Grease Cruiser
Adventurer
I got my pig back. It's a pretty good story. Check it out.
http://forum.ih8mud.com/showthread.php?t=175550
http://forum.ih8mud.com/showthread.php?t=175550
Got My Pig Back
- Thread starter Grease Cruiser
- Start date
OverlandZJ
Expedition Leader
I admit it...i teared up. NEVER sell it again. Congrats, and i look forward to the mods you do to get it ready for next summer.
And PLEASE post some pics of the Troopy... i'v been dreaming of owning an FJ again.
And PLEASE post some pics of the Troopy... i'v been dreaming of owning an FJ again.
cruiseroutfit
Well-known member
Congrats John!!! 
Grease Cruiser
Adventurer
Thanks for all the compliments. I am so glad to get it back. I never knew how much I missed it.
I know that it is just a car and my Dad would have been the first to admit that it IS just a car. But, somehow I feel that is more than that. Hopefully I can keep it alive long enough to bring us a lot more memories of adventures to come.
I am not going to go too crazy with the mods just yet. Not sure what I want to do with it but for right now, I want to just drive it.
Stay tuned.
PS John B. mentioned the Troopy. Ahhh, the troopy. Not really a troopy but a conglomeration of a few (actually a LOT) Cruisers. I'll have to save that for another day.
I know that it is just a car and my Dad would have been the first to admit that it IS just a car. But, somehow I feel that is more than that. Hopefully I can keep it alive long enough to bring us a lot more memories of adventures to come.
I am not going to go too crazy with the mods just yet. Not sure what I want to do with it but for right now, I want to just drive it.
Stay tuned.
PS John B. mentioned the Troopy. Ahhh, the troopy. Not really a troopy but a conglomeration of a few (actually a LOT) Cruisers. I'll have to save that for another day.
durango_60
Explorer
Great story, how long before the 4bt goes in???
adventureduo
Dave Druck [KI6LBB]
Great story!!! Thats awesome man. Congrats on getting back and saving a piece of your family history.
Grease Cruiser
Adventurer
durango_60 said:
No plans of a 4BT yet. I don't really want to spring this one over. At most, I would do a 2-3" lift on it and call it good. I would love to go diesel (maybe a Toyota diesel) on this as well, but it only has 115K miles on the old 2F. It's hard to justify throwing away a perfectly good engine for one that gets 50% better mileage.
For right now, I'll just drive it and enjoy it for what it is.
dieselcruiserhead
16 Years on ExPo. Whoa!!
Again that's awesome John, what a great story...
I hope you don't mind and not to trounce on your thread but I figured you wouldn't mind if I posted a little story of mine relevant to a long-time-ago FJ55...
When I was in college a good friend and I were in Taos for a month-long winter break for absolutely the worst ski trip ever, with two friends. The first day out, Sean Messing tore his ACL to go home early after a few days, Evan Emmott had brutal food poisoning from returning from Ecuador and I snapped a very expensive ski. We were all close to best friends from boarding school and this was our last real adventure together. We were 19 or 20. Then it never snowed beyond the 6" for a piss poor early winter, so we basically resorted to bumming around there and Las Vegas NM and a little village called Rociata where Even Emmott's family had just moved to from Connecticut. In the end, it was a neat trip, but really long and slow and sort of painful for a variety of reasons.
Anyway, about the second week in, growing up back east (its funny how things like this can be so rare for some people), I had never seen a FJ55 before and sure enough there was one on the side of the road right in downtown Taos. I was driving at the time and screeched to a halt as we had nothing better to do... We started poking around and it was really funky. Completely covered in NM red clay, bald and worn and totally beaten up but still running, New Mexico style.. Huge holes through the front fenders that you could put your arms through but not that bad or so I thought...
Poked around some more and sure enough it was actually for sale, there was a sign that had fallen off the dash under the front bench seat long ago. Probably been for sale for months I imagine with litte to no one paying attention, including the owner. Had badly expired plates, but looked like it was fully functional sitting in a little dirt pad off the side of the road. It was a '72 or so, 3 on the tree, old school cruier..
We called the guy up and it belonged to some NM riff-raff and the cruiser was sort of like the village bicycle, even belonged to some guy called "Kramer" at some point the guy kept mentioning for some reason. But in my eyes (I owned a beat up FJ60 at the time, in college in Vermont) it was a jem. The rear window was busted or blown out so someone had built a wooden barrier behind the back door with a piece of plexi glass to see with your mirror. And when we started it it had a bad rod knock. But ran and drove with a max speed of about 25-30 at max power and piss poor if not non existant old cruiser drum brakes.
So we negotiated, I tried to trade my back pack but the guy luckily said no (I still have and love the backpack) and ended up getting it for close to what we had to our names I think, I bought it for $225 with the agreement that me and the friend with food poisoning would split it later. Also, we had to return our Jetta shortly and would be without wheels (which had become our lifeblood with no snow), so in a sense it was exactly what we were looking for.
The cruiser eventually became the highlight of the trip. For example I am a die hard skier but really remember little of Taos the ski area. I remember meeting the author John Nichols (who wrote the Milagro Beanfield War), who is old friends with my old man, at a cheap diner, with the cruiser.. He had just married and divorced his 5th wife I think, a 20-something Mexican and she'd taken him for everything he was worth. He was driving a beat up old late 80's small Dodge pickup. He arrived wearing jeans he'd probably been wearing for 5 days it looked like. I remember from the few times I met him when I was a kid that he took out his upper retainer which held 2 or 3 fake teeth, from when he played hockey at Loomis Chaffee. And he was older than I remember him, at this point in his late 50s or early 60's. And I remember he was awesome, and so down to earth versus what I had come to remember from only distant childhood memories of the great writer John Nichols, and what an honor it was to meet him in all of his humbleness. And he also dug the old cruiser and our little adventure; he really thought it was cool that we had bought and were tooling around in this old POS..
And I remember the funky New Mexico land scape, and how barren it was. The encroachment of box stores like Block Buster into the funky down and out town of Las Vegas. I remember the little adobe house Evan's family was living in (they'd just moved to NM from rural Connecticut), which had the address "House behind Church, Rociada NM." And I remember most of the days there oddly having a hazey and cloudy feel. Odd for New Mexico.
But anyway, the Land Cruiser basically saved the day. We returned the borrowed Jetta so we were going to be stuck and car-less anyway. We ended up spending most of our time bombing around Taos related to no snow, and stayed at a family friends of Evan's parents near town. This family was very cool, modern back east New Mexico hippie transplant types, but authentic not phony. Where they lived they had a lot of land, off a gnarly road to the north. They already had a parked fire truck and a number of old non-rusted decrepid vehicles they had acquired which was also cool. So we cruised around, and the day we were supposed to leave Taos (with this hairbrain idea to drive the cruiser down to Las Vegas to Evan's parents place--a bad idea with an engine with a knock), the engine had a significant loss of power and change in noise and we knew it was about toast. It limped down to about 15 mph max and could not longer make it up the mildest hill. So we called the family with the fire truck and asked if we could store it there and they said yes. The Jetta and Evan's parents reammerged to pick us up and we actually used the extra power of the Jetta to get the cruiser to the property of these people and parked it. That night, I flew home and returned to college in Vermont ('72 FJ55 even dotted my sig for several months) but I eventually forgot about it all...
I hope you don't mind and not to trounce on your thread but I figured you wouldn't mind if I posted a little story of mine relevant to a long-time-ago FJ55...
When I was in college a good friend and I were in Taos for a month-long winter break for absolutely the worst ski trip ever, with two friends. The first day out, Sean Messing tore his ACL to go home early after a few days, Evan Emmott had brutal food poisoning from returning from Ecuador and I snapped a very expensive ski. We were all close to best friends from boarding school and this was our last real adventure together. We were 19 or 20. Then it never snowed beyond the 6" for a piss poor early winter, so we basically resorted to bumming around there and Las Vegas NM and a little village called Rociata where Even Emmott's family had just moved to from Connecticut. In the end, it was a neat trip, but really long and slow and sort of painful for a variety of reasons.
Anyway, about the second week in, growing up back east (its funny how things like this can be so rare for some people), I had never seen a FJ55 before and sure enough there was one on the side of the road right in downtown Taos. I was driving at the time and screeched to a halt as we had nothing better to do... We started poking around and it was really funky. Completely covered in NM red clay, bald and worn and totally beaten up but still running, New Mexico style.. Huge holes through the front fenders that you could put your arms through but not that bad or so I thought...
Poked around some more and sure enough it was actually for sale, there was a sign that had fallen off the dash under the front bench seat long ago. Probably been for sale for months I imagine with litte to no one paying attention, including the owner. Had badly expired plates, but looked like it was fully functional sitting in a little dirt pad off the side of the road. It was a '72 or so, 3 on the tree, old school cruier..
We called the guy up and it belonged to some NM riff-raff and the cruiser was sort of like the village bicycle, even belonged to some guy called "Kramer" at some point the guy kept mentioning for some reason. But in my eyes (I owned a beat up FJ60 at the time, in college in Vermont) it was a jem. The rear window was busted or blown out so someone had built a wooden barrier behind the back door with a piece of plexi glass to see with your mirror. And when we started it it had a bad rod knock. But ran and drove with a max speed of about 25-30 at max power and piss poor if not non existant old cruiser drum brakes.
So we negotiated, I tried to trade my back pack but the guy luckily said no (I still have and love the backpack) and ended up getting it for close to what we had to our names I think, I bought it for $225 with the agreement that me and the friend with food poisoning would split it later. Also, we had to return our Jetta shortly and would be without wheels (which had become our lifeblood with no snow), so in a sense it was exactly what we were looking for.
The cruiser eventually became the highlight of the trip. For example I am a die hard skier but really remember little of Taos the ski area. I remember meeting the author John Nichols (who wrote the Milagro Beanfield War), who is old friends with my old man, at a cheap diner, with the cruiser.. He had just married and divorced his 5th wife I think, a 20-something Mexican and she'd taken him for everything he was worth. He was driving a beat up old late 80's small Dodge pickup. He arrived wearing jeans he'd probably been wearing for 5 days it looked like. I remember from the few times I met him when I was a kid that he took out his upper retainer which held 2 or 3 fake teeth, from when he played hockey at Loomis Chaffee. And he was older than I remember him, at this point in his late 50s or early 60's. And I remember he was awesome, and so down to earth versus what I had come to remember from only distant childhood memories of the great writer John Nichols, and what an honor it was to meet him in all of his humbleness. And he also dug the old cruiser and our little adventure; he really thought it was cool that we had bought and were tooling around in this old POS..
And I remember the funky New Mexico land scape, and how barren it was. The encroachment of box stores like Block Buster into the funky down and out town of Las Vegas. I remember the little adobe house Evan's family was living in (they'd just moved to NM from rural Connecticut), which had the address "House behind Church, Rociada NM." And I remember most of the days there oddly having a hazey and cloudy feel. Odd for New Mexico.
But anyway, the Land Cruiser basically saved the day. We returned the borrowed Jetta so we were going to be stuck and car-less anyway. We ended up spending most of our time bombing around Taos related to no snow, and stayed at a family friends of Evan's parents near town. This family was very cool, modern back east New Mexico hippie transplant types, but authentic not phony. Where they lived they had a lot of land, off a gnarly road to the north. They already had a parked fire truck and a number of old non-rusted decrepid vehicles they had acquired which was also cool. So we cruised around, and the day we were supposed to leave Taos (with this hairbrain idea to drive the cruiser down to Las Vegas to Evan's parents place--a bad idea with an engine with a knock), the engine had a significant loss of power and change in noise and we knew it was about toast. It limped down to about 15 mph max and could not longer make it up the mildest hill. So we called the family with the fire truck and asked if we could store it there and they said yes. The Jetta and Evan's parents reammerged to pick us up and we actually used the extra power of the Jetta to get the cruiser to the property of these people and parked it. That night, I flew home and returned to college in Vermont ('72 FJ55 even dotted my sig for several months) but I eventually forgot about it all...
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dieselcruiserhead
16 Years on ExPo. Whoa!!
Years go by and Evan and I had long lost touch. Sean, the guy with the torn ACL, had his own bouts with desires to ski from the year he lost from the ACL tear that this trip took from him, and took a year off college to live in Crested Butte. He eventually ended up living in Lake Tahoe, and we still keep in touch (we were roommates my senior year at college) and see each other ever few years.
I had lost complete touch with Evan and still thought he was in Siberia still (literally), finishing his masters degree. He is crazy enough to actually get his masters degree in Siberia. He'd perfected a dialect of Russian that was good enough that most people thought he was from a different part of the country. This is funny because this is how he carries himself here has an odd southwestern accent and was of speech that was western and wore a big belt buckle when we were in boarding school, even though he is from Connecticut. When we next spoke, probably 4 years later, he told me the story of having to headbutt a 300 lb Russian in a bar fight he'd started by accident over some beautiful woman to escape with his life. In Siberia. And today, he is an assistant professor at University of Kansas in some sort of foreign studies.
Anyway, post our last discussion, I had received an email saying something along the lines of, "oh yeah, you remember that old Land Cruiser?" I had forgot about it enough that I didn't even remember to ask about it. I also assumed it was probably still up on that property...
"A couple of months after you guys were out, we went up and pulled it off of the property." And he went into the specifics of actually repairing the damn thing. Little did he know old Land Cruisers had become a life obsession for me by then. He said he'd bought a little mig welder and started cutting out panels here and there. Shortly after I'd even come full circle. I'd sold the HJ60 I was driving at the time to buy a FJ60 to build with some sort of domestic diesel like the Cummins 4BTs. But oddly couldn't find a clean used FJ60 for less than a song and came across a killer deal on a FJ55 in California, that would eventually became my first major project (the '71 F55 in my sig) -- which I also had to replace a lot of steel on. And as I was laboring away on this years later, doing a lot of what he was doing (replacing body panels, rust, etc), he writes "man if only I'd known to start with a clean one." (my thoughts exactly on mine).
He'd basically gotten almost completely done with a complete frame off restoration on the pig back to original 1972 specs. The only thing he'd done beyond stock was a modest swap to a 3 on the floor instead of on-the-tree. He wrote, "you have no idea how much time and labor I put into it. FJ55's as you know have a flimsy roof so I cut the roof out of an old Ford van with ribbing in it and installed that into the FJ55. It is all primered and I have the engine all ready to go and to put into it." And he sent pics.
* * *
So, I should have known and suspected as much because his Dad and older brother had an old MG at the time at his parent's warehouse. They sell/sold at the time yarn out of a warehouse in Las Vegas and had the car stored there. They'd restored the MG to about 90% (everything but paint) but never put back together other than the shell of the car. We were checking it out back then I recall and I remember thinking how cool it was and admiring the quality of their work.
And.. They did the same with the old cruiser. Last we spoke Evan had gone off to Kansas and it was still in that restored minus final paint, ready to go back together. He had learned how to use an english wheel, which is the ultimate metal worker's tool and the pinnacle of metal forming ability, and he'd sucessfully and cleanly adapted the Ford van roof into the FJ55 roof, and the photos showed really good work...
And he wrote "I forgot, I still owe you $112.50!" which I had completely forgot about meaning that in a sense I still sort of "own" this old beast...
* * *
And basically that's about it.. Someday, when I finish this next round of FJ55 (I'd been planning to do it with the last FJ55) I plan to cruise on down sometime when Evan is home and check out that old FJ55 and see how its going, and maybe help get it running again if its not yet. Evan's even poked in on 'mud here and there a couple times and its great to see and we still keep in touch here and there. I'll post some pics if I have them still when I return home.
Cheers,
Andre
I had lost complete touch with Evan and still thought he was in Siberia still (literally), finishing his masters degree. He is crazy enough to actually get his masters degree in Siberia. He'd perfected a dialect of Russian that was good enough that most people thought he was from a different part of the country. This is funny because this is how he carries himself here has an odd southwestern accent and was of speech that was western and wore a big belt buckle when we were in boarding school, even though he is from Connecticut. When we next spoke, probably 4 years later, he told me the story of having to headbutt a 300 lb Russian in a bar fight he'd started by accident over some beautiful woman to escape with his life. In Siberia. And today, he is an assistant professor at University of Kansas in some sort of foreign studies.
Anyway, post our last discussion, I had received an email saying something along the lines of, "oh yeah, you remember that old Land Cruiser?" I had forgot about it enough that I didn't even remember to ask about it. I also assumed it was probably still up on that property...
"A couple of months after you guys were out, we went up and pulled it off of the property." And he went into the specifics of actually repairing the damn thing. Little did he know old Land Cruisers had become a life obsession for me by then. He said he'd bought a little mig welder and started cutting out panels here and there. Shortly after I'd even come full circle. I'd sold the HJ60 I was driving at the time to buy a FJ60 to build with some sort of domestic diesel like the Cummins 4BTs. But oddly couldn't find a clean used FJ60 for less than a song and came across a killer deal on a FJ55 in California, that would eventually became my first major project (the '71 F55 in my sig) -- which I also had to replace a lot of steel on. And as I was laboring away on this years later, doing a lot of what he was doing (replacing body panels, rust, etc), he writes "man if only I'd known to start with a clean one." (my thoughts exactly on mine).
He'd basically gotten almost completely done with a complete frame off restoration on the pig back to original 1972 specs. The only thing he'd done beyond stock was a modest swap to a 3 on the floor instead of on-the-tree. He wrote, "you have no idea how much time and labor I put into it. FJ55's as you know have a flimsy roof so I cut the roof out of an old Ford van with ribbing in it and installed that into the FJ55. It is all primered and I have the engine all ready to go and to put into it." And he sent pics.
* * *
So, I should have known and suspected as much because his Dad and older brother had an old MG at the time at his parent's warehouse. They sell/sold at the time yarn out of a warehouse in Las Vegas and had the car stored there. They'd restored the MG to about 90% (everything but paint) but never put back together other than the shell of the car. We were checking it out back then I recall and I remember thinking how cool it was and admiring the quality of their work.
And.. They did the same with the old cruiser. Last we spoke Evan had gone off to Kansas and it was still in that restored minus final paint, ready to go back together. He had learned how to use an english wheel, which is the ultimate metal worker's tool and the pinnacle of metal forming ability, and he'd sucessfully and cleanly adapted the Ford van roof into the FJ55 roof, and the photos showed really good work...
And he wrote "I forgot, I still owe you $112.50!" which I had completely forgot about meaning that in a sense I still sort of "own" this old beast...
* * *
And basically that's about it.. Someday, when I finish this next round of FJ55 (I'd been planning to do it with the last FJ55) I plan to cruise on down sometime when Evan is home and check out that old FJ55 and see how its going, and maybe help get it running again if its not yet. Evan's even poked in on 'mud here and there a couple times and its great to see and we still keep in touch here and there. I'll post some pics if I have them still when I return home.
Cheers,
Andre
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Grease Cruiser
Adventurer
Dre,
That is a great story. It's funny how Cruisers (some other makes too) can be part of the family and have some great stories associated with them.
I find it so interesting how people have different viewpoints of their Cruisers. Some only use them for crawling/wheelin' while others frame off restore to original specs while others just drive them. I find myself in the category of just drivin' them mixed with some exploring and light wheelin'.
I have had people tell me that I am nuts for driving cross country in a unrestored Cruiser or a Rover that is 30+ years old. I have done it more times than I can remember and most of the vehicles did not have radios. It was just me, the open road, and my Cruiser or Rover. I will admit that driving a 40, a 55 or even a 45LV cross country is a helluva lot more comfortable than driving a 1965 Land Rover Series IIA 88". I guess I am getting soft in my old age as I don't think I would want to drive a Series Rover cross country anymore.
That is a great story. It's funny how Cruisers (some other makes too) can be part of the family and have some great stories associated with them.
I find it so interesting how people have different viewpoints of their Cruisers. Some only use them for crawling/wheelin' while others frame off restore to original specs while others just drive them. I find myself in the category of just drivin' them mixed with some exploring and light wheelin'.
I have had people tell me that I am nuts for driving cross country in a unrestored Cruiser or a Rover that is 30+ years old. I have done it more times than I can remember and most of the vehicles did not have radios. It was just me, the open road, and my Cruiser or Rover. I will admit that driving a 40, a 55 or even a 45LV cross country is a helluva lot more comfortable than driving a 1965 Land Rover Series IIA 88". I guess I am getting soft in my old age as I don't think I would want to drive a Series Rover cross country anymore.