My brother-in-law is in to troopers as I have stated in past posts and I directed him to an ad for on on craigslist that was lifted with an ARB ($$$) bumper and winch that the guy was trying to sell. He worked out a deal on the bumper only and asked me to go pick it up. I did and took some photos of it and tried to help the guy sell the truck on an isuzu forum I'm also on. Well it turns out the transmission was slipping and bucking occasionally and the A/T light and trans temp light would flash. He said a bunch of other weird things happen too, but he was afraid the trans was bad. After a few weeks of no luck selling his vehicle, he contacted my brother-in-law and made him a really good offer on it, without the fancy wheels and tires on it. We talked about it and decided we could part it out and sell it for scrap and come out a couple hundred in with lots of parts that he could use on his troopers and I could use on my Vehicross and besides, I had built a trooper tow bar for him a while back so who cares if the trans is bad? we'd just tow it.

We drove up Saturday morning to Whitwell and met the guy. I brought my VX's tires and wheels to drag it home on. We tried to hook up the tow bar, but the frame mounts were different between the '00 that it was built on and the 95... bummer. We said, well how well does it run and will it drive back to chattanooga? Yeah probably, but it doesn't have a battery. We went to find a battery...$60. Put it in and it started up. Cool. Switched the wheels over and put it in gear. Backed up and took off over Suck Creek Mtn.

As I was driving and my BnL was following, the trans did its thing. The lights would flash and the A/C blower would kick into high gear and blow me away. The airbag light would come on and everything went nuts. Then it stopped. After a few cycles of this, I started watching every dash light and gage... When it happened, the volt gage would peg out at 16+volts...I bet its the alternator. Thats easy enough.

Get it home and the rest of our family (who all thought we were crazy-but I had actually seen the truck 2 weeks prior) was waiting and came out to say, "what a nice truck" We pulled out all the parts and extras he threw in the back. Went through all the receipts and...Advance Auto- Alternator w/ limitied lifetime warranty! SCORE!!! Threw it on the lift and slipped it out, took it in and they said yep, its bad, the new FREE one will be in tomorrow.

My BnL picked it up today and installed it. He said all the problems were gone and we got away with practically stealing this thing from the guy. We still gotta work out:
1)tires and wheels (6-lug chevy, toyota, nissan, isuzu...etc)
2) a Power steering line (its cut and makes lots of smoke- his works: "engine smokes and scares me")
3) a dipstick- which confused us because they never came with a dipstick- they were sealed. Turns out the trans was rebuilt 9k ago or 25 months ago.

I have been looking for a basket,  you gonna keep it?

let me know, it looks like the wider one, yakima makes the warrior and the mega warrior

52 inches long by 48 inches wide by 6.5 inches high for mega warrior larger size and for the regular size 44” x 39” x 6.5”)

My brother in law got in tow friday night at around 10:30. We got to tearing it apart for the springs and LSD, HD sway bars, etc... We got all of that out of this trooper last night. I got home around 3am. We woke up and pulled the 3rd member off of his trooper, swapped in the LSD, put the springs and HD rear sway bar on before I had to be at a wedding at 4 (left the garage at 3:20 and still made it and clean too!) He had a wedding to go to at 6. We both got through around the same time and started on the front end parts swap. Got the rear end of this trooper buttoned up and backed out, his trooper on the lift and tried to pull his front torsion bars and sway bar. The sway bar was a real PITA and Uhaul had mounted a transmission cooler under the sway bar and through the front skid plate so we had lots of obstacles. Finally got that undone and put the HD parts on. Backed it out and put this trooper back on the lift to put his stock torsion bars back in it (it was riding on the bump stops). Threw those back in and it was back to stock in about 27 hours (including sleep time and two weddings!).

It was an exhausting day, but we accomplished what we set out to do. A few more things to finish and it should be good to go!

On a side note, I visited a friend on the boulevard (rossville) and he said that early chevy truck wheels would work (the ones with the large hub). So we rode down to his warehouse and pulled out a set. He just gave them to me (score!) but when I got home, I tried them on my VX and the center hub was still a wee bit too small. Still looking for Isuzu or Honday Passport wheels. I might head to pullapart in Knoxville tomorrow in hopes of finding some for $12.94 wheels and tires!  Doesn't appear to be much good VW stuff though... oh well, anyone need me to check on anything?!?!?