Old Yeller, YJ resurrection

[eddievedder]

Around 2008ish Mike (1badjeepbruiser) acquired this Jeep YJ CC01 in a trade.


Soon after he acquired a built YJ on a K2-5 chassis with TLT axles from Just Zach and he hacked the body to build his Warn Rock Ready YJ. Then he put the Yellow Wrangler on the K2-5 chassis.

In early 2012 my 4 year old son was getting very into cars, trucks and especially Jeeps. Mike had his Yellow YJ up for sale so I scooped it up for my son.



I didn’t do much to it but paint the hard top flat tan, painted the tailgate flat black and added a spare, some decals and I added a hi lift jack to cover two holes that were previously drilled into the hood.

 

[eddievedder]

Here is my son in 2012 driving it for the first time.

During that first drive he was getting used to controlling the RC and he drove right into a rock. Not hard as it was crawl speed but the old original Tamiya YJ body suffered an injury.
It cracked just below the grill area almost all the way across. Popping the fog lights off in the process.



Time for repair.

To cover up some of the repair work on the old yellow paint we decided a new look for the front grill would be best.

 

[eddievedder]

My son and I wheeled it as is for a while and he loved every outing.

 

[eddievedder]

Eventually he wanted to add some of his own touches to it. And the front bumper/grill repair took another blow during one of our outings. This one proved fatal. lol. He wanted a driver so we did up this half interior with driver and we added a stock roll bar with padding. We also added some metal diamond rear corner armor and some metal hinges.



We removed the busted front stock bumper

 

[89Industries]

The roll bar padding is a nice touch. Reminds me of my dad's MG Midget race cars with padded roll bars.

 

[eddievedder]

We wanted something with a nice approach angle and steel or aluminum. I had this stubby Rock Armor bumper in my parts bin and it was perfect.

Painted it semi gloss black.


Added a cool American flag sticker too.

 

[eddievedder]

Two years later and my son at about 6 years old was getting pretty good at wheeling his little yellow Jeep.


It was here where we realized that we loved the 8 hole black wheels but could really use some beadlocks due to the weight of this rig.

 

[eddievedder]

Fast forward a bit and I sort of let my son do what he wanted with this YJ. He really liked adding small details. He wanted a roof rack and I had a cool Dinky RC rack on the shelf. So we drilled the roof and mounted it. He went crazy with the little accessories.
We also scored some OG 1.55 RC4WD “classic” beadlocks. We also added a rear cargo rack over the spare tire.

 

[eddievedder]

A few more pics. It’s crazy but my son is now 15 and I’m trying to get him back into RC. He’s in so many sports and hockey takes up most of our time. But this is such a great hobby and builds awesome building/problem solving skills.
Anyway we are going to go through this YJ soon and resurrect it. And hopefully resurrect my son’s interest in the hobby.

 

[1BadJeepBruiser]

This thing looks awesome still after all these years

 

[eddievedder]

This thing looks awesome still after all these years

There is just something about it. It just wheels so smoothly. I’m hoping to get more of my old rigs up and running as daily drivers.

 

[OSRC]

Great story! Love it when the kids are involved.