A friend of mine wants to get an inexpensive vehicle to take on the trail. He wants room in it to take camping gear and friends, but wants it to be able to take him places his subaru wrx can't get.
He knows I'm into Jeeping and off-roading, so he's asked my opinion on some inexpensive older vehicles to get. So, I'm going to ask here, as my knowledge on Jeeps is limited mostly to the years of the TJ, with only some sparse knowledge of older YJs or CJs. My knowledge of the older Cherokee/Wagoneer vehicles is limited, if not nonexistent.
1) What is a good cheap vehicle to buy? Something that will hold up well and not be a bear to maintain? Old Bronco? Old Wagoneer such as the 1997 he is looking at? Something else?2) He has found a 1979 Wagoneer with only 10000 miles on a new engine. I haven't seen it, and he's not familiar with all the components to check, so what would come standard on this vehicle? What is good on it? What's bad? He says there is some rust on it...what kind of rust is ok and what should he run away from? How difficult is it to repair rust (he says there was a small rusted-through hole in the floor behind the drivers side seat/door)? What type of transfer case, transmission, axles, etc. are on this? I'm probably going to end up going and checking it out with him, so I want to go armed with as much knowledge about these particular vehicles as possible. He says the current owner says the "u-joints will probably need to be replaced". If this is so, there has probably been existing vibes in the driveline; any tell-tale ways to check if such vibrations have caused any trouble in the t-case or diffs (bearings, etc) besides the normal bad-seal symptom of oily diff/t-case skid?
3) Do you think a vehicle like the one mentioned here would be worth $900? (I understand I have little to no detail about the vehicle included here, I'm just telling you what he knows so far, but I'm hoping you can at least tell me if this year of Wagoneer could be a good deal in this ball park.)4) Since the engine is new, is there anything we should check to see if the engine swap is good, that it was installed well and has no problems (hoping this isn't a case where someone had this as a project vehicle, futzed up the engine install, and is now trying to sell it off and recover a little of his money).
I'll stop there, so I don't get this too terribly long. I appreciate any and all help and comments.
Thanks, Bob