Meet Road Trip
WARNING: This is long as it has been building for two years and I need to VENT!
A little history is in order. In 1979 I was in graduate school, I had a job starting at the end of the semester and was getting married 2 weeks after I started the job, AND I needed a car right then. My 1969 Plymouth GTX with the 440 magnum had finally ceased being reliable. I found two cars that could work, one was a yellow 1979 Jeep Cherokee Chief Sport and the other was a Buick. Since I was starting a career, getting married and being the responsible person I wanted the world to think I was, I went with the Buick. However, for all these years I couldn’t forget that Chief.
I had been thinking about doing a restoration for years. I had even begun collecting tools to help with the project. Then at a salvage yard on the side of a highway in the middle of nowhere I saw it, a yellow 1979 Jeep Cherokee Chief Sport. I turned around and looked at the Jeep. I told them I would be back that weekend with a trailer to pick it up. You guessed it, before I could get back that weekend, it was gone. So I started looking around and found Road Trip, a 1979 Jeep Cherokee Chief Sport.
Now this was not my first Jeep, and you would have thought I would have learned from my first one, a 70’s CJ7. In 1983 I found it in the country and towed it home with the homemade angle iron tow bar the PO had built. When I got it home and got it to run, I thought it rode really rough and made a strange noise when going over, well anything. Upon further investigation I found the frame was broken in two inside the front spring hanger, on both sides. I welded two plates on both sides of the broken frame and it seemed solid. Then, I tried to pull a shrub out with it and the driver’s side axle spun inside the hub. I thought about it a little and took it to a machine shop and had a key way cut in both the hub and the drive axle, and put a high grade steel key in it and never had another problem. The seats were shot and falling apart, but I found some Camaro seats and fabbed some brackets and had some very comfortable seats on the Jeep frames. I did the body work, moving the fill tube to the back end so it would not catch on tree limbs and took it to Maaco for a “great” paint job. Then came the stereo that I could hear at 70 on the highway with no top. Then I added a soft top and doors that popped and snapped like a flag, making more noise than the stereo could cover up. By this time I had been working on it for several months, and it would sit around and the battery would be dead. I bought it a Sears Die Hard because I thought the battery was bad. It would run like a champ. I’d park it and in less than an hour the battery would be dead, or it could sit in the garage for weeks and start every time I tried it. It had a ghost short that I could not find. I sold it to a guy who said he was “good with electrical stuff.” For his sake I hope he was.
Anyway, I learned some about Jeeps and I am at that point in life where I needed a challenge, so I bought Road Trip.
The first thing I did was make a plan. I was going to restore the body and insides mostly stock, and go with a LM7/4L60 power plant. I grew up with vacuums and carburetors and I didn’t want to go that route. However, I’m now having second thoughts and am not quite sure which way to go.
YES, THAT WAS THE EXTENT OF MY PLAN! Did I mention I have the ADD and I can’t sit around long planning, I have to be doing. I had no idea it would be so hard finding parts for this thing. I mean you can get parts for a Chevy everywhere!
I stripped the insides out to see what was there. I even got the rear window down with some screw drivers.
That didn’t work so well, I chipped the window, well broke might be more accurate. Put that on the list to replace.
When I bought it, I stomped on the front floors and they seemed solid, but that was the sheet metal pop riveted over the rusted out holes and covered with ¼” of roofers tar and carpet.
This is what it looked like when I got all the rust out.
Now I have welded with a stick welder, but I was patching things at the ranch with heavy metal. So my welds are called “Gorilla welds” by my relatives who can actually weld. I knew that I needed something other than my stick welder to weld that sheet metal after I blew holes in the first pan. So I picked up a MIG to weld with. I got some gas and I practiced a little, well I practiced on the first panel.
And then I began patching small things like the tailgate latch where the nut stripped out of its holder.
It actually worked, and I knew I could use the grinders and clean it up enough to paint it.
It was about this time I found the IFSJA site. The write ups of the people who had been through this before me were a real help. If only I had found that help before I broke that rear window. Anyway, they said if I was going with the GM drivetrain I’d need driver’s drop axles and I had passenger drops on the Quadratrac. I now know why, but I started looking for axles because they said I needed them. I found them in Ark, Iflypropjobs sold me a black 82 Laredo, sans motor and tranny. So I made a road trip to drag it home. It had a sunroof and a vinyl top and I wasn’t too interested in it at the time, but it had the axles I was told I’d need and a good windshield, so I was happy.
I kept patching small holes like the one under the driver’s vent where you can see light from inside.
Of course the rear flares had some rust, I just didn’t know how much until I ground off some of the bondo. They were so shot the whole lower portion would have to be replaced. Then I found it.
Where the roof meets the drip rail, it was sort of like Swiss cheese. If I had found this first, I might have scrapped the whole thing, but by now I had cussed it, bled on it and named it, so I had to keep going. At this point I had almost a year in it, with not much to show, except I knew how to use a grinder and weld a little.
Now I am working at the ranch, over an hour from home. So “LIFE” as WH says keeps getting in my way. I get to work as best as I can tell about 8 hours every other weekend. Now when I’m there I work a lot more than that, I just don’t get there that often enough to average more than that. Work, family, LIFE.
So I looked closely at the 82 as a replacement for the body tub. Yeah, it has a sunroof, but Laura likes those. So I started tearing into the sunroof. I tried to find new parts and may have found them, but I kept coming back to the design and components used in 82 would never be as good as I wanted. BUT I could cut a patch out of the good section of the red one and patch the hole. On a hot Texas day I peeled the vinyl off and started stripping the second one.
That Texas sun on that black vinyl was HOT!
When I removed the front seats, the seat stands were really rusty. I thought “not again”, but when I peeled the carpet back from the firewall, the floorboards were in very good shape considering the leaky sunroof and it's a JEEP. So I fixed the small spots I found up front and went underneath to pull out the dealer installed auxilliary gas tank where the spare tire should have been. When that tank came out I looked up at the floor and said a bad word, maybe a few. I climbed out from under and started ripping out the carpet only to realize the floorboard in the back was rusted to the point I was going to have to cut out all the way past the wheel wells to get good steel to work with. I had the red one and it was good there, so I could cut the roof patch and the rear floor out of the red one and use them to patch the black one. I was not a happy camper as this was now more work than I wanted, and after a year and a half I was still not building. To the rescue Serehill, the guy with the Ebay habit.
Rick found this
A NOS body tub stored in a warehouse since 86. It made life worth living again. Yes, it blew my budget, but I was back on track for a real build, with a body that is not rusted out.
That brought me to the frame. I wanted to use the steel gas tank from the 79, not the plastic one from the 82. So I put the axles from the 82 under the 79 frame and vice versa so I could have a roller for the body while I finished the frame.
Good plan, until I started reading again. I should have done that first I guess. Apparently, with the driver’s side drop the 79 gas tank won’t work! Something about the driveshaft hitting it, bummer. Back to the 82 frame the axles went, the second time I moved axles under frames.
DID I MENTION THIS IS A HOW NOT TO?
In the garage I was polishing the frame with wire brushes when I found the body mounts on the 82 frame to be less than satisfactory.
This was the good one. I thought about repairing them, but- I also had a rusted out section of frame where the gas tank had been. Oh well, I’ll just cut the tank perches off of the 79 and put the 82 gas tank perches on it, and use the 79 frame because it is in great shape, and I now know how to move the axles under the frame for the THIRD time!
I used two air grinders, one straight and one angle and I used up 2 electric grinders and I’m on my second set of these and I've been using the Dremel as a small grinder to get in places I missed with the others. I’ve used every wire brush I can find to get some that work best. On the electric grinders I use a twisted wire brush wheel and a twisted wire cupped brush and on the air grinders I use a 1” wheel and a 1” twisted wire brush cupped. Those have given me the best results.
I think it’s good.
That brings me up to the PM Master Series paint that WH talks about. It really does seem to have all the properties one would look for in a rust proofing and finish paint. It is a process that takes some time. Once the metal has been cleaned, I used the metal prep to seal the metal and prevent flash rusting. Then I applied the first coat of rust encapsulator, let it set up for about four hours and applied the second coat.
That has to set up for no more than 24 hours, I allowed about 12 hours from the first coat before I applied the black top coat.
I’m sure many of you recognize some of these parts. One that may be “unknown” is the arm rest frame. When I pulled the cover and foam off of the frame it was rusting. It was raw metal that they foamed and covered and it was rusting from the inside. I don’t think it will rust any more. Did I mention I hate rust? I mean I really hate rust!!!
I have some more small parts to paint, and then I'll do the axles and the frame. So I think I'm finally headed in the right direction.
Now about that plan for the drive train...oh wait, I'm not done painting or reassembling the frame and axles. Darned ADD!!!