It followed me home.... or rather it brought me home

I was down in south florida this past week and took home my stepdads Wrangler. He bought it new in 1991. It is a 4 cyl 5 speed. It has 75k on the ticker. I drove 684 miles from florida to home. The jeep had not seen good maintenance. The 5 speed has been grinding gears for as long as i can remember. I changed the oil when i was down there and swapped out the serpentine belt. The tranny was serviced with synthetic a few years ago so i left it alone. The fuel gauge stayed pegged at full. Stepdad told me he would fill it up at 300 miles. Everything else seemed fine. We drove it up to fort myers to take my uncle to the airport and right before we got to the motel the drive side caliper seized up. i had to replace it in the motel parking lot. The tires were pretty dry rotted and cracked. Drove up no problem, we got to Georgia and found out we didnt have interior gauge lights so i had to drive and every so often take a flashlight and see what speed i was going, oh and the driver side window had a broken zipper so it was down and it got a little cold. But it ran like a top and we had no issues.





Its got some rust on it mainly from a leaking windshield frame gasket and the carpet. Worst is the bottom of the dash rotted out on the left side and there is good rust where the fender bolts to the tub., you can only see it from the inside. I cleaned it out today and took out a poor stereo and CB install. Cleaned the gauge light dimmer and now i have gauge lights. I need to pull of the nerf bars, build a rear bumper and remove the shaded stickers on the edges of the hood and other parts. Everything you see is pretty much vintage 1991. It is a survivor, my stepdad did not mess with anything else. Tomorrow i will wash it and may change the brake fluid and flush the cooling system. What does the future hold? I am going to keep the AX5 and just rebuild it. I only plan on 33s for under it and most likely swap the rear for a ford 8.8. If money comes around i would do waggy axles front and rear but that is something for the future. This is going to be more of a highway queen for having those nice top down drives. I wont really dig into this until i get the m38a1 reliably on the road. That is my first priority.

 

Looks good! :tea: