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Hurricane 6 help wanted in the Troy Idaho area

• CATEGORIES: News This site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated.

Here's an interesting ad for someone who needs help with their hurricane 6 engine.  Never worked with them myself.

"Looking for assistance with getting a Super Hurricane 6 running right. Seems to be carb.. Carter YF.. putting out too rich mixture so runs on only two or three cylinders with occasional four or five. Ideally, someone might be near with a known good carb to subsitute long enough to drive this gem from Troy to Palouse. Willing to pay for expert help, of course. Thanks, Bob in Palouse 509 878 1471"

http://pullman.craigslist.org/car/752056711.html 

 
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1975 Mail Jeep Drag Racer — Oregon $15,000

• CATEGORIES: News This site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated.

Can't say I saw this coming … a Mail Jeep Drag Racer?  For $15k no less!  I'm sure they broke the mold after they build this one.  Note that it is still street legal, which means you can still deliver the mail with it, especially since it is still right hand drive!

"This is a "One of a Kind" 1975 Mail Jeep/Gasser/Ratrod. This is a 10 second "street legal" drag car. It has a full tube chassis: .120 wall steel tubing. Motor: 408 Ford Windsor, 10 to 1 compression, steel crank, 618" roller cam and valve train, Roush heads, 504ftlbs of torque, over 500hp. TCI C4 Tranny and TCI converter w/4200 stall. Ford 9" rearend, 23" drum to drum, spool, after-market axles, 31 spline, 3:89 gears. The body has been chopped 4" and the frontend stretched 3", Ratrod black, Full MSD Ignition, Painless wiring harness. Car weighs 2400lbs. It is still right-hand drive. This car is fun and easy to race – runs straight. For more info please call Mike @ (541)499-8625. $15,000."

http://portland.craigslist.org/wsc/car/748834075.html 

 
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My first build — Old pix emerge

• CATEGORIES: Features, News This site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated.

I assumed these pictures were lost, but they appeared in a trunk my ex-wife kindly gave back to me.  The first pic is a good shot of my first jeep’s roll cage.  The second pic is a pre-paint job pic of my first jeep stuck in the Rabbit Hole, a small mud pit at the Eastern edge of the Naches Trail.  The third pic should come with a caption “Oh does my nose hurt!”.  The fourth pic is a great shot of the jeep parked at Roche Harbor Resort on San Juan Island (Washington State) while working there in 1987.  The final pic shows the down side of oil pressure problems — broken rod, piston, and other parts.

 
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1964 M677 Gardner, MA **SOLD**

• CATEGORIES: News • TAGS: This site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated.

UPDATE: Was on eBay. **SOLD**

“This is a military issue model M677 (Crew Cab FC-170) and is an 11-passenger troop carrier that has the original issue aluminum canopy on the back body. It runs and drives and the brakes work. It has the orignial Cerlist 3-cylinder, 2 stroke diesel/multi-fuel engine. We believe the mileage is original. The sheet metal is in incredibly good shape, minor surface rust on frame, but no heavy rust anywhere. We have the original owner’s and parts manuals. It seems to be 98% complete. It’s just missing the head liner on the roof. It’s a very solid unit and very rare. Only 3,000 military FCs were built and only 60-100 of those FCs had the multi-fuel Cerlist engine. According to Jeep expert, Jim Allen, “it has a five-star investment potential”. There are a few spots where you can see the original Olive Drab color underneath the white paint. Feel free to message me if you have any questions or comments. Happy Bidding!”

 
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1961 FC-170 Ohio eBay

• CATEGORIES: News This site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated.

This is the first Stakebed FC-170 I've seen.  Looks good.

"HI You are bidding on a beautiful FC 170 Willys Jeep. This jeep has had a frame off restoration in 1992 and has been garage kept. There is no mud in this turck. It is a 1961 Jeep FC170, 6cyl, 3 speed with overdrive, 4×4, power steering, power brakes, vinyl and cloth interior (custom made), clear title, 235/85/r16 tires and 16 inch rims. The bed is made of appatong wood and it is beautiful. The bed is a dump bed but the hydraulics were never installed. The truck has been undercoated…"

View more pics on eBay 

 
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Montana Bound for a week

• CATEGORIES: News This site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated.

Updates will be intermitent for about a week as I'm heading up to Great Falls, Montana, for a commemoration of the new interpretive information at Giant Springs State Park. Apparently, my great great grandfather, Anton Eilers, is considered the father of industry in Great Falls (due to the construction of a smelter).  The park department sent me an invitation to attend the event as the representative for the Eilers clan.  Since I love a good road trip and have never been to Great Falls, how could I resist?  

 
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1958 FC-170 Van

• CATEGORIES: News This site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated.

This isn't for sale, but I thought it was too interesting to pass up.  I've never seen one of these before and I know little about them.  Here's the original pic location.

Here's one more.  Here's the location of the pic.

 
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My Build — More Engine fun …

• CATEGORIES: Biscuit, News This site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated.

UPDATE June 21:   My second trip for bearings to the NAPA store was a failure.  They shipped me bearings that were wrong AGAIN!  I got my money back and went online to find bearings.  That was a failure as well as I couldn't get anything to ship sooner than July 7.  Desperate to do the build while the kids are here, I turned to autozone.  Amazingly, not only did they have the bearings in the store and in stock, but they were only $26 (for the same Clevite77 bearings NAPA was charging me $42).  Even better, I had earned $10 on my Autozone store card and  so the final cost for the bearings was only $17. —–

June 20th .. I was all ready to assemble the engine when I discovered the Main bearings didn't fit correctly.  After examining them more carefully, I discovered they didn't work at all.  The 'tang' was in the wrong location as was the oil hole.  

This morning, I took the bearings back to the NAPA store.  After a discovery process of about 20 minutes we finally concluded I got the correct bearing box, but the box had tractor bearings rather than buick v-6 bearings.  So, my new bearings should be here tomorrow morning.  Because of this, the engine build has been delayed until monday (when the kids are back). 

 
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Happy Father’s Day

• CATEGORIES: News This site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated.

I hope all the fathers enjoyed a happy father's day!  

I took the day off yesterday from ewillys, enjoying an 8 hour drive with my children from Seattle back to Boise.  My own father was in the hospital for a couple days after what appeared to be small stroke, though the doctors could not find anything.  By yesterday he was back to his normal self and back home from the hospital.  I teased him that if he thought we were to noisy, he could have asked us to quiet down rather than checking himself into the hospital.

On Saturday I took my kids to the museum of flight in downtown Seattle.  I wanted to use the experience as a springboard for determining an approach for a jeep museum.  While the museum of flight is ostensibly about planes, it is really about people's stories (in the beginning, in war, in space, etc) and our experience as a people and the impact of planes in that experience. Their approach to planes mirrors my desire for a similar approach to telling the stories of the people who owned, used, and named their jeeps. 

The museum of flight also offers bi-plane flights and other 'old time' experiences, which is similar to what I wanted to capture as well with people being able to drive an early jeep (such as an early bantam built to spec).  A number of people have said I couldn't get the insurance I would need to offer these types of rides, but if their's insurance for giving bi-plane rides than their must be insurance for a jeep ride.

 
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Dad’s First Jeep – CJ-2A (And Jim Carter’s first roll)

• CATEGORIES: Features, News This site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated.

Every once in a while my dad will start talking and he'll talk about some event in his past I knew nothing about.  You'd think, for example, that I would have known my dad's first vehicle was a jeep — a CJ-2A — he got it when he was 16 as his first car.  But, no, today was the first day I've heard of it.  There are several reasons for this, mostly, I suppose, having to do with our father/son dynamic.  Though I wish I had heard about some of these stories earlier in my life, there is something nice about continuing to hear new stories.

As dad tells it, the year was 1949 and he was 16, living with his parents and two brothers in Holladay, Utah, now just a suburb of Salt Lake City.  The city of Holladay is south of Salt Lake City, laid out underneath Olympus mountain.  When dad lived there, off of Walker Lane, there was only wasatch blvd and 5000 vertical feet between his house and the top of Olympus mountain.  Now, I-215 with its six lanes of traffic has added a much bigger divide between the two.  Of course, there are many more houses and fences in the way as well.

One day, Dad decides to take his jeep and 5 passengers jeeping up the hill towards the base of Olympus Mountain.  Today this area is known as Olympus Cove, but at the time, I'm sure it was the great unknown.

As best I can interpret from Dad, he was driving his CJ-2A with his brother B.B in the passenger seat, and four other kids in the back (one was his other brother Tony and one was Jim Carter).  Dad was driving very slowly, crawling along when his left front wheel started over a bump or rise.  As they slowly moved forward the rise grew, shifting the jeep slowly toward the passenger side until the jeep tipped over onto the passenger side, dumping the four kids in the back onto the ground.  Miraculously, the jeep didn't tip all the way over and hurt anyone severely.  The worst damage was to Jim Carter, who suffered a cut on his knee or leg. Apparently, Jim fell the furthest, I guess he must have been on the driver's side back wheel well (dad couldn't quite explain this to me — sometimes dad's stroke makes these explanations more difficult).  

After getting off the ground and checking out the jeep, they decided to tip it back onto its wheels and head back home.   

Whatever physical damage the semi-roll caused Jim Carter, I guess he must have enjoyed himself, because he became a life long jeeper, a jeep club co-founder with dad, jeep racer, and President of the PNW4WDA for a year.  Perhaps we should all fall out of a jeep 🙂