Thoughts On This Jeep, Is It Worth It?

[Military Jeeper]

Went and looked at this Jeep today and it was in pretty good shape ($6,500, 1985 JEEP CJ-7 4x4 Laredo).

Things bad and good about the Jeep:

Cons:
- The hardtop has seen it's better days (you can tell someone tried to fix it previously) but I don't think it's worth salvaging
- The passenger door doesn't have an outside handle and some of the interior portion of the doors have tears in them (same for seats, small tears)
- The front floorboards have some surface rust because a carpet kit is installed and moisture probably got trapped underneath
- Snap rings are installed on the tub for the old softop versions that used the snaps (meaning I'd have to remove them and patch holes one day)
- Brakes are soft (It does have power brakes though)
- Drain **** on radiator appears to have a small leak
- All chrome is rusted (not a concern as it would be removed anyway, but not salvagable for resale)
- Numerous gauges don't work anymore.......go figure, haha
- Some oily residue on engine, but to be expected on original engine (6 cyl)

Pros:
- Factory suspension, never lifted
- Steers straight, no wandering (Factory steering wheel too)
- Automatic (Normally I'd say this is a CON but I'm tired of shifting in bumper to bumper traffic)
- Seats in decent shape (Has factory back seat still)
- No body rust or frame rust.....even in the normal places (it was shipped from Cali)
- Decent paint job, not great but decent (Charcoal Gray Color with clearcoat still in tact, it's been repainted from what I can tell)
- Carpet installed (I can resell this and make $100 probably)
- Aftermarket center console and tuffy speaker boxes in the back.
- Factory installed swing-away tire carrier
- Never off-roaded
- Tilt steering
- Bikini top
- Spare soft doors

My only real dislikes about the Jeep are it's a 6 cyl.............and my current Jeep is a 79 CJ5 with the 304, much more fun and loud. I was planning on swapping axles and engine/driveline on my CJ now but if I grab this CJ7 I'll do it on this Jeep instead so it's kinda a moot point anyway.

[trailsnail]

You forgot to mention if the dog comes with the jeep. If not, you may be able to talk the guy down some more. All in all, it doesn't sound too bad to me. If everything is mechanically solid, I would think that it isn't a bad idea, but I don't know too much about CJ7's.

[Lt. Dan]

Meh.... If you're going to swap the drivetrain, then you might as well keep looking... Just a little high priced for what you wanna do....

[TexCJ7]

it looks clean but its an 85 jeep and you said its never been off roaded i'm sure thats not true