About to purchase 2004 Freelander, advice from OWNERS, cracked head, timing slap...?

Hey guys, thanks for letting me be a part of your forum.

My wife and I will be joining the elite (lol) group of Land
Rover owners tomorrow morning at 9am.

Here is my predicament...

I went and looked at a 2004 Land Rover Freelander 4WD Automatic HSE model.

It is BEAUTIFUL, and my wife loves it. I however, am a mechanic. I don't
mind doing work, but don't know that I can afford to own this on a mechanic's pay.

I have been reading some truly horrific things about this vehicle. I can pick it up for $2000 which I thought was a steal. It has a cracked head and is in severe need of a timing chain. I can hear the chain making a LOT of racket inside the cover.

I don't mind doing the work to fix it, but tell me this;

Should I do it?

Be honest, I want to know if I am getting into something while it is still
early enough to cancel on them, and not buy the Freelander.

It has 71K miles, and has service records from the dealership, but still
has a cracked head and clearly bad timing chain tensioners.

If I fix all these problems will it make her (and my two kids) a good vehicle?
What do you think?
Also my wife is in love with this car. Pretty sure it makes her wet, so
I need a DAMN good reason to tell her I'm not buying it...

If you haven't already bought it, please forget you seen this vehicle... you can't afford to fix it.

Run, don't walk away. If you have already bought it, start sourcing a new engine because the one in the vehicle is no longer usable. I would recommend converting to Diesel of course the cost will be around $10k to do it right, but at least you will not need to buy a new engine every few years.

have to agree with joey here!
nice looking freelander but you'll be sinking tons of money into it.
having owned one for 10 years I've got so much money into it I wish I would of bought the LR3 instead.