{"id":2404,"date":"2012-10-08T22:12:39","date_gmt":"2012-10-09T04:12:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.everydave.com\/thoughts\/?p=2404"},"modified":"2012-10-08T22:12:39","modified_gmt":"2012-10-09T04:12:39","slug":"its-a-jeep-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/everydave.com\/thoughts\/2012\/10\/08\/its-a-jeep-thing\/","title":{"rendered":"It's a Jeep Thing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Those that know me know I love my Jeep, whichever it may be. It started with a former roomie of mine having one. A year after I moved in, I had one of my own, a ’95 Cherokee Sport. Several years later I traded that in for a ’00 model. I held on to that for 9 years, but when Jeep introduced the 4 door Wrangler, I knew it was only a matter of time and an ’09 was acquired.
\nI had always had plans to build up “a” Jeep. The 2nd cherokee had all sorts of grand plans for it but got nothing more than a 2″ lift (Thanks for the help on that Matt!) and slightly larger tires. Funds and discipline were in short supply so it never materialized.
\nWhen I got the Wrangler plans started anew. Lots of research (surprise!) went into making the “must have” list. Earlier this year I started stalking the online boards to see if I could score the specific parts I wanted for a bit less than retail, and I’ve had pretty good success with it.
\nAbout a month ago I was getting ready to pull the final trigger on the build. I had acquired the wheels I wanted at steep discount and my tires had nearly 50k miles on them and had to be changed. So do I buy the same size tires again, or do I do the upgrade like I planned? Well to do the larger tires I planned meant that I had to have the lift to fit them, was I ready to put down the money and time to do that?
\nAs I was pondering this, another thought hit me: the 2012 Wranglers had some major changes, most noticeably a new engine and transmission that offered a 40% increase in horsepower, yet had better fuel economy. Plus stylistic changes that were pretty damn nice. As the 2012 model year was coming to a close I decided to poke around on line to see what was available and the prices they were going for….oops.
\nSome of you know that I went through this a year ago. When the 2012 was introduced I was very tempted. I found one that I mostly liked and was days into negotiations with the dealer, but ultimately decided against buying at that time for a number of reasons. But then went on my way, quite content with my ’09.
\nWell, my ‘net searching found a Jeep that had every option I wish I could have had on my ’09, so I decided to take a look. As it happened it was in Provo, where I’m currently working, so it was easy. Too easy in fact, as they made me an offer I couldn’t refuse, and didn’t.
\nWaiting a year turned out to be the best thing that could have happened. While the exterior color I ended up with was #2 on the list (the one last year was my preference), the interior color and options were everything I wanted and the money saved was SO worth it. The short version is I paid significantly less than I would have last year, and got a significantly better equipped Jeep.
\nAs I mentioned yesterday, the weekend was spent on a project with Angy: installing the lift on the new Jeep. It was by no means easy, but I learned a lot, which was the whole reason I wanted to do it. Near the end I was beginning to regret taking on the challenge ourselves, but a few days removed I’m so glad we did, there’s a certain personal satisfaction hat comes from doing something like that.
\nSo…pictures:
\nBefore… (not my actual Jeep but one just like it.)
\n\"\"
\n…and after.
\n\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Those that know me know I love my Jeep, whichever it may be. It started with a former roomie of mine having one. A year after I moved in, I had one of my own, a ’95 Cherokee Sport. Several years later I traded that in for a ’00 model. I held on to that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-random"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everydave.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everydave.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everydave.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everydave.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everydave.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2404"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everydave.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2404\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everydave.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everydave.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everydave.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}