Li'l Red

 Li'l Red is our name for the 1992 jeep Hubby bought in South Dakota January 2013 and drove to AZ while I flew. (No reason to waste a RT ticket!) She, Li'l Red, has needed some TLC over the years, and has handled our desert geocaching adventures very well. She got two new seats shortly after she arrived in AZ. This season she got 4 brand new tires when we learned the AZ summer heat is very wearing on tires. Tires might have a lot of tread left on them, but the rubber itself begins to deteriorate leading to leaks that cannot be fixed. After 10 years, we felt it was a good investment. And it certainly was a wise decision when we drove on Saddle Road on this last desert adventure.

In her former life, Li'l Red was driven by a rural mail carrier in SD. When we bought her, we knew there was a rust hole in the floor board on the passenger side. OK. Hubby knew the size of the hole...I did not realize it was 3 inches wide and 6 inches long. The carpet and the rubber floor mat covered it and I never looked at it. Fifteen years of being driven on gravel roads and probably some salted sand in the winter must have created the rusty, weakened floor board. 

It wasn't until this desert trip when the dust came rolling up through the floor covered carpet and rubber mat that we realized we should probably take a look at that hole and try to fix it. As we were driving back to Phoenix I kept thinking we should be wearing gators or neck scarves like many of the ATVers wear when out in the desert. The dust inside the jeep was that bad.

If there was that much dust inside the jeep, I realized we had been breathing large amounts of it, too. Not good.

The cubby hole is an open cubby. It was so dusty and dirty we could not keep our phones in there for fear of them not working!

passenger side window and door frame

Neighbors stopped to chat and welcome us home and in the discussion of the dirt rolling up from the floor, the neighbor suggested gorilla tape. Hubby had been thinking about ways of trying to eliminate some of the road dirt, but in each possibility, there would be 'air holes' which would eliminate some but not all of the road dirt.

He bought a roll of gorilla tape and taped over a piece of cardboard covering the rusty hole.

He crawled under the jeep and taped the underside. You can sort of visualize the size of the hole from the photo. Let's just say, I am so glad I did not place my foot in that area when climbing into the jeep!

But all our climbing in and out had split the cover on the passenger seat. Hubby had ordered seat covers couple of years ago for the two front seats, but they did not fit as snug as they should have, so there was always a bunch of excess material 'bunched' on the passenger seat. He removed the seat covers and gorilla taped the passenger seat at the split seam. So far it is working and staying in place.

As for the floor board fix, we have not been on desert roads to test whether or not the gorilla tape and piece of cardboard are eliminating the road dirt from rolling up through the carpet and rubber mat. It certainly can't be any worse than it was before the fix! I will throw some N95 masks in the jeep, just in case!