A few months ago I drove to Idaho to pick up a Jeep Comanche I had bought sight unseen. This little truck’s first task would be to haul large parts that I bought on eBay back to my house in LA so I could turn those parts into an entire World War II Jeep. Hilariously, I shortly thereafter found the motherlode of WWII Jeep parts on eBay, though the seller was located back up in the Pacific Northwest. So I essentially re-traced much of my trip in the Comanche, but this time I headed to a legendary Jeep parts supplier in Oregon and to an eBay seller ever farther away in Washington state. Here’s what that 2,000 mile trek was like picking up almost a literal ton of Jeep parts.
It’s been about a month since I mentioned that I’d scored the motherlode of WWII Jeep parts on eBay, The Autopian’s brand partner in this extremely ambitious journey to build a brand new WWII Jeep from scratch using mostly parts sourced from eBay. Up until that point, I’d managed to snag a body, frame, and engine from eBay sellers, though I was still missing a transmission, transfer case, and axles. Those are some pretty big parts, and given the point of the build was to get as much as I could from eBay, I found myself keeping a keen eye on the website for a listing.
That’s why this motherlode was such a big deal, even though it was far away in Washington state:
I prepped my 1992 Jeep Comanche longbed for the journey by gifting it some brand new all-terrain tires, and by adding the world’s cheapest air suspension.
Initially, my plan was to install some brand new leaf springs, but I was having trouble sourcing them in time, so at the last minute, I ordered some air shocks. I wrote about this in my article I’m Driving My Jeep Comanche 2,000 Miles To Pick Up 1,300 Pounds Of WWII Jeep Parts I Bought From Ebay, and though I was expecting a bit of pushback for my rather simply solution to my rear springs’ lack of load-carrying capability, most readers seemed to think it was actually a good idea.
Essentially, air shocks just replace the shock absorbers with a combination air spring/damper. The air spring provides some support to help out the leaf springs, with the amount of support adjustable via a Schraeder valve I have mounted just ahead of my rear bumper. Without this, I understood, the four axles, transmission, and transfer case I planned to haul back from Washington would certainly have bottomed out my rear suspension, making the handle rather sketchy.
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I topped my little truck up on a Saturday evening and I headed north. As this was the weekend right after Thanksgiving, the traffic from LA all the way up the 5 even past San Francisco was nightmarish, with the GPS at one point sending me and seemingly ever other human on the planet on a canyon road instead of the freeway:
Once back on the freeway, the traffic was intense for hours and hours. What I had hoped would be a chill highway cruise up in my Comanche started out as a true slog:
I had started off from LA at about 5PM, a little later than I’d hoped due to my rear air-shock installation job. As I’m somehow no longer the road-warrior I once was, I’m not able to consistently grind out 8+ hour driving sessions, so after about three hours on the road, I chose a random town ahead and booked a hotel.
As I neared this random town I’d chosen on the map, I decided to google it, only to find that there had been a national incident there recently, and that the city, Stockton, is ranked by numerous sources in the top three most dangerous towns in California.
Aside from a bit more noise than I’d have hoped between 2AM and 5AM, the motel was honestly fine, and I hit the road early the next day, cruising through one of the most fertile, crop-bearing parts of this great nation.
In short order, the landscape shifted from farmland to an alpine paradise, with Mt. Shasta marking the boundary:
Visiting The Ultimate WWII Jeep Parts Supplier
My first destination was Ron Fitzpatrick Jeep Parts, whose eBay store looks like this:
In addition to being an eBay seller, Ron is the founder of the biggest WWII Jeep community on earth: The G503 forum, named for the U.S. military’s standard supply number for the WWII Jeep. G503 is a legendary message board where enthusiasts from around the globe exchange knowledge, share parts, and become part of a beautiful family. That is to say that, in many ways, Ron is the godfather of the global WWII Jeep network.
And above all, he’s just a nice guy:
And his store is filled with absolute gold.
Look at these brand new seat frames:
Here’s lots of Olive Drab green paint on the right:
Check out all these 6-volt voltage regulators; not shown is complete wiring harnesses made in-house!:
Here are a bunch of exhaust pipes for WWII Jeeps and CJs:
Here are some parking brake shoes:
Here are some bumperettes:
Check out all these leaf spring brackets:
Behold a bunch of body panels and braces:
There was a whole section of just hardware, with the staff at Ron Fitzpatrick having individually bagged many of them:
Look at all these engine mounts:
In the middle here you can see some flywheels:
Here are a bunch of frame sections:
And then there were the loads of transmission cases and transfer cases, which Ron and his team painstakingly cleaned and primered. Here’s just a small portion of the transfer cases he has:
Here’s a photo from up high:
I elected to leave the parts I had ordered ahead of time at Ron Fitzpatrick’s store because I knew I had to come back. Walking through this amazing facility full of parts made me realize: This was an opportunity I’ll only get once; I have to capitalize on this and buy pretty much every part I still need for my Jeep project while I was here with an empty pickup bed.
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Picking Up The Motherlode
Of course, my bed wasn’t going to remain empty, as the primary purpose of this trip up north was to pick up the motherlode of Jeep parts from Washington. So I bid Ron and his team adieu for now, and hit the road. My trip was basically broken up into three five hour chunks, with the first five having taken me to Stockton, the second having taken me to Central Point, Oregon (the location of Ron’s business) and the third chunk now taking me to Longview, Washington.
The sky turned dark as soon as I hit the road, and before long I found myself once again struggling to drive just five hours to my destination in Longview. I don’t know if it’s my age getting the best of me, or if I’m just not getting enough sleep as a new dad and business owner, but not being able to complete a five-hour stretch without fatigue setting in is pretty sad.
I did eventually show up in Longview, where a reader named Mike was kind enough to still be up awaiting my arrival at his amazing home along the Columbia river. Here’s Mike and me in his Garage Mahal. Not shown is his heavily-built Jeep XJ or his sweet JL:
After a bit of sleep, I followed Mike’s Silverado to the home of eBay seller gpw9167, Brent, who had sold me the aforementioned Jeep parts Motherlode.
I arrived at a giant ranch property with a huge garage at the back filled with Jeep axles, transfer cases, hubs, and all sorts of other great hardware. I was there to pick up an old generator engine, which I snagged for $1000:
Unfortunately, the crankshaft pulley had been welded to the crank, but otherwise, this looked like a good motor — a backup in case my brand new France-built engine didn’t work out for whatever reason.
I was also there to pick up four axles, a transfer case, and a transmission — all of which were already loaded up into the bed of an old F-150 just outside the garage:
Mike and I lifted those heavy parts into the bed of my Comanche, and to be honest: It sucked. The front axles especially, with all the steering gear still attached, probably weighed 250 pounds apiece. I had to pump up my air shocks to 110 PSI (the range for them is 25 PSI to 200 PSI) in order to keep the rear of my truck from sagging.
After strapping everything down and covering it with a tarp, I went back to Mike’s, we tried fixing a squeak in my Jeep’s accessory drive, and then I headed south back towards Ron’s.
Making A Parts List And Picking Up Lots Of Parts From Ron Fitzpatrick
This was a particularly rough night for me, as I remained rather fatigued and really needed a night’s rest. But I knew I had to sit down and create a list of parts to buy from Ron the following morning, as this was an opportunity I could not waste. My friend Brandon, an old engineering buddy from my Chrysler days and a true WWII Jeep expert, had helped me compile part of it, but I had lots of work to do.
So I pulled over, checked into a motel, and got to work. Just as I was finishing putting together a parts list that I used to order parts from Ron’s eBay store (I also emailed him the other parts that he didn’t have listed on his eBay store), I looked at the clock to see that it was morning. It was time to hit the road again.
When I got to Ron Fitzpatrick, he was there ready to help me, and in short order I had a giant stack of parts. While he didn’t have a few of the smaller parts listed on his eBay store (I just sent him a direct PayPal for those), the bigger parts were either already on his eBay store, or in a few cases, he went ahead and listed a couple. Here’s a look at a portion of my haul:
That’s a distributor, an accelerator pedal linkage, and a new steering sector shaft to go along with the rebuild kit below:
How about that windshield glass! And there was even a passenger’s side seat frame! And a voltage regulator!:
Ron sold me a brand new oil bath air cleaner, a gorgeous muffler, and a rebuild generator to go along with that new voltage regulator:
The big score was the wheels, which I’m surprised hadn’t sold out, as he’d put them on eBay just before I’d arrived. I managed to snag the last five combat rims, which are extremely hard to get these days. I’d been looking for months!:
Here’s a look at a cart loaded full of the parts I snagged from Ron:
[Note that, when you order parts for pickup on eBay, you simply provide the seller with a special code, which they can use to confirm that the order has been picked up. It’s quite a seamless system that worked well with both Ron and with Brent up in Washington.]
Thanks to my Comanche’s 7-foot 4-inch bed, I found room for all those boxes even among the engine, four axles, transmission, and transfer case:
The Jeep sat fairly level thanks to those air shocks, it rode really smoothly, and it even scored about 17 MPG. Acceleration was a little slower than usual, but it wasn’t really that obvious. My old parts-hauling pickup, a 1985 Jeep J10 (and the Comanche’s predecessor) had a 112 horsepower inline-six, a 4,300 pound curb weight, and a 2.73 axle ratio. By comparison, the Comanche’s inline-six makes 190 horsepower, the truck only weighs 3,500 pounds, and it’s got a 3.07 axle ratio.
Honestly, the 1,500 or so pounds I had in the bed didn’t strain the powertrain at all, and the truck tackled steep inclines with ease, scoring even better fuel economy than I had expected.
I trudged on into the night, shifting down into fourth and occasionally into third to put the engine in its sweet spot up the steeper grades; the 4.0-liter hummed under the hood, with the truck dutifully and proudly hauling its great grandpa’s parts without any drama.
Night fell, so I found the most random Indian food truck at the back of a warehouse site:
The food was fire, though, as I discovered in my motel about an hour northwest of Sacramento.
Heading Back To LA To Prepare For A Wrenching Marathon
The following day I bombed back to LA to be with my wife and child, whom I hadn’t seen in five days. It’s amazing how what I thought would be just a few days had turned into five, but I wanted to make sure I was getting all the parts I needed while I had the opportunity, because the following week my friend Brandon would be coming into town. I wanted to make sure I had the parts that would allow me to maximize my time with someone I consider one of the greatest wrenches I’ve ever met.
More on how far my wrenching pal Brandon and I got on this incredibly ambitious eBay WWII Jeep adventure in an update next week.
[Ed note: David mentioned the idea of building a brand new WWII Jeep to the team at eBay, and they loved the idea so much they said, “How can we help?” Their financial support and David’s Jeep-obsession are the fuel behind this crazy build. – MH]
Top graphic images: David Tracy; DepositPhotos.com
By my count, you almost have enough parts to build a second Jeep.
David’s secret mental dialogue: “One for ebay, one for me. One for ebay, one for me.”
What a killer trip.
> if it’s my age getting the best of me, or if I’m just not getting enough sleep as a new dad and business owner
Why not both? Good for you to stop and get some sleep rather than risk falling asleep at the wheel.
Young David: Hi there, 2025 David. Visiting me again to tell me about the future, I see.
David: Yep. And boy am I tired. I actually came back in time to relax and crash on your couch for a bit.
Young David: What is it this time? Did you take a long trip in the i3 to attend the Concours de Elegance and overdo it on caviar again? Did you take the family on a whirlwind trip across Italy with a stopover in Switzerland to experience the Alps and dine on locally sourced snow crab legs?
David: If you must know, I drove a Jeep Comanche (that I JUST finished wrenching on) hundreds of miles to pick up a motherload of WWII Jeep parts so I can put together a WWII Jeep from scratch using nothing but parts I found on eBay. I’ve got an impossible wrenching deadline, so I’d appreciate some empathy.
Young David: I KNEW YOU WERE STILL ME!! Come on! Let’s eat some shower spaghetti and make another cake in a valve cover!
Amazing comment lol
That’s pretty impressive mileage with all that stuff in there.
In Paleolithic times, I put air shocks in my ’84 Subaru wagon. It sat jacked a little in the rear most of the time, but when packed beyond rated capacity, it sat at normal height and I drove it overloaded from Boston to Detroit near redline for hours without any issues.
Good to hear you survived. I have found many parts I needed on eBay motors. Sometimes I can’t find what I need. So I go to other sources. And they inevitably say we have what you need. Then they say to confirm put in all your information and we will confirm. Then they don’t have the part but are looking for the part. Hey I know I have a hard to find parts I appreciate eBay motors saying they don’t have it. Rock Auto will swear they have it even if it doesn’t exist. Who do you want to rely on?
Who needs Disneyland when you’ve got all this? Was it hard to sleep knowing that your treasures were laid bare to the world? Good parking spot, though. Henceforth, I want all my wheels to be called battle rims. Bad-ass little truck you got there, Pal.
I would say that the four wheels on the Comanche have earned a battlefield commission as “battle rims,” for surviving a night in a Stockton motel parking lot and still being there when David came out the next day.
Olympic River??? My boy, that’s the mighty Columbia! And, since you are an official Californian now: No, you can’t have it,
Wow, what a haul (for you and the Comanche)! It’s great seeing an old truck still being used for work, and it’s super exciting to see the Jeep build really taking shape.
I used to be able to put a lot of hours behind the wheel, but these days 4 – 5hrs is my limit before i start nodding off.
Probably have to do something with age. An interesting podcast definitely helps me stay awake.
I start nodding off about a couple hours in, maybe sooner if there’s traffic (following another car makes me really sleepy, maybe not enough stimulation for my brain). My road trip range nowadays is however many miles 2 cans of Rockstars can get me through in a day.
The only drink that has ever worked for me are those 5hr energy drinks.
Coffee wakes me up in the morning but does nothing to keep me awake on a drive
doing this drive in an old manual truck would cost you 30% more energy than in something new with AC, carplay, and a more ergonomic seat.
I was thinking the same thing. Elise’s Lexus would’ve gone straight through without stopping.
Next article: try this trip in the Bimmer.
David, it sounds like you made the Jeep score of a lifetime. That’s good. You getting exhausted after 5 hours behind the wheel, that has me concerned. You’ve got a baby and a wife. They’re counting on you to be around for a long time. Go get your heart checked out. I know, it’s a pain and you don’t have time. Well, make time! We need you around here for many years to come.
I’m getting blood work next week. First time in… almost a decade.
This is worth doing.
As someone with friends (not much older than you) that recently had very preventable major medical issues that a doctor appointment in the last 5 years would have prevented, that’s a good plan.
Good! Elise, Delmar, the Autopian, and we cybernuts need you around for years to come.
I’m gonna be “that guy,” the town is Central Point, OR (not Center Point). I grew up down in the area, never knew about Ron Fitzpatrick, but then again was never a Jeep enthusiast.
I was about to say the same. Good bleu cheese though.
Ah yes, Longview, inspiration for the Green Day song of the same name.
I incorporated the phrase “twiddle my thumbs just for a bit” into my repertoire at a young age thanks to that song.
Stopping in Stockton is hilarious to me. If Reno is the Biggest Little City then Stockton is the Biggest Little Ghetto. There are some great restaurants there though like The German Guys, and Fat City Barbecue.
And so close to Elk Grove, too, where decent hotels are directly off both I5 and 99. DT probably had his search algorithm sorted for price low-to-high.
I’ll have to remember that next time, last time I stayed in Sac it was a little too Stockton.
Can anyone confirm whether hotels.com has a filter for “sort by crime rate low to high”?
If Zillow does, then hotels should.
Forums are still the gold standard in my opinion for finding and sharing information about specific vehicle platforms. So many people have dumped them in favor of Facebook groups and I have to say, Facebook groups suck. The search functionality is terrible, there are no sub-forums, and there actually isn’t nearly as much useful info as you need. For older cars, everything has been done by some guys 20 years ago and was documented meticulously. The only problem is their pics are now a bunch of red x’s because they were uploaded to Photobucket.
And some of us refuse to use Facebook. Putting all that content off the public web and inside Facebook’s walled garden is the devil’s work.
When Facebook finally dies, I hope somebody will take all that special-interest group information and put it online for everybody to see.
Count me in as one who refuses to use Facebook.
Some of us even got summarily deleted from Facebook because reasons, reasons which Mark Liquorbird declines to share. (Voice-to-text once corrected “Zuckerberg” to “Liquorbird,” so that is exclusively how I refer to him online now. It makes him sound like Lahey’s imaginary friend on “Trailer Park Boys.”)
The very next morning after he spilled the beans about his participation in government censorship and reassured the entire world “we don’t do that sort of thing anymore,” I get an email from Meta saying, in so many words, “We are considering deleting your entire account because you’ve been a bad boy.” Another six hours later, they had. And true to every temporary ban I had ever gotten, they never even told me why. Which is why I made this meme:
https://imgur.com/gallery/7hifJxu
Which is also why forums are superior to Facebook groups – because I can, you know, like, read them and stuff.
Outstanding! Simply Outstanding! America needs more men like you.
Maybe I’m old but no way I’m going to Facebook to research a build thread.
I’m in the GMC Motorhome community. There is some on Facebook, but it’s mostly one forum, and they got tired of problems with image hosting sites, so the built their own. ????
I agree. I’ve been an active member of several forums over the years and find the depth of knowledge and usually friendliness of everyone to be phenomenal. The image hosting problem is annoying, I’m now a member of Comanche Club and they host their own images making the forum a lot more useful for the future.
While I agree with what you’re saying, unfortunately as we’ve found with Oppo and other groups, there’s more to web-based groups than just participation. Files – especially large ones like photos – get purged, servers get replaced without data transfer, logins get messed up/hijacked, systems change, admins stop participating for whatever reason without having successors, etc.
When Yahoo groups went away, some moved to https://groups.io/
Not exactly the same as forums, but useful for some groups.
Until not that long ago (say, 10 years), it wasn’t trivial or cost effective for forum operators to accept image uploads and store them. The old ways of hosting forums had bandwidth and storage limitations and overages would cost more than what most volunteers were willing to pay, which is fair.
With cloud computing, storage and bandwidth at even popular forums’ scale is essentially free. But forum software has died on the vine since social media, FB groups, and real-time communities (e.g. Discord) really took off. The last major forum software project was Discourse, and it didn’t really replace established players like Xen or phpbb because 1) the UI is odd when you’re used to the others, 2) people were already ditching forums, and 3) it’s not easy to switch platforms when you have a large database of posts and rely on your weed-smoking nephew to do maintenance.
Great write up! Love that you’re putting this old truck to full use. A 7+ foot bed on a midsize pickup.. *sighs in wistfulness*
I grew up near Stockton, and people think I’m kidding when I say that I raised my kids in Brooklyn because it was so much safer. It’s way safer in Brooklyn.
On the other hand, Stockton has some of the best Mexican food in the country.
Everything I know about what sort of town Stockton is, I learned from watching “Sons Of Anarchy” – especially after confirming with actual Californians that it’s even worse than they made it look on the show.
David, next time you’re heading north, hit me up. We have a comfie little granny flat in the back yard that’s usually empty. Sacramento’s less than an hour north of Stockton.
Fun article – stuff like this is why I keep coming back.
You’re in Sacramento? I’d love to say hi; thank you for the invitation!
Sounds like a mostly great trip. I feel you on the fatigue issues with long drives. I have pretty much decided I am no longer up to doing my FL-ME and back annual migrations in 2.5 days. It’s going to be at least 3.5 going forward unless I have a co-driver. I just can’t safely do 10-12hrs in the saddle solo anymore, even in a car as comfy as my MB E350 wagon. I can’t imagine doing it in a loud old pickup truck. No wonder you were beat after only five hours.
You are a braver lad than I to sample random food truck Indian food on a roadtrip…
Due to all the Sikhs in trucking truck stop Indian food is probably more reliable than just about anything else.
I doubt it is more reliable than McDonald’s. And it only takes one bad dish to ruin a night.
McDonald’s is reliably barely tolerable. They set the floor everyone else has to do better than. If you’re eating a worse burger, you’re probably in prison. Or school, the hospital, some remote tourist trap, or another place with a captive clientele.
Meh, it’s fine. It is what it is, greasy, salty goodness. Hard to go wrong with a $6 McDouble or $5 McCkicken combo meal. It’s not haute cuisine, but it is road food that I KNOW will not give me the shits.
It is when you remember $2 McDoubles.
$6 for a McDouble, fries, McNuggets and soda is in line with that. And probably a loss for them to get traffic in the door.
McDonald’s (and any food purveyor) can have food-borne illnesses and poorly-prepared food, too, especially the ones closer to highways where they know they’re less likely to see return customers.
I’m off fast food, but if I was desperate then I’d be more willing to risk Taco Bell than McDonald’s, especially given many McD’s reputations for holding food for longer periods of time than recommended.
Jack in the Box, Wendy’s, Hardees/Carl’s, White Castle, and Popeye’s were my go-to fast food places when I used to consume it. Now we take the time to find a local eatery and experience something we hopefully couldn’t experience at home, even if it’s slightly inconvenient for the travel time. It’s about the experience of new and different things nowadays, not getting somewhere as fast as possible. I applaud David trying the local Indian option instead of a fast food joint.
A corporate restaurant like McD’s is FAR less likely to make you sick than some random food truck in a parking lot. That is simple, well documented fact. And even if Indian food is well-prepared (and as I said, I LOVE the stuff) the reality is it is far more likely to cause gastrointestinal distress to the average person just from the sheer spiciness of it. Occasionally even me and I eat the stuff every week. So there is ZERO chance I would risk it in a random parking lot when I have many hours of driving to do the next day. Brave or stupid is often down to Lady Luck.
I worked for McD’s, despite the popular perception, their standards are actually VERY high – they have a massive target on their backs and they know it. Same with all the big corporate chains. Amusingly, it’s the smaller chains that like to tout how “fresh” everything is that tend to cause the mass outbreaks of food-born illness. The sprouts will get you, the french fries will not.
I get where you’re coming from, and your overall point is reasonable and sound. I worked for JITB not long after they had the E coli outbreak so I know all about working at a place with the crosshairs on them. However, I have too much experiential anecdotes to make me trust McD’s as a particular brand. Same reason I don’t go to chipotle, literally every time I’ve had it it’s made me ill.
McD’s does have damn tempting fries, though.
Yeah, here’s a Google Map of the mighty network of truck-stop Punjabi Dhabas: https://t.co/iVt35Ij73h
Indian food is usually a good bet, I’ve found.
I agree. Truckers can’t afford to eat bad food, and I’m sure word gets around if someone’s selling sketchy curry.
If you are not used to some of the ingredients then you could have a bad reaction. It’s not a knock on the food quality but on how your body can react.
Yeah, good point. I’m usually pretty good on that count with Indian food, but that may not be the case with everyone.
I absolutely love the stuff. I am basically Norm from Cheers at my local Indian place – I have my own table there every Friday that I am not away.
But I am also under no illusions about what the after effects of it CAN be on my gastrointestinal system. I don’t eat it when I am not going to be in close proximity to a toilet for the following 24hrs or so. So absolutely NOT on a road trip.
Different dishes for different palates. At least you know.
Not interested in contributing research to this technology project?
https://www.jalopnik.com/how-to-pee-in-your-car-and-keep-your-pants-dry-1658903998/
Gold
Phrasing
It’s not peeing I would be worried about – that’s a one minute stop on the side of the road for we males of the species. And I can hold my water for a LONG time sitting down (if not nearly as long as in my youth). But when a spicy dinner decides it’s time to exit, there is no stopping it.
Right, that’s what I meant by contributing research :p
I love Indian food.
It is unfortunate that the site can’t pay for the freight that would have 1) afforded you 5 more days with your family and 2) saved everyone around you the risk of an exhausted driver in a fully loaded 80s Jeep rear-ending them.
Honestly curious if the number of hours the EIC has to put into the Jeep content is worth the squeeze. Maybe the Jeep stuff brings in cash in a way the typical content doesn’t. I certainly have always enjoyed the Jeep tales
This was probably a combination of “honey, I need to get this stuff” and “honey, can I take some me time?”. Which is perfectly legitimate. Now David has to let his wife get some alone time if she wants to. Or a nice weekend away with Junior being watched.
Zero people were put at risk. I took my time which is why it took me five days. I’ll also note that being able to walk through all those parts with Ron was well worth the trip.
It’s great content too which is why we are all here.
Thank you!
“ So I pulled over, checked into a motel, and got to work. Just as I was finishing putting together a parts list that I used to order parts from Ron’s eBay store (I also emailed him the other parts that he didn’t have listed on his eBay store), I looked at the clock to see that it was morning. It was time to hit the road again.”
The lack of sleep seems risky.
I’m sure the trip was worth it. Could have just flown to see Ron though
That day was, as a result of the previous night’s lack of sleep, very short. Falling asleep while driving is simply not acceptable, so rest assured (pun intended): I take it seriously.
If a small business staffed with very seasoned writers and business people is hurt by the EIC being n/a for a few days, something’s really awry.
A Jeep Comanche is not some sketchy old truck. I use one for all of my truck purposes, it’s not a big truck but they drive very well and honestly better than most trucks built before 10 years ago. Your can’t race around like a modern truck, pretending you are driving car but really piloting 3 tons of stuff, but if you take your time and drive respectively, the Comanche fits in nust fine in modern traffic with a load.
I was a little sketched reading about having those air shocks on the truck, a Comanche has a load leveling proportioning valve on the rear brake circuit, so when the bed is loaded down it sends more braking to the rear.
It’s a temporary solution; I’ve purchased new leaf springs. (not the heavy duty ones because I’m cheap and also I don’t want a 4″ lift).
[After seeing the parts warehouse] I’ll be in my bunk.
What is the wagon/hatchback that’s in the Indian food truck photo?
Genesis GV70.
Yeah, it’s parenthood that’s exhausting you for sure my man. …But the old work truck with the aerodynamics of a brick and (I’m guessing) virtually no effort to reduce NVH certainly won’t exactly help.
Awesome stuff, can’t wait to see the pile of parts start to become a Jeep!
Wonderful road trip. The Commanche is a workhorse, and you are learning the limits of dad-bod endurance. (You’ll toughen up, don’t worry!)
Looking forward to the Jeep build stories with Brandon. Assembling from new-ish parts should be a treat compared to the rust-calcified buckets you’ve dealt with in the past. Almost like an Erector set!
I’d be far more concerned on any need to rely on the brakes, not the acceleration.
I’ve heavily loaded (read: probably overloaded) a truck before, and the first emergency stop was followed with a long string of expletives as I came to a halt mere millimetres from the car that pulled out in front of me..
The truck’s brakes are surprisingly great, even loaded. It helps that the truck’s curb weight is only 3,500 pounds, so loading it up with 1,500 only brings it to 5,000 — not too crazy.
It’s not your age. It’s the slow creep of exhaustion that being a parent does to you that you don’t even realize has overcome you. Our kids are teens now and I look back at those early years and can’t believe how exhausted we were without realizing it. It’s the thought of having another kid that makes me shudder. I can’t imagine being that tired again.
My kids are straddling elementary and middle school and I wholeheartedly agree with you. You don’t realize at the time just how exhausted you are when they’re 0-4 or so. Like the second you get to lay down at midnight, one of them comes down the hall and projectile vomits for the next 2 hours.
My kid just turned 4 and it’s the first time I haven’t felt sleepy all day, every day, in four years.
“The food was fire, though, as I discovered in my motel about an hour northwest of Sacramento.”
Better to make that discovery in a hotel room bathroom than out somewhere on the road.
Oh, you meant,…
well never mind then.
“IT BURNS! THE GOGGLES DO NOTHING!!”
Nice!
These are the stories that keep me coming back.