Back in the 80's, I had a co-worker who was in a Jeep offroad club. Those guys were nuts. He'd come home after an outing and start fixing. He said if you didn't spend $500 (in 80's money) in repairs, you didn't have enough fun. I couldn't afford his kind of fun. I had a family and he was single.
Yeah, every time a buddy wanted to go out 4 wheeling with his jeep, I took my yota and he would always be breaking parts. Parts would actually be falling off of that sob. He had a couple jeeps and it was always the same thing. He had old CJ's and the last one was a 90's wrangler. He finally gave up on the pos things after he couldn't go where I went in my '85 short bed yota. His was terrible, it actually went pretty good when it was in 2wd, but when you needed 4x it was absolutely useless. Pretty much stuck at that point...
"It's a jeep thing"
Ha! Reminds me of an old friend of mine. He had a Jeep Commando with limited slips in both ends and a 69 Bronco with 3:55 open diffs. He swore that for whatever reason that little Bronco would go places with no trouble that the Commando couldn’t even think of going. He claimed there was some combination of magic in the wheelbase and track width of the 66-77 Bronco.
My only real Jeep experience comes from having an 80 something Wrangler, whatever year was the last year for carbs on the straight six. It was a gigantic POS that nothing ever worked right on, especially the 5sp trans that was apparently made of glass or at least broke like it was. That thing cured me of ever wanting another Wrangler. I might entertain the idea of a CJ if they had room in the back for more than a pack of hotdog buns.
1989 was the last year for the carb 4.2.
CJ6 has more room. So does the CJ8. 2004-2006 LJs are longer as well.
