So, we love Jeeps. At one point, we owned four Jeeps, but we recently sold the GC. I’ve (Manda) been driving Jeeps since my Dad bought one in 1998, and we now own that beloved blue Wrangler that was so lovingly abused by my brother, Matt, and myself growing up. Jeeps are a mechanical path-maker into the wild, allowing an adventurer to drive further into the wilderness and explore in places where most vehicles can’t go. A stock Wrangler is a pretty beastly little vehicle on its own, but with a few modifications it can be a true trail warrior. In this episode, we meet up in the Shop to give a quick overview of our Jeeps and what we are working on right now. We’ll touch back on the progress with the Critter and Bison bison in the near future!
Our Jeeps:
Un-named “Blue Jeep” ’99 TJ Wrangler Sport – Gunmetal Blue (my first Jeep!) – My Dad taught me to drive a manual on this Jeep, and we bought it off of my parents a few years back. We did an engine rebuild, lift, suspension mods, and wheels/tires. Blue Jeep still needs some work, but runs well and is tons of fun to drive!
“Bison bison” ’99 TJ Wrangler Sahara – Landrunner Body Mod – ugly beautiful, low $ find! We bought this intending to use the parts for the Scrambler rebuild, but decided to fix her up once we saw how easy the necessary repairs were. Re-built transmission, new suspension/lift, wheels and tires, wheel-carriers bumper mod, and lots of cosmetic work in progress.
“The Critter” ’83 CJ8 Scrambler – Barn find from our buddy, she’s in pieces but will come together as a piece of art when we’re done! New frame to replace the rusted out one, body cleanup and repair, new engine, pretty much new everything but the VIN…
Our Jeep theory: We sold our 2011 Jeep GC WK2 and traded “down” to using the ’99 Wranglers as our daily drivers and keeping our Toyota Tundra truck for big events. Doing this removes the complications of all the “bells and whistles” of a modern vehicle, which we’ve found to be comforting for a while, but just more stuff to break in the long run (and more expensive to fix based on the computerized components). We love wrenching on our Jeeps, and enjoy building out a vehicle that is capable of tackling any off-road hurdle. We are planning on building out the Scrambler to be a bit of an “off-road-rod,” big engine, big axles, but probably more for show than for true off-roading – we feel like she’s an important piece of Jeep history and don’t want to risk rolling her over.