It's Alive

(You're supposed to imagine the Weird Science theme song as you read the title.)

And no, I'm not talking about my old RROD Xbox. I gave up on that.

My friend Greg has a 1984 Jeep CJ7. He's had it for as long as I can remember... somewhere between 10 and 15 years. Over the years, I've put a lot of miles on that Jeep... one of my cars would break down and it would take me a couple of weeks to scrape together the money to fix it... during the interim, Greg would let me use his Jeep. I've grown kind of fond of that thing.

The thing is a beast... huge off-road tires, a Holley carb and intake... not designed for everyday driving, especially at highway speeds. Once you hit 50 mph or so, the front end gets a bit squirrely. Add in the notoriously short wheelbase of Jeeps, and you've got a recipe for disaster. Once you get the thing off-road though, it's probably the coolest thing I've ever driven.

One day a while back, the throttle cable broke. He parked the thing and said "I'll fix it." A week passed... a month... winter... the following spring... two years... five years. Yeah, the thing broke down over five years ago. During that time, it sat in his back yard, waiting patiently to be resurrected. The Jeep was fortunate enough to move with him to the new house.

It sat in his garage for what... eight months... staring him in the face. Eventually, Greg decided it was time to fix the Jeep. I was all over helping him out. Over the last couple of weekends, we put in a new throttle cable, changed the oil and antifreeze, cleaned the spark plugs and did a general tune-up. Greg expected that it would need the carb rebuilt, and I figured that ALL of the engine's seals had dried out.

Both of us figured that we had nothing to lose by trying to fire it up today. Who'd have thunk it!? It fired right off!! The gas was old, and we put a little bit of oil in the cylinders to minimize and block damage due to rust. We poured a little gas in the carb for good measure. We cranked it over and it fired up the first try!!

We spent the next 3o minutes road-testing it. Once we were satisfied, we gave her a real test. We beat the hell out of her, taking it through grass, mud bogs and woodland areas. She took everything we dished out as if she had never broken down. It was very satisfying bringing that thing back from the dead.

By the way... I want to thank Mrs. Evan for being understanding of my need for male bonding time, and my need to tinker with all things mechanical.