Just Starting Off

The story of this jeep starts off around 25-26 years ago, when my Dad got the itch to start going back up to Silver Lake Sane Dunes after both my sister and I were born. I was about 5 when i got to experience the sand dunes for the first time myself, and I was hooked.

About 3 years of looking and playing around on the lake, my Dad decided that he needed to relive his years from the late 70's and get into another Jeep. That is where this 86 CJ7 came around. Bought it from a kit that went to the local college that he worked at, and from there things took off. Start it's life as a stock 4 banger and 5 speed transmission, and in a short 8 months time, we had the old motor and trans pulled out of it, and a cleaned up SBC and TH350 tranmission bolted in it's place.

The first trip up to Silver Lake with the new set up was nothing sort of amazing! We finally got to play in the big sand box with our new toy, after countless hours spent in the garage helping my Dad with anything that i could (mostly holding a flashlight or fetching tools at this time)!

Most of the next few years we didn't change much with the Jeep, basically just kept up on maintenance over the winters. There were a couple of tranmissions that had to be swapped out, and a rear end that got blown to shreds in there as well somewhere, but other than that, nothing much changed.

In 2004 we pulled the motor and went through it along with swapped the cam and went to aluminum heads and roller rockers. This is how the motor would stay up to it's current state today. However, I do have to admit, it's currently sitting on the trailer with a spun rod bearing. 15 years of super low miles, and getting rode hard and put away wet type of driving, then trying to semi-daily drive the Jeep... motor didn't like that.

So, a really short sweet story of this Jeeps journey. But I love telling the story, and if you want to know more, then just ask!! Now that I have a little one, and another on the way, my build has kind of slowed down for the moment, but I am going to get back on it so I can start sharing my passion with my kids, just as my Dad did with me!