The Grand Wagoneer Story; a crazy and costly adventure, version number Two!
Again, as I find myself writing my blog posts, I listen to
soothing Brazilian Bossa Nova, which has become my new go-to background
music. In addition to the perennial
favorite Astrud Gilberto, I just found a southern California group called Baila
Nova, and if you are interested, you can find them on YouTube. Kudos to Baila Nova for keeping this
wonderful music alive in the 21st century!
Ok then, so here is the story of our 1990 Jeep Grand
Wagoneer, that we lovingly called “Grand Waggie”. Originally bought for 6,700 dollars, over the
course of about five years, we spend some 25,000 dollars in restoration and repairs,
before we finally sold the Grand Waggie in the fall of 2023. During that time, while living in Irvine, I
drove the thing for about 1,500 miles per year, mostly back and forth to work
(8 miles per day round trip). Later when
we moved to San Clemente, I would take the car down to our local car show South
Orange County Cars and Coffee, some 2 miles from our house. What follows is a story of what it takes to
restore an old car in terms of money, time, frustration and heartache. Even so, our restoration did not attempt to
put the Grand Waggie back to its original condition; instead, we just wanted a
cool car for Saturday and Sunday drives, and we never suspected that it would
cost so much money, and that we would spend so much time fixing up the old
thing. Nevertheless, the Grand Waggie is
COOL, and whenever I took the finished car down to Cars and Coffee on
Saturdays, I would always get great comments.
However, we finally realized that having a car that was only driven
maybe 10 miles per week just didn’t make sense, and we finally sold it, and we
were lucky enough that we recouped at least some 85% of what we had invested
(not counting the time, of course). We
did a fair amount of work ourselves, like taking out the seats and painting all
the frames, and I took off the door skins time and time again, but for the big
stuff we relied on local help, which is explained below. Just so you know, when it comes to general
descriptions of the car, I’ve relied on Google and other sources, but our Grand
Waggie story is uniquely ours. So,
buckle up your seatbelt, and let’s go for a little cruise in the Grand Waggie
in sunny So Cal!
Our 1990 Jeep Grand Wagooner story began during the Memorial
Day holiday in late May 2017, when on a lark, we decided to buy the Grand
Waggie after seeing an ad for the car on Craigslist. We had been looking for a car for Matthew,
since he had just gotten his driver’s license, and even though he wasn’t really
that interested in the Grand Waggie, I fell in love with the picture on
Craigslist, and I just had to have the car!
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The
Craigslist advertisement for Grand Waggie. |
Earlier in 2017, we had lost both of our beloved dogs Sidney and Mckenze, and we needed something to do. I had also given up playing with our band AlterEgo, right after we lost the dogs, so there were a couple of big voids in my life that needed filling. Also, ever since we were married in 1982, Kathy and I had talked about getting a Hot Rod, or some other cool car to tinker with, so the Grand Waggie would be it! So, I called up Gus the owner, and asked him to hold the car, so that we could drive up and pick it up the next day. Mind you, the car was located in Diamond Springs, some 40 miles east of Sacramento, so the trip from our house in Irvine to Diamond Springs was almost 450 miles one way. On the way up, we had to stop at the bank and get some cash, then we drove straight up to Sacramento on the 5 freeway, then east to Diamond Springs. We met up with Gus the owner at a bank, I drove the car for about five minutes, then handed Gus 6,700 dollars in cash, and we got the pink slip! By now it was almost 6PM, and it would get dark in a couple of hours. Matthew had decided to accompany us on this crazy trip, and he was scheduled to work the next day. Since Matthew had to get back to Irvine, we decided to drive straight home. I drove the Grand Waggie, and Kathy and Matt were in our truck, following behind.
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Leaving
Diamond Springs with myself behind the wheel, and the pink slip in my pocket! |
It was a crazy drive home; for some reason, Gus had torn out the headliner, so there was no insulation and it was loud! Also, on the straight shot down the 5 freeway, the Grand Waggie behaved reasonably well, and I did about 75 MPH. However, at about midnight, when I hit the Grapevine and started going up the hill to the Tejon pass, the Grand Waggie started “boating” due to its swaying and unresponsive steering. As I had to slow down to about 55 MPH, the 18-wheelers were passing me on both left and right. Kathy was following behind, and she thought that I had fallen asleep, that’s how much the Grand Waggie was swaying. Long and scary story short; we made it home to Irvine at about 2AM, after driving almost 900 miles. I’m thinking “what have we done”, but when I woke up the next morning and got to see the old Grand Waggie in all its glory, complete with the vanity plate “9O JPWAG” I just loved it!
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Grand
Waggie is finally home in Irvine! |
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1963
advertisement for the “All New Jeep Wagoneer”! Not much changed between 1963 and 1991,
when production was ended. |
Originally, the 1990 Grand Waggie had a price tag of almost
$30,000, at a time when the average
car cost around $15,000, and you could get a Jeep Wrangler anywhere from about
$10,000 to $16,000 for the Laredo trim level, or you could buy a Toyota Land
Cruiser for about $22,000. So, this was
an expensive car, for sure! Now, when I
read some of the ads on Craigslist or Google, some people even go as far as
calling the Grand Wagoneer the American Rolls Royce, which, as a former owner,
I can guarantee that the Grand Wagoneer is not, especially when it comes to the
suspension!
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The
original window-sticker from the Grand Waggie. The list price was a whopping $29,140.00,
at a time when the average car cost around $15,000, and you could get a Jeep
Wrangler anywhere from about $10,000 to $16,000 for the Laredo trim level, or
you could buy a Toyota Land Cruiser for about $22,000. As per the window-sticker, Grand Waggie had
originally been a maroon “Black Cherry” color, but had been repainted a GM
Sunset Orange, which is the color that we kept when we had it repainted
again. Don’t trust the Gas Milage
Information; I never got any better than 10 miles per gallon! |
1988 Grand Wagoneer, 14,117 produced
1989 Grand Wagoneer, 10,159 produced
1990 Grand Wagoneer, 6,449 produced
1991 (last year of production) Grand Wagoneer, 4,253
produced
Compare that with 1978, when AMC produced some 28,871 Grand
Wagoneers, you can see that by the late 1980s, the popularity of the old Grand
Wagoneer had vaned. Also, if one were to
compare the Grand Wagoneer to the Honda Accord (a poor comparison indeed),
where the Honda Accord sales numbers from its debut in 1976 runs upwards of
12,7 million vehicles sold, the Grand Wagoneer was always a niche vehicle.
When we bought the Grand Waggie, it was already 27 years
old, and it had 135,000 miles on the odometer.
Not a lot of miles for such an old car, but Grand Waggie had not lived a
pampered life (like it would after we bought it); instead, one could argue that
Grand Waggie had been used as it should, since, after all, it is a four-wheel
drive vehicle, and it is supposed to be used, not pampered like some Porsche
911. Bless old Gus; he was a duck
hunter, and it appeared that he had used Grand Waggie to tow his duck hunting
boat, because when we tore out the old carpeting in the back, the cardboard
underlayment was completely destroyed by water damage, so I think he had backed
the whole rear end of Grand Waggie right into the water. To Gus, Grand Waggie was just another truck,
and so be it.
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Since Gus had torn out the old headliner, I insulated
the inside of the roof with adhesive insulation before installing the new
headliner. |
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The baggage
compartment carpet cardboard underlayment, completely water damaged and
rotten. This is the bottom view, the
parts that go against the sheet metal. I used this underlayment as a template
when I cut the ¼” plywood replacement to size. |
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The baggage
compartment carpet cardboard underlayment, completely water damaged and
rotten. This is the top view, which
shows years and years of neglect. No
wonder the interior stank! |
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The rear baggage compartment cardboard side
panel. This one can be opened, to get
to the floor jack. Completely rotten
and destroyed. Again, I used this as a
template when ¼” plywood
replacement to size. |
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The other side cardboard panel for the baggage
compartment. Disgusting! |
When we first got it, I drove the Grand Waggie around for a couple of weeks, until it dawned on me that I would need to smog the car pretty soon. I had found a smog certificate in the glove box from 1997, which appeared to be the last time the car had been smogged. I called up Gus, and I asked “I saw the 1997 smog certificate in the glove box, but what was the last time you got the Grand Waggie smogged?” He said “1997! I live in Plumas County, CA, and due to its sparce population, in Plumas County the first smog is the lifetime smog.” Dang; I took the Grand Waggie to a smog place close to our house, and if course it didn’t pass smog. Then I took it over to our usual mechanic to give us a hand with the smog, and he said “Sorry, I don’t work on cars that are older than 2000.” So, just by chance, I called up Santa Ana Smog Repair, on 123 South McClay in Santa Ana, and this was the first time I talked to Jerry, the owner. Ever since then, Jerry has become my go-to mechanic for all our vehicles, since he is both reasonable and honest, and he was the only one that could fix (time and time again) the Grand Waggie, but much more on that story later! BTW, Santa Ana Smog is a STAR Station and a licensed State of California Smog Check Station, and he can smog pretty much any vehicle, and he will work on any car, any year.
So, sometime in June of 2017, I took the Grand Waggie over
to Jerry at Santa Ana Smog, and he, after putting on a new catalytic converter,
was able to smog the car. He also did
some other repairs, like new rubber brake lines, something that was sorely
needed.
Funny, right after we bought Grand Waggie, I found an ad for
a Grand Wagoneer part-out up in Rialto.
We drove the 50 miles up to Rialto (in the newer truck, not in Grand
Waggie), and from the part-out Grand Wagoneer we picked up the head liner and
the roof rack, among other little knick-knacks.
In our ignorance, since we had found a part-out pretty much right away,
we thought that Grand Wagoneers would come up for scrap and part-out all the
time. Not so, that was pretty much the
only time we found a Grand Wagoneer for part-out, and used parts are really
hard to come by, and they are expensive!
I few years later I did find a Grand Wagoneer at a scrap yard, but the
poor thing was is such bad shape that I couldn’t really find much of use
(except the rear wiper motor; those things are about as rare as
Unobtanium!).
I think the first time (but not the last time) that Grand
Waggie was towed was in the summer of 2017.
It had stalled out (and this may have been the first time it stalled,
but certainly not the last time) somewhere on Irvine Center Drive, a pretty
busy street. I think we had Grand Waggie
towed up to Santa Ana Smog, and they replaced the distributor, but my memory is
a bit fuzzy. Nevertheless, towed it was,
and it is a good thing we have Triple A road-side assistance!
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Grand Waggie being towed on Irvine Center
Boulevard. |
When I had bought the car from Gus, I asked him “does it leak from anywhere?”, and he said “Nooooo”. Well, as I started driving Grand Waggie to work, I realized that I was leaving a good size oil stain behind, and I figured out that I needed to fix whatever oil leak that was responsible for the oil stain. I took the Grand Waggie back to Jerry, to diagnose the leak, and after his diagnosis, I asked Jerry, “where does it leak?”. He said, “from everywhere”, and that’s when I realized that the old car really needed some TLC. So, I asked “what shall we do?”, and he said, “we will start to take the engine and transmission out, and then we will go from there.” So, Jerry and his guys ended up rebuilding the old 360 engine, transmission and carburetor, and also re-sealed the transfer case. In retrospect, I should have just replaced the old 360 engine with something newer like a Chevy LS-1, with a four-speed transmission, but at the time I just didn’t know what to do, except for having the old stuff rebuilt. Next time I’ll just replace the engine (BTW, there will be no “next time”; I’ve learned my lesson never to buy an old car again, however cool!).
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The old rebuilt AMC 360 V-8, complete with new
electronic ignition. What you can’t
see is the Howel fuel injection we put in to replace the old carburetor. I spent quite a bit of time under that hood
trying to fix something or other.
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Now, after the engine was rebuilt, the overheating started. When I drove the car down from Diamond Springs, the engine ran cool as a cucumber, and the temperature never got much higher than just above the blue bottom indicator. However, as soon as I got the car back from Jerry, it ran really hot. I tried everything; replacing the fan clutch, replacing all the hoses including the spring-loaded bottom hose (which was new-old stock from 1997 that I found at a dealership in Arkansas), flushing out the whole cooling system, removing the air conditioning condenser to increase the air flow, and getting a new radiator cap. Also, depending on who I talked to, the problem was either a clogged cooling system, or a problem with the rebuild itself. I spend a lot of time reading forums, to no avail. However, after some time I found a forum post that said something like “for the old 360 engine, due to the engine block composition, it will take about 2,000 miles of break-in before it starts to run cool again.” So, lo and behold, two things happened; I replaced the old copper/brass radiator with an aluminum radiator, and as soon as I passed about 2,000 miles of driving since the rebuild, the engine started to run cool as a cucumber, and it never overheated again!
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Nice and shiny new aluminum radiator. I had to drill a couple of holes to make it
fit, but fit it did! |
So, after we had the engine and transmission rebuilt, and
the car was running reasonably well, we were on to the cosmetics. After I started driving the old Grand Waggie,
I realized that if you are a young guy, cool and good looking (like my son
Matthew), you can drive pretty much any old classic car, regardless of the
condition. However, if you are an old
dude (like me), and you want to drive a classic car, it gotta look sharp and
crisp, otherwise you will just look like some old pathetic dude, driving an old
pathetic car. Cosmetically, the Grand
Waggie needed everything; new paint, a new interior, new wood grain and new
tires. So, when you are restoring an old
car, you gotta make some decisions; are you going to do the exterior paint
first and then the interior (and risking the new paint getting chipped when
they tear out the seats), or are you going to do the interior first, and
risking paint splatter on the new interior?
I don’t know the right answer, and it will probably depend on who you
ask.
Neverthelss, we decided to do the interior first. We had already tried to clean the original
carpeting, but it was way too damaged and disgusting to be saved. Also, the inside of Grand Waggie had a funky,
musty smell, so by replacing all the old carpeting and upholstery, at least
some of the old smell went away.
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The old baggage compartment plush carpeting being
dried in the sun. No matter how we
tried to clean the pieces, they never looked good, so we replaced all of
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One of the carpet side pieces, destroyed by water
damage and neglect. Crazy thing is
that Grand Wagonner purists will pay top dollar for the original plush
carpeting! |
I had already replaced the water damaged cardboard carpet backing in the back of the car with ¼” plywood, so at least we had some solid backing for new carpeting, and we had already replaced the headliner. When we first bought Grand Waggie, Gus had put on some weird hunting-related seat covers, to make the interior a bit more spiffy. However, the seat covers were just hiding the wear and neglect.
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Weird old seat covers; all of it had to be replaced. |
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The front drivers’ seat and the armrest. Both had been completely worn down, and all
of it had to be replaced. |
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The reupholstered front seats. |
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The reupholstered rear bench exposed. |
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Kathy’s custom car seat covers that she made. |
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Kathy’s custom car seat covers fit like a glove. The headrests were especially tricky, and
Kathy spent a lot of time running back and forth between the car and her
sewing machine. |
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The rear bench seat covers installed, soooo nice! |
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Kathy’s
custom car seat cover for the rear bench.
In the back you can see the tailgate cover that was also re-carpeted. Also, the plastic piece that goes on top of
the tailgate was cracked in four pieces.
I repaired it with a 36” ruler
and epoxy, and painted it didn’t look half bad. By the way, that particular piece is
impossible to find. |
The Grand Waggie lived outside, since our garage was taken up with our other two Jeeps, so after a while, Kathy realized that her custom seat covers were being bleached by the sun, and the plaid was starting to fade. Fear not; she decided to make seat covers for the seat covers! She chose a really cool fabric that I loved, a geometric multi-colored pattern, and the cover-covers kinda draped over the plaid car seat covers, for an ultra-cool hipster look.
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Kathy’s car
seat covers for the front car seat covers.
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Kathy’s car
seat covers for the car seat covers for the rear bench. She also made two matching pillows made
from the original corduroy upholstery fabric.
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Grand Waggie in the paint shop having the right rear quarter
panel straightened out. |
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Grand Waggie in the paint shop with the tail gate open;
inside are the refurbished and straightened bumpers. We had the whole tail gate pained, to match
the rest of the car. |
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Grand Waggie in the paint shop with the tailgate
closed. You can see how the wood grain
on the tail gate is almost completely faded.
This is usually a sign that a Grand Wagoneer has spent a lot of time
outside, especially in the sun. |
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Grand Waggie in the paint shop. I’m apparently inspecting something or other… |
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Grand Waggie in the paint shop having the hood straightened
out and ready for paint. |
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Grand Waggie getting ready for paint. I had removed all the door skins, so that
as much of the doors could be painted.
The door skins were always a pain to take off and put back on… |
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Look at that shiny, straight hood with its hood ornament! How could one not love that car! |
We also had the suspension worked on; over the years, the
rear leaf springs usually start to sag, which gives the old Grand Wagoneers
their usual “Wag Sag”. We took the Grand
Waggie to Orange County Offroad and Auto Repair at 17871 Sampson Lane in
Huntington Beach. Pete the owner and his
crew came highly recommended for offroad suspension work, and they re-arched
all four leaf springs, and also installed all new Bilstein shocks, and a new
steering dampener (which did help a little bit with the “boating”). After that, the Grand Waggie had its original
stance back, with an almost horizontal roofline. However, after we had the suspension worked
on, it was as stiff as can be, and the crazy idea that the Grand Wagoneer is
the American Rolls Royce was again proven to be entirely wrong! After all, Grand Wagoneer is a Jeep, with all
its utilitarian history deeply embedded in its DNA.
Since Grand Waggie had aftermarket chrome wheels, as opposed
to the original alloy wheels, I was looking at Craig’s List for some original
wheels. We fund a set of four original
wheels down in San Diego, and we drove down and picked up the wheels. The seller was a nice old dude, and he told
us that he loved his Grand Wagoneer, but it had gotten totaled in an accident,
and he just had some old parts left, like the old wheels. He also told us about the only time he got 15
miles to the gallon, when he drove his Grand Wagoneer down from Denver,
Colorado down to San Diego. No wonder;
Denver, the Mile High City, sits at exactly 5,280 feet in the sky, so he was
going downhill the whole time! The
wheels had seen plenty of miles, but since we had been watching YouTube videos
of people restoring old wheels with nothing but Bar Keeper’s Friend and old
toothbrushes, we thought we could do the same, no problem! We had bought a Dremel rotary tool to help
with the polishing, and armed with the Dremel, fine grit sandpaper and plenty
of Ajax, on a Saturday we set out to refinish the old Grand Wagoneer
wheels. We cleaned, scrubbed, rubbed,
sanded and dremeled, all to no avail.
Turns out the alloy that was used in the Grand Wagoneer wheels were
about as hard as diamond, and nothing would touch them. We realized that there is a reason why wheel
restoration is a business, as opposed to a simple DIY project. After four hours of fruitless labor, we
called it a day, and put the old wheels back on the side of the house, where
they stayed until we finally sold them as part of the Grand Waggie sale.
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Four original
Grand Wagoneer wheels we bought on Craig’s List. They had seen plenty of miles, and in our
ignorance, we thought we could refinish them ourselves. |
Even with all of the repairs that we had done, I continued to have problems with the Grand Waggie, especially its intermittent stalling problem (which is not unusual for old Grand Wagoneers).
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Grand Waggie being towed again; I think this time it was
because the ignition switch got stuck, and I couldn’t turn the car off. I had to disconnect three of the spark plug
wires before it finally turned off. Back
to Santa Ana smog it went for a new ignition switch! By this time we had put on new woodgrain on
the tail gate. |
In an attempt to fix the problem, which I (erroneously, as it turned out) attributed to the carburetor and the crazy emissions equipment, I also had Orange County Offroad and Auto Repair install a Howell fuel injection kit, which, if nothing else, got rid of a whole bunch of unneeded emissions stuff. Also, by installing fuel injection, it was now a lot easier to pass the California smog inspection, which is oftentimes the last nail in the coffin for old Grand Wagoneers.
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The Howell fuel injection sticker. |
Even after we had done the fuel injection conversion, I continued to have stalling and rough running problems. Now I thought electrical (at least I was on the right track), so I had Jerry and his guys at Santa Ana Smog install a new alternator, to no avail. One early evening when driving back from Jerry’s place, it started to run really rough, and I turned around to bring it back to Santa Ana Smog. On the way back, the hose from the brake vacuum that runs the power brakes fell off, and I pretty much lost all my brakes. Of all the low points with the Grand Waggie, this was probably it, and at that point, I was ready to push the old thing off a cliff. I was able to limp back to Jerry’s place without power breaks, and I just parked the Grand Waggie in Jerry’s parking lot. Nevertheless, a couple of days later, Jerry and his guys had fixed whatever was causing the Grand Waggie to run rough, and they had re-attached the brake hose, so at least I had my power breaks back.
Sometime later, I took it back to Pete at Orange County
Offroad, and they flushed out the fuel system.
Guess what, the Grand Waggie kept stalling, which made driving the thing
less than enjoyable, and more of a nail-biting exercise.
And back to Santa Ana Smog the Grand Waggie went, for yet
more work on the fuel system. Now it was
August 2020, and I had just had my Rezum prostate procedure (for that story you
can check out my post “The Prostate Saga…”), with a Foley catheter up my
bladder, and a urine bag strapped to my leg.
The day after the procedure, Jerry called me back and told me that the
Grand Waggie was ready to be picked up, so up to Santa Ana we went. I didn’t drive the Grand Waggie for more than
a couple of miles before it started to backfire, and it was belching black
smoke. So, again, back to Santa Ana
Smog, for yet more diagnostics. This
time, mainly due to the difficulty in getting parts during the Covid 19
pandemic, the Grand Waggie sat at Jerry’s place for over a year. During this time I didn’t miss it, since all
the problems had soured me on owning an old car, however much we had spent in
order to bring it back to a reliable condition.
Finally, Jerry and his guys were able to diagnose the real problem,
which turned out to be electrical. Grand
Waggie needed a whole new wiring harness, which, after two attempts (the first
wiring harness that Jerry had ordered didn’t fit), Jerry and his guys
installed.
Well, in October 2021, right as we were moving down to San
Clemente, Jerry once again called me to let me know that ye old Grand Waggie
was ready, and this time he was right.
With the new wiring harness installed, I didn’t have any more problems
with the car, and, even though I never took it on the freeway or any long
trips, now it finally started up every time, and no more stalling. Even so, I very seldom drove the Grand Waggie
more than 10-20 miles per week, either around San Clemente to keep the battery
charged, or going down to Cars and Coffee on Saturdays to show off the old
car. Nevertheless, since October of
2021, all through 2022 and in to 2023, the Grand Waggie ran just fine, and I
never had any more problems (at least not until I was ready to sell Grand
Waggie, but more on that later).
One of the last things that Kathy and I did was the
re-application of the (fake) woodgrain on the sides of the car. If you look at the picture of Grand Waggie,
there are a total of nine (9) fairly large parts of the car that have wood
grain; both fenders, front and back doors, two rear quarter panels, and the
rear tailgate. More often than not, if
one wants top dollar for a used Grand Wagoneer, the woodgrain needs to be in
pristine condition, which was certainly not the case with Grand Waggie. If a Grand Wagoneer is parked outside,
especially in sunny California, over time the woodgrain will start to fade and
crack, and it will start to look crappy.
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The old woodgrain on the driver’s side fender and door. You can see how the woodgrain has faded where
the sheet metal is creased. It was
finally time to tackle the woodgrain… |
That was the case with Grand Waggie, and finally we decided to do something about it. BJs Offroad sells a woodgrain package, which consists of die-cut pieces of the adhesive-backed plastic woodgrain, which can either be used to replace the existing woodgrain (and removing the old woodgrain is a bear) or simply put over the existing woodgrain. We chose the latter, since we were just looking to make Grand Waggie look a little better, especially looking at the car from six feet. Kathy was tasked with putting on the large pieces of woodgrain, which kinda resembles large sheets of adhesive shelf liner. Not an easy task; we found some YouTube videos to watch, but in the end we just started. Armed with squirt bottles with soapy water and spatulas to smooth out the woodgrain, after about 10 hours total, we had applied the new woodgrain, and cut it to conform to the contour. Keep in mind that we put the new woodgrain over the old woodgrain, so looking up close you could still see where the old cracked woodgrain underneath, but from six feet it looked pretty darn good, and it was certainly a great improvement, which was reflected in the positive comments I got from folks at Cars and Coffee.
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The Grand Waggie
is up for sale, complete with the newly applied woodgrain and brand new
tires. It probably never looked better
or ran better than the day we sold it!
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The back of
ye old Grand Waggie. In order to roll
down the rear window, you had to push on the left side of the tailgate and
turn the key. The rear wiper was just
really a prop, since I never hooked up the motor, but in So Cal you really
don’t need a rear wiper, especially for a car like Grand Waggie that was only
driven when the sun was out! |
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The front of
Grand Waggie, with its plastic grill, and cool hood ornament. I had to remove the plastic grill many
times, and behind the grill, the 1962 sheet metal was unchanged. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! |
“Restored 1990 Jeep Grand Wagoneer, 4x4, 140,000 miles. Rust-free California car. Rebuilt 360 engine and transmission, fuel injection, new paint, new interior. The ultimate Retro vehicle. Comes with four original Waggie wheels and a storage crate full of smog stuff that was pulled off when the fuel injection was installed (smog pump, carburetor, etc.), and the original window sticker. This could be your daily driver, as long as you don’t mind paying for gas. Note; NO AC.
Mechanical
Upgrades:
Engine and
Transmission rebuilt at 135,000 miles
Transfer case
re-sealed at 135,000 miles
Howell fuel
injection (passes smog every time)
New wiring harness
(starts every time, no stalling)
New electronic
distributor
New aluminum
radiator (runs cool as a cucumber)
New alternator
New battery
New hoses
New fan clutch
New muffler
Fuel tank and fuel
lines inspected and replaced as needed
Leaf springs
re-arched to cure the “Wag Sag”
New Bilstein shocks
and new Bilstein steering damper
New rubber brake
lines, rebuilt rear brakes
New tires
Exterior
Upgrades:
New paint (GM
sunset orange)
New straight
re-chromed bumpers front and rear
New vinyl wood
New exterior
weather stripping on the doors and tailgate
Interior
Upgrades:
Front and rear
seats and armrest re-upholstered with vinyl and OEM corduroy inserts
Custom plaid seat
covers
Custom seat covers
for the seat covers (yes it is true)
New carpeting
New headliner
New interior ¼”
plywood panels in the back
New plastic
tailgate interior panel
New plastic kick
plates up front
Pretty much every
screw replaced with stainless steel screws”
So, with the ad up
on Craigslist, we actually got some real interest, and not long after the ad
was posted, I got a call from Scott, who eventually bought Grand Waggie. Scott is a young guy, and he is a true Jeep
enthusiast, and he really loved Grand Waggie.
On a Saturday in the fall of 2023, we met up at the San Clemente
Outlets, just a couple of miles from our house.
Scott showed up with his parents, and they were all really nice. Scott drove Grand Waggie down Pacific Coast
Highway for a couple of miles, and as luck would have it, he fell in love with
Grand Waggie, right there and then. I
had prepared a folder with all of the receipts that Kathy had collected which
chronicled everything that we had done to the car, along with the original
two-volume repair manual that we had got from Gus in 2017. We settled on a price, and I told him that I
would get Grand Waggie smogged the following Monday. On Monday, I drove Grand Waggie from San
Clemente up to Jerry at Santa Ana Smog.
As usual, I didn’t take the freeway; instead, I took the long way up
Moulton Parkway, since one of my fears with Grand Waggie was breaking down on
the freeway. I got to Jerry, and he told
me that his smog equipment needed calibration and that it was temporarily out
of service. He told me to come back
later in the week, and I started heading home.
Some two miles away from Santa Ana Smog, Grand Waggie started losing power,
and it felt like the poor old thing was only running on 7 cylinders. Going uphill was a struggle, and the irony
was that Grand Waggie had been running great since the fall of 2021, and now
two years later, just before we were about to sell it, something else goes
wrong!
I limped back to
San Clemente, and on PCH I decided to check with one of the local smog and
repair shops, to see if they could diagnose the problem, and maybe even smog
Grand Waggie. I talked to the owner, and
he told me that a) he didn’t work on old cars like a 1990 Grand Wagoneer
because it was very difficult to get good parts, and b) his smog equipment that
was need to smog a car like a four-wheel drive Grand Waggie had been down for
six weeks! However, he told me that he
had a buddy up in San Juan Capistrano that had smog equipment that could work
for Grand Waggie. I drove up to the
place in San Juan, which looked more like a little scrap yard than a repair
place, and the only person around was the owner. I dropped off Grand Waggie, and he told me he
would call me back the next day. When he
called me on Tuesday, he told me that the problem was missing vacuum hoses,
something that had been removed when the fuel injection had been
installed. So, having realized that this
place was not right for Grand Waggie, I called a tow truck (again) to have
Grand Waggie towed up to Jerry at Santa Ana smog, so he could take a look.
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Grand Waggie
being towed again… |
I texted my new
best buddy Scott with the smog certificate, and we agreed on meeting down in
San Clemente on Saturday to seal the deal.
On Friday, we washed Grand Waggie for the last time, and since Scott
lived in Ranco Cucamonga (some 65 miles from San Clemente) I made sure that the
gas tank was full. The transaction was
surprisingly easy; we both had accounts at a local bank, so we just did a
mutual money transfer from their account to ours, and the pink slip was
Scotts! Ironically, after Grand Waggie
had its mini tune-up with the new spark plugs, it probably ran better than
ever, and I felt confident that Scott had gotten a reasonably good deal. I really hope that he continues to enjoy
Grand Waggie!
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Grand Waggie
being sold; we took a few pictures to memorialize the occasion. |
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Grand Waggies
last day with the Lindwalls as being its caretakers. Despite all the time, money and heartache,
it is a COOL CAR!!!!! |
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Grand Waggie
leaving Marblehead for the last time, on its way to its new caretaker young
Scott, who loves Jeeps! A little bittersweet
for me, but not that much… |
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To remember
Grand Waggie, Kathy made a pillow made from the left-over OEM corduroy seat
fabric. Given the nature of automotive
fabric, this pillow will probably last forever, as long as it is taken care
of! |
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