no, this isn't me. it's my car, tho. and yes, you're right--it DOES say "slut on board" on the back window of that chevy.
okay, to satisfy my 2.5 daily readers, i must blog something. the bit i intended to publish is in rough form (also known as "crap",) so i will settle for posting some older material that i forgot i even wrote. mark dug this up last week on an archive file for a jeep scrambler website we were gonna do back in like '98 or so. it's actually not too bad. enjoy:
The Search!
Back during the summer of ’97, I was in the market for my first automobile. I wanted something unique, something eye-catching, something I could drop the top on in the summer, something to handle the roads in the winter. I wanted a truck to do hauling, towing, off-roading, and of course, cruising. I’d always been interested in Jeeps, even since I was a kid, so a Jeep was the logical choice. But which one? A Cherokee? No, no convertible top, although I love the old Cherokee styling. A Wrangler? No, too common, too small (although fuel injection would have been nice!) That only left one choice—a Scrambler! Of course!
Deciding on the Scrambler was the easy part. Finding one was the hard part. My friend Mark (insert shameless Interadtive link here) and I scoured the classifieds and the internet for CJ-8’s. The Scramblers we located were too crappy (rotted & abused), or too good ($10,000 blown show Scrams w/nitrous), or way too far away. Finally, near the end of the summer, when we had to start thinking about college again, we received a reply to one of our internet ads that fit the bill perfectly—an ’83 Scrambler with the 258, 4-speed, plow, 31” tires, little rust, and even the original oak bed rails. The best part of the Jeep was it had only 41,000 miles! A steal at $3,000. Groovy, baby!! It was a must-have.
the jeep in queens
The Purchase!
My good old dad understood my obscene desire for a vehicle, and although he wasn’t huge on me buying a goddamn Scrambler of all things, he okayed the purchase. The Jeep was located down in New York City, a good 7 hours from our hometown of Lafargeville, NY. So in late August, dad and I cruised on down to NYC in the family minivan with a certified check and a fat toolbox. Along with the directions and some pictures of the Jeep, the owners sent us some of the “not-so-groovy, baby” details (which I’ll explain later.) the closing line to one of their e-mails stated, “You’re coming a long way for a vehicle; I hope you know what you’re doing.” Of course we did!
I had written up a checklist of stuff to check over on the Jeep before the purchase, which promptly went out the window when dad said we were buying the thing whether it was a piece of shit or not; we weren’t driving all this way for nothing (not his words.) Besides, there aren’t many Scramblers around to choose from anyway. And I must admit, I had only driven a Jeep once in my life (my cousin Doug’s Wrangler down in Gainsville, Florida), and that was sure as hell not a CJ. I’d only seen a Scrambler in the flesh once that I could remember, so this was just some kind of ballsy-nuts. What the hell was I doing?!?
When we neared the owner’s house, I spotted the Jeep and was in (dubious) love at first sight. I took a test drive down their suburban street in Queens with the owner’s son and I promptly blew through a stop sign and almost got T-boned. Oops. It didn’t help that it had manual brakes, either. The only manual brakes I’d ever used were on John Deeres back on the family farm, and they don’t count. Neither the son or the other motorist seemed to mind too much; I guess they are kinda used to this crap down here in the city. I was enthralled by the Jeep and at the same time I was crapping my pants. I loved it at first sight but it did have more than it’s share of nuances and gremlins. Dad took it for a spin, too, and although he was still not convinced this was the best vehicle for me, he gave me his blessing. Shagadellic!
We stayed overnight at a sleazy Queens motel (“sleazy” is redundant for most Queens motels), did the DMV thing in the morning, and gave the Jeep a once-over for the trip home. We also wrestled the plow & assorted Jeep parts into the “bed” (calling it a “bed” is questionable.) Time was of the essence; we had to be home by nightfall (because of a pesky dead headlights problem.) Dad drove it out of town, not me. He’s used to finicky machinery (we’ve got a farm) and if the Scrambler puked it’s tranny on the Tappanzee Bridge or something, it would be his problem, not mine. We switched rides somewhere in New Jersey. I was in love with the Jeep already but I was pretty nerve-wracked over the purchase. Of course, the fam checked it out when we got home. This is when reality started to hit…
after my first accident--i blame it on the brakes
Reality Hits!
Initially, there were some obvious problems, mostly minor--such as the skanky interior, the hole around the shifter where the shifter boot used to be (it was off because the shifter had a nasty tendency to pop out of the tranny), the multi-layered pile of decomposing, metal-eating leaves in the back, in-op headlights (something was screwy cuz of the plow lights), broken aluminum plow pump bracket, mismatched tires, assorted dead gauges and interior functions, several engine leaks, a sick old battery, etc. etc. (Just like a typical CJ, huh??) And forget about hauling shit in the back; the bed is an overrated tin box. There was also busted glass inside from a radio theft down in NYC (oh yeah, no radio, either.) The first sickening discovery was made by one of my brothers—it wouldn’t move when shifted into 4H…giving me a queasy, expensive feeling in the pit of my stomach…
Mark came over to see it, too. I was pleasantly surprised to hear him say it was better than he expected. I took that as a complement, which made me feel a bit better (although he was looking at it in the dark.)
Initial Projects!
The first project was to fix the headlights, which lead to the removal of the plow mount. (The previous owners bought the Jeep from a NYC university, which used it as a plow truck—another not-so-nice thing; plowing is rough on the frame & drivetrain.) We had no need for another plow, and it didn’t need any more abuse. The mechanical troubles weren’t as serious as I feared. It also cleaned up quite nicely. It wasn’t a half-bad looking Jeep!
Mark and I spent an afternoon and a lot of my money installing a sound system. It’s relatively low-buck: two 45W Infinity 4 ¼” front speakers, two Optimus truck boxes with 10” woofers & 2 ½” tweeters, a 150-watt Optimus amp, and a 35Wx4 JVC CD player/receiver. It sounds great; it’s good enough for who it’s for.
Summer ’97 Adventures!
By the time we got the Jeep, the summer was nearly over, but I did have some time for some fun stuff. I took it off-road on the farm a little and drove it all over the North Country. One of our first on-road adventures in the Jeep with the hardtop off was the evening of a huge rainstorm in Alexandria Bay, NY. Mark & I got soaked. But hey, we got attention from girls. Yes, I definitely needed a new top. But overall, the Jeep was a blast.
loaded up for college...place bets on how long those bags stayed up on top
First Winter!
My first winter with the Jeep was memorable and educational. Anyone who owns a CJ can sympathize with my plight of fixing one Jeep crisis after another. There’s always something going wrong, or something that broke a long time ago that never got fixed correctly, if at all. And of course, there’s always the urge to modify. And I just gotta say that all the dipshits that have told me this thing would be awesome in the winter can just bite my ass. I knew they would be wrong. A tiny 3,400 lb. truck with balding, shitty 31” Armstrong Desert Dog tires, manual brakes, and a high center of gravity just ain’t gonna perform in a New York winter. Especially without 350 lbs. of tube sand in the back, which is exactly what I put there. My God, it was awful. It was only good for doing donuts in the parking lots at school. And being a college student doesn’t lend itself to pouring money into a 15 year-old Jeep. It was also pretty drafty & cold. But I expected nearly all the problems I experienced, so it wasn’t too bad.
The Refinish!
Luckily, I had access to 6 fully-functional automotive labs and free labor. I was majoring in Automotive Technology at the State University of New York at Morrisville. (link) The Jeep was a guinea pig for many lab periods. And the best part of all was auto body lab—the perfect opportunity to do a complete refinish!
Yes, this is a shameless plug for SUNY Morrisville, a two-year state Ag & Tech college, located in central New York. I started my second year there after the summer I bought the Jeep. My first big auto body project was building a car to use as “Greased Lightning” in a campus production of “Grease” (which I also had a role in—Kenickie.) I’d been bugging my auto body professor, Mr. Roger Powers, about doing a refinish on the Jeep as my next project. He finally let me do it, with the help of my fellow Auto Body II classmates. Note I call it a “refinish”, not “repainting”, because people always underestimate the amount of work that goes into a job like this. There’s more to it than spraying paint. I knew it would be a huge undertaking, but not quite as huge as it got!
I initially wanted to change the color from the blazo slate blue to a nice medium metallic green, but at the last minute I decided on Intense Blue Pearl Coat when I saw the color on the ’98 Dodge Durangos. I love this color and everyone else seems to as well (and our supplier was NAPA/Martin Senour.)
being stripped, getto style
First, we spent a lab period dismembering the Jeep like a swarm of bees. It was transformed from a running, not-so-bad vehicle at 3:00pm to a pile of inoperative metal shit by 6. To add to the stress of tearing it apart, it had to be back together again very goddamn quick because we were rapidly approaching graduation. The project was turning into a government job pretty quickly—swelling costs, cutting corners, it was way overdue, and I kept telling lies to everyone about how well it was going.
note the diaper for errant jeep juices
it's me! painting! yaay!
We stripped the Scrambler to the bare body tub, repaired/prepped, and sandblasted anything & everything. We discovered lots of hidden rust, including a big, rotting hole around the driver’s side seat belt mount. Eek. I used NAPA “Extend” (rust converter) on the bed; it was pretty rough & rusty, as well as having a coat of ancient black spray paint all over it.
The Crew!
Mr. Powers...on graduation day, no less. thus, the suit.
I’ve got to give Mr. Powers a million thanks—he put up with a ton of crap, a million oil & fluid leaks on the clean body shop floor (it got so bad he made me put a diaper of plastic sheet on the underside) and he let me do a lot of stuff he didn’t have to let me do, like stay after hours to get it done and break some of the rules. I assume he let me do this so he wouldn’t be stuck with Jeep parts littering the body lab until July. I’ve also got to mention my body lab buddies/classmates: Rob “outhouse” Althouse, Dave Russell (who was equipped with a cast-iron beer stomach,) Mike “wetballs” Westfall (G-Body freak), Josh “three on the tree” Grant, Ben “I wish I was cool” English, Brian “I am cool” Scanlon, Rich Howard, Kenny Whats-his-name, and that other guy, who’s name I can’t remember, but he wasn’t there half the time anyway. I’m sure they all wanted to set the Jeep on fire at one point or another, but they stuck with me. Probably so they could get it out of the lab and never see it again as soon as possible. Nah, I’m just joking. It was all fun, wasn’t it, guys? …guys…!?
the finished product! success! that is one blue son of a bitch
for those of you who just can't get enough of the scrambler stuff, scroll thru my archives for more. read about the engine rebuild and cool stuff like that.
