When I looked at the Trooper initially I didn't see a drop of oil after I took a test drive, although I'm assuming because it hadn't been driven in a while that the more I drove it, the more spots started to spring leaks to where it became more or less like the Exxon Valdez:

The top side of the engine didn't look too bad, so I got suggestions on what spots might be leaking which ultimately included several and made me realize that the Haynes repair guide just wasn't going to cut it, so ordered the Isuzu Workshop Manual which cracked me up when I got it... yeah, just a little more comprehensive:

The worst leak was probably the o-ring on the distributor which looked like this:

The rocker arm covers ended up being pretty bad too:

After poking around at a few other things I got things to the point where it still leaked a bit, but not gushing like it was before so decided to close out that project and move to some other odds and ends including an attempt to fix the wobbly speedometer (note the word "attempt"):


I also got some slightly better tires swapped out and refurbished a brush guard I stumbled upon at the local salvage yard at which point it actually started to look reasonably legit:


The last two projects I did for the year was refurbishing a set of Aisin manual hubs which I scored for free:


And getting it dressed up for Christmas!


My daughter (aka "littleredtrooper") was driving basically full time by that point so what was briefly a Trooper we shared became her full time daily driver. As for me? Yeah, you might say I was hooked... it took me all of two months before I popped on a poor beat up 1990 Trooper for myself and dragged it home... literally!


Which leads us back to this:

Still stock, but showing what it (and its driver!) was made of! That day was another turning point, my daughter was nearly as jacked up and goofy about the experience as I was, so before we even left URE for the day we had a list of the top upgrade priorities to get done! LOL!! Another big shout out to Joe D., I'm not sure the day would have ended up as good as it did without his generous help and care.

