Woodstock

May, 2002. Now that the tub was painted, I had 3 weeks before I needed to start shake down runs. And the motor hasn't run yet. So that was the push, get the body on the now complete rolling chassis. My '67 in the background had been on 8 Jamborees at this point, with 7.50-16 tires, 3 speed, manual steering, power lock in the rear. The Rubicon was just getting tougher, and I needed a crawler that wouldn't break.

The chassis was pretty much ready, minus the winch. Those are some cheap Thrush turbo mufflers on there, I will be buying a lot of those in the future. The shocks were just some basic mono tube from the FLAPS. The tires were used 33-1250-15 BFG KM1's from a jeep I parted out to get the rear Detroit, front 30 outers, and the tires. The wheels were wrecking yard Scout rally slots, painted black. (It was practically still the 90's, sorry). Years later, it turned out those Scout wheels are valuable, and I returned them to the Scout world, not too worse for wear.

Body on for the last time. All the little stuff that I could do after work- wiring, brake lines, swing pedals, hydraulic clutch, gauges, lights, seats. I used some lightly used Beachwood Canvas cushions that came out of my dad's M38. Still have them. New glass in the windshield, painted the frame black, as was correct. Nick started calling it "Woody of Jeep".

Firewall mounted brake and clutch cylinders, Optima red top was the standard at the time, rebuilt a Rochester 2G, Delco 1 wire alternator, very small radiator-did not last long.

 

The winch is finally installed. There is quite a bit to it, fabbing a mount that gets it in the correct position, and the driveshaft needed to be 2-piece, with a pillow block under the motor mount, and a bunch of u-joints. But it fits, looks good, and very functional. I would test the absolute crap out of it 2 years later when we had the bright idea to go wheel the Hammer trails in Johnson Valley, but that's another story.
Also power steering lines made and connected, and wiring complete, now time to fire it up. It was an uneventful cam break in, and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

A lot of the flatties on previous Jamborees had these rocker guards, all made by one guy, who to this day is a great friend of mine. I couldn't afford the amount of beer he wanted for a set, so I was plotting a way to blatantly rip off his design.

This was when you could buy a roll bar, add-a-cage, weld it up, done. So that's what I did. Now..those days are gone.

 

Love this so much.

 

Why are "those days are done?"

 

No one is selling roll bars for ECJ's that I know of. Let alone the add-a-cage front hoop. Not sure if it's a sales thing or a liability thing.

 

Ohhhhh, that.
I've noticed we no longer represent a significant market.
I called TereFlex and asked about the Tera Lo gears. No makey anymore. Not enough CJ's needing parts.

 

Herm has them, I just bought a set for my upcoming project. Also Advanced Adapters has them, and if I had to do it over again, I'd buy from AA, more complete of a kit.

 

not many but at least one....Extreme Custom Fabrication (extremecustomparts.com)

 

Ok, I didn't know about them. Man, the prices these days.

 

Loads cheaper than buying a bender AND tubing..

 

I think that's how they figured their price point. When I bought the 1.75" DOM for the tux last year, it was $175 a 19 foot stick. (9 bucks a foot), used 2.5 sticks. Then 2 guys work all day, and get a cage bent and tacked up. Another day for final welding, another day for paint. So yeah, if you count labor, (4 man-days) it doesn't pencil. WFO quoted me $4500, that's when I started looking lovingly at my brothers bender.

 

Well, it's late June, time for a shake down run through Deer Valley. I skipped painting the hood because it needed some love I didn't have time for. The jeep was running good, and I wanted to feel good about our upcoming Rubicon trip, which was to be my first year as a rock roller on the 50th Jeepers Jamboree. The deal with the JJ is, bring your jeep and a trailer, work 2 days on the trail, get 2 free tickets. So my very first trip with this unproven jeep would be dragging a trailer through the Rubicon.

Deer Valley for a day run is a ton of fun. The jeep had several things that could stand an upgrade, like points ignition, 6-bolt hubs, small radiator, but it ran great, idled great, low range is 93 to 1, the 225 seemed happy out in the rocks.

My brother was running his '68 then and we both had 33" tires, Detroits, 4 speeds, power steering, and whiney Dana 18's.

 

93 to 1 !!!?
Did I miss something?

 

He did say 4 speed and guessing he has 5.38 gears, it ends up a little over 93-1.

 

Yes, SM420 7.05 x M18 2.46 x 5.38 =93.3.

 

After some more fine tuning, it was Jamboree time. There was a lot of hype about the 50th anniversary of the oldest and toughest trip. For the first time, they had a 3, a 4 and a 5-day trip Thurs-Mon), but everyone would be at the Springs by Friday night. As a member of the Lake Tahoe Hi-Lo's, I was scheduled to be a rock roller in the Little Sluice for Thursday and Friday, so we wheeled in to Spider Lake Weds., which is awesome because we have the trail to ourselves because it is closed for the event. Woody was running great, and I was really happy with the 2 Detroits pulling a trailer.

The Hi-Lo's camp is just above the Little Sluice, just below the edge of Spider Lake, which has the best swimming in the Rubicon, great after a dusty day. We set up and got ready for 600 jeeps coming tomorrow.

Each of the next 2 mornings we wheeled down trail to our assigned spots. We could have walked quicker, but it was nice to have a winch and a cooler out there.

Friday after the last jeep and the drag crew went by, we had a quick dinner, loaded up, and headed east, with misguided ideas of getting to the bar before closing.

Just after Buck Island repair station, Sam broke a tie rod end, and since the drag crew was in front of us, it was up to us to fix it in the dark. No big deal, but we were beat, camped, and made it in to the Springs for breakfast.

 

As the 70th anniversary was in 2022, this is amazing you are remembering trail and build details that are 20 years in the past.

 

This one just stood out, a lot of firsts on this trip. Don't ask me what happened on the 51st.

 

What happened on the 51st?