Welcome to my 1st Jeep build thread!
Brief history: I grew up with Willys jeeps, my dad and grandpa were big into building their willys jeeps together and they would go hunting upstate NY in them. So my dad got me into them at a very young age. I learned how to drive in a Willys Jeep when I was 12 years old. I have pics of my dad when he was in highschool taking my mom out for a date in a Willys jeep. He also had an electric blue CJ-7 with a matching electric blue speed boat in the 80s that I was obsessed with. He was certainly my main source of inspiration for my love of old school Jeeps. This is also why having this Wrangler is extra special, I feel very inspired by him and I think about him a lot because of it. This build is dedicated to him ( RIP ) because without him, I would not have this passion for them.
Recent: I am currently in my late 30s and never owned a Wrangler before. I have always been an Audi enthusiast, specifically the Audi B5 S4 platform ( twin turbo german muscle car) and have been very involved with that community. So I know how to turn a wrench on packed overly engineered german engine bays, but I always had a love for Jeeps & Wranglers. Issues happened after my father passed away and his wife sold everything, I never got anything and definitely not my dads 3 Willys Jeeps. That pushed me away from Jeeps for a long time because I just could not see myself owning one if it wasn't my dads.
Fast forward to about 2022, I started looking into Jeeps again and instantly fell in love with the TJ Wrangler with the 4.0. I was patient and took my time, I wanted to research, research and research. I needed to learn every single thing about them and what to look out for. Unfortunately, I realized it all came down to the frame lol. I did not realize how bad this would be because I am in Ohio. This made the search extremely difficult. I would find one I liked in my price range, go look at it and it would almost ALWAYS have bad rust or tons of issues, this happened to about 8 I looked at, so I made the decision to take my time and not rush into one. This took years, because I needed to find one that was not too far away and checked all my boxes. I did this for so long that I can safely say, I am a professional online Jeep TJ wrangler market purveyor LOL. I saw quite a few trends happen in the market during my search in the midwest( I will touch on this in a separate topic ). I came to the conclusion that the TJ market is FULL of people who are hiding issues or have no idea how to price their Jeeps. The ones priced right that are transparent, sell their jeeps within a couple days, the others I watched sit for up to 6 months......even a year.
My TJ Needed to be: TJ, Auto, 4.0, decent frame
Preferred: smaller than 35" tires, small lift, lower than 150K mileage unless had transmission replaced with receipts, no preference on Top.
I needed my Jeep to be Auto because my daily driver is manual and since I will be doing lots of camping and adventures in it. I want to lazily crawl through the woods, my Audi is for banging gears hitting boost.
I already started tackling some issues and ordered parts. I will keep this thread updated whenever possible.
I also apologize in advance of my long wall of text history in the beginning, I felt I needed to add some context because its a pretty big reason behind my passion.
-donnie
Brief history: I grew up with Willys jeeps, my dad and grandpa were big into building their willys jeeps together and they would go hunting upstate NY in them. So my dad got me into them at a very young age. I learned how to drive in a Willys Jeep when I was 12 years old. I have pics of my dad when he was in highschool taking my mom out for a date in a Willys jeep. He also had an electric blue CJ-7 with a matching electric blue speed boat in the 80s that I was obsessed with. He was certainly my main source of inspiration for my love of old school Jeeps. This is also why having this Wrangler is extra special, I feel very inspired by him and I think about him a lot because of it. This build is dedicated to him ( RIP ) because without him, I would not have this passion for them.
Recent: I am currently in my late 30s and never owned a Wrangler before. I have always been an Audi enthusiast, specifically the Audi B5 S4 platform ( twin turbo german muscle car) and have been very involved with that community. So I know how to turn a wrench on packed overly engineered german engine bays, but I always had a love for Jeeps & Wranglers. Issues happened after my father passed away and his wife sold everything, I never got anything and definitely not my dads 3 Willys Jeeps. That pushed me away from Jeeps for a long time because I just could not see myself owning one if it wasn't my dads.
Fast forward to about 2022, I started looking into Jeeps again and instantly fell in love with the TJ Wrangler with the 4.0. I was patient and took my time, I wanted to research, research and research. I needed to learn every single thing about them and what to look out for. Unfortunately, I realized it all came down to the frame lol. I did not realize how bad this would be because I am in Ohio. This made the search extremely difficult. I would find one I liked in my price range, go look at it and it would almost ALWAYS have bad rust or tons of issues, this happened to about 8 I looked at, so I made the decision to take my time and not rush into one. This took years, because I needed to find one that was not too far away and checked all my boxes. I did this for so long that I can safely say, I am a professional online Jeep TJ wrangler market purveyor LOL. I saw quite a few trends happen in the market during my search in the midwest( I will touch on this in a separate topic ). I came to the conclusion that the TJ market is FULL of people who are hiding issues or have no idea how to price their Jeeps. The ones priced right that are transparent, sell their jeeps within a couple days, the others I watched sit for up to 6 months......even a year.
My TJ Needed to be: TJ, Auto, 4.0, decent frame
Preferred: smaller than 35" tires, small lift, lower than 150K mileage unless had transmission replaced with receipts, no preference on Top.
I needed my Jeep to be Auto because my daily driver is manual and since I will be doing lots of camping and adventures in it. I want to lazily crawl through the woods, my Audi is for banging gears hitting boost.
I already started tackling some issues and ordered parts. I will keep this thread updated whenever possible.
I also apologize in advance of my long wall of text history in the beginning, I felt I needed to add some context because its a pretty big reason behind my passion.
-donnie
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