Love at First Drive

Although I am oficially starting to work on this blog today, this project technically started back on March 9th. So bear with me as I post old stories and pictures while I attempt to get up to date.

The day which I consider to be the first day of this project was Monday, March 9th. On that day, I stopped by Dave's house to get a tour of his "facilities". I saw his two car garage next to his house, where he is currently keeping his own Jeep project (I should probably get a picture of that, 'cause it's gorgeous). I also saw the enormous garage (it's more like a barn) he has down the hill from his house where my Jeep was being kept along with a couple Trans-Ams (his future projects) and a wide variety of auto parts including engines, transmissions, body components, and the like.

Later that day, after I had returned to my apartment, Dave called me to inform me of a great deal that he had discovered online that he suggested I strongly consider for my Jeep. It was a set of full doors and a hard top. These items would be pivotal come winter when a soft top and half doors would function as very poor thermal insulators, not to mention being extremely noisy on the highway.

The thing about these items that made them a deal was that the guy selling them was only asking $600 for the set. According to Dave, a good set of full doors can cost up to $800 by themselves, and a hard top can cost $300 or more. So I called the guy up (it ended up being a kid), and told him I was interested and was wondering if he would take $500. He said he could do that. Then I told him that I read on his posting that the latch on the hard top was broken, and that this can be expensive to replace, so could he come down to $450. He hesitated, but agreed. So the following day I brought him $400, told him that I couldn't get more than that from the ATM, and I ended up getting full doors and a hard top and a great price.

On Monday, March 16th, I finally got to test drive the Jeep! It was amazing, truly love at first drive. I'm used to being about 3 feet off the ground while zooming around in my RX-8, and while that is fun and the handling is great, being 6 feet off the ground in the Wrangler and driving around with no roof or windows exposed to the wind is a blast. The 2.5L engine struggled a bit on the interstate, especially when going up hills, but it had no problem at all going off road and climbing up the side of the hill by Dave's house in low gear. I even took it through some mud after getting some peer pressure from my buddy Kevin, which is something I have been regretting this past week while I work under a Jeep that is covered in dried mud.

The frame is in great shape, as are the brakes and the suspension. There is some minor rust on the exterior and some in the floor panels, but this problem will be solved using the replacement body panels I purchased from JC Whitney. I will definitely need to replace the seats and the interior carpet; I'm hoping to get the interior looking very clean and new.

In the next post I'll start documenting the tear down and engine removal, and there will be lots of great pictures.