Yeah, I Still Have a Problem

Well, as some of you could probably guess, I haven’t cured my car buying addiction yet. I swear I had legitimate reasoning this time, though. I have been struggling since February to try and get the FJ60 to at least functional. I could get it to run, drive, and so on, but the key issue was the rust. It had tons of it. I wanted so badly to get the FJ60 functional, but the rust had gotten the frame, and it was no longer structurally sound enough to be safe. Since I had originally purchased the FJ60 as a daily driver that I’d work on on the side (I know, bad plan), this was a problem because I still needed a daily driver, and the FJ60 was just sitting in my car port undriveable.

I was able to get away with it not being functional for the summer, because I had the CJ-5, but coming up into winter I’ve been able to drive the CJ-5 less and less, and the fact that I was leaving my wife without a vehicle she could use was becoming more and more of a problem, and it finally came to a breaking point where I had to sell the FJ60. So, sadly, the Rolling Turd has moved on to a new owner.

The Rolling Turd loaded up to go to its new home

The money from the FJ60 was promptly used to purchase a new vehicle. I bought a 1995 Jeep Wrangler YJ, which I initially was thinking I would drive in the winter, then modify in the spring and summer, but I’ve come to a new conclusion (one that I’ll detail a little later in the post), and now I think I’ll be keeping it stock, at least for a while. The YJ has been great so far, running and driving well. I had to get new tires put on it (par for the course with most used car purchases), replace the TPS (Throttle Position Sensor, and a $12 part), and get the ECU rebuilt ($128 from SIA Electronics), and it’s running great now. The tires were scavenged off of the CJ-5, which is now sitting in the car port on jack stands as a result, but the sacrifice meant that I didn’t have to spend a ton getting new tires for the YJ.

And now for a picture dump!

So, I have a new daily driver that has windshield wipers (the CJ-5 has 1, and the motor is burned out), tires that are snow rated (General Grabber X3s in 31×10.5r15s, to be precise), a top (CJ-5 definitely doesn’t have one), and a heater/defrost (biggest key to actually having a winter daily driver). All for the price of $2500, and this time there’s no frame rust. Sure there’s holes in the body tub, but I couldn’t care less since the frame and important structural bits are immaculate.

We’ve finally gotten to what my actual plans are. Like I said earlier in the post, I originally thought that I would drive the YJ for the winter, then come spring, I would go hard out on modifying it, doing things like a rear axle swap, 35s, lockers, the works. Then I decided to do some research on something fairly important in regards to that. Namely, where would I actually use those modifications? There are a few places, somewhat close (read a few hours away) that I could take advantage of them. But they’re all small places, and fairly expensive to go to regularly since they’re all privately owned. All the places that are closer and publicly owned can be done on the 31s that it already has, so the conclusion that I came to was that it wouldn’t be worth my money to do so.

So, what am I going to do? We know that I love working on/modifying cars, but I’ve also basically said that I won’t be modding any of the vehicles I currently own. Well, if you’re even mildly following my track record, you’ve probably already guessed that I’m gonna feed my addiction, and buy another car.

I’m changing gears (heh, car pun) and going with something that I haven’t done before. I want a muscle or pony car. I’m definitely hoping I can get a 67-69 Mustang, but I’m open to anything really from that era. It’ll be closer to March before I’m even able to start looking, but that’s the current plan. I’m excited about the idea, for sure, and am hoping it goes well. If you know anyone that has a Mustang in that year range that is both willing to sell and willing to hold on to it until I’m able to buy sometime next spring, feel free to let me know.