Tag: Jeep

Charles Darwin, Alive and Well

You know those signs that tell you not to drive into flooded areas?

Every time I’d see one, I always wondered about the target audience.  I mean, who would be stupid enough to drive into a flooded area?  And if they were that stupid…well, maybe ol’ Darwin had the right idea.

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Based on the cover photo, you may have already guessed where this story is going.  I don’t have to look very far to find someone stupid enough to “enter when flooded.”  I see that guy in the mirror every morning when I shave.

You see, there’s a creek that flows across the dirt road out to the West End Gun Club.   I’ve been driving across it for close to 40 years now.  Most of the year, it’s a dry creek bed. After a rainy spell, we’ve had times when it was so obviously flooded I wouldn’t attempt to cross it.  Most of the time.  But other times when the water was flowing, it didn’t look bad enough or deep enough to keep me from taking a chance.  I mean, what could go wrong?

I guess I’m one of those guys who has to urinate on the electric fence to see for himself.  Yep, I finally got stuck, and stuck good.  I always figured with my all wheel drive Subie I could get out of anything.  But you know, AWD ain’t the same as 4WD.    Something I learned today.

When I heard the underside of the Subie hit the ground on the ledge (that was now more of a bank than a ledge), it hit hard.  I felt it as much as heard it.  I was in trouble.  I tried to back out, but I knew from the downward facing hood the Subie’s butt was in the air and I could feel the front wheels spinning in the water.  I was balanced on the bank, and I could feel the car rocking and pivoting slightly to the right.  It was like being in a formulaic movie or a bad dream when a car has gone out of control and is hanging over a cliff.  I opened the door and the bank was directly under the opening, and as I looked at the ground, the bank was eroding.  In the wrong direction.  Water started coming over the door sill and into the car.

I beat a hasty exit out the passenger door.   Other folks going to the range, wondering if they could cross, had stopped and were watching me.   I had set the example.  The spectators tried to help by pulling down on the rear bumper.   It did no good.  I was high sided, and if anything, the car was moving more toward the stream, which was starting to look like Niagara Falls.  Yikes.

I called the Auto Club, but they put me on hold.  The bank continued to give way under my Subie, so I called 911.  They took my info and I never heard from them again, nor did anybody show.  You know the old saying…when seconds count, the cops are only minutes away.  The other spectators drifted away.  I was on my own.

Then a miracle occurred.  Good buddy Lee, who I met for the first time this morning, came by in a Jeep.  A real Jeep.  With a winch.  We connected (literally and figuratively), but it was no good.  As the winch did its thing, it dragged the Jeep toward the Subie.  Lee and I looked at my  situation.  Lee put boulders in front of the Jeep’s wheels, and the winch dragged them along, too.  “If I could hook up to another vehicle,” Lee said, “we could make this work.”

Then the second miracle occurred.  Another newly-met good buddy named Aaron rolled up in a big Dodge pickup.  He hooked up to Lee’s Jeep, Lee hit the winch button, and just like that (with some God-awful undercarriage scraping and grinding), I was free.   For a few seconds, I thought my future held a commission as a U-boat commander, but no more.  Lee and Aaron, wherever you are, thanks much!

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Flipper Nation: How To Ruin a Fun Hobby By Squeezing Every Dime That You Can Out Of It

I realize we all have to make a living. Food has gone up, gas costs more and the rent is too damn high. Look, I have nothing against businessmen, as long as they play it straight and don’t scam customers. Go for it. Make all the money you can; see if I care. No, this story is about how all of us grease monkey types have forsaken the cool and the funky to become a bunch of soulless stock fluffers: a nation of pump-and-dump Hobby-Hawkers concerned only with what they can extract from the other, equally soulless fluffers.

Take Jeep YJ’s for instance. The square-headlight YJ has been the entry-level vehicle for 4-wheel drive buffs for the last 30 years. Shunned by other Jeep owners, despised for the simple crime of having headlights that actually align with their bodywork, Jeep YJ’s were the bottom rung. You could pick up a running YJ for a couple thousand dollars and hit the trails later that day. Light weight and simple suspension made the YJ very capable off-road and easy to fix when it broke down.

I bought my ’92 YJ for $2800 about ten years ago and the thing has been running good-ish ever since. If you believe the YJ groups I habituate, YJ’s are $20,000 rigs now. I see people posting up rusty old YJ’s for $6000/$8000 dollars. The users of YJ groups love it. Just sitting on their hands their investment (note: It’s no longer a Jeep or something they enjoy; it’s just an investment, like oil futures) goes up several thousand dollars a day. When someone online asks what their YJ is worth, which is every second question after which oil to use, the shills pipe in with ridiculous amounts of money that they themselves would never pay. All in service of bumping up the YJ’s stock price.

I could understand it better if Jeep YJ’s were sort of rare, but Jeep made 685,000 of the things over a nearly 10-year production run. They are everywhere, in fields, rusting in driveways, stacked in Jeep specific junkyards. That doesn’t stop the flippers from trying to run up the price. Everyday the imagined value of a Jeep YJ goes up another few hundred dollars. We may have missed out on Bitcoin but we’re darn sure not going to sell our clapped out old Jeeps for less than the price of a 2022 model. This money grab turns a fun hobby into just another IPO stock offering, something to own for its upside potential, not because you enjoyed it.

It’s the same with old motorcycles. The prices people are asking for any minor part that fits a vintage Japanese bike are just silly. I’m not immune to fluffer-fever. Prices for old Z1 Kawasaki’s have gotten so high I’m thinking of selling mine to cash in before the bubble bursts. My funky old motorcycle has turned into a savings account. And that’s the truly sad part: I enjoyed building the Z1 but now have to worry about where I park it due to its inflated value. I was going to ride it to Mexico with Berk but what if it gets stolen? The bike is no longer fun. In my mind’s eye it has become a stack of dollar bills waiting to be blown away by the slightest wind.

I know I’m ranting here but just once I’d like to log into a vintage motorcycle forum and not be bombarded with Internet shills asking for valuations or offering Jeeps and motorcycles for sale at stratospheric numbers. Old Jeeps, motorcycles and for that matter, vintage cars should mean more to us than how much return on the investment we can get from them. They should reach back into our memories and emotions; they should recall hot-metal smells and loves lost or found; they should be valued and not commoditized.

I guess what I really want is to remember the fun we had with our old cars and bikes before it all became a race to the top. I know the air will rarify and these old clunkers will become like casino chips: traded but never loved except for their monetary properties. You know, I used to hate the way people chopped up vintage Japanese motorcycles and turned them into goofy looking Brat style bikes but now I’m having second thoughts. Maybe by so thoroughly destroying the value of their motorcycles the Brat Butchers are actually saving the old bike’s true value as a motorcycle.

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Read more about the Z1 and other projects here.

Ferrari versus…Jeep?

You’ve probably seen the movie Ferrari versus Ford a few years ago about Enzo Ferrari, Henry Ford II, Carrol Shelby, and the 24 hours of Le Mans.  As flicks go, it was decent show.   Ford GTs are cool and so are Ferraris, made even more so by their stint in the police show a few years ago where a Ferrari Testarossa shared top billing with the two actors who played the good guys.  That show had one of the greatest intro scenes ever:

I didn’t know why that show and the Miami Vice sound track was playing in my mind repeatedly for the last day or so, and then it hit me:  Joe Gresh posted an old passport photo on Facebook.  Take a look and tell me what you think:

Gresh is a Jeep man, though, through and through.  Like me, I think he’d have a hard time even getting into a Ferrari.  Hence the title of this blog.

A bit about the Ferraris on Miami Vice.  It’s shades of Long Way Around all over again, you know, when those two dilettantes who call themselves adventure riders wanted to borrow a couple of KTMs and do a show about going around the world on motorcycles.  KTM wouldn’t cough up the bikes, so BMW stepped in with their GS ADV bikes, and Starbuck’s parking lots haven’t been the same since.

Something similar happened on Miami Vice.  Its producer asked Ferrari to give them two Testarossas and the answer was no.  So they had two kit cars made up using Corvettes as the base car and Enzo went nuts.  He sued the kit car company, but in the end,  he coughed up the two real Ferraris so Don Johnson could be authentic.  Not as authentic as Joe Gresh in a Jeep, but more than he would have been otherwise.

One more thing about Miami Vice:  A lot of big name actors got their start on that show.   Take a look:

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Not Worth Selling: How I Let The Free Market Determine My Transportation Needs

We own a lot of motorcycles and cars. There are two Jeeps, a Toyota truck, a 4×4 Suburban, an MGB GT, three Kawasakis, a golf cart, a Yamaha and a whole bunch of other motorcycles. I can’t afford to insure or repair all these vehicles so many of them sit around and collect dust. You may wonder why I keep all this junk. It’s optically distressing and hints at my unearned, depression-era, scarcity mind-set. But it’s not simple hoarding that litters my view. It goes deeper than that. I don’t want to own all these wrecks. The junk stacks up because of my twisted sense of fair play.

This misfit collection of vehicles didn’t happen accidentally or overnight. They were each bought and mostly used as directed but somewhere along the line their purpose became obsolete and other, more capable or more enjoyable vehicles took their stead. And that’s the spot where the free market fouled everything up.

We don’t really need the Toyota pickup truck. It has a couple hundred thousand miles on it but the thing still runs perfectly fine. It’s our go-to vehicle when we want to get somewhere fast. With a 4-liter V-6 pumping out 200 horsepower the lightweight Tundra will cruise at 90 miles per hour all day long. Its soft, car-like suspension coddles the driver and one passenger. And there’s the rub: The Tundra is a standard cab so two people are all you can realistically fit inside, out of the weather. On those long trips your luggage will be wrapped in garbage bags then tossed in the bed. The Tundra was fine when it was my work truck but it’s no longer optimal.

So why don’t we get rid of it? We tried once but it’s worth next to nothing on the free market. The 14-year-old truck has a few minor dings and a manual transmission. We tried to sell it for 3000 dollars but nobody wanted it. We had a few offers under 2000 dollars but I stomped my feet and said, No! I mean, where am I going to get a truck this good for under 2000 bucks? The Toyota stays because it’s not worth selling.

It’s the same with my Kawasaki ZRX1100 or as I like to call it, The Coat Rack. I let the bike sit for a year when we went to Australia. In that year everything hydraulic froze. The front brakes, the rear brakes and the clutch all need repair. The engine still runs ok but the carbs are clogged up from our crappy, alcohol-laden fuel. With only 23,000 miles the ZRX is overdue for a valve adjustment. It needs a new chain, sprockets, a throttle cable and I can never seem to find time for the bike because I’m having so much fun on the 1975 Z1 that I won’t sell.

So why don’t I dump the ZRX1100? I tried to get 2000 dollars for the bike once but no one wanted it. It’s worth even less now. The basic bike is solid but if you took the ZRX to a shop the cost of repairs would exceed the value of the motorcycle. That winnows the pool of eligible buyers down to people who know how to fix motorcycles. Those handy-types traditionally hold out for a super low selling price because they know how a few unknown problems can kill the budget on a project motorcycle. Besides, you can get a showroom condition ZRX1100 for 3500 bucks. Why bother with all the issues on my bike?

When I look at it in the garage, the perfect bodywork, the glossy green paint, and the totally original everything I say to myself, “That’s a great bike, I love the styling. A week’s work would have it running like a champ again. What would I do with 2000 dollars anyway? I’d rather have the non-running Kawasaki!”

And so it goes. The Suburban was bought for its engine and drivetrain but has proved so much better than the Toyota at hauling heavy loads it has taken the place of the pickup truck that I refuse to sell. If I did unload the Bomber it wouldn’t be worth 1000 dollars on the free market. Why bother?

The MGB GT could be worth a pretty penny if it were restored. I see nice GTs going for over 10,000 dollars but then again it would probably cost 9,999 dollars to restore it. At one time I offered it for 250 dollars but couldn’t get a single taker.

After walking past the little blue sports car for several years I’ve grown to love its classy British/Italian mash-up styling. I’ve spent a couple hundred dollars getting a clear title to the MGB. My buddy Lynn managed to get the hood open and everything looks intact in the engine room. I think I can get it running. Wait, I know I can get it running. You can bet I won’t be selling the MGB; its potential as a prop in my fantasy world far exceeds any real-life street value.

I’ve got a Kawasaki 250 that I only use once a year for Bike Week at Daytona. It’s paid for and in pieces at the moment. The KLR always starts first or second kick after sitting for a year. It’s not bad in the dirt, if a little underpowered. I bought it used with very low miles and the sunk cost has long been absorbed. I’d be lucky to get 700 bucks for it and 700 bucks won’t buy much of anything nowadays. The KLR250 stays at our shack in Florida so that I always have two-wheeled transportation whenever I visit. That feeling of moto-security is worth whatever small amount of money I could get for the bike.

You’re starting to get the picture by now. I don’t really want all this junk; it’s just that The Man and society places so little value on my treasures I keep them out of spite. I’ll go to my grave clutching my outdated ideas on what my things are worth and to whom. Sure, it’s a sick way of approaching life but I can think of much worse things, like accepting Market Value.

The 100-Mile Loop

If I had to guess, and I really can’t imagine why I’d ever have to, I would say New Mexico has two or three times as many dirt roads as paved roads. I’m not getting on those trails at anywhere near the frequency I should be so I called up my moto-buddy Mike and asked him to show me the volcanoes. With the morning temperature hovering around 30 degrees Fahrenheit it didn’t take much convincing to get Mike to ride along in Brumby, the 1992 YJ Jeep.

There is a huge expanse of territory encircled by Highway 380 to the south, Interstate 25 on the western edge, Highway 60 up north and Highway 54 marks the eastern edge. Roughly 50 miles square, this land has hundreds of miles of dirt roads crisscrossing in all directions. These roads lead to huge cattle ranches and as such are kept in pretty decent condition. In dry weather you could run most of them in a two-wheel drive sedan. In wet weather they become much more challenging.

With the Jeep heater on high, we turned north off 380 and headed 25 miles into the outback to find the volcanoes. I didn’t really see a traditional cone-shaped volcano; at the volcanoes it’s more a lava field with an impressive variety of colorful minerals scattered about. Rust reds, crumbling ochers, and black lava dominate. The area is pockmarked with sinkholes several feet deep. What looks like broken beer bottles is actually exposed glass fused between layers of lava. I need to quick-learn geology because this spot is interesting and needs further exploration.

Forty miles from the volcanoes are the Gran Quivira ruins. The Spanish have a long history in the area. If you are a Native American you probably don’t think highly of the Spanish. The ruins of three large churches with pueblos built around them are thirty to forty miles apart. The southernmost one, Gran Quivira dips into our loop and it’s worth taking a trip just to see the masterful stonework.

The ranches out here have a loosey-goosey cow containment policy. Since the land is so dry it takes many acres to support one cow. Fencing huge amounts of land is not cheap so you get just a bit of fence near the road and the cows wander around doing cow-like things. It’s best to drive past slowly. If a cow hits your truck at 30 MPH things will get compressed rapidly.

After the ruins we ran for many miles on a slippery mud road that seemed to be the final drainage point for 50,000 acres. I put Brumby in 4WD because the little Jeep wanted to spinout when we sunk into the really muddy bits. Having the front wheels pulling seemed to make the truck go straighter.

In Corona we pulled up to the only good Mexican restaurant in town, also the only restaurant in town. As soon as I managed to unfurl my body and escape the Jeep’s door the neon “Open” sign went dark. I looked inside and the chairs were leg-high on the tables and staff was cleaning up.

I cracked the door and stuck my head inside, “Are you guys really closed?” The Senorita in charge said, “Yes, but it will take us a while to clean up, come in.” Not wanting to create more trouble, Mike had a burger with un-sweet tea and I seconded the order.

After a late lunch we ran the county-maintained dirt roads all the way back to Carrizozo. With the setting sun illuminating Brumby’s bug and mud splattered windshield I nearly overcooked a few turns, but only because I couldn’t see them.

All told we did over a hundred miles of off road exploring and we only scratched the surface of this one tiny section of New Mexico. It will take many lifetimes to see all this state has to offer and next time I’m bringing a metal detector.

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Endurofest One

Things have been hopping and getting ready for the 2019 edition of Endurofest has only increased the load on our fragile infrastructure. The Toyota started shaking in that now-familiar way that indicates a bad driveshaft U-joint. And it was. The front joint was a mess and the others looked ok so I went to the auto store and picked up a joint.

While I was at it I figured I’d change the center bearing just because it had a zillion miles on it so add another hundred. The job went as well as any U-joint replacement, kind of a brutal war and a finesse combined to accomplish what needed to be done. Except that the middle u-joint had to come out to split the front drive shaft (to replace the center bearing) and It didn’t look so hot. Another trip to the auto store and I managed to button up the Toyota without further drama.

I turned my attention to Brumby, tackling a loose exhaust system that was an easy fix: One of the rubber hangers had deteriorated letting the pipe swing around playing a tune under Brumby. Another trip to the auto store and a slick-jiffy had the pipe suspended like a proper off road weapon.

The soft top on my tow rig, Brumby, had been damaged by a hailstorm earlier in the year. The ice balls went right through the windows and generally made a mess of things. Amazon sent along a nice Sierra soft top and all I had to do was send them a cool $250. The top went on without issue except for the rear door latch became stuck in the locked position.

The linkages for automobile locks are small bits of bent wire rod and they are held in place by tiny pieces of plastic that snap into the rod. The problem with this system is that after 20-30 years the plastic becomes brittle and breaks. When they break the link rod falls off whatever mechanical device they were supposed to operate.

The fix would be to dismantle the door and replace the plastic bits, assuming you can find them. I don’t have time for this hokey-pokey so I drilled two small holes in the link rod. Using a couple small washers and cotter pins I reattached the link rod and I could open the rear door and finish the soft top installation.

But that’s not all! The Harbor Freight trailer had been sitting in the sun for about a year and the wiring to the lights was rotted off in several places. Luckily there was enough wire to cut out the bad section and splice in new. I really have to replace the entire lighting system on that trailer but it will have to wait for another day.

The trailer was looking a bit like a shantytown and I had some house paint solidifying in their cans so I dumped the stuff onto the trailer in an attempt to make it look a little less distressed.

With the tow rig out of the way I could get Godzilla, the 360cc Yamaha ready. It needed a new tire in the rear but of course I’m not spending the kind of money they are asking for new tires nowadays. I managed to borrow a slightly used M21 from my buddy Hunter when he momentarily turned his back on me. The tire was relatively easy to install. Which really threw off my plans for the day.

I also fitted a new tail bag and assembled a new concrete mixer, the mixer having nothing to do with Endurofest.

Finally all was ready and loaded. Only one small problem remained: somewhere in all this messing about I lost track of the days and I am actually a day ahead of schedule. Ah well, it’s too late to change things now, this train is leaving the station. Next stop Flagstaff, Arizona.

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The Short List: 5 Reasons You Should Buy a Jeep YJ

Reason 1: Leaf Springs

The YJ, built from 1987 until a somewhat vague date in either 1994 or 1995, came with leaf springs. Next to no suspension at all, leaf springs are the simplest way to attach four wheels to a frame. The addition of a hydraulically dampened shock absorber is the only thing separating the Jeep YJ from a Conestoga wagon.

In 1987 Tort Lawyers at American Motors Corporation wrested control of Jeep’s design offices from the guys that actually knew what they were doing. In an attempt to cut back the number of Jeeps rolling over on America’s roadways, the Sons, Sons and Sons-a-Bitches law firm decided that restricting the Jeep’s already stiff wheel travel to no travel was the answer.

AMC-Law’s track bars and sway bars were configured in such a way that the various components were in constant mechanical opposition to each other, eliminating wheel movement. Naturally this bind produced extreme loads on the hot attachment points causing the rod and linkage connections built into the Jeep YJ’s frame to self-destruct. Oddly, the more things broke on the frame, the better the YJ rode. How many cars can you say improve dramatically by removing 50% of the suspension parts?

Reason 2: Square Headlights

If ever a vehicle cries out for square headlights it’s the Jeep. The whole car is a box with a slightly smaller box set on top of the first box. With square fenders, square gauges and square tail lights it’s only fitting that square owners dig the headlights. Less hard-core Jeepers (anyone who dislikes square headlights, really) complain about the YJ’s face but never bother to spend the extra effort on their own face. A little concealer, maybe a dash of rouge and a finely cut-in set of lips would go a long way towards making themselves more presentable down at the Mall. And they’re always at the Mall.

Reason 3: We Still Wave

Jeep YJ owners are the last generation of Jeep drivers to wave at each other. There has been a long-standing tradition of Jeep people waving which indicates to other Jeeps passing in the opposite direction that they have bits of their bodywork falling off. Or that the Jeep is on fire. Newer Jeep owners, coddled in their climate-controlled interiors and bedazzled by multi-color dashboard displays going haywire have lost the ability to see other Jeeps. With automatic transmissions and soft, coil-sprung axles their bodies and especially their arms have atrophied from disuse. And the newer the model, the worse the prognosis: buyers of Jeep’s latest model, the JL, are kept alive in a nutrient-rich petri dish until a help-mate smears their gelatinous bodies onto the JL’s driver seat. They aren’t even sentient; how could they wave?

Reason 4: The 2.5-Liter 4-Cylinder

Many YJ’s came with a 6-cylinder engine and that’s fine if you like that sort of stuff. YJ connoisseurs know that the 2.5-liter, 4-cylinder is AMC’s gift to off-roading. Weighing 100 pounds less than the 6 it produces 25% of the power while consuming the same amount of fuel. The extra power of the 6 is futile because with its boxy shape top speed on a Jeep is limited by wind resistance. Under ideal conditions, dropping a YJ out of a cargo plane will see the thing reach 80 miles per hour as long as it doesn’t start to flutter or break up.

Reason 5: The AX5 Transmission

This transmission gets a bad rap from Jeep haters because it disintegrates from time to time. What they are too dense to grasp is that Jeep engineers planned the AX5 to act as a fuse between the 35-horse 2.5 engine and the Dana 35 rear axle. The combination of a weak engine, weak transmission and a weak rear axle, like the trinity, is an economical mixture that transcends the sum of the components. The Internet is full of stories about YJ’s that have gone off-road and survived. I’ve only broken my transmission once and the rear axle once. It’s that good.

The Jeep YJ is the last of the real Jeeps, the hard-core Jeeps that keep you awake at night wondering what that sound was. YJ’s can draw a direct line to Jeep’s military past and have a sort of Stolen Valor way of conking out when least expected. That’s all part of the fun. Sure, modern jeeps may be smoother off road but if smoothness is what you are looking for, stay on the pavement. And get some exercise because you really should start waving.