On March 10th, 2000 I flew to Colorado and by that afternoon was drooling all over what I knew was going to be my new baby! That evening I exchanged my check for his bill of sale and I was grinning from ear to ear, I had my new toy! The next day I spent looking over and photographing every inch of the truck. As good as it was there was quite a bit of work ahead of me. The engine and transmission were out. I wanted to rebuild the block. The wiring harness looked like it needed to be replaced. Except for one of the rear side windows, the glass was all out . And there was some body damage in the rear end.
Click for more pix
I talked to a friend of John's, Larry Watts, a body man who works on John's Jeeps, about doing the body work on the Carryall. I knew it'd be several months before I'd be able to have it shipped to Los Angeles, so there was time for him to clean it up. I helped Larry work on the tailgate a little on that Saturday and Sunday morning . In the process of sanding it down we came across a registration number (U.S.A. 20165639), unfortunately there was also a layer of yellow/orange paint on the tailgate that wasn't found elsewhere on the truck. So we came to the conclusion that the tailgate was a replacement and the number didn't belong to this rig. I then made arrangements to have the block rebuilt there in Fort Collins. I didn't want to put it in the rig and then have to pull it back out later to do the rebuild. I'm funny that way, if it's going in, it's going to be ready to go.