So I had students father tell me about you all... So here is my story, long but interesting, never thought in a milllon years I would be where I am now
Hello all.... A little back ground. I got my first jeep as a Jr. in high school, it was the first vehicle I bought. When high school ended I was off to college. My jeep lasted about 3 years into my college career when the motor blew. So it got parked at grandmas under the apple tree for over 7 years until I got married and had a place with a garage. At that point I began to build it. Now it sits in pretty good shape realizing that I want to maintain the jeep look and have a good crawler. Here is my jeep as it sits now. I got it back in 1994...
So in life things never seem to go as you expect. See in college I wanted to be a wildlife biologist, and then I met this good looking gal and things took a turn. I was soon on a second path to becoming a teacher. I graduated from college and took a job as a teacher. My degree was in Agriculture education, however I never seemed to land a job in that area, in fact I ended up teaching in an alternative high school with student considered "at-risk". Very different than what I had counted on. I had found a knack for working with students struggling and would spend several years working with the at risk students. At any rate in the mean time I obtained the degree and licensing to become a principal. Tried that for a year and things were not good. At any rate I ended up where I am now...
Currently I am an industrial arts teacher. the school I work at is small around 320 students. I teach woods classes, construction trades, Computer aided drafting and also autos. It is hard to teach all the courses, but I am trying my best. As the autos teacher, the first year was really rough. The instructor prior to my arrivial was pretty sub par in several areas. As a result I am working hard to rebuild the program...
Last year the students were all put into autos 1. Book driven course with some minimal hands on, but tons of theory and knowledge. This year the best students from autos 1 were selected to take autos 2 this year...
So as planned for this year, I was trying to figure out what autos 2 should be? what should the students learn, do, etc. In addition to what they should do I had to figure the how. The how has been more challenging the what. Our auto shop is actually very small. It is actually a welding shop. Welding is offered by another instructor as a college course. The course is ran every day at 6:00 in the morning. A handful of students take the course. It is a good program and pretty successful for the few students who take it each semester. So in the middle of this small welding area is our autos program. Space sucks and worse yet the metal is everywhere... As a result we have to be extremely careful on what we do, how we do it etc...
So now looking at everything I had to figure out what I could teach in a small shop, that had no lift, limited supply of harbor freight tools and 10 young students with little to no mechanical experience... Worse yet what could I do to gain the school, board, community, student support for the program?
Then one day in September I get phone call about a jeep up north. At first my wife freaks out... At the time I had too many vehicles already... A 1972 blazer, 1972 Chevy Truck, 1985 Jeep CJ 7, 2006 Dodge ram and her car... So somehow I again convinced her for just one more vehicle... I picked this jeep up 2 weeks before school started. I paid a total $800 for it... Got it home and drove it a couple weeks. The 258 was leaking all over, the tranny shifted well, and the body was swiss cheese. When I got the jeep home the very first night a student knocked on my door at 9:15 that night asking if that was for the class. I figured that in the course we could fix it up. So I said we would work on it... Next day he and 2 other students show up asking about plans and building it. Before school started the kids had decided that we were going to buggy it... I was slowly getting convinced myself... So school started and things began to move:
Towing it home:
The start of take down:
Body was almost totally shot... We could have fixed it, but had this come up locally for $200...
So I ended up with a new body... I then figured I already had a jeep with a 258, a decent lift lockers etc... But it was all I wanted it to be minus a few cool things... So I decided to go big... So here we are now...
7
Frame is getting fixed up next week. Going with a dana 60 front, 14 bolt rear, amc 360 automatic tranny, dana 300, etc. going rear stretch and comp cut and shackle reverse and front stretch. We have done well on CL and have had some really good support from some companies...
Some pics:
So far we have received help from JB Fabrication, Rust Bullet, MORE Offroad, Pro Powder Coatings in Grand Junction, ARB/OME, to name a few.
I will keep you all updated on progress. This project is huge for both me and our program. I have to have succes to prove we can do it. I am in my pocket a bunch for this... It is my jeep and I will keep it, but really without it I do not see us gaining the support we need. Once this one is done we will use it to gain donations and hopefully do the next totally for the program. Build for 2 years then raffle it for the program. Just hope we get it done. I decided to use my vehicle incase everything fell through, I did not want the school stuck with a project unfinished, incomplete etc. I also did not want people to to try and cut our program cause were too expensive and with current budget cuts if I finance a project myself then my budget looks good...
Wish us luck the more support I can get the better we will be...
Hello all.... A little back ground. I got my first jeep as a Jr. in high school, it was the first vehicle I bought. When high school ended I was off to college. My jeep lasted about 3 years into my college career when the motor blew. So it got parked at grandmas under the apple tree for over 7 years until I got married and had a place with a garage. At that point I began to build it. Now it sits in pretty good shape realizing that I want to maintain the jeep look and have a good crawler. Here is my jeep as it sits now. I got it back in 1994...
So in life things never seem to go as you expect. See in college I wanted to be a wildlife biologist, and then I met this good looking gal and things took a turn. I was soon on a second path to becoming a teacher. I graduated from college and took a job as a teacher. My degree was in Agriculture education, however I never seemed to land a job in that area, in fact I ended up teaching in an alternative high school with student considered "at-risk". Very different than what I had counted on. I had found a knack for working with students struggling and would spend several years working with the at risk students. At any rate in the mean time I obtained the degree and licensing to become a principal. Tried that for a year and things were not good. At any rate I ended up where I am now...
Currently I am an industrial arts teacher. the school I work at is small around 320 students. I teach woods classes, construction trades, Computer aided drafting and also autos. It is hard to teach all the courses, but I am trying my best. As the autos teacher, the first year was really rough. The instructor prior to my arrivial was pretty sub par in several areas. As a result I am working hard to rebuild the program...
Last year the students were all put into autos 1. Book driven course with some minimal hands on, but tons of theory and knowledge. This year the best students from autos 1 were selected to take autos 2 this year...
So as planned for this year, I was trying to figure out what autos 2 should be? what should the students learn, do, etc. In addition to what they should do I had to figure the how. The how has been more challenging the what. Our auto shop is actually very small. It is actually a welding shop. Welding is offered by another instructor as a college course. The course is ran every day at 6:00 in the morning. A handful of students take the course. It is a good program and pretty successful for the few students who take it each semester. So in the middle of this small welding area is our autos program. Space sucks and worse yet the metal is everywhere... As a result we have to be extremely careful on what we do, how we do it etc...
So now looking at everything I had to figure out what I could teach in a small shop, that had no lift, limited supply of harbor freight tools and 10 young students with little to no mechanical experience... Worse yet what could I do to gain the school, board, community, student support for the program?
Then one day in September I get phone call about a jeep up north. At first my wife freaks out... At the time I had too many vehicles already... A 1972 blazer, 1972 Chevy Truck, 1985 Jeep CJ 7, 2006 Dodge ram and her car... So somehow I again convinced her for just one more vehicle... I picked this jeep up 2 weeks before school started. I paid a total $800 for it... Got it home and drove it a couple weeks. The 258 was leaking all over, the tranny shifted well, and the body was swiss cheese. When I got the jeep home the very first night a student knocked on my door at 9:15 that night asking if that was for the class. I figured that in the course we could fix it up. So I said we would work on it... Next day he and 2 other students show up asking about plans and building it. Before school started the kids had decided that we were going to buggy it... I was slowly getting convinced myself... So school started and things began to move:
Towing it home:
The start of take down:
Body was almost totally shot... We could have fixed it, but had this come up locally for $200...
So I ended up with a new body... I then figured I already had a jeep with a 258, a decent lift lockers etc... But it was all I wanted it to be minus a few cool things... So I decided to go big... So here we are now...
7
Frame is getting fixed up next week. Going with a dana 60 front, 14 bolt rear, amc 360 automatic tranny, dana 300, etc. going rear stretch and comp cut and shackle reverse and front stretch. We have done well on CL and have had some really good support from some companies...
Some pics:
So far we have received help from JB Fabrication, Rust Bullet, MORE Offroad, Pro Powder Coatings in Grand Junction, ARB/OME, to name a few.
I will keep you all updated on progress. This project is huge for both me and our program. I have to have succes to prove we can do it. I am in my pocket a bunch for this... It is my jeep and I will keep it, but really without it I do not see us gaining the support we need. Once this one is done we will use it to gain donations and hopefully do the next totally for the program. Build for 2 years then raffle it for the program. Just hope we get it done. I decided to use my vehicle incase everything fell through, I did not want the school stuck with a project unfinished, incomplete etc. I also did not want people to to try and cut our program cause were too expensive and with current budget cuts if I finance a project myself then my budget looks good...
Wish us luck the more support I can get the better we will be...
