Our New Member

Its always a glorious day when we welcome into the fold, the brotherhood, a new member. Meet Pappy. He has become our oldest member and with it, his baby, tOG, the old girl, a 1974 CJ5.. she is the oldest ride as well!

Lets take a quick history lesson. Pappy hails from a Jeep heritage. He once owned (and coincidentally still does own) a 1967 Jeepster Commando. That jeep has not ran in over a decade and is awaiting her mechanical savior, the White Wizard, to rebuild her engine. Pappy has recently become fed up with the poshness of Club Xterra and thus, rejoined the ranks of the awesome.

Now, lets meet the old girl. When we saw her ad go up for sale, here is what we knew. She was a 1975 CJ5 in need of new tires and a new battery. A bit later we learned she was a 1974, with a cracked bell housing, a bad starter, but with a Ford 351 under the hood and yet still in need of loving, but the price dropped to an unbeatable rate, so we pounced on her. Regrettably, this meant she had to come home not under her own power or wheels, but on that of a trailer pulled by a big ol ford. She made it to her new home though and it was game on. 

It didn’t take long to diagnose a few things. First off, she does not have a Ford 351 engine. She has the stock AMC 304 V8.  Then we found the cracked bell housing. Its cracked where the starter attaches. So we ran a bolt through it, and nutted it on the back side and we’re good there. Oh, and the starter worked. The new battery was too small to really fire her up, and we ended up frying it. Thanks to a charger hooked up, she had enough juice to turn the beast over. We realized then, that because she had not been started in a year and a half, the gasoline.. was not good. That said, it took about 3 hours to get her started, even if she wouldn’t idle on her own.

The next day she got new new sparkplugs, new gas, some fuel treatment, new sparkplug lines, a new fuel filter, and a new thermostat. She then would idle on her own, but with backfiring. We have a cylinder that doesn’t seem to want to work just right. But we find the longer we run her, the more she frees up. So, carburetor cleaner, seafoam and new gas mixed with running her, and she's smoothing out more and more.  

We have since run water through the engine, based on a few recommendations, which surprisingly, has worked quite well. She now is idling with very minor backfiring and when the backfires do happen, they are mild. One cylinder seems a bit sticky, but she is working out. Not bad for a 36 year old motor. On the agenda: Body work, paint, bed liner, a top, doors, windshield wipers working again, new lights.. she needs love. Follow her progress as she becomes trail ready before summer. The tOj experience staff will be working hard with many all hands on deck calls to get her up to standards. It will be an exciting and long project, but in the end, worth it. She is already happy to be with us, and Pappy.. He seems pretty happy with his old girl.  Here’s your proof of Jeep’s superiority. This short video shows proof that even after not running for many moons, a 36 year old motor has still got it. Enjoy!