And now on to the install of the OME. This was WAY tougher than I thought. Nearly all of the difficulty came in trying to remove the old rusted suspension. I bought my first cruiser while I was an under-grad and newly married, a 1973 fj55. My wife also loved the cruisers and encouraged the habit. I spent evenings after class learning bodywork on it, then we had it painted black. It was a great cruiser and we had a lot of fun, except for the time it caught fire on our way back from Moab in 2001. I'll have to dig up some pictures. After that my wife swore off old cars for a while (think stranded in the desert for several hours, looking back she was pretty patient), so it took me a couple of years to persuade her we needed another one. We had to sell the 55 when we moved to DC because our high-rise didn't have enough parking (yep, it still ran even after catching fire...just not well. I think it's been parted out now). In about 2003 I found our current fj62 online. The family had owned it since it was one year old and taken great care of it, they even got teary-eyed when they sold it to us and made us promise to take great care of it. The drivetrain was in great shape, but it had rust. I was still a newb to the world of cars (I still am, that's what comes of working in museums) and figured it would be better to have a dependable drivetrain than a solid rig. Lance at IPOR said at the time I had the strongest running 3fe he had heard, but he just smiled and cringed when I asked him about the rust. I thought I could fix the rust and have a good cruiser. Well, after many attempts the rust is still there and now worse due to salted roads in Utah, but that's another story. The wifey insisted on auto transmission and power steering, while I insisted on classic cruiser styling. So the 62 was the perfect compromise for us. It was a NYC cruiser so we bought one-way tickets to the big apple and drove the cruiser home to DC. This wasn't too long after 9/11, so the toughest part of the trip was convincing the airline security we weren't terrorists and if we were we would probably be smart enough now not to buy one-way tickets from DC to NY. We joined the Capital Land Cruiser Club (CLCC), a great group of cruiser heads, but always longed for the mountains in the west. After finally moving out here last year we made the commitment to outfit the cruiser and use it as our family get away wagon.
Anyway, after that long-winded intro, on to the OME install. First are the new springs. The great thing about being in Utah are all the offroad fans and cruiserheads, it's like being in 4x4 nirvana. After being back east for 7 years it was a rare thing to see a lifted rig, let alone a cruiser. I've got 3 herniated discs in my back so my friends Ty, Christian, and Devon really came through to help me install the lift (I say help but I was just moral support, they did all the work
). Christian has a shop and is a big cruiserhead, he's currently got a 40 and a huge 80, and probably another dozen cruisers between his brothers and cousins.
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. Glad he didn't mount anything else on the cruiser.
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