JeepTruck.com - 81 J10 Sportside Honcho Restomod

81 J10 Sportside Honcho Restomod

Story by: Rufus D.
Editor: Mark Smith, JeepTruck.com

S o what got you interested in Jeep Trucks?

It goes back to 1965 when I was a 13 year old kid on a Wisconsin farm. I was attempting to back a wagon loaded with four tons of hay bales up a slick grass grade and into the hayloft of a dairy barn. I was using a Ford 8N tractor. The load wouldn't go beyond mid-slope before the tractor tires began to spin. A gnarly old neighbor with a Gladiator farm truck happened to stop by earlier and was observing. I asked him if perhaps I should put chains on the tractor tires. With a sly smile he says "let me give it a try with the truck". "No sir, no way that dang truck is gonna move that load", I reply with the swagger of a highly experienced 13 year old. "But you can go right ahead and try....my ol' man is gonna be P.O'd if my brother and I don't get that wagon unloaded and back in the field behind the baler ASAP". "We gotta make hay while the sun shines", I sagely tell the "old geezer". He laughs and says let's hook it up to the front hitch on the truck. I connect the wagon and stand beside the door as he fiddles with controls in the cab. He inches forward taking up the slack in the towing pole on the wagon and feeds in a little gas. When the wagon starts moving backward he floors the gas and there are clods of grass and dirt flying from both ends of that dang pickup. I run for cover. The wagon shoots up the grade, rolls into the barn and hits the wall on the opposite end the thresh floor. Good thing the hay bales absorbed some of the impact or it would have gone right through the wall. I had run up the grade and stood there slack jawed. The old geezer saunters over with a big grin and says, "That there is a Four Wheel Drive Jeep Gladiator". Then he helped us off-load the wagon.

So what brought you to purchase this particular truck?

Well, fast forward three decades and I was looking for a truck to tow a trailer carrying a "must have" car project. When I spotted an ad for a Jeep truck in the Fort Worth Star telegram I immediately thought of that pickup back on the farm. The J10 looked sadly neglected with faded dark blue paint and eroding baby blue "Honcho" stripes. But while the paint was rough, and the interior faded, the rest was solid and it was virtually rust free. The owner explained that he had purchased it from Holiday Lincoln Mercury Jeep in Fort Worth in 1980 for his "juvenile delinquent" son in an attempt to reorient him toward something besides trouble. Unfortunately, it didn't work and within a few months the kid was serving a long sentence for armed robbery. The father used it as a work truck for almost ten years, and then it languished beside the garage in the blazing hot Texas sun. The original bill of sale for the new truck was $11,758.42. It was optioned with AC, cruise control and a dealer installed alarm system that features an old police car style siren....very loud, very weird, and guaranteed to kill a battery in record time.

I bought the truck, scraped off the stripes and the big faded HONCHO sticker, and slapped on some new tires. It still looked ragged, but gnarly ragged. Next I found a frame mounted trailer hitch on the dealer's CJ parts list, which was a near perfect fit. Then I purchased that "must have" Javelin drag car project sitting on a trailer. That trailer and the Jeep pickup led me down a convoluted path of mostly hair brained car misadventures.

The drag car phase ended in short order with a catastrophic transmission failure. So I sold the 401 and then the rolling chassis. Shortly after that I started buying Bitter SC automobiles from both ends of the country and stopped at three....which was 10 percent of the total number of US imports. (www.bittercars.com) Only one was running, so I dragged Bitter SC cars around the DFW metroplex for a couple of years seeking inexpensive storage. One became a parts car, one eventually got an LT1 swap, and one went back to Germany. I hauled it from Dallas to the port of Houston behind the J-10. (Photo) Then came the Jaguar restoration project.

What happened next?

Next, I walked into the same family trap as the original owner of the truck. A younger brother in Wisconsin was having psychological problems and was beginning to run amok with the authorities. He liked old vehicles and was drawn to the Cherokee. Even then, rust free full size Jeeps were a rarity on the frozen tundra. So I decided I'd keep him busy and maybe focused by ferrying Cherokees from Texas to Wisconsin and selling them at a "huge profit". I found and purchased two candidates very quickly. The first was a clean white "S" model with a blown 360 and GM 400 gearbox. The second was an exceptional dark bronze six cylinder. It had starter engagement issues and a whacked right front fender. Both were retrieved with the trusty J10 and trailer. Now I needed a 360. Again, I checked the Fort Worth Star Telegram and found an ad for a running Grand Wagoneer that was being parted out near Burleson, Texas. The lady who answered the phone seemed very tentative, but assured me the engine was a runner. She said some parts had already been removed, so it might not start. Off I went with the J truck and trailer.

A young woman answered the door and several little kids peeked around the corner. I asked if I could look at the Jeep and she said it was in a field behind the house. I walked back and discovered a very decent vehicle with a lot of missing parts. The engine was there, although the carburetor and the distributor were gone. I went back to the house and asked if she was the owner. She said it was her "jailbird" husbands (I swear) and she was selling it for parts because the SOB wasn't supporting her or the kids. She seemed determined and desperate. When I decided not to get involved and started to leave, she almost begged me to buy some parts and give her whatever I thought was right. I removed the engine for the white Cherokee and the doors because I thought electric windows would be handy on my J10. The engine was a pig in a poke since I couldn't hear it run. I gave the lady far more than a salvage yard would charge me to buy the parts (honest). She was thrilled and I crossed my fingers about the engine.

The next weekend I swapped the 360 into the white Cherokee and held my breath as I turned the key. Thankfully, it started. For a long time after that I wondered if some escaped convict would show up at the door and pistol whip me with his zip gun. I also wondered about that poor woman and those kids.

...back to the "business venture" with my brother. The plan was to purchase a big tow dolly, and move two vehicles north at a time. For the first pair, my brother would choose one of the vehicles to keep for himself, and then sell the dolly and the second Jeep. I would break even on my investment. Then we would repeat the procedure until every decent Cherokee in Texas was in Wisconsin. I replaced the fender on the second truck and fixed the starter problem with a shim. My brother bought a bus ticket to Texas. On the return trip he used the six cylinder truck as the tow vehicle because we weren't all that confident about the engine from the jailbird's, wife's parts truck. My brother got stopped by police a few times on the way north. But he had both titles in his name and deftly explained our brilliant business venture. They all let him go... probably thinking what an insane idea. Little did they know.

The engine in the white truck turned out to be a keeper, and that one became his vehicle of choice. And then-n-n-n......about a month later my brother had a berserko psychotic episode which found him blasting at gophers in his backyard with a big honkin' Dirty Harry 44 Magnum. The neighbors freaked out and called the cops. That was a change for the local police. Normally it was my brother calling them regarding paranormal events in the rural neighborhood. My trusted business partner met the police at the door with the pistol in his hand . He later said that he explained that it was unloaded, closed the door, and went back in the house. Then he decided he needed a pack of smokes. The nearest convenience store was about five miles away. When he backed the Cherokee out of the garage he said he wondered why there were a half dozen police cars blocking his driveway. Nonplussed and out-to-lunch, he selected four wheel drive, drove around the house, and took off across an overgrown, rock strewn, hilly field. According to the police reports and remarks from neighbors along the route, it was a leisurely 35 mph highway "chase" involving eight police cars with lights flashing. A few miles down the road, spiked chains had been laid across the highway and the nearly new mud tires were shredded along with the inner fenders.

So much for the business venture. My brother was remanded to state supervised psychiatric care and when he got out he needed a running vehicle. He had sold the white V8 truck for a song and moved over to the six cylinder truck. That lasted a couple of months until he lost his job, and decided he couldn't afford to keep the vehicle in gas. I found him a Suzuki Samurai in Texas, and a Jeep enthusiast in southern Wisconsin purchased the six cylinder Cherokee. It was recently resold for a sizable amount. So, I guess our business scheme was sound... just twenty years premature. There was one more Cherokee in the pipeline, and I sold it here in Texas....another six cylinder with a T176.

I've always felt complicit in contributing to my brother's downward spiral. If it wasn't for the excellent four wheel drive capabilities of the Jeep truck, he'd have never made a good escape through that field. He passed away at a young age, possibly from Cherokee related complications. Full size Jeeps are a mental illness, after all.

Tell us about the mechanical history of the J10.

As the Cherokee experiment drew to a close so did the 727 transmission in the J10. It was slowly dying and I decided to switch to a manual. I liked the T176 shift action and set out to find a donor. I found one in a local salvage yard. With a replacement transmission in hand I took the J10 off the road and removed both the engine and transmission. The engine always seemed a little short on power and torque for the towing role, so I decided to give it an overhaul and some mild performance upgrades. When it was finished it had new pistons/rings, bearings, a valve job, seals, an oil pump, an Edelbrock performer manifold , a small Edelbrock four barrel, and a Crane "RV" cam kit, The ignition system was replaced with a modified HEI from an Oldsmobile, which an IFSJA forum member was selling at the time.

During the engine rebuild I learned that the early 80s J20 had a T18/NP208 option. It seemed like a better choice than the T176. A Jeep salvage yard in Ohio said they had a low mile example from an old farm truck. (There's that farm truck connection again). The best of my three 208 transfer cases was selected and resealed. The T-18 was inspected by a local rebuilder, deemed to be in excellent condition, given new seals, and buttoned up. The rebuilt engine, T-18, NP208 , and new clutch were all installed in late 1999. The engine mods were just what the doctor ordered, although the truck has seen very little use since then, and has never been off-road since I've owned it..

I see it has rear disk brakes, is there a story behind that?

The rear disk brake conversion came out of an incident where one of the rear drum brakes locked up while towing one of the Bitter cars in a rainstorm. The truck and tow skidded through a red light at a busy intersection in a semi jack knife configuration. The rear disks eliminated that issue. The disks are from an early chevy C10. The Eldorado calipers are flipped upside down and side to side in order to get the parking brake levers lined up with the Jeep cables. I also added a goose neck hitch that would provide better control with a short wheelbase truck. I never used it.

How did you arrive at the current configuration for the truck?

With the towing phase in the rear view mirror, I really didn't need the J10. But it had been with us for a long time. All terrain tires were mounted on the original rims (painted black before black was cool). I drove it to work and to Navy reserve drill weekends for about a year. The other pilots in the unit lusted after it, suggesting that it only need a 50 cal mounted in the bed to finish off the look. While it ran perfectly, it was looking mighty ugly.

The interim solution was a thorough sanding and a garage spray with the DP90 epoxy primer. The old DP90 was fairly UV tolerant compared to the current environmentally friendly DPLF chemical mix. I found a nice Rhino grill and sold the original muscle style. It stayed in that configuration for a couple of years until I grew weary of the tire noise. At that point a mild street rod concept took shape. The front end would have to be lowered, but I didn't want to remove the four wheel drive. So the only option was a body channel for the cab and front sheet metal. This ultimately lowered the cab relative to the bed and also changed the "rake". Lowering the cab relative to the bed helps reduce the very upright, geeky tall look of the cab without resorting to a top chop. That said, I would still like to lower the roof about an inch by carving away some of that flat sheet metal above the windshield, and removing an equal amount at the"B" post and above the rear window. That could be easily done without altering the window frames or glass I started by dropping the radiator support panel on the two support posts a little over 2 inches. As you know the entire front sheet metal is tied to those two posts. When the hood contacted the radiator cap, I lowered the radiator until it was about a half inch above the steering gear. It's also slightly tilted reward to avoid the front cross brace in the hood. Then the cab and bed shims/rubbers/spacers were altered (mostly sectioned or removed) to bring the cab and bed into alignment. It was an iterative process. The clearance between the hood and the factory air cleaner is about 1/2 inch, and the sheet metal at the rear of the cab clears the frame rails by the same amount. Tire stagger completes the forward rake look.

The hood is from an early 70's truck ...selected because the stamping is much more crisp than the later models, and the "scoop" opening is larger. The trim bar was removed (holes welded closed), and the sheet metal in front of the radiator was reshaped to enhance the prominence of that intake. The razor grill replaced the Rhino to complete the "look" I was after'.

What happened to the bumpers?

The front bumper is in storage. I (stupidly) junked the rear because it had a bend in it. Anyway, they were too "busy" for the "clean look". Both were replaced by roll pans. The rear is foam and fiberglass. The front pan was fabricated by welding together the rear outboard curved sections cut from the original hood. The forward lower fenders were modified slightly so that the seams between the ends of the roll pan and the fenders are a straight line. I still need to fill that thin gap with a rubber bead.

The mirrors?

They're from a 90's Ford F150. I didn't care for the small ones from the GW, and the original large tripod items just didn't fit with the minimalist look I was after. In the interest of cleaning up the exterior, I eliminated the cowl mounted radio antenna (hole welded shut). If I ever installed a radio,the antenna would mount on the side of the roll bar. But the side pipes are fairly loud, so that might not happen. And speaking of the side pipes, they're just a pair of long glass packs with large diameter turnouts from Speedway clamped on the end. I did install an H-pipe up near the rear of the oil pan to get a balanced V8 rumble from both sides. The pipes exit to the outside of the frame rails behind the aft bracket for the front springs. Plenty of space is provided for the forward drive shaft. All of the bends are preformed mandrel sections welded together. So it flows well and sounds right....old school with just a very slight cam lope at idle.

Epoxy doesn't fare well when exposed to UV. How did that DP90 hold up?

It looked decent...a nice flat black....for five of six years, but then it turned a grayish color and became chalky in appearance. In 2018 I noted surface rust showing through on the roof and the hood. I tried stripping an area on the hood and it went poorly. Epoxy is tough stuff, even when deteriorated. Then I tried sanding which worked OK, but was super slow going with 80 grit. So I decided to have it media blasted. The guys did a good job with no warping. The outside of the cab and doors were stripped, along with the inside and outside of the front sheet metal, the entire bed, and the exposed rear portion of the frame. basically everything except the frame under the cab, and the inside of the cab. Stripping all of that myself would have been an impossible job. I delivered components to the blaster in phases so that I could prep and prime sections of the truck before surface rust set in. While an Eastwood product called "After Blast" helped keep surface rust at bay, it was a crazy period as I had to schedule paint days around cold weather.

Tell us about the current paint work.

I purchased a five stage turbine sprayer and a couple of guns, then masked off the inside of the attached garage. As advertised, the over spray with the turbine set up was very minimal, but there was no way to keep the fumes from seeping into the house, especially since I had tapped into the furnace plenum to get some heat in the garage. My normally tolerant spouse was not amused (don't do it).

I used all Eastwood products except for the spray-in bed liner. Everything was first sealed with 2-part epoxy primer, and then a catalyzed urethane primer was sprayed on before the epoxy cure time closed. This assured a chemical bond between the two paint types. The bottom of the bed and the blasted frame areas got two heavy coats of Chassis Black over the epoxy. The same for the inside of the front fenders. The front inner fenders are powder coated top and bottom, as the paint always gets beat up. This truck is sealed up tight as a drum against rust, and if the next caretaker wanted to change the color, for example, all of the difficult basic prep work is done with quality materials.

After the urethane primer cured on the exterior surfaces I fixed the few dings, primed the repair areas again, long boarded every flat surface, and then sprayed Eastwood hot rod satin black on the exterior. The top coat is also a 2 part urethane and is purported by Eastwood to be UV tolerant.

What about the interior?

Some ten years ago I decided to modify the dash. I never cared for the design of the passenger side on the J10, and never like the foam crash pad covering. The right side of the early steel dashboards (with the speaker grill) looked more appropriate to my eye and I like the left side round dial arrangement that was in the truck. I thought they'd look good together...balanced like the early Mustangs. So I dissected one of each and joined the two outer halves. By keeping the left side of the original, I didn't have to change the steering column mounting and all the instrument hookups. Unfortunately, the right side of the earlier dash had to be modified for the later defroster vent if I wanted to re-install the original air conditioning evaporator. Long story short, there was a lot of cutting and stitch welding involved, and some cutting and drilling when I finally mounted the evaporator. I'm pleased with the retro look, and it's 100% Jeep.

The seats were reupholstered in the original pattern and material, but in black instead of baby blue. The new upholstered headliner from BJs Off Road is top quality. I lined it with reflective Mylar before installation as the hot Texas sun on a black roof could be hard on the adhesive. The windshield glass is new, as is the seal. It was installed by pros.

The doors are from the jail bird's wife's parts truck. The interior panels are dyed black. I hooked up the electric windows, but not the electric locks. All of the track felts for the glass were renewed as were the rubber seals and glass scrapers at the top of the doors. I also replaced the cogged tracks for the electric motors. The side windows and vents were professionally tinted. Our dog, Rufus, begs for rides in the truck as he likes to flop out the passenger side window opening for the wind tunnel experience. The electric windows are handy when it's cold as I can lower it for him while driving, and then raise it again when his lips start freezing.

So is it finished?

Well, as you know, they're never finished... But for the first time in many years everything is functional. The air conditioner and heater were removed way back when I overhauled the engine (twenty years ago!). So there's a new R134 compressor, hoses, etc. And it has a new HEI distributor and wires, as well as a total R & R of the power steering components. But I keep thinking another inch of suspension drop would look good... and different wheels with a deeper dish... and then there's the recently released 450 HP Wrangler 392, which has virtually the same wheelbase... a body transplant, perhaps...

No, it's not finished. But this old geezer is getting close...

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