Summer 1996

After coming home from the Jamboree I decided I had done enough jeeping for a while and it was time to fix a lot of those naging problems. My rear main seal was leaking and replacing that was going to be a major pain. My brakes also weren't working right, I was overheating, there were more things rattling, etc.

So I decided to do a ground up. Well, it wasn't a ground up but I was going to take a lot of things apart.

One other thing I decided to do was get a welder. This is another one of those tools that I don't know how I lived without. Before the welder if I wanted to attach something to the jeep or make another brace or something, I had to drill holes, bolt things together, etc. Now, just fire up the welder and pow, it's on there. No nuts or bolts to come loose, no more holes (and there are a lot of holes in my body).

With a welder I could also rerun my exhaust inside the frame. But first I took off the top, then the roll bars, then the seats, windshield, hood, fenders, gas tanks, and then finally I pulled the body off the frame. Now it was time to work.

With the body off it was real easy to get my exhaust run right. It was also a snap to take the transmission out and other engine stuff off so I could get to that rear main seal. While I had the body off I cut out the passenger floorboard which was on the way out and rewelded in a new panel. I also got some 2" channel that I used to sort of rebuild the bottom of the body where it attaches to the frame. I wan't going to have that body bouncing around on 4 bolts anymore. I went nuts with the welder.

I also made it so that the radiator now bolted to some brackets attached to the frame. Before, the radiator was attached to the grill which would move around a bit.

I tried to take pictures of a lot of stuff (which I don't have developed yet) so you can see more of what I'm talking about. Hopefully I will get all this organized so you can browse over my jeep on this web site and see all my little modifications.

The nice thing about this whole project was I could stop any time I wanted and leave shit all over the garage (which I did often). I was also not in a hury to get it back together again.

Eventually though, it did all get back together.