My First Jeep!

May 2011, I finally succumbed to my perennial springtime Jeep lust.  In years past, I'd see a beautiful spring day in the 60s with clear skies and totally jones for a Jeep with the top-down.  I live in Boise, Idaho where we have something like 200+ rain free days a year.  It does get rather hot but the heat is dry and the summer nights are some of the best top-down weather there is.

I am a father and husband so a Jeep was beyond impractical for a few years while my boys were small.  Now that they can sit in boosters and buckle themselves up, the Jeep idea became more of a possibility.

When choosing a Jeep I looked at several factors:  price, ease of maintenance, safety(rollcage design), and last but not least, round headlights.  This led me to the TJ.  Built from '97 to '06 it would definitely be reasonably priced, the rollcage fully covered the rear seats(not so with the older CJ models, YJ's have square headlights but have an improved rollcage from the CJ).  The TJ was also old enough to possibly still allow a weekend warrior to to his own maintenance.

I did not expect to do a lot of off-roading.  This was to be my daily driver.  I don't need anything flashy, just a jeep with maybe a 2-3 inch lift and a little larger tire purely for looks.   This is what I bought:

I had gone and bought a full-on rock crawler.

It's got a cold-air intake, front and back rock crawler warn bumpers, 33 inch mudders, and a 4-ton winch!  It's a Rubicon!  The beefiest Jeep you can buy off the assembly line:  upgraded axles, upgraded transfer case, ARB air-lockers for climbing and I planned on taking it to work everyday on pavement!

I have had this Jeep for several weeks now and what I am finding is that I love the fact that this thing is over-engineered for the way I drive it.  Now I have been getting more and more brave with it as the weeks go on and who is to say how far I will go?  I'd be a shame not to try out the lockers to make sure they work....