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'72 Jeep J4000, 360cid 2v, GM Hydramatic 400 transmission,
Dana/Spicer 20 transfer case,
Dana 44 closed knuckle Full Floating front axle, Dana 60 Full floating rear with 4.09 gears.
I recieved this truck sometime during the '96 year from my dad. The Jeep was used to tow a trailer most of it's life, it's rigged with a fifth wheel hitch, a gooseneck hitch, an auxilary fuel tank, big mirrors, and a tire carrier that's mounted outside of the bed. I'm sure that some of these options were factory installed but the others are custom touches.
Bringing it to life!
This Jeep has been sitting outside in the elements for about 2 years before we decided to start it up and to get it running again. We started on it on a early Saturday morning, the battery was dead and it wouldn't hold a charge so we bought it a new battery. With the battery it started to turn over and it started but died after about a minute of running. After awhile we were tired of hand feeding it gasoline through the carb so we decided the carb was the problem. Indeed it was, the old fuel had turned into varnish and had completely clogged everything...rebuilding time. About 3 hours later the carb was rebuilt and thrown back on the engine, it started up but it was running rough. After letting it run for about 5 or 10 minutes we had decided to take it for a test drive, so when we put the transmission in Drive, nothing happened. We scratched our heads in awl... then we checked the transmission fluid, it was empty, we refilled it and this tie it went into drive. Even though it went in drive the Jeep still wasnt moving forward, it was stuck in the front yard. We then proceeded to put it in 4WD to get out and it worked. The engine works, the transmission works, and the transfer case works... so far not bad. But something was wrong with the carbereuter, when you stomped on the gas the engine died or it made a loud whiny noise when the engine was running. The solution was to get another carb. A Holley II rebuilt Motorcraft 2100 was placed on the mill, except it didn't fix the problem... So now we took the carb off again except we had found what was causing the problems, the carb baseplate was sitting loose on the manifold, after discovering this we tightened it down and put the carb back on and started the Jeep up. The problem was fixed. Now off to the shop it goes to get the 6" hole in the floorboard fixed, and to see why it was running rough. At the shop they fixed the hole, found a broken pushrod, and changed the oil. Okay, now it's time to get new tires and rims, it originally had some Michelin 16.5" tires and split steel wheels on it, due to the unavailability of 16.5" tires the Jeep was retrofitted with some white spoke steel wheels and some Goodyear Wrangler A/T's 235/85R16. Now the Jeep looks more sportier.... It still needs to get inspected and to pass the inspection the exhaust leak needs to be fixed along with the Emergency brakes. I don't know how long it took us to sort of fix the exhaust leak because when we were replacing the donuts the bolts decided to snap. We tried to use a EZ-out, but we broke a couple and then we broke the manifold where the stud goes in. After new exhaust donuts were installed we rigged up a C-clamp to tighten the donuts down, (now we have a smaller exhaust leak than when we first started). The Jeep had passed the inspection, (barely).
Let's see you try to navigate this thing in the woods without breaking anything!
The Never Ending Projects:
You need to spend time with a something to learn how to appreciate it, and with FSJ's you spend lots of time with it...