Dad's Old Army Jeep
Army surplus vehicles have been driven by civilians as well as the army for many years now. This is not surprising when you consider they are durable and cheap to repair and run.

Army surplus vehicles have been driven by civilians as well as the army for many years now. This is not surprising when you consider they are durable and cheap to repair and run.

There are army surplus jeeps that date back all the way to the Vietnam War but are still in service. With a few ordinary tools, you can perform routine service on them yourself, making them great vehicles for hobbyists.

I remember, as a child, that my father bought an old Vietnam Army Jeep. It wasn't in great shape, and needed repair. It hadn't seen any action, but had been used heavily.

The Jeep came from an army training camp, and had been treated to the roughest terrain they could find, it seemed, because it was knackered. It had a massive hole in the bottom and one of the wheel was about to fall off. But it was cheap to buy, and more importantly, cheap to fix.

When I was little, you could find parts anywhere for these vehicles. It was as easy as going to you local Army surplus store. This isn't the case any longer.

We ordered some of the parts from a mail-order catalogue, found a few more in the local army surplus store, and traded with a friend of my dad's for the missing wheel. A few months later, we had all the parts we needed and were ready to get to work.

Today's army surplus vehicles are huge hummers and troop transports, but back then many of them were rather humble. This particular jeep was quite small, and easy to hoist up and work on. We could fit the whole thing in the garage and have plenty of room to move around and access our tools.

It took around three months of work. We spent around 20 hours per week on it, but when we finished we had an almost restored army jeep. It still needed some body work doing to it, but when we test drove it it ran great. And it's still going today.