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While we've had many off-highway
"experiences"
in the last |
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Here's the Jeep today. Looks a little different. Of course, for what
it cost to build it, just in mistakes, I could have bought a TJ! (Which
I eventually did.......... )
It's always under construction so it never looks the same. These two photos were taken late 1999 after the Ford 9s and TSL SXs were added. Hit the button to see a complete list of all the mods. 
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| So now you have a Jeep and you want to take it somewhere fun. You can't drive it, so we needed a tow vehicle. We sold the Suburban and camping trailer and bought a POS Fleetwood Flair. It was really a piece of crap, although we flat towed the Jeep almost 50,000 miles with it! |
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Then we upgraded to a 1994 32 foot Pace Arrow motorhome. Now this was
much, much better. At the same time we also bought a trailer for the
YJ. We did a lot of damage flat towing it. In addition, there were
a few times we broke an axle and had to fix it in the campground before
we could flat tow it back.
Never again will we flat tow! --- Nor own a Fleetwood POS under designed product! Well, we beat the hell out of the Pace Arrow pulling the trailer. The Pace was already overload right from the factory and adding 500 lbs of tongue weight didn't help it at all! Fleetwood products suck! |
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In 2000, we traded the Pace Arrow in for a Country Coach diesel. We really
needed something that could pull the trailer and Jeep. We love the
coach but had the worst time of my life when we went to buy it.
Bates RV in Florida really screwed us.
Click
here
to see the gory details. At any rate, the coach is a delight to drive
and you don't even know the trailer is behind it (as evidenced by the
time the hitch broke and left the trailer and the Jeep in the median
- shiny side up :) See
here.
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| The trailer has a box with lots of spare parts and goodies in it, including an air compressor that we can run off the motor home's generator if we need to. No more working without air tools! |
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| So once the YJ was so modified it couldn't be used for street driving, we bought a 1992 XJ. Haven't built it yet, but if it survives our teenage daughter, it would make a great second trail vehicle. Footnote: Didn't survive. |
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| A week after buying the red XJ, we got a really good deal on a 1995 XJ from a member in our club. Since we were made "an offer we couldn't refuse," we bought that. Now we have one too many Jeeps in the "fleet." |
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| We had a 1988 Dakota pickup that turned into a beater. Pick ups are so handy we'd never be without one again. |
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| So, when the Dakota rusted away to nothing (thanks, Illinois for all the salt!), I cashed in my GM card $$$ and we got an '01 Chevy S10. This would not have been my first choice, but with the GM card rebate, we got a helluva deal. Should have bought a GMC 4x4. Screwed again. ARG! |
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| And if that isn't enough to haul crap around in, we also have a converted 1970's Commonwealth Edison utility trailer that can hold at least 8000 lbs (yeah -- we tried it!) | |
| So the white Jeep was bought around 2001 for $300 and used about 4 years as a "hot" spare. Friggin' Illinois plates and registration for the first year cost more than the Jeep! But after 4 years, sold it to an Amtrak engineer after buying the latest fiasco, the FN JP. |
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In 2005, decided to augment the DAM JP with an extended TJ. Why the hell not? Needed something that would be much easier to ride in once retirement kicks in and we tour the country. Sadly testosterone got the better of me and I wound up building a relatively kick-ass trail Jeep instead. Oops! And I'm paying the price in MANY more ways than one. So here are before and after photos. As my friend Graham put it when he saw the stocker, "Shit, there's more chrome on that bloody Jeep than there was on Elvis' Cadillac!" Stay tuned to the Jeep page for more adventures with the FN JP and see how long it takes me to totally destroy it, also. |
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It's pretty obvious that our vehicle registrations are funding the current " Build Illinois " program!
