Truck of Theseus

[RecursiveDelta]

Hello all!

 

It's been a long time coming, but I'm finally taking some time out of the garage to put together a little build post. I hope this can provide some entertainment, and maybe even save some effort for others doing something similar. I'd also like to throw a quick thank you out to others who made build posts and helped me avoid a few headaches along the way. :)

 

For me this all started in May 2019. I had been looking at MJ's for a while because of how much I liked the design and thinking that I'd like to have one at some point in the future. At the time I was living in a small apartment and had just upgraded to having a driveway to work in rather than how I had been while street parked on my LJ. I stumbled across a fellow car guy who had just bought a house with multiple garages, and wanted to find someone to rent part of it and some garage space. The timing was right with my lease getting ready to renew in around a month, and it all worked out. A garage!

 

Suddenly the someday was right around the corner, and I found what I thought at the time to be the best starting point :)

 

 

"Doesn't need the key to start and lost the key" seems legit.

 

I live in the rust belt in NYC/NJ so I wanted a nice rust free truck to start with, and I found a good one in GA! One plane ticket, a delayed and rerouted flight due to thunderstorms, a bus ride, and an uber got me to my new MJ a mere 15 hours late. The truck was as expected mostly, and we worked out a good price. Sadly GA doesn't issue temp tags which is fine in state, but I needed to drive all the way home to NJ. One more flight home with title in hand and off to the DMV!

 

 

The LJ apparently found out about the new purchase, and demanded some attention. It got moved over to the new apartment with a heated garage in preparation for picking up the MJ and putting it right to work moving me to the new apartment.

 

 

One more plane ticket. This time with new tags in my backpack. Got to the truck, zip tied my tags on and we were on our way north! 

 

Naturally not without event. The steering had a dead zone from roughly 10 to 2. The brakes put a valiant effort into quietly suggesting that the truck might consider slightly slowing down if it felt like it. Thankfully being a 5 speed meant I could combine that with engine braking and planning ahead. The interior had seen better days. The cab was full of a collection of cigarette butts and acorns from squirrels, and all the associated smells. Just add the Georgia heat, and simmer. All three windows open and the excitement of the new project helped for a while. 

Then turn signals stopped working after an hour or so, looks like time for an arm out the window to signal.

The muffler was almost entirely absent so the sound was really starting to make my head hurt after another hour.

Then it started to rain, and the wiper blades are all but useless... oh look a waffle house!

 

I picked the truck up and hit the road around midnight, by the time I hit the waffle house it was around 2. I stuck around until the rain quit around sunrise, and got back on my way. 

 

At some point the next morning my clutch stopped working, which meant I now needed to rev match and shift without the clutch to slow down. I found a walmart and made a stop for supplies and parking lot repairs. Thankfully the clutch was just leaking, and had gotten low. I filled it and got some clutch back. The truck apparently had 270k on the clock when the previous owner bought it, and it was broken already. I imagine the truck had somewhere beyond 300k at this point, so it was no surprise to find my oil a bit low. Topped that off too.

 

I needed to do something about this muffler. I found a couple aluminum pizza pans and some wire and wrapped the pans around each face of the swiss cheese muffler, and wired them in place. Wow what a difference. 

 

Got back on the road for another 600ish miles, and made it back in one piece. 

 

 

Check out that fancy parking brake! Better yet, check out the gas mileage for the trip home. Stock dry rotted bald tires, and burning oil may have helped a bit. Also magic. I'm just happy it made it.

 

The truck got home on June 22 2019, so there's a little bit more to catch up on. Stay tuned.

[scguy]

Martinez is close to me. Fun story! Interested in seeing your continuing progress and adventures

[RecursiveDelta]

Thanks scguy! 

 

The next bit.

 

This truck will eventually be doing part time daily driving, road trips, some off-roading and of course truck things. To that point, it needs to be comfortable, utilitarian, and most of all reliable. The current drive train and interior aren't really going to give me what I want even if they were fresh and new. That's why I was looking for a cheap rust free truck with good bones, but the rest didn't really matter so much as long as it drove. I wanted a 5 speed truck mostly because I wanted to be able to use it right away, and it's less problematic to avoid the automatic. You probably know what's coming next.

 

7 days after I got the MJ home, I got the parts XJ I had been looking for to build it.

 

 

I didn't want to really take a good or fixable xj off the road, that felt wrong. I also wanted a pretty specific list of good working stuff to all come from the parts xj so I didn't need to go hunting around for each individual part. That's kind of the whole point of getting a complete parts car. Struggle. 

 

I wanted 98+ to avoid the 96/97 all over the place parts, and 99- to avoid the cali emmisions complications (I already have that in my LJ, no thanks). 

Manual, 4wd, np242, black/grey interior, overhead console. 

a good front end so I can swap the header/hood/fenders/doors.   

 

This is the best option I found. 

 

98 xj, ax15, ~130k, upcountry with the overhead console. etc. etc.

 

This xj has been taken care of well right up until the moment it got rear-ended right into the back of a squad car. The front bumper was a little squished, and the rear unibody had buckled to the point one of the leaf springs was just sitting against the body on one side. But - it ran and drove just fine really, other than the obvious frame/suspension issue.  This seemed like the perfect find. The only thing broken was the one thing I didn't care about, it gave me everything I needed to do the 98 swap in one go, and it wasn't worth the cost to fix this and put it back on the road. Which also meant the price was right :)

 

Just about the only thing this didn't have that I really wanted was an np242, but given people generally want the 231 instead, I figured I could find a swap sooner or later.

 

 

What, you've never seen a soft top XJ?

 

 

Lots of room to store parts! It's even holding the factory soft top from my LJ that I replaced for now. Which also nicely covers the mostly missing back glass from the accident! 

 

 

 

[RecursiveDelta]

So about being able to use the truck right away, I still need to move to the new apartment.

 

In addition to no longer having turn signals, I've lost 4 ways and brake lights too now. Those would be nice. Having slightly more effective actual brakes would also be nice. And the interior could be slightly more livable...

 

 

That's as clean as I could really get the interior. I know you can't see how it smells, ... just trust me on that one. It smells much worse than it looks. Cigarettes + wet upholstery + squirrels living inside isn't a great combo. Not shown here is the bath towel that lived on the drivers seat the entire drive home from GA, and every time I drove it after.

 

 

This plug is somewhat of a local celebrity right? Mine had a clutch master leaking right into it for at least a decade. You'll see later how I know it was that long. Anyway, a whole can of brake clean and some dielectric grease later I have my lights again! Mostly anyway. Turns out the turn signal switch is also not very happy. Time to work more on that left arm tan I already have from hand signals the whole drive home.

 

Also - this needs to go somewhere. The Peugeot BA-10/5 feels exactly like trying to use a knife to mix a jar of extra chunky peanut butter. The gears do technically all work though. When I bought it the shift knob was also on the floor, duct tape around the stick and a press fit thankfully fixed that for the drive home.

 

 

Other than a fun time where the throttle cable popped off the pedal arm while I was stopped on an up hill left turn lane, the MJ made moving much faster than it would have been just using the LJ. That was an interesting time doing a repair in the middle of a road. You can see I've stolen the much much better wheels and tires off of the parts XJ for this.  

 

 

Yeah, that checks out. 

 

Also the garage needs a little putting together.

 

 

It's getting there.

 

 

[Big_Mark]

nice heater! Those things crank it out, seems like you got a project or two as well as a place to do em! 

[camjeep3]

Talk about an adventure getting the truck home!

I agree about killing a fixable xj.. The one you got is the perfect candidate! 

Look forward to seeing your build!

[MiNi Beast]

Totally legitimacy.  Welcome to the club my friend. MJ owner for life. 

 

I'm in, sold me at pizza pan repairs. 

[RecursiveDelta]

2 hours ago, Big_Mark said:

nice heater! Those things crank it out, seems like you got a project or two as well as a place to do em! 

 

It was one of the huge selling points for me renting here  I've always got a project or 20, it seems I'm better at finding the projects than the time to do them...

 

1 hour ago, camjeep3 said:

Talk about an adventure getting the truck home!

I agree about killing a fixable xj.. The one you got is the perfect candidate! 

Look forward to seeing your build!

 

An adventure to be sure. I'm looking forward to finally documenting the part I've done so far!

 

47 minutes ago, MiNi Beast said:

Totally legitimacy.  Welcome to the club my friend. MJ owner for life. 

 

I'm in, sold me at pizza pan repairs. 

 

Thanks! I hoped my pizza pan fix would get some appreciation here :)

 

On to the next bit!

 

Let's see what I've got here...

 

 

First things first, doors off so I can actually work in the cab in the garage. Seats out revealed yet more treasures this truck had to offer...

 

Let's get the plastic interior bits, center console, and dash out.

 

 

And let's get it back in the garage while it can still drive.

 

 

Honestly, this was all an interior upgrade. This would have been better for the drive home xD

I think at this point I'd had enough of the interior smells for a bit, and I switched to checking out the front end/engine situation.

 

The seller mentioned that his girlfriend had used the truck and bumped something with the front, but that it just bent the bumper a little. No big deal. And I never planned to keep the stock bumper, so I wasn't too concerned either.

 

 

 

I think it was more than a little bump! But again, I never planned to really use any of this anyway, so it wasn't a huge deal. 

 

 

Found the jeep egg intact! If we keep it warm I wonder what will come out? 

 

 

Some heater core goo and spaghetti removal later, and tada! There IS and engine bay and fire wall under there! ... somewhere, under all the sludge perhaps?

 

That's a tomorrow problem.