Figured I'd share the story of my JP Jeep....
As of April 24, after two years of painting and changing/adding parts to make it match the 1993 Sahara, it's finally done!
Long story. Bear with me. Or read this and skip to the pictures!
Back in 2005 at a midnight showing of Ghostbusters, I started joking to my friend Will about how funny it would be to run out of a place like the Stanley Hotel or some large building in ghostbuster uniforms, carrying smoking ghost traps, handing the manager a bill for $5000, and running away. Of course, we'd record the whole thing and put it on the internet. Will laughed and said he knew how to build proton packs. I owned a white Subaru Outback at the time and I told him that if he built the packs, I'd convert my car.
Flash forward nearly a year.
My friends Austin and Will and I are talking about doing something spectacular for Halloween. We decide to go with the Ghostbusters idea. In June I start researching lightbar laws, construction costs, and ways to convert my car temporarily, with nothing permanent.
By September 22 I have completed the first iteration of my Ectomobile. We roll it out and people start going crazy. It's on the cover of the local newspaper, radio djs are trying to find out who we are, and the general public thinks we're real ghostbusters. I decide to keep the car, as it's ridiculously popular and enjoyed wherever it goes.
Flash forward to this spring. My buddy Ben is driving around his uncles 1970s Land Rover, and I suddenly realize I have a strong desire for and open-top, 4-wheel drive car. It occurs to me that if I buy a jeep, I could easily repaint it as one of the Jurassic Park jeeps, thus restarting the cycle and creating a new movie car for the masses to drool over.
And so the story begins.
In June I started searching ebay, craigslist, cars.com, and many other sites for 1990s-era jeep Wrangler. I find a white 1990 for about $4000.
I needed to turn this:
into this:
All I had to do was swap out the rollcage for the right shape, bolt on the correct side steps, replace the wheels, seats, and repaint it.
In early July we start stripping the paint, pulling the Jeep apart, and prepping it to be repainted.
We eventually took it all the way down to bare metal. I am guessing that one of the previous owners had rolled the jeep because there was extensive body damage to both sides, both rear corners, and the original color of the drivers door was actually red. We had to pull out all the bad body work and re-bondo everything.
One dilemma I encountered that proved to be very troubling was the color of the Jeep. At the time, I only had the DVD and several production photos to work with. Further research brought up the IoA Jeep, which appeared to be painted FAR too brown to have been the original paint from the film. Using the first Jeep scene as a reference, I found that I would have to go with either gray or a slight champagne color. Not wanting the car to come out looking like crap, I opted for a semi-gloss gray that would seem to change depending on the light. I am very happy with the result, given the circumstances involved. If I could repaint it, would I? Sure, probably. But for now it's a sharp gray that isn't too light and isn't too shiny. And on a nice cloudy day it looks just like the pair of Jeeps that climbed that hill on Isla Nublar.
Masking for the stripes...
Striped!
Replaced the windshield, pulled out all the carpet and rhino-coated the entire interior, that way I can just hose it out whenever I want.
Refinished the front bumper and attached the corner horns.
Restored and painted the side mirrors.
Replaced every light, lense, hinge, bolt, grill, and rubber seal on the Jeep.
Found a rollcage at a Denver junkyard that would fit.
Found sidesteps at the same junkyard
Sold off the old tires and rims, and replaced them with stock wheels and brand-new BF Goodrich tires.
Mounted spare tire and restored rear bumper and undercarriage.
Ordered graphics... lots of graphics!
A lot of the work was about simple restoration, not just conversion. The old speakers needed to be replaced, good lord they were gross.
Applied graphics.
Installed foglights, and took an ironic picture!
Got seats from a 1992 Sahara and installed them.
Internet meme, anyone?
Mounted rollcage and cb antenna.
Around this time I started scrambling to have the Jeep ready to be on display at the Nan Desu Kan convention in Denver. I was working on making a set of props to go with the Jeep, a makeshift pelican case and a weapons/survival kit like the one used in the movie. I bought an $8 gun case from wal-mart and filled it with deactivated grenades, signal flares, and a flashlight.
I had a large InGen logo made and stuck on the gun case, and I also had a set of these made up, one of which ended up on the windshield as sort of an easter egg.
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