Jeep
I love jeeps. I have had a thing for them since watching MacGyver and Dukes of Hazard as a kid. You can’t get more AMERICAN than a BAD ASS JEEP. This page is kinda a lime line of my jeeps in an attempt to document some of the work I have done. This is page is in a early stage with more to come……….
I bought my first JEEP when I was 16. We drove to a PIG farm outside of Lumbertown to get it. The jeep was in Great shape almost completely stock with no RUST, the big selling point.
The jeep had a brand new soft-top, it was originally a hard-top jeep however the dude sold the hard-top and doors a couple weeks before I bought the jeep. It had the factory 258 with 128k miles + (the speedo stopped working who knows when) it also had the T-5 and D300 with the stock axles, d35 and AMC20, with 2.73 gears. Being young I thought this was everything I would ever need.
I slapped on some 32X10.5’s and ran the piss-out of it in high-school. I was on cloud 9 even thought 5th gear was relatively useless unless you were going down hill on the highway. Some where along the line I picked up a new hardtop and doors for the winter. Using it year round as a daily driver got a little cold. The top was gray which looked good however the doors were a nice gloss white.
Before I bought it I wish I ran a compression check on it. Some time towards the end of High-school the 4.2 started loosing power and it turned out the rings on a couple of the cylinders were bad. The Little 258 finally gave out one day in the middle of a huge mud hole off Poole road. So me and pops learned how to rebuild an engine. We rebuild the engine for the first time in, Owen the Jeep guy’s, driveway.
In college I meet the jeep guys in Apex and got a little crazy with it. I went all out with a custom spring over suspension system with wrangler springs and shortened dana 44 axles w/4.28 gears - The rear is from a ‘76 J-10 pickup, and the front is from a ‘78 wagoneer. I added 35X12.50 BFG mud-Terains. I also added a cv drive shaft in the rear. All of this work was done in the “BARN” with expert help.
Although jeeps are never really done, and there is still a list a mile long of things I want to do to it. Here is a pic of it on a nice summer day running with the windshield down. Why? Why not.
Well its a sad day however after over 10 years of great times, its time to get rid of the CJ. Commuting to my “real” job in the park isn’t really fun in the beast and I don’t really have time to work it it anymore. However Lucky, it found a good home and is staying in the family.