New addition to the fleet

[extrashaky]

I kinda feel that if I'm going to have a sports car, I need a truck to complement it. If I'm going to have a truck, at least it should be an interesting truck and not just some bland F150.

In that spirit, behold the 1971 Jeep J4000:











Pulling it home was an adventure. It has a leaky carburetor and no brakes, so it had to be towed. The car carrier I rented jumped right off the ball in traffic and tried to go off on its own, but the safety chains held. Luckily that happened on the way to pick up the Jeep and not on the way home.

Eventually I'll be using this to tow a car carrier with the BRZ to the track. But for now it's one project at a time.

[computeruser]

Nice score. Love the old Jeep trucks!!!!

Please, please, please don't screw this up and pimp it out. I spent years in the Jeep scene, and it always broke my heart when folks started messing with these classics, cutting them up, and so forth.

[NemesisPrime909]

This feels like the truck of a protagonist in a steven king novel

That said, I adore these trucks, I wish Jeep who actually make a truck again, and not a conversion.

[extrashaky]

Originally Posted by computeruser

Please, please, please don't screw this up and pimp it out.

No pimping planned. I'm going to keep it at stock height. I don't really care for the goofy wheel color, so I will probably swap out the rims to something functional and appropriate to the period (none of these stupid 22" rims). I will also likely convert that big 360 over to throttle body injection later on. But otherwise I intend to keep it mostly stock. I bought this thing to drive, for its ability to pull a trailer and haul a load. While still looking cool, of course.

In the second photo you can see my Cherokee through the windshield. That's where all my modding budget is going. It has a Golen 4.6L stroker in it and will eventually get a 4.5" long arm lift. I have a beastly Ford 8.8 axle to go under it. Even there I'm staying conservative, though, and don't plan to put more than a 32" tire on it.

Originally Posted by NemesisPrime909

TThat said, I adore these trucks, I wish Jeep who actually make a truck again, and not a conversion.

It'll never happen while Jeep is owned by Chrysler, and Chrysler won't divest itself of Jeep as long as it's making money. Chrysler killed the Comanche and has refused to bring a Jeep truck to market since then because they don't want the competition with the Ram trucks. The only way those concept trucks will ever become reality is if Chrysler sells off Jeep in a fit of stupidity. I think the best we could hope for is that Chrysler goes into bankruptcy and has to sell off Jeep to another company that doesn't have a strong truck line (but then we wouldn't get the Hellcat Grand Cherokee).

[NWFRS]

Originally Posted by extrashaky

It'll never happen while Jeep is owned by Chrysler...

Someone just needs to gift a classic Jeep pickup to Sergio Marchionne so he can see firsthand how bad@ss they were.

One of my best buddies was given a '65 International pickup by a teacher in our senior year of high school. A true barn find. Our little gang used to pile into that pickup and visit various gravel pits on the weekends-it always had 22lr shells rolling around in the bed. The sheet steel on that truck was so thick we could easily stand on the hood or cabin roof without it oil canning. It had a strait six and got 6mpg on a good day...

That is a BEAUTIFUL pickup by the way. Congrats!

[extrashaky]

Originally Posted by NWFRS

The sheet steel on that truck was so thick we could easily stand on the hood or cabin roof without it oil canning.

When I was a teenager, my first car was a Triumph. That meant that I was often driving my dad's '59 Chevy Apache instead, since British cars spend much of their time with the bonnet up. That Chevy was a beast.

One morning on my way to school in the Apache a stupid girl in an '81 or '82 model Gran Prix made a left turn right in front of me, and I SMASHED her. It must have been a spectacular crash to witness. I saw glass go flying everywhere and saw the roof of her car buckle, and I thought oh shit oh shit oh shit my dad's truck! I jumped out ready to scream obscenities at her and looked at the front of the truck... and laughed. Then I looked back at her car and laughed again.

The only damage to the Apache was a little scrape around the headlight bezel where it punched into the side of her car and took out the rear side window. Oh, and the bumper spacer collapsed where the bumper punched into the body and folded the door into it so that it would never open again. The deputy that responded was looking at it with me, and we realized that you could make out the imprint of the front end of that truck in the side of the car. "Hey, look, here's where your turn signal went in," he said.

I drove on to school that day. That girl's car went to the junk yard. She was actually so rattled that she left and walked home before the cop showed up.

Later that evening the girl's dad called my dad to find out how bad it was going to be against his insurance. My dad said, "Don't worry about it." The guy had seen his girl's car and had a very hard time believing there was no damage to the truck. My dad said, "If it would make you feel better, you can come over and wash it."

I understand about crumple zones and that cars today are much safer than they were back then. But there's still an appeal to heavy American steel.

[Tcoat]

That exact year, model and even colour was on my toy search list for about 10 years. I could never find anything local that even remotely affordable or in any form of condition that made it worth while trying to fix. The rust demons took them all around here.
Needless to say I am very jealous.