3/26/02
It all started in 1984 when I saw my 1st Scrambler in Germany of all places. I was in the Army, stationed in Miesau, Germany & went to Ramstein Air Base to shop for a 'car'. A benefit of being overseas is the Soldier & Sailor relief program (or something like that). Through this a soldier could order a new car & pay cost for it, very little markup if any. Well I went in to look for cars & saw a Scrambler outside. This was the salesman's lucky day because he walked up to me & asked if he could help me & I said "yeah, I want one of those, same color too". Just like that :) I was hooked & still am. It is a Nutmeg colored 1985 Renegade Scrambler with a 1/2 hardtop, power steering, oversize fuel tank, 5 speed- 6 cylinder with a swing away spare tire carrier. Well I was a few months away from returning to the states for my next assignment so I told them not to ship it overseas, as I would only have to ship it right back. Instead I had it delivered to a JEEP dealership close to my next duty station which was Fort McClellan, Alabama. Well I got to Alabama & went to find my JEEP & the dealership where I was told it was to be delivered to knew nothing about it, of course! So I started to play the phone tag game for the next month. Finally I found it in Birmingham, Al. They were wondering when I was coming to get it & almost wound up putting it back out for sale!! Well, I got a buddy to give me a ride down there to pick it up & drove it home, ahhhhhhhhhhhhh. I can still remember that ride too! Well since then It has 'lived' in Alabama, Italy, NY State, PA & now Virginia. I have all of the former license plates still. Some of the best 4-wheeling I have done to date was in Ft McClellan on the Army JEEP trails. While I was in Italy (for 3 years) I spun my 1st axel 4 wheeling. Talk about a hard fix! It took a month just to get the parts there. Once I came back I spun it again [see pictures]! THIS time I went to Moser 1 piece axels! That was about 8 years ago, nuff said on THAT!
About 9 or 10 years ago my younger brother was with me on the way home from some pizza or something & we hit some 'black-ice'. This is where I almost lost my JEEP again. There was over $4500 worth of damage from that roll. We had to walk about 2 miles in the dark, all banged up, to a diner where we called for a tow truck...ughh- I'll never forget that night! If you look at the pictures of the damage, it was a pretty violent roll. The front end & the rear is where all of the damage occurred, not a scratch on the "roll-bar", figure that one out... If you think about it, to get that kind of damage, there was a lot of flippin', twistin; & rollin' going on. My brother was real lucky, he wasn't wearing his seat belt. He got a little banged up but it could have been much worse. Once we came to a stop it was very muffled. I instinctively tried to start it back up but quickly realized that we were not going to be driving this one away! Well I got it fixed with insurance money. It was so close to being totalled that without me listing the prices of mods that I had added they were going to actually try to total it! Needless to say it was fixed, all except for the Renegade stickers. They forgot to order them. I forgot to bring the deductable $ so I left With the Jeep & WITHout the Renegade body stickers. I finally replaced the RENEGADE stickers thanx to eBay.
Well, I drove it another year after it was repaired & then we moved an hour into PA, from upstate NY. On 1 particularly cold & snowy day my wife wanted to take the 8 to work, I let her. It apparently had a slow radiator leak, went 1/2 dry on the way to work for her, then froze while she was at work. She got 1/2 way home & had to pull over from all of the steam. It was never "right" after that. It had low oil pressure for starters. I mean it had typical low oil pressure for years, but after this it was really low. I took it off the road as I needed reliable & cheaper transportation (I commuted 38 miles/ day). So I got a Geo Metro. It felt like a toy, like I was scraping my tail on the ground (compaired to the Jeep where I could look down thru sun roofs!). That was in 1997 I am still driving that Metro but the Jeep is about 3 or 4 weeks away from going back to daily driver status! The Jeep sat outside for over 4 years on blocks with a tarp over it :(
I would dream about having a garage, start it twice a month, charge the battery, clean the mice out of the airfilter, blow the leaves out of the back, brush the snow off of it, etc etc etc all the while- as people told me "why don't you just get rid of it" - ahhhhh! They Obviously didn't understand the Jeep thing.
Then in August of 2001 I learned that I would be promoted & transferred to VA (if I accepted the offer) Well, I did. We sold the house, moved down here & started to set up shop. I lived in a hotel for over 2 months all the while as my Jeep sat at my neighbor's house. We finally found the perfect 2 car garage- with attached house, as I like to say. Now every evening I rush home & spend about 1.5 hours on the Jeep & 1/2 hour on the CJ8 Message Board
In the middle of March I finally went back up to PA, got my reserved UHaul & towed it down here on a trailer. At 1 point in the trip down, as I towed it I kind-of asked myself (knowing full well what the answer was) Am I nuts or am I lucky? Some may argue with me, but I think I'm d@#* lucky! ... - Stay Tuned - there's much more to come, including many pictures..
Go -here- to follow my progress of the restoration.
