Assessment

I have only collected and brought home one of the three jeeps.  It is approximately a five hour drive (one way) to where the jeeps are and unfortunately, I only have a trailer that will haul one jeep at a time.  Quick math tells you its about 30 hours, 6 tanks of gas, and a couple of hours to load the jeeps so it is just a logistical nightmare for one person just to get the jeeps back to my house in order to transform my yard into a junkyard.  This sort of dedication is not for the faint of heart.  I keep telling myself it is for the war effort...even if the war ended 66 years ago.  Keep 'em rolling, right?

So one jeep (the supposed "good jeep") is at home and in the garage sitting next to my original project.  The morning after unloading it, I was like a kid on Christmas morning:  up at the crack cleaning and organizing, pulling all of the large parts out of the tub (extra windshields, hoods, fenders, rims) and then sweeping out the interior so a practical assessment could be made.

Overall, it wasn't too bad.  The tub is fairly solid, albeit there are quite a few extra hole purposely drilled into, a tailgate had hastily been cut out of he rear panel and then haphazardly welded back on, and then the typical rust that is expected to be found:  hat channels, drivers side toolbox bottom, beneath the passenger seat (is the worst spot) and a small spot on the driver's seat floor.  I can honestly say that I have seen worse!

There were four boxes of parts and accessories that came home with me, too, but I wasn't able to inventory them due to a committment to retrieve the rest of our household belongings that had been in storage for the last 3 years.  If its been that long, do I really need them at this point?  No, but I had to get them out.   When all of the "stuff" came home, we had nowhere to stick it, so half now sits on my trailer and the rest sits in, on and around the two jeeps in the garage while it waits for the National Kidney Foundation to come and liberate it.  My wife thought it made the jeeps look better with everything piled on.  I am not happy.  At 10:00am, the garage looked like a motorpool.  By 1:00pm, it was a storage unit for junk.

Below are some not so glamourous shots of the jeep in the garage.  These are posted mainly so everyone can pity my wife and give her sympathy.  Seriously, though, it wouldn't look so bad if all that extra "stuff" weren't in the garage!  Trust me.  You might not be able to tell, but the already restored jeep is on the left and the new guy is on the right.  I've removed the grill of my restored one while attempting to pinpoint my pinhole radiator leak.



In two weeks, I am tentatively planning to retrieve jeep number 2, which is the one with the good frame.