Great question. I enjoy working on my 58 Burb and love driving it. This is my first real project truck and I didn't have much experience with older vehicles when I bought it. I owned a 63 Chevy Stepside about 25 years ago but only drove it and did basic maintenance till I sold it after 3 years. Never should have sold that truck! :-)
One of the screening criteria for my decision process when buying the truck was that it had to run/drive. I didn't want to spend a bunch of money on a truck and then not be able to drive it. Like I said, with little hard core wrenching experience I thought it would be overwhelming to buy a true project truck the first time around. I ended up spending more money than I wanted to when I bought the truck, but after a tune up and my first ever carb rebuild, it started and ran quite well. I drove it to work as often as I could at my last job and enjoyed it very much. Unfortunately, I'm in Kuwait for two years and the Burb is in underground storage in Kansas City. :-(
Loving to drive the truck is a double edged sword. When working on the vehicle I often found myself thinking "while I'm under here I should probably replace this part or that." Problem was that I didn't have the part on hand and it would be another road trip out to one of the parts houses. Always wanting to drive the truck to work on Monday morning sometimes had me delaying issues that could have been resolved with a little patience. That being said I never drove the truck if I thought it was dangerous. It kind of came down to doing the job well enough versus really doing the job right.
Bottom line is I bought a truck because I want to drive a truck. Working on it is part of the package deal.
