First Jeep

[Civilian Jeep Five]

After buying the jeep just over a week ago, I've run into a few problems. Firstly, I knew this was going to be a project because of the low price, but I was hoping for a little more time before I had to fix anything. Secondly, what's life without a few bumps in the road, it's why I bought new shocks. This leads me to one of the problems I've already encountered. I bought new shocks because the old ones were old and I mean old, probably the original ones. This jeep had been sitting for 30 years or so in a garden and the guy I bought it from just basically got it going and did some rust repair, so now it's up to me to finish it. But anyways I go to take off the shocks and that's when i find out, a) why my ride was so stiff, and b) that my lower shock mounts are bent. So here I am with a partially dissembled jeep with broken shock mounts. But that's just the start, the U-bolts are all rusty so I sprayed some PB Blaster on them and took them off but I stripped them so just another thing to add to the list to get. But as I go to notice the leaf springs were painted over, as much of the things on this jeep were, and one of the leafs is basically rotted. So what else to do but get a new leaf spring. But now adding up the cost of all these new parts I just think well it is only another $100 or so to get a lift kit with basically a brand new suspension set up, so that's what I'm going to do. Only a 2.5 inch lift, but none the less a lift. So we'll see how that goes. Oh, and also my Transmission likes to get stuck in reverse and never come out. Sooo I guess I'm going to try and see if the shift lever repair kit works, if not I'll probably replace all the shift forks and pins and bearing, etc...if you have any tips let me know! Other than that I'll keep y'all informed of how it goes. Also let me know if you want pictures and maybe step by step? I'm not new to working on cars, just new to Jeeps. I'll also let you all know what else I'm planning if anyone cares. Thanks for reading.....Zachary