Coming outside to inhale these expensive and unhealthy sticks of foul I am faced with yet another mountain of responsibility. See, I have another even more expensive and time consuming addiction. Cars. Sitting in my driveway right now are four Jeep XJ’s in various states of disrepair. In my garage are the pieces and parts of two others. In my basement are tubs of new parts waiting to be used.
Ugh.
If I want to move I have to figure out what to do with all this. How I got into this state is a long and convoluted story of a guy who just wanted to restore a vehicle once in his life.
See, I come from a car family, and it has always been a dream of mine to restore a car. I tried when I was 16 with my first car, a 1975 Toyota Celica. I got it most of the way there but found I needed a lot more skills and a fuckton more money to really make it the car of my dreams. Then I found marijuana and got distracted for a while.
I tried again in my late 20s with a MK2 Volkswagen GTI.
Failed. Lack of skills.
I tried again in y 30’s with a 1969 Chevy C10 truck my dad got for free and gave to me.
Failed. Lack of money.
1974 Super Beetle I picked up for near nothing?
Failed. Lack of money.
1979 K5 Chevy Blazer?
You get the idea.
My most recent adventure started with a divorce. In the negotiations, I gave the ex our only vehicle. I wanted her to have something stable for driving the kids around knowing I could get a hoopty and not stress if I broke down. To that end I sat down and did some calculations.
I needed a car that was cheap to buy, with an inexpensive and stable parts pipeline, and one not known to be prone to a major repair. It had to have four doors for ease of kid finagling, and it couldn’t be totally annoying to drive. After a lot of research I came to the conclusion that the 1998 Jeep Cherokee XJ was the best option.
Mainly because in Colorado there are scads of them.
Supply and demand baby.
I found one for sale that hadn’t been molested by some weekend mechanic wanting to do competition rock crawling and wanting his investment back. I handed over the $3400 he was asking for. It immediately needed tires, a wheel hub, a u-joint, and some cleaning on the intake sensors. All easy work, cheap parts, and in no time I had a wicked reliable vehicle that was good in snow and was actually pretty fun to drive.
It wasn’t fast but it had enough grunt to get off the line.
I fell in love with it and made the decision that someday I would do a full restoration and make it the vehicle I drove into the grave. This time, though, I was being patient. I made sure the finances were in check, and I was going to do it in steps. The thing is, in order to do any restoration I would need a second vehicle to use while my project was out of commission.
By a stroke of chance, I picked up a running, driving XJ of the same year for $1350. It had body issues and was lifted, which I didn’t like, but after selling the oversized tires and rims and recouped some of the price so I was able to get a full parts Jeep that would serve as my daily for less than $1000.
Sweet.
I bought parts and paint and was ready to start the resto. I was just waiting for the weather to warm up. Then in a light snow storm I was T-boned by a full size truck that obliterated my Jeep. Undaunted I decided to look for a replacement while I scavenged what I could of the mangled carcass. I found what I thought a decent restorable example locally and paid $3500 for my third Jeep.
I started tearing into the new Jeep and found that it had been in an accident. While not totally noticeable, I discovered the rear quarter panel had been replaced and the shop didn’t get it lined up properly. This had consequences on how the rear gate lined up, and also meant there was a leak that went unnoticed until I pulled the carpet.
The entire driver side floor in the cargo area was rusted out. The wrecked jeep had the sheet metal for that area undamaged, but with the misalignment and the rust repair it just wasn’t worth fucking with.
Now I have three Jeeps. One is wrecked and mostly stripped, one is the parts Jeep with the lift and body issues, and one is my daily and is too fucked up for me to repair.
Shit.
With no money to buy another Jeep, I finish stripping the wrecked one and scrapped it. I rock the rusted out daily and decide to restore the parts Jeep despite the lift and body work being a barrier. I then spent the next 6 months cleaning every inch of the interior and prepping the body for paint.
After paint I installed a stereo system that would make Masta Ace blink. I got everything put back together and started to daily the project Jeep. I stripped the rust bucket and had it hauled off and was back to a single Jeep and a garage full of spare parts. Then as I was driving back from a trip to Denver the check engine light came on in my fancy, partially restored Jeep.
Something about doing 95 miles per hour for too long.
Allegedly.
No worries. I have a garage full of parts and a willingness to use them.
Come to find out I had lost compression in one cylinder.
This is bad.
It isn’t the worst thing in the world to have to dig in to a motor, but given the circumstance I start doing the calculations. If I am going to take the head off, I may as well pull the whole motor and clean it. If I am going to pull the whole motor I may as well clean up the engine bay. While I am at it, I could rebuild the steering box and if I am going to go through all this trouble I may as well just rebuild the axle and redo all of the bushings.
First things first though, I need another daily driver.
I settle on one that has a few minor rust issues but is all in all a good looking and driving Jeep. I drop $3300 on it and it immediately starts overheating. Now I have to tear into it and replace the radiator and flush the cooling system.
Annoying, but easy bucket.
I pull the motor on my project and start buying parts. Then I realize, if I am going to rebuild the stock engine, why not make it a stroker and give the thing more power? If I do that then I have to change fuel injectors and probably the fuel pump, and then I really should do the intake and the exhaust.
This is going to require a shitload more money, but fuck it.
I want a cool Jeep.
Yadda yadda pandemic, yadda yadda no more job, yadda yadda half-finished project in the garage. Yadda yadda a year of no employment goes by.
Meanwhile my daughter has been learning to drive and we are using my Jeep. She finds she doesn’t like driving other cars because they have huge blind spots, are low to the ground, and new cars disconnect you from the driving experience. When the time comes for her to want a car she asks for a Jeep so we go shopping.
She takes out a loan with me cosigning, which means I took out a loan. We find her a nice Jeep that needs some work for $3500. Meanwhile I find another that I can’t pass up for $2600. I figure we buy these two, and we can use all of the parts of three okay Jeeps and make two great ones. Then I can sell one and use it to get the project finished.
So now I have four Jeeps.
I have the project Jeep that I don’t have the money to finish. I have my daily driver that has rust issues and a sketchy but stable transmission. I have my daughters Jeep that is a decent daily but needs a paint job and some mechanical cleanup. Then I have a parts Jeep that could become a decent driver but needs a lot of attention.
It is all manageable with the right strategy, but what I lack in this equation is time. If I am trying to get moved in 2 years I don’t think I can finish my daughters Jeep, and swap everything from my daily to the other two. Realistically I should just finish my daughters Jeep and sell everything I can and start over, but I will lose a lot of money going that route.
As with many of my dreams, restoring a vehicle just might have to be something I never got around to.
I don’t even want to talk about the 1975 Corvette Stingray my son bought with the locked up rear end and title issues that is currently in pieces in my garage. . .
Fucking kids.
