Back in June, the City of Troy, Michigan sent out a letter to my landlord stating that, if I did not fix and register the 11 cars on my property on July 31st, bad things would happen. Over the next six weeks, I rubbed myself as hard as I possibly could, and although I had an engine to build and a front one to repair, I somehow pulled it off.
The following letter from the city of Troy sent to my landlord stated that I had too many broken and unregistered cars on my property, and that I would do better to do so. or else. Apparently a neighbor did not like the appearance of my dilapidated float, and complained.
I called the city inspector, got an extension until July 31, and set off for work.
Here is the full list of cars I owned at the time:
- 1948 Willys CJ-2A
- 1966 Ford Mustang
- 1979 Jeep Cherokee Golden Eagle
- 1985 Jeep J10
- 1987 Jeep Grand Wagoneer
- 1991 Jeep Comanche
- 1991 Jeep Cherokee 5spd
- 1992 Jeep Cherokee car
- 1994 Jeep Grand Cherokee 5spd
- Land Rover Discovery of 1995
- 2000 Jeep Cherokee
- 2003 Kia Rio (total)
The seven in fat brought the ordinance. I would just fixed the Willys’ engine with a new-ground crankshaft, but the car did not drive. The Golden Eagle’s motor bar was motorless, with a green tarp taking the place of the hood. De Free Grand Wagoneer en $ 500 Comanche both rounds, but neither was titled in my name. De Mysterious Discovery did not walk or ride, and it did not even belong to me. And the Kia was a gigantic piece of junk, missing its front (due to an unfortunate incident for recovery time in the garden), do not run, nor title in my name.
G / O Media can get a commission
With the help of my friend Brandon, I was able to start the Willys’ Go-Devil engine, which had some ground issues that occasionally caused a no-spark condition. When Willys shot nicely, I reached out to a reader named John who was interested in buying Project Slow Devil.
John drove to Pennsylvania from Pennsylvania, bought the Jeep for $ 3,000, and towed the Kia himself to the junkyard, which put a generous $ 145 offer on the table for the quiet, crashed small sedan.
That was two down.
The 1995 Land Rover Discovery was a bit of an awkward situation that I managed to resolve by simply dragging the red to a place where I think it could sit for a while without bothering. I have the owner aware of the location of the car, and hopefully he will pick up the machine at his leisure. As for the Grand Wagoneer, a reader named Sean – a soldier currently living in Italy – turned $ 4,000 on me, and had a truck arrive at my home to pick up the Jeep and tow the car. to his mother’s house in New York.
That made four to go down and three to go.
Registering for the Comanche was just a matter of finding a time slot with the Secretary of State of Michigan. I was lucky, and managed this, despite severe scheduling issues caused by COVID-19 workplace restrictions. In fact, I managed to cut two deals, one to title the Comanche and register it and the rest of my cars (which were soon to fall into disrepair), and once the 1991 Jeep Cherokee title.
Title de five-speed Cherokee was a wonderful moment because I had purchased the machine from Indiana with a salvage title in Illinois, and was worried that this would bring complications.
The only major complication was the wrenching. The car was considered by the insurance company in total after it was involved in a side impact crash. This bent the front axle, and bassed in the outer fender. Replacing the shaft means replacing a number of other components, including the assays on the leaking donor shaft.
The seals were a gigantic pain in the ass to swap out (I think I broke four seals to try to install), as were the seized bullet holes and U-joints. Eventually, with a lot of help from Jalopnik readers, I replaced the very front axle of the Jeep and the driver’s fender. With this done, I reviewed my work through an official Michigan State Inspector and then I was in the mood to get the red back on the road with a Michigan salvage title to my name.
De 1979 Jeep Cherokee Golden Eagle was an even bigger job – so big, in fact, that I skipped a lot of it. Instead of building the original Jeep engine, I just bought a converted one that was sold by a friend of a friend.
After tightening the engine, I had trouble getting the pistons to slide into the drills. This lag, and the fact that I felt deep down that the engine really deserved a complete rebuild instead of just new bearings and a hone track, led me to install a newly refurbished engine. It cost me $ 849, but it just felt good.
Browse through the videos in the embedded Instagram post below, and you’ll see that I didn’t just throttle the engine into the Golden Eagle. First I changed the rear main seal, the oil pan seal, the valve cover valves (and I painted the valve covers, because orange is not the right color for an AMC engine), the water pump, the oil pump, the inlet sprocket gasket, some freezer plugs, and a number of other seals and parts. After all, I was like crazy when I installed the engine, and it started leaking. Especially after the engine had been off right there on the engine bay, with everything easily accessible.
Unfortunately, the day before the deadline, the engine was still in the stands, and I had no one to help me install it.
So, in the middle of the night, I installed a 500+ pound AMC V8 engine in the 1979 Jeep Cherokee Golden Eagle even though. I just lifted the engine with the crane, lowered it onto the engine supports and used some extra long bolts and a quarter-inch drive extension to keep the engine in line with the transmission.
Finally I got the AMC 360 into the engine compartment, and I installed the hood and grille. Again, I did this by myself, and it was a pain in the ass, as you will see in one of the clips above. But it did make the Golden Eagle look a little more presentable:
I drove the 1992 Jeep Cherokee, which was sitting in my backyard on the driveway, and with that I now have five functional cars and one “aesthetically functional” car neatly in the driveway in front of my house.
- 1979 Jeep Cherokee Golden Eagle
- 1985 Jeep J10
- 1991 Jeep Comanche
- 1991 Jeep Cherokee 5spd
- 1992 Jeep Cherokee car
- 1994 Jeep Grand Cherokee 5spd
There’s also a 1966 Mustang in the garage and a 2000 Jeep Cherokee at my brother’s house, which means I’m in a total of eight cars, with only six visible from the outside.
The Kia, the Willys, the Land Rover, the Grand Wagoneer are gone, the 2000 Cherokee is first and foremost my brother and who knows, maybe the Golden Eagle and 1991 XJ will find new owners in the not so distant future, bring me in total to six machines.
That would be a more normal car count, right? (OK, if you de manual, diesel 1994 Chrysler Voyager that I am currently repairing, that would make sand, but this van is on another continent, that does not count).
I reached out to the city inspector to make sure I was good to go, especially since the Golden Eagle might not be spinning yet, and he replied:
The ordinance states that it may be fully capable of driving. If all the tires are inflated and all the cars are plated, I may not be able to tell if the car is operated from public property.
That I should be fine. Inflated and plated – it’s a term my colleague Jason Torchinsky insists on, and I’ll use it now as a phrase to represent the minimum standard of car ownership. Here is an example to help you use this term properly:
Person A: “Hey, did you see Dave’s cars? How are they? “
Person B: ‘I will put it to you this way: His cars are far from pieces of collectors or even everyday riders around the edges. Dave is more of an ‘inflated and plated’ kind of car owner. ”
With this small victory in hand, I was still not very clear. That’s because the aftermath that resulted from my hard blow against the city deadline led to a mess on my driveway. There were tools and car parts scattered everywhere, and although my cars now complied with the ordinance, I now had a new problem:
Dammit.
The good news is that, just in advance flying to Germany to take ownership of the diesel, manual minivan of my dreams, I spent a few hours cleaning the driveway, removing the tires from roofs, putting bent axles and water pumps in my Comanche’s bed to later go to the scrap heap, and organizing the tool that lay over the driveway. The place now looks legitimately good.
If my house does not meet the city standards, I would be surprised. And screwed, because I’m 4000 miles from my house.
Gulp.
.
