My 1984 CJ-7

I really enjoy my Camaro. It's a great car and is fun to drive. But it has a few drawbacks that doesn't make it the ideal vehicle for every situation. Firstly, it's quite enclosed so on nice days it is hard to enjoy the sun while driving. Secondly, it's a rear wheel drive vehicle that doesn't do so well in the snow. I found this out the hard way in December when we received a couple of inches and my Camaro got stuck in the lot at work for a few hours.

So I decided to purchase a second vehicle that would be fun to drive in the summer and could go places the Camaro couldn't. After looking around for awhile I bought a 1984 CJ-7 from a guy on Craigslist. He had just finished completely redoing the body and had done some work on the interior.

This is the only picture I have of her, since she has mostly been in the garage.

Part of the reason I chose to buy such an old jeep and not like a 90's Wrangler is that I wanted something I could work on. I was looking for a vehicle that I could also spend some time fixing up. Since body work is not my forte I was glad that this jeep was freshly painted.  Buying a 30 year old vehicle that has 113k miles on her means there will pretty much always be stuff to do.

I realized exactly how soon I would have to start working when I started driving it home from Olympia and she died on the way and couldn't get started again. Job-1: Purchase and install a new battery. From there she did fine on the highway home until I got to a red light where the engin would stall every time the vehicle came to a stop. I eventually got her home after a very long trip, but Job-2 was to disassemble and clean the venturi assembly in the carburetor and reset the mixture screws to the manufacturers specs.

Last week I attacked some of the electrical problems. The tach, fuel gauge and radio were all dead and a ground somewhere was constantly draining the battery. Job-3 was the fuel gauge where the fix was as simple as finding and connecting the right wires. Job-4 was the tach which was hard wired to the battery for some reason. Job-5 was the most important, finding a live wire to connect power to the radio which for some reason had been cut.

This week Job-6 was replacing a dried and leaking gasket on the 258 straight 6 valve cover which took the better part of two nights. It would have been an easier job if there wasn't a stupid bolt in the 3/4 of an inch between the valve cover and the firewall.

Right before putting the valve cover gasket on

I also had the enjoyment of registering the vehicle and paying the absurd WA state use tax, which requires people to pay sales tax on things they buy from other private citizens. So if I bought an Xbox on craigslist or scalped some concert tickets, I as supposed to pay the state 9.8% of the purchase price. Obviously no one does that but when it comes to vehicles the State actually has an effective way to collect the tax by not issuing a registration until you pay. I guess that's what we get for not having an income tax.

This weekend I took down Job-7 and Job-8; the first was flushing the radiator. I had to disconnect most of the hoses to get to the valve cover off, so why not put some new coolant in. Job-8 was a simple oil change and a new filter.

Since the guy I bought it from had only had it to do the body work, I really don't know the last time it's had any maintenance done so I'm pretty much assuming that everything needs to be checked or changed. It's been a good amount of work the past two weeks, but I've really enjoyed having something to do each night and it's gotten me off the couch. I think I've taken care most of the major stuff I'm aware of right now. My goal is to have it in good shape by the summer so I can take the top and doors off and go up into the mountains with her.

I think the next few jobs will be changing the air filter, tracing down a bad connection somewhere in the speaker wires and checking the brakes which seem a little iffy.

I'm looking excited to having another vehicle and especially one that I can work on. The other nice thing is that when I drive the Jeep onto the ferry I get a discount because she is so short.