Old Postal Jeep Delivers Big LS V8-powered Burnouts
Postal rig from the 1960s doesn’t just ‘mail it in,’ it uses every ounce of its 1990s Jeep grunt to turn its rear tires into smoke.
The Jeep DJ put in a lot of years with the US Postal Service, delivering millions of cards, letters, and packages. Since production ended in the 1980s, many of them have lived out their golden years as prized possessions of a cult following. The DJ in this video from the Hoonigan Daily Transmission YouTube channel is still working – and every move it makes is a rush delivery.
This 1968 DJ-5 belongs to a man named Jared Micallef. Instead of leaving it as it was in its civil service years, he swapped out a variety of its parts for more robust hardware. With the exception of the front wheels from a Mercury Grand Marquis, Micallef kept things in the Jeep family.
No LS swap here. The DJ had a non-stock engine in it even when Micallef got it. He ripped that out and replaced it with the 5.2-liter V8 from a two-wheel-drive 1996 Grand Cherokee. Micallef says, “I drove it into my garage on a Saturday. The following Saturday, I drove it out with the V8.”
Not only did Micallef take the ZJ’s heart, he harvested some of its bones, too. He installed its front end, including its disc brakes, but he made a major modification to it. Micallef says, “The newer Jeep front end had all the control arms and all that crap on it so I cut them off and converted it to leaf.” By doing that swap, he gave his Jeep an unusual wider-in-the-front-than-in-the-back look.
Micallef’s DJ rides on a wheelbase that’s only 81 inches long. It transmits its power through a driveshaft that’s proportionally short. “My driveshaft’s measurements from center of the U-joint to center of the U-joint is 9 7/16s [inches].” The diff is not perfect, but that doesn’t stop Micallef from using it to light up his rear tires.
The Hoonigan Burnyard, aka the Irwindale Speedway in Irwindale, California, is the perfect place for Micallef to do that. When he starts the DJ, it sounds like a NASCAR racing machine firing up. The 318 under the hood has no trouble turning the skinny rear tires into smoke dispensers. They send up massive clouds of vaporized rubber bigger than the tiny vehicle they’re attached to.
If he wanted to, Micallef could get quite a unique delivery service going with his positively bonkers postal Jeep – as long as his customers didn’t mind everything they ordered smelling like slaughtered tires.
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