BigBad408
Observer
After owning a behemoth Ford Excursion and enjoying the fact that I could fit half my house in it, but liking little else about it, last January I decided to purchase a Jeep. After deciding what I wanted, a JKU Rubicon Hard Rock, Auto (wife’s requirement) 4:10, fully loaded with leather, Alpine stereo, etc I set about hunting down one in the color combo I wanted. Rhino, standard black hardtop and flares. I found exactly what I wanted to a “T” at a dealership where I had test driven several jeeps a few months prior. Drove out to the dealership and started wandering the lot. Found a sales guy and told him what I was looking for. We went and found my Jeep on the lot.. except….it had just pulled out of their shop with added wheels w/35’s, a mopar 2” lift, teraflex tire carrier, rigid cube lights on the A-pillars and a few other odds and ends. Not only did I want to start from scratch, but all the add ons with dealer mark-up pushed this Jeep out of my price range. The sales guy and I went back and forth that day for a bit, the next day I reached out to him about just ordering the same exact jeep. He knocked some more off the Jeep, the add ons and upped the offer on the trade in. I hemmed and hawed some more and he eventually brought the price of all the add ons down to cheaper than what I could buy them retail. Even though it wasn’t starting from scratch, the wheels had grown on me, the mopar 2” lift is a decent starting point and I was having a hard time justifying not buying it(read: I wanted it now), when if I went and bought all the same things on the street I would be spending 1K more. We finally got to a deal after about four days and the below pictures are the Jeep as it came home almost a year ago. Then something really awful happened. The Jeep sat. In a year I have put less than 4,000 miles on it and the first 2,000 were in the first month I owned it. Only modification I made was to add a Maximus-3 grill guard and fab a bike mount for the cargo area. It was a travesty. Oh…and it hadn’t been off road. Once. Travesty #2.
Well after a year of doing nothing….I melted my credit card on black Friday and things have started. The intent for Rhino is an all around rig. Overlanding, camping, trails, some crawling and whatever else comes along. Our last kid will be off to college in Fall of 2018 and we want to start to get away when we can. In the past year I have gone through roughly 579.5 iterations of “builds” in my head and on excel spreadsheets. I won’t attempt to tell you what all is planned….because I likely don’t know, haven’t made up my mind or will change it. Follow along and I hope you enjoy as much as I have enjoyed some of the other build threads. More to come.
Well after a year of doing nothing….I melted my credit card on black Friday and things have started. The intent for Rhino is an all around rig. Overlanding, camping, trails, some crawling and whatever else comes along. Our last kid will be off to college in Fall of 2018 and we want to start to get away when we can. In the past year I have gone through roughly 579.5 iterations of “builds” in my head and on excel spreadsheets. I won’t attempt to tell you what all is planned….because I likely don’t know, haven’t made up my mind or will change it. Follow along and I hope you enjoy as much as I have enjoyed some of the other build threads. More to come.
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