Well, after years and years of coming home to boxes from Fastlane, Ebay, AutoParts.com, Foreign parts.com, and whatever, on the front porch, I finally seem to be overcoming my compulsion to repair every used car in our 4 car fleet to "mint condition".
Even now its hard to fight it. To me my 85 300D has to look and run perfect and had to be better than a new car. But you can spend a fortune making these cars totally mint!
What's worse, I would order one gasket and a filter and it would show up in a box the size of a TV set and it was hard to cocnvince my better half that i was just spending 15 or 20 bucks,
It really got bad when I had my 87 300D, where the parts were running $100 a throw. That was one expensive car to own, and on top of it the Head scared the h*** out of me and I kept my 85 vice 87 300D.
After that, I decide to down size my used car fleet and to just concentrate all our driving on two cars with the other two in reserve and never driven except in emergencies.
Finally I made up my mind to just make them run and be safe. Basic maintenance, Brakes, engine and transmission and suspension, but thats it. No more Interior parts or special struts and shocks or trim or Central locking gizmos or nice to have features. No more seats or mirror switches. No more owning a used car museum of unique fun to have cars.