GFY Racing

A small update. We got an Aussie locker installed. It took two attempts as the first one was the wrong part. Apparently there are two different carriers for the D35. The guy who listed the locker put the wrong part number in the ad. He made good on it though and even paid to have it shipped back. We ordered the correct one from Amazon and got it installed a few days ago. We’ve also been adding some gambler bling. The front clip clip is removed right now. I’m planning on building a bumper to hold a winch in the next few days.

My buddy who got me interested is building his Crown Vic. Excited to see how he does. SatiricalHen, yes, they are usable. Are they not the same a XJ tail lights of the same year?

The really sad part is how terrible the paint is on this thing. It actually looks way better in the pictures. Not to fret though. I’m selling off the usable parts. The fender flares are in ok shape minus one that is cracked. Pretty sure it can be fixed with some plastic welding. I’ve also got a buyer for the tailgate if we decide to part with it. The stock bed liner is also in OK shape and I’m hoping to sell it locally.

Free/inexpensive is the name of the game for the Gambler 500

Those are pretty cool. I may be putting in an order next month.

So with the new transmission installed, it was time to start on the lift. We scored some free springs from the local Jeep shop. Not sure exactly what they are, but we think the front coils are 3.5" lift springs. No clue what the rear leafs are from, bit it gave us quite a bit of lift in the rear, at least 4". We scored some free stock JK wheels and Rubicon BF Goodrich MTs. Two of the 4 have some decent tread left, so those were installed on the rear. We bought the adapters from the same shop for cost, as they ordered them by mistake. We also managed to replace the valve cover gasket, and trim the front fenders. The rear fenders seem to be large enough for the tires.

Made a lot of progress this weekend. Got the "new" transmission swapped in Friday night. Turns out 1st gear sorta works. It will pop out of gear or sometimes just refuse to shift into first at all. Also, 5th gear is completely unusable for some reason. It shifted into 5th and seemed to work just fine before we installed it, but going down the road, it won't shift. No grinding or any other noises, so we're not real sure what's going on with that. Maybe a synchro or something is bad. The below pictures are what we found in the transmission that came with the Jeep. I'm not sure if it's worth keeping around for parts/rebuild or to just chunk it.

We're going to leave it 2wd for the Gambler. We're toying with the idea of racing in the Dirt Riot series with this. If we do, we'll convert it to 4wd. I have a TJ D30 that can be swapped in. It's a low pinion, but for high speed with not much crawling, it'll work just fine.

I registered for this forum in hopes of selling the bed liner that came with the truck, but of course I need 10 posts. Figured I'd share this build with the community while I'm here. Found out about the Texas Gambler 500 from another buddy who's going to be attending in his Crown Vic. For those of you who don't know, this a very much a beater race. Participants are encouraged to spend no more than $500 to buy a vehicle with and beat on it for 500 miles over two days. I thought it would be a blast so I began searching for a beater. I was actually about to pick up a Subaru that had damage to to the back end when another buddy found this 2wd MJ on CL for $800. For what it's worth, it's very difficult to find a running vehicle around here for $500 or less. When we got there, we assesed the front and rear end damage. It doesn't seem to bad, and should be able to fix it enough for our purposes. It also had a transmission issue that made grinding noises anytime the clutch wasn't pressed it. We were hoping it was something simple, but more on that later. After we looked at it, we talked the owner down to $650, paid him $100 to hold it for us, and went back the next day to pay the rest and load it up. It took both of our Jeeps to get it up on the trailer along with some 2x4s and old tires (my buddy didn't grab both ramps to the trailer). We ended up using my JK as an anchor and his winch to pull it onto the trailer. Then for the 10 mile trip back to my house. We managed to push it up into the driveway and discovered the parking break was pretty much useless, so we chalked the wheels.