The whole commando thing started back in February. I still didn't have the Wrangler and I wanted a Jeep bad. I missed driving the Jeep and also working on her. I figured if I could find a cheap project, I would be all set cause my Jeep cravings would be satisfied and eventually I'd have a sweet Jeep to drive. Well, I joined the interactive BBS at offroad.com last November (of 2000) and became a regular visitor of the Jeepster-Commando forum. I started looking for a Jeepster around Christmas but the damn things are so rare that I didn't find a decent project til February. The Jeep was on ebay for 200 and it was located in Long Island, kind of a ride, but it would be worth it if I could pull it off. The Commando was a 72 with a 6 cyl (not sure if it was 232 or 258), 3 sp, station wagon...In fact I still have the picture of it right here:
See!? It looks pretty good for 200 right? Well, it never made its set price or whatever but I e-mailed the guy and he said he was moving and I could have it for FREE of I wanted! I was pumped and started researching towing costs and such. My only problem was I didnt have a tow vehicle and rebting one plus a tow dolly would have been a fortune, plus the long drive...
In March I bought my Wrangler so I had a Jeep to drive everyday but it was too nice to work on, and I couldn't offroad much in it cause I didn't want to break it or anything. I started looking for a cheap project Jeep (any Jeep) in April and amazingly enough I managed to find another Commando in the wantad. I called the guy up and as it turned out, it was located only a few miles from where I was staying at my school. I drove down that night to look at it and fell in love with it. Under a little pressure from my friend, H, I started it up (the key was in the ignition) it started right up and ran great. It has a 304 V8, TH400 auto, D20 Xfer case. Its a 73 wagon. I paud him 300 for it and drove it all the way back to braintree (VERY scary experience). The ride home, HAHAHA. About a mile down the highway, one of the exhausts blew off and started dragging. H and I used a bungee strip to tie it up to the window and we were set. The only thing really scary about driving it was that the brakes were bascially inoperable, like they didn't work. We drove her home when there was no traffic so it wasn't too bad, but it was still scary as hell. If you wanna see pictures of her...click below:
Hall and I are doing a detailed build-up of it that we'll post here. Its not gonna be original, or an extreme offroad machine but its gonna be awesome. Right now I plan on replacing the exhaust, brakes, and air cleaner and fixing up the body and seats. The frame has a fairly large hole right before the rear crossmember on the driver's side. The roll bar pulled out, and theres a huge hole in front of the rear seat...good start. I managed to get the H-top off by myself even though it weighs a few hundred pounds cause its steel (I really need to make some kind of pulley system for those things). It definitely needs some lift so I plan on doing a 1" body lift and a suspension lift. Unfortunately no one makes a lift for a commando so what I plan on doing is adding some leaves in from my CJ-7's old spring pack. I'll also do a shackle lift using early CJ-5 shackles up front and Cherokee XJ shackles in the rear...should be cool! So thats where we are right now...I'm gonna try taking some pics tomorrow with the cheapo depot digital camara I bought. Stay tuned for more real soon. Til then, keep in touch on the forum for info on ANY Jeep!! Later!