Jeepster <=> Commando

[sams88]

As the old saying goes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.... and there is another one I really like, and it's appropriate, one man's sh*t is another man's gravey

So I've wanted a jeepster since I was a young one (too many years ago to remember just about). Dad was always drooling over them too. But he never got one, and as the years are quickly going by, I figured I'd better get off my butt and get one. So I jumped. Went up and took a look at it in the dark with my headlights and flashlight. Definitely wasn't a beauty queen but it was salvageable. About the only thing I didn't notice on it until daylight is that the right front frame rail has been tweaked and it about an inch lower than the left. Nothing that can't be fixed, but definitely not some lightweight work either. There are three spots with rust. One on the right rear quarter panel about 6 inches up from the bottom where flatheaded rivets attach to a rail behind the skin, and it's still surface rust that can be taken care of. On the rocker panels on each side, there is a spot where it has rotted through. The front windshield needs to be replaced as it is starred with a large series of cracks. Some wiring is going to have to be replaced which is no biggie. There are exhaust leaks, and the exhaust gaskets need to be replaced. The engine sounds like it has a miss, but then the 225 Buick v6 sounds like it's got a miss anyway so I don't know at this point whether it really does miss or not. Needs a lot of cleaning up, but the body panels are straight, and it has been customized with a CJ hood and grill.

So it's a project car. My friend William was kind enough to drive his car hauler and me up to Yakima to pick it up yesterday and we brought it down to the Tri-Cities. We did a lot of what-if discussions on the trip back home with several ideas popping up regarding how to handle taking care of various issues.

First thing is to get the title issues taken care of, and then move some of my other junk around so that I can move the jeepster into the garage and pull the front clip off to get a good look at the front frame rails. One idea that has entered the brain is to re-do the front end and set it up like a long arm suspension like on a Cherokee. But until the front clip is off I won't decide for sure.

Doing the serial number trip, it started out as a Jeepster pickup with the short cab. Well obviously that was done away with as it now has the station wagon model hardtop on it. So I'm pretty excited about it and will get some "before" pictures, and then go from there. Meanwhile the wife is giving me those looks.... she obviously doesn't see the true "potential" in this.

[sams88]

Well to continue this one a bit further. Turns out that the youngest son has a 3rd gen extended cab Toyota p/u, broken of course. And he wanted to trade it for the Jeepster. So after a bit of thinking about things like I don't have any stash of jeepster/cj parts but I've got a large and growing collection of Toyota drivetrain and suspension parts, I decided to go ahead and swap with him. So tomorrow will be the trip to visit the DOL folks and do the paperwork. He in turn works for a body/fender shop, so he will be able to do a good job on the jeepster without having to sink an arm and leg into it to get the body cherried out.

As for the extended cab, at first I wanted one to do the crawler thing to it, but I've pretty much decided to turn it into a modified daily driver and beef up the suspension a bit and put a throttle-body 4.3L in it. I've got the Advance Adapters stuff to do that and hook it up to the Toyota 5-speed. I even picked up a straight axle Toyota front end to do an SAS conversion to it. Ran into a good deal on one yesterday for a huh to hub complete unit. So time marches on and a new thread on a Toyota will appear one of these days this fall.