After a week of anxious waiting it was finally here. It had been too long. The final Jeep in my collection to make it to the west coast was here.
Four years ago we needed a truck for the offroad shop to be able to haul parts to shows and pick them up from vendors. We specialized in Jeeps at the time and needed something that was a large box that would lock. We finally found a candidate one year at the PA Jeeps show in York, PA. One drove by and it was perfect. It was big, a Jeep, and a nice large box on the back to haul parts. This would be a big upgrade from the Jeep TJ and Jeep XJ + 2 trailers we were using at the time.
After a few weeks of searching on eBay after the show I stumbled across a suitable starting point. It was doing plow duty at an industrial cabinet maker's shop for the last few year. Its stock Tornado 230 still ran, but its brakes currently didn't work. Everything else was intact and it looked like a great starting point.
A few hours later, we had it back in MD.
Its first build took a while and we ended up with something that worked pretty well for hauling parts around. It still wasn't quite done yet, but it was already useful.
About six months after we got it to the state that it is now I took a job coding on the west coast. For a while we attempted to keep the off-road parts business going from both coasts. This was November of 2008 and the economy just wasn't supporting another online Jeep parts shop. After a few good years, our time was up and we closed our doors.
For a while I wasn't all that sure what to do with the truck. I really didn't want to sell it, but I really didn't have that much use for it.
Specs as it stands now:
1967 Kaiser Jeep M725 Military Ambulance (the 'M.A.S.H' truck for those that are wondering)
2005 Dodge Hemi with 545RFE transmission
Dana 44 front axle from a 2500 2nd generation Dodge Ram, complete with 5 link front suspention.
GM 14 bolt rear.
After a few camping trips out in the TJ we were starting to find it a bit cramped with Just Kira and the camping gear. Then we added Kona, neither of them are small dogs so the TJ just keeps looking smaller.
Once day the light bulb finally came on. I have a good sized truck, that's 4wd, already has a decent suspension and axles under it. Will fit 37" tires as it stands and oddly enough has less miles by far that any other vehicle I own despite being older than me. I finally got ahold of a shipper that haul the truck out here for me.
Now I can start planning and getting some of the loose ends tied up on the truck to make it more reliable. I'll add more details as the design flushes out. We'll be taking some inspiration from the following companies and blogs as we go:
http://www.earthroamer.com/
http://globalxvehicles.com/
We'll also be stealing some of the construction idea's from these guys:
http://www.thesupercamper.blogspot.com/
