Great to meet y’all – Tripwire is my neighbor and he recommended this place. I’m glad for the chance to tap your technical expertise!
In 1963 my dad bought a new Wagoneer – he’d actually meant to order a Willys Commando, but waited too long, so in early 63 to his chagrin he got the new Wagoneer instead. For the next ten years the Blue Jeep became a staple of our family adventures – wilderness camping, canoe trips, and a lot of off road exploring back before there was a word for it.
In ’69 we were headed home in the evening with some neighbors. It had been sleeting, and the Missouri roads were coated in glare ice. We were moving slowly in 4WD, but finally one hilly curve was too much and the Jeep went nose-first into the ditch, and did a long end-over-end. We all crawled out, and my parents hushed 6-year old me for saying ‘Poor Jeep!” instead of asking if the other people were OK (they were.)
Problem was, we’d originally lived in Michigan, where rock salt was applied liberally at every snowfall, and the poor Wagoneer body was badly rusted out, beyond repair, they said. However, my Dad knew this crazy body man (who raced sprint cars on the weekend – that kind of crazy) who talked him into splicing on the back half of a front-ended Gladiator pickup he knew about.
But he didn’t just chop the body and stick on a bed – he actually cut the frame in half and welded the Gladiator rear frame to the Wagoneer front frame! The back of the cab, roof, and overhang are Gladiator, and everything forward of this is Wagoneer! There were issues with this of course, he never figured out how to get the bumpers to fit, so my dad bolted the 3-piece bumpers back on with 2x4s as spacers and all was well. Meanwhile the body man got himself killed in a sprint car accident shortly after finishing. And… the state of Missouri decided they could not tell if the front or the rear half of the frame counted as the vehicle, so they asked for a signed statement by the body man who did the work… Fast forward ten years and the frame welding job was cracking, so my Dad had it solidly rewelded by a shop which specialized in wrecked farm trucks, and they were a little loose with what constitutes straight, so now the bed has a slight upward angle. Sigh.
Fast forward twenty years, the Blue Jeep is now mine, and of course I want to restore it, and I did have it running for a short time, but calamity was about to fall. In 2005 I got sick, which I won’t go into except to say that I got over it and won and got on with my life. But during the worst of it, the nearby river flooded, and unable to get out of bed, I watched out the window as my Jeep (and a couple others) went underwater completely. And then, afterwards, sat with no care, no fluid changes, nothing.
Fast forward ten years to this year. I finally got a shop situation set up and a place to safely work on the Blue Jeep. So now I’m digging into it, to see what it’s going to take. A lot, I know. This one is in worse shape than many parts cars you’ve had hauled away, no doubt. But I don’t care. This one has been in the family, I have history with it, and however impractical, I’m gonna get it back on the road.
Thanks for reading my story and thanks in advance for the technical help I know I’m gonna need. I guarantee this one is already making me happy, just working on it. Updates to come shortly.
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.