My MM540 Restoration complete

A small request to all: Enjoy nature, enjoy your travel but please don’t spoil MOTHER NATURE. Refill bottles, don’t throw plastic in water bodies or roads. Dispose your garbage at proper place. Cheers!

A little off topic, not related to my travels but just for my own memories I am documenting this one.

I always wanted to have a jeep, back since I was a kid. And finally in the month of April I was randomly checking some jeep pics and came across and internet listing of mm540.
I was tempted, called Dilip Bhai(my friend in Hyderabad) and shared this idea of buying a jeep with him. Then checked my account balance and called the seller. A few negotiations, a small test ride and I got that mm540.
It was an old 1990 model - very hard, lazy like an arrogant bull. I had to tame it and to tame it I had to start rebuilding it.
It took me almost 35-40 days, paper work is still pending, to rebuild it.

I had to check lot of internet links for help, till one stage I was reading good info from teambhp.com but later when I wanted to ask for more I was declined a membership by teambhp moderators. I don't know on what grounds, but I was even more charged to do all the work, necessary findings by myself.

In rebuilding Cobra (that's what I name my jeep as), many people helped me.
Special thanks to my dad, noopur & rahul for some fundings :) and Nasser (the seller) who guided me on a lot of things.

So when I drove the jeep for the first time, I immediately realised that first thing to be taken care of is mechanics and later I can work on looks.

So this is all what I did to Cobra:

Stage 1 : Brake liners, clutch plates, pressure plates, bearings, front frame change, labor & miscellaneous things - Rs 11000

Stage 2: Tinkering, denting, body lining, painting(green) - Rs 15000

Stage 3: Front seat lining, all seat covers(rexine), some mats, new rear seat and replacing the old seats with cushions -  Rs 8000

Stage 4 : Old tyres from Afzal Gunj market : 265/70/R16 - 3 michelline tyres and 1 falken tyres in reasonable condition. - 1500 each = 6000  + 200 fitting +  300 (discs) + 4000(tubes + balancing)= 10500 total. My rim size was stock mm540 - 6.00 - 16" with 4.5 inch thick. A little problem in negotiating sharp curves as the steering is very hard now and I had to go with 1 disc each just at the intersection of axle and tyres to give a little more space to tyres.
The new tyres were like 7000-8000 each, I didn't wanted to invest too much on tyres since at first I wanted to check mechanicals and then do any significant investment on tyres.

Till this point jeep was running but without top.

"Top & tyres will give your jeep a breather", quoted Nasser and I couldn't agree more with this statement.

I got the top work done at Jameel's workshop in Bahadurpura. He gave me 3 options:

1) Half top - 2500
2) Simple top - 5000
3) Half top + convertible top on rear side - 8500

I chose the 3rd one and got the top work done.

Stage 5: Top work + Bars fitted (with leather covering to make 2.5inch dia bar look thicker like 4 inch)
Cost - 8500+ 2000 = 10,500

So in all 5 stages which lasted for 45 days I spent around - 52K


My raw jeep cost = 78000 + paper work(still pending) 1500 + 52000 = 1,35,500

I have to get a stand by tyre, tube,a jack, spanners, some sticker work.

Will post the pics soon :)