On September 13, 1979, my dad came home with a Silver Anniversary Jeep CJ5. It's been here ever since. For the last 30-35 years it has sat out in the elements at our ranch, used to get us around the pasture. I learned to drive a stick in it, as did my sister, and both my boys. For some reason, late last year, my dad decided it was time to clean it up. He talked about several plans, the worst of which was just to coat the entire thing in bedliner material. That stuff is pretty much permanent and we would never be able to restore the Jeep to anywhere near original. So John and I started a campaign on two fronts: John kept showing him pictures of restored Silver Anniversary's and I directed him to this website created as a registry of Silver Anniversary's. Jeep didn't keep a record of how many of these were made, so this gentleman created this registry of confirmed finds. Less than 125 have been found. Fast forward to March. It spent much of March in the paint shop and a detail shop getting her stripes back. I think she turned out as nice as I remember when new.
At the end of February, we bought Amy a new vehicle. When I picked up the Silver, it needed to be protected from the elements. I couldn't resist our garage full of Jeeps (even if the middle one is a Fiat :) ).
My dad got back to town so I needed one more DURING shot before we rolled it down to the shop to start reassembly. He drove it while I followed, it has no lights currently, and now we pull out wiring diagrams and old parts and see what we can do to get it put back together.
Just for grins, here is my sister and friends circa April 1996 driving it at the ranch.
