Belizean’s after retirement excursions - took 40 years after buying my Jeep CJ7 off the truck.

[Belizean]

It all started over 65 years ago when my dad bought a 1958 Jeep pickup off the lot I was told. My mom was at about 9 months pregnant waiting for me to pop out as # 3 in the family. They took an off road trail ride out in Arizona hoping that the bouncing around would help with that. There is no facts known if it worked or not, but I was born several days after that. I will be updating this slowly as I go. Pictures and hopefully video. This is the first Jeep.

 

[Belizean]

My buddy and I did a few trips in the early days. Couple of Jeep Jamborees in Arkansas and N. Carolina, but those were very crowded. Starting driving out to Big Bend NP for several trips. Nothing real technical but a lot of back roads and a lot of big rocks and shale rock and extremely beautiful country side in the Chihuahuan Desert with mountains from 6000 feet to 10,000 ft on the Mexico side. Sorry but this is also picture of pictures. Negatives gone and long before iPhones. Picture of my buddy back when we were young. More to come.

 

[Belizean]

So about 30 years ago I happened to be out in the Utah area on a little trip with my parents checking out the national parks in the area and stayed in the Moab area a couple of nights. I decided to rent a Jeep for the day. I could have rented a newer YJ, but since I had a CJ I decided I might as well go for a CJ. Don’t even remember the trail names now but I knew that I wanted to get back there. Took 30 some years to do that.

 

[Belizean]

I knew a few of the members on the forum were going out there so I got ahold of a couple of them and joined them. Gert lives in Texas so I joined up with him for the ride out. There was only 1 problem. About 2 weeks before the trip I started having trouble with my Sniper. It seemed like fuel. I got with Gert and he helped with some of the diagnosis. Got it running and thought that was it. A few days later I had the same problem. He suggested I get a vacuum gauge and got the readings. Another member suggested changing the vacuum from ported to manifold vacuum which I did. Seemed like it worked. Gert said get over to his location an he would help me. Seemed like a good option so I went for it.

 

[gert]

Im already ready to go back


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[Belizean]

Im already ready to go back


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X2. Of course there are a few things to do to get to that point.

 

[gert]

Always is


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[Belizean]

380 miles into the trip to Dallas the engine just died, like no spark. Right on the side of the busy interstate. After doing some looking and poking around I just called AAA towing and got flatbedded the 117 miles left. Thank goodness for free 100 miles towing.

 

[Belizean]

Once the tow truck is gone we open the hood. I tell him what took place, feeling more like fire than fuel. He digs around for a couple minutes and said turn the key on and the fuel pump runs on for the 5 seconds for the Sniper. But the MSD CD box does not blink the 5 times when things are all good. Gert takes a look and fiddles around with the Harness and plugs it in and turn the key back on. Blinks 5 times and fires up. He was thinking maybe the CD box might be going bad. After all it could be 10 - 15 years old. Had it with my 4 cyl for a bunch of years before using with my AMC 258 i6 / 4.2l I had rebuilt and installed about 18 months ago.

 

[Belizean]

I had been wanting a spare CD box and actually picked up a used one along with a distributor that was tossed in for $50. What I didn’t know was the6AL Off-road was a different animal. The harness was different and MSD didn’t have any kind of wire harness to plug in to make it work. So I resold and got my money back out. So the decision was made that we would stop on the way out of town, we would swing by Summit and grab one. Next morning we finished getting ready and leave and within about 15 out of a 40 mile ride topless and right behind him and his Jeep on trailer and he heard me give him a holler. Otherwise he might have been hours finding me that’s how bad Dallas traffic is. He backs up Ram and trailer and Jeep and gets a strap wrapped around his Jeep axle on trailer and hooks onto my hook and off we go on a wild ride through Dallas on the freeway system. More to come on this.

 

[Manic Mechanic]

I'm glued to my seat. Btw I always hated msd boxes for this reason. I'm a big fan of the GM hei distributor. However I've been considering the sniper hyper spark recently

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[Belizean]

Well hang in there for this tale of Woe !!! Still working to figure it out, and don’t want to get ahead of the story. I need to fill in some of the story..... As people usually say, life is interfering some. My daughter is graduating from college Saturday and we are doing Mother’s Day Sunday with a big group of extended family and a little graduation party combo. It’s coming.

 

[Belizean]

I actually loved the CD box and MSD blaster SS coil on my 4 cylinder for a bunch of years. With over 200K miles it made it purr.

 

[Belizean]

So we get to Summit and buy the new box. Install it and make sure I have a full tank which ends up just topped off with a few gallons, my gage is not that accurate to say the least. Fire It up and we are good. Working great like it should. For reasons I won’t mention we need to head back to the house, through that horrible Dallas Friday traffic probably 3 hours I’m guessing with mainly stop and go and crawling along. We make that and gas back up on the way out of town and close to 5:45 pm finally.

 

[Belizean]

One of the things I learned rolling with Gert was my mileage. I’ve had 30s and 31s (tire size) with my 4 cylinder over the years. Never knowing what the true mileage was. With the 30s I was figuring around 16 was what it was looking like. Then the 31s looking like 15.5 maybe. When I was rolling with the rebuilt AMC 258 i6 / 4.2l and Sniper and 33s it was looking like 13.2 mpg and I was not to happy about that. Gert has Speed Hut gauges in his Ram tow pig, so I finally knew how many miles I was actually going between stops. My best out there on the main roads was 17.2 miles per gallon. So that was something at least.

 

[Belizean]

So we are on the road, couple hours north of Dallas and getting pretty dark when we decided to stop for gas at some small exit area and get gas. I turned the key on and no fuel pump comes on. We prop the hood open and Gert takes a look and pulls the relay for the Sniper and does a quick google of it and grabs a piece of wire and jumps the relay. Pump comes on and he said fire it up. We are back in business. Couple hours later we stop again and the same thing again, and he does the same and it fires up again. 2 or 3 times that night. Eventually exhausted we get a room in Amarillo and get like 4 hours sleep then breakfast and back on the road the next morning early.

 

[gert]

Gert is still jealous that you were making 15-17mpg


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[Belizean]

So with little sleep, this being me, on the road for the 3 rd day, I was pretty tired and that being 4 or 5 weeks ago now, my memory is a little fuzzy now. Can’t really remember what trouble we had now on this day. But I do remember we had a little trouble with the brand new MSD box I had bought the day before. It’s supposed to blink 5 times with the little red light on it. We decided to grab the old one and swap the new one out. Sure enough the old one worked . That was actually a good feeling because now maybe I still probably had a spare. The old one is still in the Jeep and I suspect the new one is good also. Need to check that out. Anyway it was a great ride that last 4 hours riding north through New Mexico, Colorado and Utah and into Moab a couple hours before the sun went down . Went through some small wind storm with a slight drizzle and got the sweat jacket and gloves out. One of the best rides ever in 40 plus years.

 

[Belizean]

Couple pictures of New Mexico.

 

[Belizean]

Couple pictures of very SW corner of Colorado.