Yes, you’ve probably seen this same 1978 Jeep Honcho J10 before. We’ve featured it twice before here on Barn Finds, First in 2018 and most recently in January of this year. It apparently sold in 2018 but didn’t sell a few months ago. It is now selling at no reserve and can be found here on eBay with a current bid of 4,300. Still located in Bowling Green, Kentucky, at least one upgrade has been done since January. Check it out.
While the exterior is fairly sun-faded, the interior is really nice. It is pretty clear the seat has been recovered, but there’s no mention of the dash or steering wheel. The door panels could be addressed, but other than that, it doesn’t appear to need anything.
The engine is a 360 V8 mated to an automatic transmission. The seller says it has been sitting for a few years, but they recently got it running and driving again. It has a new battery, battery tray, fuel filter, and fresh gas. They say it now starts, runs, and drives although it hasn’t been tuned up.
As you can see, the truck still wears the vintage mag-style wheels but they are now wrapped with new BFGoodrich tires. Based on the previous posts, the mud tires that were on it before looked like they could be dry-rotted. It was probably a good upgrade to put on the new BFGs. With a no-reserve auction, this one will sell to the highest bidder. Hopefully, the new owner will enjoy it and give it the attention it deserves.
I wonder why they sold it so quick. Seems like the perfect truck to drive something cool with patina and still use it as a truck and not a show piece. To me it’s one thing to have a show car and drive or show it but I can’t get my head around having a perfectly restored pickup that will never be used as a pickup. Patina and trucks go together like peanut butter and jelly.
We had one of these in our work fleet at Ascension island we did dive ops, OSP cable work and tower work as well. It was a good truck had the big straight 6 FT 4×4 bench seat AF blue we also had a couple of old W200 crewcabs with the slant 6 great trucks.
Why not tune it up and dial it in to make the 360 purr? You put new seat covers and tires on it as well as a few other things? Tuning it is simple and inexpensive. Makes no sense to me imo.
Maybe it’s more serious than just a tune up?? I’ve owned a few J-10s n J-20s and had more than one fuel pump diaphragm leak gas into the crankcase…especially if they’ve sat for a while.
Good argument for an SBC drop-in.
Although the conversions, TorqueFlite, etc. might be involved,
Nonetheless. If this rig dropped in my driveway…I’d not kick it to the curb.
Wondering the same questions as previous posters. While this checks a lot of boxes for me, the current bid on Ebay would be near the top of my range for a vehicle with a fair number of questions??? Will watch, but doubtful.
$6600 seems like someone got a decent deal even if the engine is junk stuffing a 5.7 Hemi and transmission set up from a RAM wouldn’t hurt the wallet as much