Absolutely beautiful pics you have here, and the story of you and this jeep is amazing. I love this thread.
Thanks...it's hard to take a bad picture around Moab. I've been trying for well over 40 years.
So in the spirit of calling this a "build thread," I'll recount a few things I did last week. I spent a couple of days polishing the Jeep…again. I still wasn't happy with the appearance of the passenger side and hood. For some reason, paint on the passenger side was more oxidized than the driver's side. The decals on the rear quarter panel were very chalky. In a recent TV show called “Competition Ready”, I learned of a paint cleaner made by Sonax, a German company, that is used by professional detailers for high-end custom vehicles entered in competitions. I probably spent 3 hours just on the hood. I finished it with a coat of NuFinish Paste, which has been the only polish I've used for at least 10 years. The passenger side decals look nearly new again and the paint on the passenger side and hood now shines very nicely. Even the patina shines!
I understand the malls have been playing Christmas music since about the Fourth of July…so thought I might as well get in the spirit. Since it's the Scrambler's first Christmas back home, I picked up a few presents for it...new Rancho 5000X shocks, new auxiliary lighting, new mirrors, headlight and taillight guards, hood latches, and windshield tie-down kit. I also picked up a Rancho steering stabilizer but haven't had a chance to install it yet.
I was literally shocked when I pulled the shocks. The old ones were no longer shock absorbers. They were just dead weight. After I removed the old shocks, I could easily extend or compress them to any point along their travel length and they would stay in that exact position. They've probably been completely useless for quite a few years. We went cruisin' out to Island in the Sky Friday and it rides significantly smoother now.
In looking back through some photos from a previous century, I discovered that the Jeep had a square black mirror on the driver's side and no mirror on the passenger side when I bought it. The new mirrors are (again) square and made of black powder-coated stainless steel. As long as I was switching the mirrors to black stainless steel, I ordered matching hood latches and a windshield tie-down kit. The padding on the loops where the windshield rests on the hood was about gone. And since there was some rust on the chrome mesh headlight and taillight guards, I ordered those in black also. I was apparently into chrome in the 80's.
I've been engaged in a debate with myself for months about the type of auxiliary lighting I wanted to install…on the bumper. I think I mentioned in an earlier post that the stupidest mistake I ever made with any Jeep was to mount lights above the windshield. As incredible as the new LED lights are (had Rigid's on my JK and now have them on my '16 Canyon), they just would not look correct on an unmolested CJ. I had Hella Black Magic Rally 1000 lights on my '03 Rubicon and was impressed with them. So that's what I installed last week.
Whew...is the "build" done yet? It's been a grueling process.
Here is a photo taken probably a week or 3 after I bought it in 1982...before the winch was installed and sideboards were painted...a
Brand New Scrambler!
And a few taken last Friday, a couple of which were posted in another thread but thought I'd repost here:
