Bringing the Jeep home
OCTOBER 7 – FIRST DAY
I first got the Jeep on October 7, 2018. A friend, Michael Wilgus, who was a member of the 82nd Airborne Living History Association (LHA) reenactment group was looking to part with his Jeep. It was a tough decision, but he was moving out of California and felt the Jeep wouldn’t be appreciated for what it is stuck on a ranch in Arizona. I mentioned I was interested, and about a month later I had sealed the deal completing a 20 year wish of mine to someday own a Jeep.
Mike brought the Jeep to the house on October 7th, 2019 along with a few boxes of spare parts and some pieces he had intended to replace. At the time, the Jeep had been sitting for about a year in a garage and was in need of some work. She wasn’t running, although the starter and engine would turn over. After giving her a quick bath later in the day I rolled her out onto the driveway and took some ‘before’ photos. I should have taken all angles of the Jeep that day, but I was on cloud nine being a new owner of a World War 2 Jeep! I wasn’t sure yet what exactly I was going to do with the Jeep, be it just a quick tune-up and new paint job, or a full frame-off restoration. In hindsight, knowing how much I document every little thing with this restoration, I wish I’d taken tons of photos!