1978 Texas Ranch Jeep Rescue! - Dirt Every Day Ep. 24 - video Dailymotion

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On this episode of Dirt Every Day

Transcript

00:00 It's about 930 on a Monday morning and I am just outside of Sulphur Springs, Texas.

00:18 Basically I'm buying a Jeep today, sight unseen, and I'm gonna try and drive it

00:24 home to California. Or as far as we can get on the drive home.

00:36 All right I got an admission to make. I have a notorious problem with Craigslist.

00:45 And last week I was looking at Craigslist and I found a Jeep that was a

00:50 lot like the one I had when I was in high school. It was a CJ, it had a 304 V8,

00:54 and I was like this is perfect I need this. So the next thing you know I'm

00:59 flying to Texas to buy a Jeep, pretty much sight unseen, and drive it home.

01:12 What do you see? This Jeep looks awesome. I got some BFG mud terrains.

01:21 Let's go check out this thing.

01:23 Let's check this Jeep out.

01:30 It's got Duck Dynasty seat covers.

01:40 I think this is gonna be great though.

01:42 The CJ7 had lived a pretty hard life. It was currently living on a ranch and it

01:47 had been through many previous owners. In fact one of the previous owners even

01:50 painted the engine bright green. But we looked it over, most of the parts were

01:54 there, the frame was a little bit cracked, but it would be perfect for our project.

02:06 The Jeep doesn't want to start, battery's dead. When we do finally jump

02:11 start it and get it running, it won't charge the battery so it won't stay

02:15 running. And we don't know if the brakes are gonna stop it, we don't know if the

02:20 steering is gonna turn. So we hot-wired the alternator to finally get it to

02:24 charge. Most of the wiring on it's a mess.

02:27 Overall the Jeep is in great shape, but there's a few things here and there that

02:36 I'm gonna have to replace today. So we're gonna drive across town, get it to my

02:40 buddy's shop, fix as much of it as we can, and drive all the way to the West Coast.

02:45 Before we got the Jeep I realized this thing's gonna have wiring issues. I had

03:02 some photos, I saw that there were wires hanging all over the place, and I got a

03:06 hold of my friend Dennis. Now Dennis used to work at Painless Performance and

03:10 Painless offers wiring harnesses for lots of different vehicles. So we talked

03:14 to him, we decided to bring it to his shop and do a rewire on the Jeep from

03:18 front to back. Updating status, Jeep battery dead again, post.

03:25 Okay Dennis, now before we get started tell me a little bit about Painless, how long

03:31 you guys been around? We started in '89, I built the first harnesses then and in

03:36 the mid-90s we went into the four-wheel drive market. So before that it was hot

03:39 rods? Yeah it was hot rods, street rods and hot rods of all kinds and a little

03:42 bit of racing. Okay. Which that's where I'm, that's my background. Now what

03:46 different harnesses do you offer for say this CJ7? The CJ7 I have two different

03:51 ones. Okay. One is a customizable. Okay. And it's designed for a Jeep that's been,

03:56 has a lot of electrical modifications. Okay. Or if we're gonna keep the Jeep all

04:02 original like this one, then we have what we call a 110 harness which is a

04:06 factory original type harness. So it has all the plugs on it, plug and play, ready

04:11 to go. Perfect, because our goal with this Jeep isn't to make it a crazy modified

04:17 Jeep as much as it is keep it stock, go four-wheel and have fun with it, but a

04:21 lot of those parts like the big gauge with the speedo and the other smaller

04:24 gauges, the tilt column, we want to keep them but we're not really sure if they

04:28 work. Luckily all those things are available now. Awesome and how long would

04:31 a normal guy take to do a rewire like that? Oh with any expertise whatsoever

04:37 you can do it in a weekend. Perfect. Let's get started. Here we go.

04:41 Okay we've laid out our wiring harness. This is for the 75 to 86 Jeep CJ. We're

04:48 gonna start in the middle here. This is the under dash part of the harness. It

04:52 has the fuse box and it has all the wires that go to the gauges.

05:09 So we are just about done with the back half of this Jeep. All the back of this

05:14 CJ really has is tail lights and the fuel sending unit for the fuel tank

05:18 which is right underneath the bed here. Tomorrow we'll button up all the engine

05:21 wiring. We'll run the reverse light switch and we also have a few other

05:25 things to fix such as we want to find some new seats. We might run to the junk

05:28 yard and find that and we have a rear pinion seal that's leaking. So we can get

05:32 all that stuff dialed in tomorrow. We should be back on the road and hopefully go

05:36 four-wheeling. After finding some major issues with the CJ 7's rear axle we

05:45 tracked down a replacement at a Jeep parts junk yard.

05:49 We're gonna get some seat belts, the rear axle and those two seats. Everything

06:01 looks like YJ's. Okay. Ooh, half doors. We need those too. This is a much better

06:16 specimen.

06:22 Luckily somebody already started loosening everything up. Look at that.

06:30 Styling. These are our new seats. We got a new rear axle, some replacement seats, a

06:37 spare tire and a few other odds and ends to put our Jeep back together. Then we

06:41 drug it all back to Dennis's shop where we swapped the parts in. We pulled the

06:45 old axle out, bolted the new one in and by the end of the day we were back on

06:50 track. This definitely set us back on our timeline but it was better than heading

06:54 out on the road with a broken rear end.

06:58 [Music]

07:01 Okay Dennis, let's go over everything before we start this up. We put the new

07:26 battery cables in, all the grounds, new battery tie down, all the wiring to the

07:31 alternator, new coil, ignition stuff, anything we didn't use we rolled up and

07:36 tied up nice and clean on the sides. I'm gonna turn on our master kill switch.

07:40 Okay. And check some lights. How's it look up front? Everything looks good up here.

07:46 Alright, let's start it up. Alright, fire it up. Clear! Woohoo! Another successful story. Let's get more wheeling. Here we go.

08:04 So we had hopped on a plane, flew to Texas, found an old Jeep, drug it to our

08:11 friend Dennis's shop, rewired the whole thing with some help from Painless, put

08:15 in new headlights, new taillights, got everything working, got the Jeep running

08:19 great, swapped an axle, put in some new seats, a new bikini top, and now we're

08:23 ready to go. Painless really stepped up and helped us out a lot to make this

08:27 happen. The guys drug us around to junkyard so we could find the parts we

08:31 needed. Dennis lent us his garage where we just made a giant mess for a few days

08:35 before we got the Jeep back together. We can't wait to come back to Texas and

08:39 take this Jeep on a little adventure.

08:44 Well Dennis, I think I'm gonna need my raincoat. Sure looks like it today.

08:48 Thanks for all your help. Hey, you're welcome. Glad to have you. I had a good

08:51 time. We got a working Jeep, we have new lights, we have a new axle, seats. I think

08:57 we're ready to go. Alright, that's it for Dirt Every Day.

09:01 Tune in for an upcoming episode where we take this Jeep on an adventure.

09:06 [Music]

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09:35 [Music]

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09:43 [Music]

09:48 (rock music)

09:51 (baby crying)

1978 Texas Ranch Jeep Rescue! - Dirt Every Day Ep. 24

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