of working on the cars.
I don’t think less of people who don’t wrench. I feel a bit jealous of them sometimes. I feel like my life would be easier if I just sent some stuff out.
Wrenching was my hobby until I became an aircraft mechanic. Then the absolute last thing I wanted to do after crawling around A320’s covered in Aeroshell 33 and Skydrol was get under a car and turn more wrenches. Really sucked the fun out of it. Now that I have an office job, I’m back to enjoying it.
It’s hard when I work weekdays and my wife works weekends and we have a 3 year old, but usually I end up trying to get work done on the cars during extended lunch breaks. It does help that I have a flexible job and I work from home.
Of course it’s always frustrating when I’m 2 hours in to a half hour job and I have a meeting in 15 minutes, and my engine is being held up with a jack.
Just make sure it’s not a Harbor Freight jack (I have 4 of them). LOL
I had a Harbor Freight Jack stop working on me last week when my car was up on jackstands. I had to get creative to get the car down. It involved another jack with less lift and wood. It looked exactly as you imagine it.
Nightmare sauce. Glad you didn’t get hurt.
I am not managing my time between work, family and projects well at the moment. I recently tore apart an old pontoon boat and opened up a huge can of worms. It has been 6 weeks of work and I’m in full obsession mode now trying to finish this damn thing. My wife says “take a break” for a couple days, but I can’t rest until it’s done. Taking half days to work on it, working on stuff till 10:30 at night, squeezing stuff in on my lunch break, etc. Fingers crossed we’re on the water this weekend.