From owner-fsj-digest-at-digest.net Tue Mar 2 05:59:55 2004 From: fsj-digest fsj-digest Tuesday, March 2 2004 Volume 01 : Number 2109 Forum for Discussion of Full Sized SJ Series Jeeps Brian Colucci Digest Coordinator Contents: fsj: administrivia: Digest.net contributions fsj: Fwd: FSJ in New York Times!!! fsj: a little more J-10 truck progress FSJ Digest Home Page: http://www.digest.net/jeeps/fsj/ Send submissions to fsj-digest-at-digest.net Send administrative requests to fsj-digest-request-at-digest.net To unsubscribe, include the word unsubscribe by itself in the body of the message, unless you are sending the request from a different address than the one that appears on the list. Include the word help in a message to fsj-digest-request to get a list of other majordomo commands. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 01 Mar 2004 08:25:01 +0000 From: Richard Welty Subject: fsj: administrivia: Digest.net contributions 4 times a year, this message is sent to the lists on digest.net. Readers of these lists are asked to think about how much value they place on these lists, and whether they might want to make a small contribution to help fund the further operation and management of the lists. There are no paid subscriptions to these lists, and never will be. Contributions are strictly voluntary. For more details, see the following web page: http://www.digest.net/digest-contribution.html A copy of this message may be found on the web at: http://www.digest.net/contribution-message.txt ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 1 Mar 2004 20:18:14 -0800 From: "Jim Blair" Subject: fsj: Fwd: FSJ in New York Times!!! If anyone wants the pic, I saved it. (any room on the website?) - -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- February 27, 2004 DRIVING Kings of the Road, With Rusted Crowns By ROBERT ANDREW POWELL SLAMORADA, Fla. GET in and come with me," commands Eric Bass, leaning out of his rust-speckled Jeep. "I have found a masterpiece." Mr. Bass rumbles down U.S. 1, the Florida Keys' main drag. His 1979 Jeep is a link in a chain of motor homes and motorcycles that clog this island road during the high season. Mr. Bass, a 53-year-old fishing guide, is tracking a more indigenous vehicle. About a mile down the road, Mr. Bass pulls onto the gravel shoulder, tapping the brakes and stirring up a cloud of white coral dust. Before him sits a perfect specimen. It's a 1980 Jeep pickup. A pelt of flaky orange metal colors the body, except on the hood, where engine oil has soaked through the rust. A gash runs from the passenger door to back near the gas tank. There is no rearview mirror; the outside mirror on the driver's door dangles like a broken arm. One headlight is round; the other is square, held in place by a nest of plastic twist ties. "Look at those tires," Mr. Bass says. The treads on three tires are as smooth and thin as balloons. The fourth is flat. The truck appears to have been abandoned, left to decompose. It's more like sculpture than vehicle. But looks are deceiving. "I saw this truck this morning at the post office," he explains. "That means it was driven today." There's a certain kind of car that flourishes in the Florida Keys. It's not a shiny new Audi or a Porsche S.U.V. The Keys Cruiser, also known as a Conch Mobile, is a jalopy held together by copper wire and duct tape. A car warmed by a heavy coat of rust. These are not "art cars" decorated with bottle caps and elaborate paint jobs, but fashionable vehicles nonetheless. "The thing that makes it cool is how beat up it is," says Mr. Bass, who has been tracking Keys Cruisers since he moved here from Pennsylvania six years ago. "It's a badge of honor the more dents it has." Poorer residents employ Keys Cruisers because they have to, the wealthy because they want to fit in. And there are plenty of poor and rich people alike in the Keys. Subsistence fishermen and short-order cooks live in trailer homes down the street from the elevated mansions of insurance magnates and sports team owners; weekenders, as the locals call them. There's the doctor who trucks his dogs in his 1982 Chevy Blazer rather than use his new Ford Expedition. John Clark, a marina owner, drives a fleet of luxury cars, including a Ferrari Testarossa. When he leaves his home in Islamorada for happy hour at Rum Runners, he takes his Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz convertible, the one with the rust spots and brittle molding, the car he has not maintained since it rolled off the assembly line in 1955. It's a car, he said, that "you have to be half-drunk to appreciate." "You pay nothing for these cars and you just drive them," Mr. Clark said. "You don't care if somebody runs into them. It's the Keys. If you're looking for status symbols, you're in the wrong place. You don't drive Ferraris and BMW's to impress anyone down here, because they aren't impressed." In the 1930's, the Overseas Highway, which connects Key West to the mainland, was completed. The arrival of automobiles, though, never altered the islands' essential nature. Fishermen pass their days hunting tarpon in backcountry mangroves. Nights - and memories of troubles in past lives up North - are softened with beer and tequila. In a culture where worry is the enemy, a good car is one more thing to worry about. "I wouldn't take a Lexus to a bar and park it," said Billy Ismer, a mechanic. "The nice car is for special occasions, like when someone dies." Good weather is one reason dilapidated cars last so long in the Keys. There are other factors. In Pennsylvania, where Mr. Bass grew up, his Jeep would have to pass inspection every year. Not so here. (Vehicle inspections have never been required in Monroe County, but the police can issue a "fix-it ticket" if an individual officer thinks it is warranted.) "If they ever did a safety inspection, they'd have to get rid of half the Keys Cruisers," said Bruce Delvalle, owner of Bruce's Long Key Automotive. Speed limits are generally low, he said, "so it's not like you need to do 80 or anything." "There are no hills here, either," he said. "You just step on the gas and roll to where you're going." Arys Arce's cruiser was a green 1977 Dodge Aspen he bought for $500 from a former colleague in the Coast Guard, where Mr. Arce had been a boatswain. In more than a year of ownership, Mr. Arce never bothered to change the oil. The Aspen featured vinyl seats and a dashboard masked with duct tape. The air-conditioning didn't work, and the car overheated if he drove faster than 50 miles per hour. The roof leaked, too, though that problem was solved. "Someone asked why I didn't just cut the roof off," he said, referring to a co-worker at the Coast Guard station in Islamorada. "At the time that sounded like a great idea, so we just cut if off right then and there." The back seat became convenient storage for a catch of as many as 15 dolphin (the game fish, not the porpoise). Any rainwater that accumulated dripped out of holes drilled in the floorboard. The only problem was the stability, or lack of it. Hitting the slightest bump caused the Aspen's body to undulate like an ocean wave. It was a problem Mr. Arce could live with. "When you live in the Keys you don't have to go east or west, because if you do you'll be in the water," he said. "If you find a car that goes straight, you're fine." A few months after Mr. Arce modified his Aspen, high seas tossed him from his Coast Guard cutter. A boat propeller cut into his head, nearly killing him. As he recovered, a titanium plate screwed into his skull, his surgeon ordered him to find a safer car. He stubbornly stayed with his cruiser, a hockey helmet his only protection. "I'd still be driving it today if my wife hadn't opened her big mouth," Mr. Arce said, adding that his family complained en masse. "It was kind of an intervention." Mr. Arce sold the Aspen to a pair of Canadians who had just moved to the Keys. They gave him $500 for it, same as he had paid. The Keys are gentrifying at an astounding rate, and some fear that poses a threat to the cruiser culture. The value of homes has increased by 10 percent a year, every year, for two decades. Tiny cottages in relative disrepair are selling for $450,000 or more. Even in the Middle and Upper Keys, working-class families with good jobs are being priced out of the market. Short-order cooks and maids who work in the islands' many hotels often live in dormitories. While the cost of living in the Keys rises, the emphasis on individuality that inspires cruiser culture declines, said Dean Miller, the owner of a salvage yard in Marathon. "As times change, fewer and fewer people are fixing up their cars," Mr. Miller said. "Ten years ago they were coming in searching for Pacer parts, or old Lincoln stuff. Now that the cost of living in the Keys is too high, individuality has been sacrificed." Not entirely. The building boom of expensive condos is attracting people like Lonnie Ruehlow, a migrant construction worker. Mr. Ruehlow, 31, moved to Big Pine Key four months ago, escaping a winter at his last job site, on Martha's Vineyard. One recent afternoon he was loading plants at the nursery where his girlfriend works. He was shirtless, deeply tanned, his hair bleached by the sun. Around his neck dangled the tip of a deer antler, a talisman from his youth in Wisconsin. When he arrived in the Keys, Mr. Ruehlow looked into buying a new truck. Instead, he invested $500 in a '72 Chevy, with a horn that warbles "Dixie." A grille of wire mesh shields the radiator. The passenger-side door can't be opened from the outside. Duct tape - that staple of Keys Cruiser repair - prevents the back bumper from falling off. "I get more compliments in this thing than I would in a new truck, man," Mr. Ruehlow said. "This has style, man, it's the bomb. It needs a little body work, sure, but it fires up when I turn the key. It's my official Conch Mobile." Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company | Home | Privacy Policy | Search | Corrections | Help | Back to Top ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 2 Mar 2004 07:14:25 -0500 From: "Neal Hoover" Subject: fsj: a little more J-10 truck progress for those interested, i've posted a few more pics of the J-truck project. i just finished coating the rear of the frame with POR-15 paint last night. pics are at the bottom of this gallery... http://community.webshots.com/album/117503613fQxzeY?440 Neal A. Hoover Project '76 J-10 Project '96 XJ ------------------------------ End of fsj-digest V1 #2109 **************************