Project Jackass

Umbra

Umbra

TJ Enthusiast
Supporting Member
Joined
Sep 7, 2016
Messages
484
Location
Bluegrass
Last October, I traded a 63 Bel Air for this:


20160908_185523.jpg


Looks pretty good, huh?
It's tricking you. It's a hateful bastard. It tried to kill me. Twice. Not on the pre-swap test drive. Oh no, it waited until I was alone and tooling along minding my own business. Then it started shaking and tried to run into a telephone pole. I heard it laughing, but at the time I wrote it of to the "nearly dead shakes". I wiped the poo off the seat and drove it home. A few days later I drove it up to the clerk's office to register it and get my plates. It started shaking and ran me towards a ditch. It shook so hard the pos battery cable came loose. I definitely heard it laughing then, but nobody believes me.

Being gullible, I just assumed trying to murder me was a cry for help. I swapped the wheels, hoping to make it feel pretty so it would feel better about itself. I also promised it I would take off all of the stuff that was making it too tall and rusty, causing it to feel old and angry.
I bought some CL 18 inch JK wheels, and took off the dry rotted and bumpy mud tires. I took it out for a spin and it behaved very well and had me fooled until it tried to kill me again.
I then promised it I would buy it lots of shiny new things to bring it back to life so it could run free with the wind in it's interior again, like when it was young and happy.

So we towed it to my friends shop and began our plastic surgery to remove all of rusty and dry rotted old suspension pieces. I petted it and told it everything would be okay. It sighed and smiled and promptly started dropping pieces of itself on me and chewing up my hands.


Jackass.

More tomorrow. I'm having trouble typing because the blood dripping from my knuckles is clogging the keyboard, and this knot onmy hed is making me a lillte butt woozshy
 
Last edited:
  • Like
  • Haha
Reactions: TJ Starting, Jeepin for joy, Andy P and 8 others
Rob5589 said:
I like my TJ and all but, there ain't no way I am trading away a 63 Bel Air unless it was some non-salvageable POS. And yea, need some current pics :D
Click to expand...

The Bel Air wasn't bad, but it woulda taken fat money to get it where I would have wanted it. 283 PG, an interior like a french cat house, manual everything, bad paint and wiring like spaghetti. I kinda inherited it. Plus, I've got an uncool Chevelle that I dearly love so the 63 was a dust collector.

If you look close, you''l see that the bumpers are both sitting crooked and the paint was attacked with something sharp by a previous owners angry ex.
95f7e88e-dbf1-4672-bc2e-bf7e1651ba2c.jpg
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Chris
Having a classic like that would probably be a bigger money pit than the Jeep.

I'm thinking new paint job, suspension, fast engine, etc... I could EASILY put 50k into a car like that to get it where I want it.
 
You are 100% correct.

I have had a number of old cars. A decent paint job with mediocre body work would easily run you 5k in this area. "show quality" 8-10k minimum and months or years in paint jail. Mechanical parts to make it better than riding in a tuna can: 10-15 k. I could go on, but you get the picture.

The beauty part about Jeeps is that they are the anti-hot-rod. A little rust? who gives a ****? Some mud and dirt? YAY!!!! A dent or two? Point of pride and proof you use it as you should.
 
Thankfully I've never experienced it. But that sounds like the death wobble I've read about. Perhaps someone here has a ideas on a fix. Loved your write up. Jackass is a great name for a Jeep by the way. :)


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
  • Like
Reactions: Umbra
Thanks.

Jackass has lived in this region most of it's life, which means when it was younger it was exposed to snow and salt. That's probably why it's so mean now. I'm not making excuses for it's s****y behavior, but the emotional and physical scars are evident. It is weird though. The frame, floors and body are in fairly good shape except for a few spots. Most of the suspension parts are s**t piles of oxidation. Like a bad science experiment. The aftermarket lift pieces especially are bad.

After the wheels were replaced with the CL specials. It looks silly, but my plan is to drop it back to stock height. Note the rust bubbles on the rocker. I hit that with a hammer and now it's a hole. there and the upper part of the fenders are really bad, the rest is good. The thing even rusts cantankerously. :
20160910_142636.jpg


At the shop, fun begins. I've got most of the suspension parts along with anew gas tank skid plate and a few other goodies. The pile is pretty big, but I didn't get a pic.
20170121_125845.jpg



Gas tank skid:
20170128_102203.jpg


If you can see, it is rusty which explains its nasty disposition. But it's weird. What's rusty is REALLY rusty, but most of the frame and tub are good. Bizarre. And that shock. How does a shock rust that bad but keep the sticker?

Here's what we are dealing with. This is the drivers side rear shock mount:
20170128_115854.jpg


Of course it broke off. half the bolts we tried to take off broke or rounded off, even the ones that don't look this bad. This was by far the worst. The aftermarket shocks have rusted so badly that they can barely be Identified. The springs are worse.

Once we got that out, they mounting area cleaned up well and easily with a wire brush. But it took us most of a Saturday just to remove the rear shocks and drill out the bolts. The same thing happened yesterday when we tried to remove the front track bar. What a lot of this looks like is the parts used to replace factory stuff over the years seems to have rusted much quicker. And Jackass continues to make life hard for us. It snaps at us all the time. My buddy has been a pro mechanic since he was 15 working in his dad's shop. He has hit his hand twice with a hammer, had a socket fly off and crack him in the noggin and busted his knuckles 3 or four times. I've made three runs to the first aid kit for gauze and band aids, cracked my head on the rear drum and had a nice hot piece of steel go down my shirt prompting an apparently entertaining hoppy dance around the shop floor.
my buddy is picking up the torch this week. Next Saturday, if Jackass fails to cooperate, he gets flamed. I'm done messing around.

We've been fooling around with cars and trucks for years and never had the kind of problems this Jeep is giving us.

It's eeeeevvviiil and cursed.

Jackass.

More later if I can stay out of the hospital.
 
Last edited:
glwood said:
Or Jay Leno.

I sure want to hear what you end up doing to the death machine.

Just so you know, he might try to get back at you for making him wear 18" wheels...
Click to expand...

:D

The 18s are probably a temporary measure. I have a set of TJ 15 Canyons for it, but I do dig the look of the 18s on a factory height TJ.

And I'm quite sure that Christine's cousin is gonna get me anyway.
 
Oh yeah, not feeling the 18" wheels at all. I would personally put 15" wheels on it with a bigger tire. That's just my preference though.

Damn though... That rust is serious and definitely needs to be dealt with before that rear shock just rips right through the body.
 
  • Like
Reactions: JP98
That rust is nasty. One good thing about Ca, if you do not do the Tahoe commute, is rust free vehicles.

I still would have kept the 63, but thats me :D
 
Chris said:
Oh yeah, not feeling the 18" wheels at all. I would personally put 15" wheels on it with a bigger tire. That's just my preference though.

Damn though... That rust is serious and definitely needs to be dealt with before that rear shock just rips right through the body.
Click to expand...

Yep. The torch and the welder are on standby. It looks worse than it is, but it ain't pretty. That area is probably the worst spot and when I cleaned it up, it wasn't as bad as I first thought.

But, I need the welding practice anyway. You learn to live with rust around here.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Chris
Rob5589 said:
That rust is nasty. One good thing about Ca, if you do not do the Tahoe commute, is rust free vehicles.

I still would have kept the 63, but thats me :D
Click to expand...

'Til you drove it. Steering it was like going to the gym. With the power glide trans, anything above 50 mph made me think a rod was gonna fly through the fire wall any second. And stopping? Hahahahahaha! Manual drums . Spooky.
 
Chris said:
Oh yeah, not feeling the 18" wheels at all. I would personally put 15" wheels on it with a bigger tire. That's just my preference though.

Damn though... That rust is serious and definitely needs to be dealt with before that rear shock just rips right through the body.
Click to expand...

Speaking of the 15s, here is my old 4 banger. I love this look with the canyons and those tires.
0310121558a.jpg
 
  • Like
Reactions: UpperMI, Travis and Chris
Top Bottom
Back