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.

Brian makes someone named Gina laugh

Madison is an amazing college town. It is great. On a lake, with beautiful buildings and a great downtown. I was about to declare it one of the best college towns that I've been to (and I've been to lots) when I realized its fatal flaw. You can't buy booze in the city after 9pm. Can you imagine having a party and running out of beer but the only way to get more is to drive to the next town over? So that's a boo.

Anyways while I was wandering around Madison wondering why every liquor store I went to was closed I came across a cat. So I posted it on Craigslist.

Tonight I was wandering around Madison in an attempt to buy beer after 9PM. While I was disappointing with the realization that it is impossible to buy a 6 pack of High Life at a time when I actually want to drink, I was pleased to discover a feline friend. I'll try to describe her. She had hair. It was black in some parts and greyish/white in some parts it was kinda long. She looked like she had eaten her fair share of Friskies.

It was dark and she did not like it when I tried to read the phone number on her collar. But the collar was elastic and it had a single small bell and a tag. The tag had a name and a phone number that started 608-. I know, I know, I should have read the last 4 numbers or the name. On the other side of the tag was yellowish orange with a little catlike thing raised up on the metal.

So that could be you're lost cat. Or it could have just been an outdoor cat that lives in the house whose driveway I was suspiciously hanging out in. Either way, I'm sober and there is a cat at Allen and Van Hise.

Then while I was reading my GMail while driving through construction today I came across this email to me.

Hi

I just wanted to let you know that I loved how you worded you post. It made me laugh my ass off. Not many people can put there humor into words.

Gina

So I totally made Gina laugh.

Nightmares

Last night I had some scary dreams, like in one I was in a fight. In another I was living with all of my roommates in Couzins and there was a lion fighting an aardvark fighting a zebra in the courtyard, and every time I looked out my window there was another animal like a horse and dog. Eventually there was a human baby involved and I had to go down and save it. That was scary. But the dream that caused me to wake up in a cold sweat was that for some reason people weren't allowed to comment on my blog. It was awful. So analyze my dream and comment about it, if you can.

Also, I can feel my dream of being the subject of a craigslist missed connecting is getting closer to reality. There was a rant and rave about a bus driver. That could have been me, but it wasn't. Someday there will be a "superhot superfunny bus driver, I want to sit on your face" post. Until then I'll keep checking. And don't post that, because I'll know it was you.