Jeff and his wife are the third owners of this manual transmission Hurst. They are just finishing up a great looking restoration. See the before & after pictures below and scroll down further for more information on their Hurst. Check out the custom "71 Hurst" logo in the two close-ups of the cowl below (look closely)
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Before
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The story on the Jeepster is that I started to look for one in 2006 when my wife decided that she wanted one for getting around town and traveling the back roads. I found my vehicle in Vancouver, WA from a 2nd owner. He advised that he thought someone had been messing around and stuck some Hurst pieces on the vehicle, as well as a hood scoop and tach. Because the tach didn't work he discarded everything he didn't think belonged on the vehicle, with the exception of the hood, which he filled in. The hood was my first clue as to what the vehicle actually was, and some searching proved I was right.
The vehicle had the original Buick 6 with a stick shift, non-original seats, a fair amount of rust, but all in all a good beginning point for under $1,000.00, and it ran (I initially thought). Once I verified what I had, I decided to make it totally road worthy and trouble free for my wife, who wanted to drive it all of the time. The engine, transmission, transfer case proved to be beyond repair. To bring it into the "modern" era for her, I found and rebuilt a 4.3 L Chevy, backed it up with a built 700R, something unconventional (don't shot me) a Toyota transfer case to provide a little more leg room for the passenger side. Everything slipped in like a glove. I replaced the original front axel with a Dana 30 with a locker, Warn hubs. New springs courtesy of Alcan Springs, built custom shock mounts and installed Rancho 9000 shocks. The springs gave me a enough lift to install 33X12.5 BFG's, on ARE wheels.
The engine took up a little more room than I anticipated so the radiator mounting was cut back and a custom aluminum 4 core radiator installed with an electric fan. Also, for steering comfort the shot column replaced with a tilt Flaming River column, and I added power steering with a Buick unit. Truthfully the power steering provides a little too much over steer and I'll probably remove it. Shifting is provided by Lokar. New drive shafts were made and installed. I replaced the original dash with a filler from Don Fletcher, and Dolphin gauges. They're beautiful and I plan on doing something similar for the switches to the left. I had a custom gas tank and electric fuel pump put in. I obtained an original rear seat and replacement front seats from an Acura, had them recovered in tan leather and built new seat mounts. I obtained a replacement hood scoop from Jim Serr, and located an original, functioning hood tach, as well as original Hurst emblems.
I removed the body from the frame, sandblasted everything, new bushings, undercoating, significant body straightening that ended up with all of the original panels and hardly any bondo. The interior of the tub and roof were covered with Line-X. The paint is a custom tangerine, based on the late 60's early 70's hugger orange from Chevrolet, with a custom
cream trim. I thought in as much as all of the original Hurst's were white with the red, white, blue striping and mine had been "customized" that the paint should be as well. You may notice that I did my own striping by adding ghost stripes with a custom Hurst 71 feature on the cowl (I don't know if it shows up that well in the pictures but in the sun it stands out quite nicely). I've some things to finish up,
but the bottom line is it turned out to be a great vehicle, fun to drive, certainly gets noticed and I'm proud that I was able to save one of the few remaining '71 Hurst Jeepsters.
I need to thank several people in the Longview, WA area who had a hand in helping out, because it certainly wasn't all me by any means.
Jeff S.