Comment by garyrichardson | Hacker News Reader

Comment by garyrichardson | Hacker News Reader

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That's a vintage military jeep. These are available to civilians, if you can hunt one down. Based on the tires and the model, I suspect it's WWII era. Even modern humvee's are way more complex. I doubt you'd want one as a daily driver though.

If you get a jeep made since 1995, it's definitely way more complex. The jeep in the video doesn't have the same emission controls and safety requirements of a modern vehicle.

Modern jeeps still shars some of the same design principles. For instance, tub on frame -- they lift the tub off of the frame. The cabin of a jeep is like a bathtub on a wagon.

The suspension in modern jeeps is far more complex in order to give a smoother ride -- the jeep in the video has leaf springs on front and back. Modern jeeps typically don't have leafs in the front.

Jeep CJ's were the first consumer models available. Some of the older ones may be close to that simple.

I drive a jeep. I think it's awesome. For the same reasons I like it, most of my passengers hate it:

- it's loud (soft top or top down you basically have to yell to hear each other, forget listening to the stereo on road trips) - it rides rough -- you get thrown around - it has almost no features. I have a heater, headlights, three speed wipers (off, too slow and too fast), manual windows/mirrors and a button to reset the trip counter

Also, it's a bit of a money pit. It's super rugged, but when you take it into the bush, you push the machine to its limits. I'm not really an expert in vehicle repairs (spent my teen years on computers instead of with my dad in the garage), but I'm definitely getting more into it as a way to save money.

I get about 15 L/100KM (~15mpg). It's as aerodynamic as a brick flying sideways, so you can't really do anything to improve gas mileage.

That all being said, I love my jeep. I can't see myself not owning a jeep in the future.

If you're interested, I still have J10 stepside (very rare, 1100 made) in a barn in Ontario, you can have it if you want, for free.

I'd rather see it with someone that might breathe some life back into it, I'm Europe these days so I most likely won't be seeing it again. And with the price of petrol here what it is I can't see it moved here either.

If you mean Ontario, Canada, I'll Definitely take you up on that. Email Sent...

Nice. I hope Gary Richardson responds to this either way.

Too often people complain of HN turning into Digg/Reddit - wonder if we'll see any complaints about it turning into Freecycle :)

Heh, Vancouver is a long way from Ontario. Otherwise that's a sweet offer :)

Ok, thanks for getting back on that one, I have enough offers by now that I think that the Jeep will go to a good home.

Say hi to the steamclock from me :)

j

Yes, absolutely. A lot of Jeep owners will tell you that pretty much everything on them can be fixed with a $10 socket set from wal mart.

I love my Jeep because when my dog and I crawl into the thing covered in mud, I can just hose it out the next day. There are holes in the floor that lets the water drain out when it gets rained in, and I know that there are very, very few places on the planet that it won't take me if I ask it nice enough.

There is definitely something to be said about simplicity in engineering. I feel more connected to my Jeep because I can see everything working. There is no abstraction level, it's all just mechanical.

It's the same feeling I got when I first started using linux. I could see everything working which, for my brain, was awesome.

someone mentioned further down the thread that it is a willys which by looking at it I would agree but I am not 100% sure without psychically looking at it and it's plates. I guess that is the beauty of these machines in certain ways they have not changed much. It is somewhere in the era of 40's or 50's, as you mentioned. One thing to bare in mind about these machines is that they are designed for a specific purpose and that purpose is not that great for a standard civilian vehicle. The military jeeps where all dowel and pin fastened which allowed them to be broken down and repaired rapidly but it was at the sacrifice of high speed. With items like the leafs dowel and pinned they rattled like an SOB at any thing over 40mph which results in a pretty wild ride.

The suspension in modern jeeps is far more complex in order to give a smoother ride -- the jeep in the video has leaf springs on front and back. Modern jeeps typically don't have leafs in the front.

A lot of modern off road suspensions are a 3 or 4 link suspension set up. They can be dowel and pinned as well, and can be broken down faster than a leaf sprung vehicle, but again you suffer from the fact that they is play in the suspension components, that is not there with a bolt fastened suspension.

The point is, that while it is a great engineering feat to build such simplicity, there is also some huge sacrifices that you make to achieve such simplicity. Safety and high speed performance being the top two.

The JEEP is a great machine and I recommend them to anyone who wants to get into off-road motor sports, they are probably the best beginners vehicle one can buy. As they can grow with someone as they get deeper into the hobby.

As well there is no other off-road vehicle available that has the aftermarket availability of products that JEEP does. I say that as an owner of a 68 Bronco. The JEEP is a well respected vehicle for motor-sports hobbyist. It is one that they got right from the beginning. The original Bronco and the International Scout are great choices as well.

100% sure it's a CJ-5.

The little dip above the rear wheel and the spacing between the filler and the rear wheel arch make it an 81" wheelbase version.

It could have been an M38A1 as well, but that one has a front window in two parts, and it does not have a tailgate.

If you get a jeep made since 1995, it's definitely way more complex.

Did you mean 1945? If not, were Jeeps made before 1995 comparatively simple?

IIRC Around 1995 (I thought '96 but could be wrong) emissions standards were made stricter and cars made since then need to have computers that monitor the emission systems.

I don't know about Jeeps specifically, but they started putting embedded systems into cars in the mid-1970s and into pickup trucks in the early-1980s.

Seeing "super rugged" and "money pit" separated by a single word is amusing to me. By my standards, my Toyota Prius is more rugged than most cars. It doesn't take me everywhere I want to go, though.

It's a money pit because the only way to get spares is to find a junker (and even then all the rubbers will need to be replaced with whatever you change out) or to machine them.

This is a 60 year old car, it's not like you can walk in to your local car part store and order some parts. You're going to be buying your parts from places like this: http://www.willysjeepparts.com/ which will happily charge you a good sized premium for the parts because they're being made in much smaller series than for cars that are still 'current'. And that's assuming you do the work yourself, if you let someone else do it for you it'll cost quite a bit more still.

They also need quite a bit more maintenance per mile driven than a modern car because the engine clearances are not to be compared with modern stuff.

But if it came to your 'prius' or that 60 year old beast and we had to cross 50 miles of bush I'm pretty sure which one I'd pick.

A prius is not a rugged car, not even a little bit, it's a delicate piece of beautiful engineering.

Ruggedness depends on what you're asking the car to withstand. I'm hoping mine will withstand 150k-200k miles without unplanned maintenance :-) But right now I'm in the embarrassing position of trying to borrow a car from my mother to drive to a trailhead my Prius can't get to, so I appreciate your point.

I don't know about the Prius specifically but I feel like people underestimate modern economy cars. I've taken my 96 Saturn and my friend's 00 Sentra through some improbably bad terrain, and the combination of light weight and front wheel drive means that you can generally slide across a lot of crap that would technically high center such low vehicles, if you have some momentum.

Despite common perception cars are not designed to fall apart.

Sometimes being less rugged is a feature. Modern cars are designed to have the front crumple to absorb energy in a collision, reducing the impact on the passenger area.

A dashboard that's soft and light may be easier on the head and save gas, but it sure is annoying the way they dry out and crack from mere heat and sunshine.

Modern engines last longer, but I think that's mainly due to the process the Japanese developed for easily producing hard steel (amounted to a simple additive). Engines aren't worn out at 100,000 miles any more.

Yes, the crumple zone in a 60 year old car is you.

So best not to get in to an accident, but that goes for any vehicle, including modern ones. Sudden deceleration is a real problem, all the crumple zones do is change that from 1 ms to 15 ms. (that's a huge difference in terms of impact on your body, but still).

The dashboard in a Jeep is steel, but don't worry, in most accidents you'll be thrown clear of the vehicle on to the street, with a little bad luck in front of other traffic. Chances of you hitting the dashboard are much slimmer than you hitting the pavement.

You don't want to roll one either...

Materials science has come a long way since the 40's, I don't think you can compress the 60+ years of research resulting in our current engine life in to 'a simple additive', and it was definitely not just the Japanese that worked on this.

They do deserve a lot of credit for ceramics to metal bonding processes, but there too there was plenty of international collaboration.

And not just materials either. Some of the longer life is due to tighter machining and better finish, largely thanks to CNC automation.

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