Jurassic Park Jeep Forum

1992 Wrangler Sahara - rust free body and frame

Has the wrong fog lights on the front, cracked dash and wrong gauge cluster. It also has a black soft top with the "round" doors. I have a new spice top and frame coming with the correct square doors, and I just ordered a Ramsey 9.5e winch.

I'll have one of the race shops here fabricate the light bar and the D ring hooks on the winch plate, an interior shop redo the seats and carpet, and I plan to pull the tub and have my body guy repaint the whole chassis while I redo the engine and trans.

My hope is to end up with a fully restored, movie accurate (as much as possible with the currently available parts) JP18 to add to the collection.

So if anyone has stock Sahara front fog lights or a source for them please let me know.

So far I have done some cleaning and started restoring the sun damaged green plastic panels. I only have pictures of the doors up to this point but I have also begun to pull the carpet out and clean it, it's filled with dirt and mud.


The interior as purchased. Door before restoring the plastic. After restoring the plastic. A heat gun is a wonderful thing. Side by side, before and after.

Busy day!

Back story: Ordered a new top and hardware from Morris 4x4 on Christmas day. Ordered a Ramsey winch, plate, and snatch blocks from Quardratec the same day.

Today (5 days later) I call Quadratec because my winch is "back-ordered". Spend 10 minutes on hold to find out that it's two weeks from the manufacture.

Call Summit and wait 10 minutes to find it in stock for $40 more. Ordered it from Summit (should have it in a few days now)

Called Quadratec back, waited 10 minutes on hold, canceled the winch that was back-ordered. Total time spent, 40 minutes.

Called Morris 4x4 to find out why my top was "shipped" but with no tracking number. Waited for 5 minutes on hold, spoke to a girl there who tells me the company (Rampage I assume) is doing end of year inventory and will not be shipping any orders until next week, where they will be playing catch up and may take a week or so to ship the top.

My jeep has the wrong door/roof combo and it leaks and it's been raining for 10 days straight...... I need a top.

She switches me to a guy in sales who I tell "I need a top, spice, clear windows, with hardware kit, in stock" ASAP if possible. He figures out he can sell me a hardware kit and replacement top, both are in stock, and it's $40 cheaper than my previous order and comes with a $50 rebate and $20 gift card. Top should be here in 1-3 days. WIN!

Moral of the story, don't order Jeep parts on Christmas day online if you have a time crunch! Took about an hour of my day to sort things out but got it covered finally.

In happier news, my "not back-ordered" stuff from Quadratec came today. I ordered the Smittybuilt winch plate and installed it tonight. It'll do the job but now that I have it I can see all the things wrong with it. I'll probably switch it out with something more movie correct later.

Also not happy they gave me the wrong bolts for the kit. If I wanted to mount it without the hooks I had to get new bolts. What I did instead was to grind down the old hooks so I could keep them until I replace them with the custom tow hooks JP18 had in the movie.

With the cover plate removed and still dirty. I sprayed the whole thing down with some WD-40 and cleaned it up. Original bolt, wrong bolt that came with the kit (too skinny and wrong thread) and the correct 1/2 -13 to replace it. Before and after, grinding down the stock tow hook. Final product - waiting for my winch! If I have tow hooks I might not need them. If I don't have tow hooks.....

Looks good unfortunately there's not too many winch plates out there that work with tow hooks
so you're most likely have to lose them anyway
Great progress so far

Any how-to's or tips on the door panel restoration?

ProjectVIC wrote:Any how-to's or tips on the door panel restoration?

http://youtu.be/R9tDq1oRy9U

There's a quick video someone made that shows the process. Basically you use a heat gun to reflow the plastic and take care of the surface scratches and sun damage. Medium heat flows the plastic, but hold it for too long and you'll melt the texture too. Practice on something you don't care about first.

Jack_Fauth wrote:Looks good unfortunately there's not too many winch plates out there that work with tow hooks
so you're most likely have to lose them anyway
Great progress so far

The plan is to build custom tow hooks like the movie JP18 had. I'll probably make larger front holes to accommodate D Rings if needed.

Door panels came out looking great! I need to do this to my set.

The winch came in and I installed it. Kinda pissed it's been painted grey when it should be black and it was shown as being black.
It works too! We used it a few weeks ago to pull our 30,000lbs bus out of the mud!
And here's my wife standing in one of the smaller tire ruts!

When I purchased the Jeep it had no muffler or converter. I replaced the exhaust system to pass NC emissions and quiet it down. Of course, that's when I heard the noise coming out of the Transfer Case....