Jeep Jeep Jeepy Jeepy Jeep Jeep

With buying our new house, the little Alfa I had as a station car had to go. A shame as I loved it, even though it was a bit of a cooking model rather than the full fat V6. However, it wouldn't have done for the work I needed for. So goodbye to this:

And hello to this:

This photo taken at the old house. When we were moving into the new house, those nice comfortable AT tyres on those lovely original alloys just didn't cut it, and I was lucky to be able to get the Jeep out of the mud at the far end of the garden.

So, apart from the obligatory couple of Pistonheads stickers, a few mods were made:

With those steelies and mud tyres, the driving experience is now much louder and less comfortable, but no way is it getting stuck. The Jeep has a LSD and centre difflock as standard, so with these tyres and that transmission, plus a 4lt engine, it's unstoppable on mud. However, there's not much room between tyre and arches. Basically it's suffered from the usual XJ ailment of sagging leaf springs. No worries there - heavy duty ones now fitted:

You can see that even with the roof laden (overladen, most likely), there's still lots of room between tyre and arch. Unfortunately, I've not done the front yet so with nothing on the roof, it looks a bit like a 70's custom....