75 Renegade CJ5 304

1975

Jeep

1975 CJ5

AMC Pastel Blue

Renegade

40 years ago I bought a 1976 CJ5 Renegade. At 18 years old I drove the heck out of it. I was extremely rough on it and went thru 8 universal joints and four sets of brake shoes in the first 18 months. I had a lot of close calls in it, near roll overs and such and about the third year of ownership I sold it. Fast forward 38 years. About two years ago with the help of Craigslist I started looking at Jeeps. I called about several and looked at three or four. I could not find anything near what I thought I should be finding. I changed my strategy and I put a pic of a like new 1976 Renegade the same color as mine from way back on line and said I was looking for a Jeep that would have looked like this forty years ago. I had a few calls and then a text from a fellow in Tenn. He said he was sure he had what I was looking for. He was close! He had recently purchased a 1975 CJ5 Renegade with the 304 that had 42K actual miles. He bought it off a farm from the 80 year old second owner. The last tag it had was 1984. I went to see it and brought it home. It has lots of character! Slight surface rust and very little rot. Only thing was with the engine, anything above a good idle it popped , skipped and even backfired like it had jumped time! We changed out some stuff it needed any way. Distributor, timing set, water pump, fuel pump, plugs wires and electronic ignition box even a reman Motorcraft 2100 2bbl carb. Still acted crazy. We put the timing light on it and the timing light acted crazy. All we had not done was replaced the coil! My mechanic bud started taking the coil bracket off and exclaimed. Hey! This condenser is on the wrong coil terminal! Wow! Do you think? Man! we swapped that thing over and she fired right up purring like a kitty cat. Revved it real good and that 304 sounded like NASCAR. Well I soon realized that some time back in 1984 someone worked on that Jeep and put that condenser on the wrong terminal. They could never get it to run right after that so they put her in the shed and it stayed there for 32 years. And that is how I ended up with a 1975 Renegade with 42K miles on it. During our diagnosing we did a compression check on all cylinders. It was 150 psi on all. I looked up the specs on the 1975 304 and "factory new" is 150 psi. ! I hope you get to find one like I did.! Tim