For a long time after joining the fold here in magazine land, I hit the trails with Cappa and his flattie, either running shortly behind him in my fullsize or riding shotgun while my trail rig was down for the count. When following, I quickly became jealous of the places he could go. I was also getting sick of the sound of scraping and tearing metal as my fullsize was compacted by rocks. In short, his Jeep made me appreciate Jeeps.
There's really no way of adequately describing the experience of riding shotgun in that vehicle, but the personal experience of wheeing in it influenced me more than any magazine article could. The 350 Chevy engine always ran rich, even below sea level. The body contorted and bent with the terrain like it was made out of Jello. It only had a Dana 44 front axle and a Spicer 18 T-case, but that didn't seem to matter. It was more the way Cappa drove it than the way it was set up that did it for me.
While lots of people just close their eyes, hold on, and hammer down until parts fly, Cappa would just put the engine rpms to a certain level and let the ragged 35-inch Boggers or 36-inch Swampers chew and claw until things worked. It was a marvel of understatement and, as it turned out, necessary because of the relative frailty of the driveline. In lots of ways, it was such a pile of crap that you had to drive it well. Being around that rig and watching it wheel taught me to wheel smarter, not harder.
It's not always about how much power you have or how big your tires are, but it's about how well you know your rig and how much finesse you can muster behind the wheel.
Few project vehicles created as much of a buzz in the industry as 4Wheel & Off-Road's Project 4xQuad Dakota pickup and, later that year, the 14-Day Flattie. Although I helped build the '46 CJ-2A in Cole's driveway, I was both enamored and horrified with certain elements of it's completed form. The old axiom is that form follows function. The problem with the 14-Day Flattie is that the form came first, with function a close second.
Cole's vision was for a Jeep that looked as though it was just pulled from a field after 40-years abandonment. That included the bare dash with no gauges of any kind, full uncut fenders that didn't let the 380hp small block cool enough to keep from frequently overheating, low-back uncomfortable seats, and a fairly tall stance for 35- and 37-inch tires. To engage the ARB switch you had to awkwardly reach down between the seats next to the tool compartment. There were no switches in the dashboard, and you had to lift the ammo-can cover between the seats every time the Jeep stalled to reach the starter toggle switch. The Jeep was built without a tubing bender, so the T-case crossmember was built of miter-cut tubing and hung gloriously far below the framerails.
It was ungainly to drive and sort of uncomfortable to ride in, but I'll be damned if it didn't have character. The completely drab olive coloring, the temperature and oil pressure gauges mounted in the grille where the stock running lamps should be, and the cumbersome and huge stock steering wheel were right on. When building my Jeeps later in my career, I've tried to take lessons from both the good and the bad of this build. My project vehicles have to have a good amount of character -- a hook that draws you into caring about it and think that it's cool -- but they also have to remain functional, easy to drive, easy to live with, and they need to work well on the trail.