Waving 'Hi' from the Pacific Northwest

Hi all,

My wife and I are a couple of retired nudists living up near Tacoma, Washington with our two dachshunds. We like the laid-back life. I've always been a car guy and hobbyist, as was my dad. He was immersed in the crowd that shoehorned Cadillac engines into their primer-black Fords. There have been more cars in my family than I can remember. Hell, I've had well over 30 myself. One of the family rigs was a 66 Bronco dad bought in 71, with a 289, 3-on-the-tree, and manual steering. When I was barely 16 our family was in the Puget Sound Boondockers 4wd club, and it was there dad, mom, and we all got our first taste of obstacle course racing and barrel racing. Being 16, I assumed I would be racing kids class when dad asked me if I wanted to race. Little did I know that being 16 meant I was a legal driver, and I drove against all the seasoned (and not so seasoned) racers. I didn't do bad for a skinny little kid, coming in barely after the person I competed against. Mom actually won a trophy for 2nd place in women's barrel races! Pretty cool for her first day ever of racing. Now, years later I've had several 4wd's, but no Jeep. I had a 62 Chevy 3/4-ton stepside 4x4, 66 Ford 3/4-ton 4x4, a 72 Bronco, and a 86 GMC half ton 4x4. So much for some history.

We just bought an 81 CJ7 a couple weeks ago. I'm not into crawling over rocks or anything like that--I prefer exploring the endless mountain roads and places up here that I used to hit when I was a young dirt bike rider. Because of this sort of easy, explorative driving, I was looking for something "pre-82" because I wanted the narrow track. The 81 is the last narrow, but unfortunately, they had the first 5-bolt hubs. Anyway, in addition to the tires/wheels I've already traded down to a smaller size, it's also loaded with Skyjacker (4") lift parts, 1 1/2" body lift (already ripped that out), 4" shackles, and all kinds of crap I didn't want. Some of the add-ons were good though, such as the steering box braces. Now I'm up to my eyeballs in 40+ years of ignorance. The steering was actually not as bad as I feared (I drove it 170 miles home). It had a fair amount of free-play, but at least didn't dive, lunge, or follow the road. The brakes were so bad if you STOOD on the pedal it stopped... sorta quickly. I had to cut most of the lines out. Everywhere I've looked so far I've found destruction-by-ignorance. Every aspect of the brakes is being replaced--right down to the pedal rubber. Front axle u-joints lubed with nothing but rust dust... fun stuff! I call this Jeep archeology. The good news is, the 258 is solid, running a Clifford intake/headers, with two-into-one exhaust that was nicely done, Holley 390, D.U.I. HEI distributor/Livewire plug wires, and Mile Marker 10500 hydraulic winch. Unfortunately, it's got an SR-4 trans, but as of now it works great, so that's fine by me.

So here I am, not as much eager to learn as just liking to share stuff every now and then. The wife and I are both introverts, and a Jeep fits that lifestyle. We're planning on escaping to it often.

 

Welcome @rick1956 ...envy the story of the laid-back life especially after living so long on the east coast. Be neat to see some before & after pics as you returned the CJ7 back to its roots

 

Welcome aboard. A couple of other sites you may want to visit:
https://jeep-cj.com/community/

https://www.jeepforum.com/

Both of those sites have a lot of "late" CJ information. As for track width, I don't think wide track versus narrow track is as important as you may think. I wheeled narrow track CJ's for more than 50 years before purchasing a 2012 JK. I didn't find a single place where I previously wheeled I could not also get the JK to and some of those were pretty tight. On my last reincarnation of my CJ 3B, it received wide track width axles, the front a narrowed Ford F250 housing and the rear a 1960 Kaiser offset, full float converted FC 150 housing. Both of those are nominally 57" track width.

I sold that JK last summer. A paradox for sure. With 35's, quite capable off road but from the day we bought it new to the day we sold it, the electronics, all of them, were a disaster. Out of the 40 something vehicles I owned, the JK firmly holds the 3rd spot from the bottom of the heap. The ancient 3B is everything the JK wasn't, but there aren't very many stock pieces left in the B.