I feel like the words “soap and water” have been involved in at least 75% of my conversations of the last week or so. You can’t completely defeat everything in life with soap and water, but washing and general hygiene go a long way towards maintaining a healthy life. What’s the statement…”Cleanliness is next to godliness”? That quip, which traces back to a 1778 sermon by John Wesley, might have less to do with getting your funky neighbor to wash their butt and more about selling soap, but either way, there is a degree of truth to it. It’s why my first recommendation to anyone who is starting out with a new project car is to wash and detail what you have on your hands, because you want to eliminate the grit and grime that never needed to be there in the first place.

As part of the Kars 4 Kids charity, AMMO NYC took on a Jeep Wrangler Sahara that had been sitting in a Copart yard on death row for their next cleaning and return to life. The YJ didn’t seem that bad…just dirty. If this Jeep was sent off simply because of disgusting carpets and algae and mold all over the paint, that would be a shame indeed, so here’s what it took to bring this rig from scrapyard back row refugee to a gleaming, revised version of itself that deserved to be put back on the road.