OK – that 304 is OUTTA THERE! Cold freaken day, but my buddy Harry came over and we got it out. I’d piddled with getting the last bits disconnected last weekend and all we had was a ground strap (that came off with the driver side engine mount) and the kick down brackets for the TF-999.

Discovered last weekend that the previous owners had gone with dual exhaust, meaning they’d Redneck Engineered a second pipe and Cherry Bomb for the passenger side. Apparently, they cut the Y-pipe extension to the passenger side, smushed it flat and welded it closed. Hey – whatever works, I guess! I’ll bet this Laredo was a pretty cool and fun toy for them while they had it.

I decided to just bite the bullet and leave the transfer cases with their respective transmissions to save time during the transfer of my Jeep’s drivetrain into the Laredo for Dave to take home with him, and spare the driveway a couple of new puddles of 90-weight in the process. So basically, Dave gets a turn-key running Jeep, and I have my work ahead of me to get mine running again – but this time, for the last time.

I also struck a deal with Harry to take my 33×15.50 TSX Swampers and 15×10 steelies, along with my old hard top and doors for $500. Since Dave scored me a pristine set of full ‘paddle handle’ doors, we’ll swap that YJ hard top onto Dookie before Dave takes off with Klooge after next week (he already picked up a Rampage black denim YJ soft top, which should work nicely with those half doors… when I met him, he had a ’92 Wrangler Islander, and had always preferred the factory top against the Bestop units). Once everything’s back in order, drive train-wise in my Jeep, I’ll be upgrading to some 35×12.50 Swamper SSRs and a set of Mickey Thompson Classic IIIs (for weight savings and one more cosmetic point for this ‘Jeep 3.0’ project of mine).

Now, I just gotta pull the engine mounts, exhaust, transmission, T-case, and drive shafts, then we’ll be ready to bring the 258/T-176/D300, driveshafts, clutch linkage, brake pedal, and steering column over from my Jeep into the Laredo. After getting everything wired up and replace the valve seals, it should be running… then we work on the little nit-noid things before he heads home.