With a jump box and some gas in the carb the little jeep managed to cough and sputter to life and move under its own power onto the trailer and into the shop for an assessment.

Dual gas cans are nice and yes those are 60’s mustang tail-lights.

None of the front or rear lights work. The old cloth insulated wires are rotting away and will need replacing. the seats are from some Isuzu SUV, those will have to go. I am glad it has Army tires. No turn signals, side mirror randomly welded in place, wipers don’t work, runs very rough, lots of rust underneath, spare tire holder area has a cut plate over it for reinforcement, windshield really rusted and will need replaced, tailgate rusted pretty bad too. 2nd gear synchro doesn’t… ‘sync’ but the 2-4wd and low-high shifters work, that’s good. Looks like someone hit the transfer pan off-roading and it has a leak. The exhaust manifold sounds like it has a crack on the bottom. 12V generic Delco alternator, with old 6V starter and coil… better just convert it all to 12V. The starter doesn’t always spin, most of the time it does nothing unless you hit it with a hammer while starting, so that’ll have to get fixed.

Under the hood…Holy crap what a mess. Lots of bubba-fixes to re-fix. Battery has a red to ground, black to starter, and a black spliced to red for the + to selenoid. That will get fixed with the starter first.

Nice barely insulated wires to the gas tank…..

The carb… Umm, missing stuff and more rat’s nest old wiring.

The Isuzu seats are too high and forward making it difficult to drive. The shifter boots are missing, the choke and throttle and lighting controls don’t seem to do anything. All of the gauges work though.

Fortunately there are lots of online sources for enough old CJ2 parts to be able to build one of these from scratch via mail-order so I have ordered a bunch of stuff and will get started. First to fix: the seats and starter!