Taking the First Steps towards building our Bad Ass Jeep!

So when customizing a Jeep there are a million things you want to start with. And if you are like me, you want to start with everything all at once. Let’s get it lifted. Let’s get the big tires. New bumpers. That’s where my head went right away. But you can’t do everything at once. And some things require research. So here’s what we did first.

I really liked the Black Bear package Jeep put together (obviously, I shelled out an extra $4,700 for it). But the one comment I received from almost everyone I saw when I first showed them the Bear was the big sticker on the hood. Is that some type of retro GPS? An impressionic rendering of a bear? An EKG graph? I heard it all . . . and that was just in the first two days of owning the Bear.

So what is it? It is a map of the Black Bear Pass in Colorado which is where the Black Bear Jeep gets its name. The sticker is black and grey and has a jagged red line which runs from the start of the ridge from of the pass to its finish. Upon closer inspection, at the finish of the pass it states “Black Bear: Date Conquered” and three blanks next to it for month, day and year. I guess the marketing guys at Jeep contemplate that, immediately upon your “conquering” of the pass, that you are to scrape the mud off your hood sticker, pull out your Sharpie pen, and ink in the “Date Conquered”. Ok. Really? So the marketing guys at Jeep I think generally are geniuses – the Jeep has to be one of the best marketed vehicles on the market. But they missed it this time. Big time!!! So the first mod to the Black Bear? Removal of the hood sticker. Ten minutes in the sun, a little bit of patience, and half a bottle of adhesive remover and it was gone. Not a huge first mod but an important one. No more questions about the sticker.

The other two first mods where not as exciting but just as important – removal of the ugly advertising spare tire cover that the dealer put on (complete with cheesy waving American flag) and the stickers on the back with the dealers name and address. I don’t need to be a mobile advertisement for the dealers. So 15 minutes of work and our first few mods are complete. Now on to the fun stuff.

So its been so long since we did a build (we either lost tools in multiple moves or they didn’t come back after being loaned out) that we needed to update our tool bin. We just received from Amazon (love Prime!) a DEWALT ¾ inch 18-volt cordless impact wrench and a DEWALT DW059HB ½ inch 18-volt cordless impact wrench and a set of sockets for each. We torqued off a couple of lugs on the wheels and a bolt on the rear bumper with the ¼ wrench and it had a ton of torque. Can’t wait to get our ½ inch sockets so we can test out the big one. The 4 inch suspension lift and rims are on order and should be here next week. We can’t wait as we are in the middle of summer and we gotta get this build going.