Planetfurry BBS

[The Silver Coyote]

In case anyone has questions or comments about what I've done or ought to do with or to my 2017 Jeep JK Unlimited. But feel free to discuss overlanding / back country operations in general, or about 4-wheel drive vehicles in general. I started with a 1966 International Scout back in the day.

The Little Red Beast

Have fun!

SC

[Kellan Meig'h]

I started out with a 1966 IHC 1100 Travelall 4X4. SV304, 5 speed Clark w/ OD, 2 speed Dana Xfer cases, Dana 44 axles with 4.56 No-Spin diffs. Was not fast by any means but it got you there. I ran 31" Dick Cepec tires on it that it ate like candy.
The next 'Harvester was another T'All, a 1975 1010 with a 401 AMC V8, TF-727 trans, 3.73 Dana 44 axle. More creature comforts but it didn't stand up to being hit head-on at 40+ mph. I walked away but it was done, gave its life for me.
The last (for now) 'Harvester was a 1010 Bonus Load pickup. SV345 V8, TF-727, 3.54 gears. It had some rust, not bad and certainly repairable if I could have gotten it back here somehow. Had to sell because I had no place to keep it.

Ya know, back here in Indiana, our Jeeps succumb to frame rot around the rear leaf spring hangers. Every time I see a Jeep for cheap, it has a wasted frame. I guess I could source a frame from California somehow, since almost-dead Jeeps are plentiful. I know of four offhand that are the 4 banger/5 speed jeeps with rusted frames. One can't move right now, the frame is rusted in two in front of the right rear leaf spring front perch.any one of them could be had for $500 or less.

[The Silver Coyote]

Wow, you and Harvester are old friends!

The earliest exposure I remember to IH trucks was a couple of 50s vintage units, a Travelall and a Carryall. I was just a pup myself, maybe 5-7 years old, so I don't remember the details of them, I just remember a big, round-looking 4-door wagon-truck, I suppose equal to the Chevy Suburban of the period, except these things didn't go very fast. But they did go anywhere you pointed them, and the guy that drove us around the Four Corners area in his knew all the gnarly trails to terrorize the tourists with.

Except it didn't work that way for my folks. All it did was start a fire in their souls, my dad's especially, to get into the off-road world. And that they did, in spades. As I've posted elsewhere before, I learned to drive in my dad's '71 Jeep Wagoneer, and my first vehicle was my old '66 Scout 800. It was very faded canary yellow with a white top. My buddies called it the "Russell Bus." I sure had a lot of fun with that old Scout.

I sure spent a lot of money on fuel, too. Factory four speed stick behind a Harvester 345 V8. Never had to fool with the transfer case, it just worked, so I don't even know what model number it was. Had Dana 44s at both ends with limited slip in both. Granny low in low range topped out near 5MPH, as I recall. It sure was fun off road. Top speed on the highway was around 65 MPH ... you could hear the suction in the fuel system and see the needle on the gas gauge moving. I ran Armstrong Norseman tires on it ... I don't remember what size, but they were probably in the 31 to 33 inch range.

My folks had a whole family of Jeeps. They bought an '88 Cherokee when they finally sold the Wagoneer, which had 250k miles on it. After they wore out the '88 they bought an identical '96 Cherokee, again fire engine red. That vehicle passed to my son Mike when my folks bought an '04 Grand Cherokee. The red '96 was in the family until just a few years ago when my son sold it to a friend of his, who planned great modifications for it. It's still running around in the dirt down in soCal somewhere, as far as I know.

The '04 Grand Cherokee is in my driveway here in Oregon. It has 98K on it. Parked next to it is my '17 Wrangler, which has 109K miles on it, and it still begs for off road miles every time I start it up. The last off-roading my dad did with that Jeep was in the spring 2008. That summer the CalDMV took his license away from him, following his diagnosis of early stage Alzheimer's. His last back-country trip was with me in Monument Valley in 2009.

So yeah, I guess 4wheeling is in my blood. That's a good thing. Who knows what I'd do with all the money I spend on fuel and "modifications" for my Wrangler if I didn't actually have one. I might be one heck of a consumer of fine bourbons!

Oh ... wait ...

;^) SC