FrankenJeep - It's Alive!!

“Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.” - Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein

So... a couple months later, and there's been some progress.

The main issue is... Frankenjeep failed eCheck yet again. I spent quite a bit of time working on him mechanically, but it looks like it's not happening. That's what temp plates are for, I guess. In January 2019, I'll get plates for him once he's 25 years old and grandfathers out of eCheck.

(Getting new brakes, a tuneup, oil change, and basic maintenance [3/14/2018])

Also squared the brakes away, so he stops when you tell him to.

Other than that, he's running amazing after everything that we did to get him up and going

I also began body work. Pulled the front flares and found that the fenders had quite a few holes in them. So a bunch of new sheet metal, some tiger hair, and some finish bondo later, and the tub is in tip top shape.

Now, I am not a body guy. I'll be the first to admit that. However, I have Youtube and several years of half-assed painting experience; enough to be dangerous. In other words - the body's not super smooth, but it's good enough.

REMEMBER: FrankenJeep is a low buck project. He's for cruising in the summer and off-roading when I can. He'll never be a show quality ride. This means I'm not dumping a crap load of money (beyond the crap load I've ALREADY dumped into him) for paint... so I went with a backyard paint job.

We went with a Rustoleum spray job. The boy and I spent a day sanding and doing additional body work, spent a day taping and prepping, and then painted it in like 2 hours.

The paint job looks amazing from 10 feet away. Up close, you can see some runs here and there... but Frankenjeep looks pretty damned good now. Plus, I used Rustoleum 2x from Home Depot... so I'm not concerned about dings or anything because I can always just give it a quick, $3.49 spritz to touch him up from trail rash and mall parking lot door wangs. All told, with bondo, primer, paints, painting supplies... I spent like $150. I could have probably bought an HPLV sprayer and did it the right way, but rattle cans worked with the spirit of the build.

NOW that all that other crap is done.. and while I'm waiting for him to age into some plates... I can spend some time working on mods.

I also added:

• A Rampage soft top
• Bestop soft doors (I LOVE these doors!) 
• A Rampage Center console
• Seat covers
• Other little odds and ends

On the immediate list:

• Lift
• Bigger tires (31s or 32s. Nothing crazy)
• New bumpers
• Some offroad lights (I'm thinking round halogens mounted over the windshield. Old school, ya know? That's how Jeeps had them when I was younger and dammit, these kids today with their new-fangled LEDs need to get off my gorram lawn!!!)
• Paint the hardtop black

Nothing too crazy... just want it to look good and perform a little better.