JEEP UPKEEP AND MODIFICATIONS

Prickly Pear jeep modified and ready for off-road adventures

Story by dalondo Moultrie Photos by Felicia Frazar

Tooling around in her diesel-guzzling Dodge Ram 3500 Mega Cab began to hurt her pocketbook so Seguin resident Danielle Meyers decided she wanted something different.

Once she cruised the market, nothing really caught her eye for a while, but then she saw it. The 2015 Jeep Wrangler Sahara JKU had to be hers, even if the gas mileage wasn’t much better.

“All I liked was the Jeep,” Meyers said.

Turns out, it was a good buy. Meyers calls the SUV the Prickly Pear because it is the color of a cactus flower.

Over the last year or so, she has taken a keen liking to the Jeep and its capabilities. One of her favorite things now, Meyers said, is taking the mid-size sport utility vehicle off road.

Her face lights up when she talks about “wheeling.”

“You literally just go on some ranch somewhere and drive over big things or trails,” Meyers said.

To keep up with her wheeling and keep the Jeep up to par for the roads and off roads, Meyers performs a majority of the vehicle’s upkeep herself.

In the nearly 18 months Meyers has owned “her,” the Seguinite has performed several upgrade and maintenance jobs on the Jeep.

She changed the thermostat and repaired a malfunction in which one headlight shone bright while the other was normal. The headlight issue baffled her for a bit but she did what any good tech does: She turned it off and then on again, basically.

“One headlight was low beam, the other was high-beam,” Meyers said. “I just unplugged the headlights and it was fixed.”

When it comes to maintenance, Meyers said she does “pretty much anything” that doesn’t deal with computers or electronics under the hood.

She recently installed a 3.5-inch lift kit that she pieced together to give Prickly Pear’s suspension a boost. It allows her to cover more ground and scale over larger objects while off-roading

But of all the upgrades, she is most pleased with the job she did in one particular area.

“My proudest accomplishment is I gutted the entire sound system and upgraded it,” Meyers said.

She installed an aftermarket head unit and a five-channel amplifier. She mounted tweeters on corners above the dashboard and affixed a sound bar on the ceiling of the vehicle between the front and rear seats.

Meyers built a subwoofer box that includes a subwoofer to exquisitely accompany the amp and match its ranges, she said.

“The inside of the box is specific to this sub and it is perfect,” Meyers said.

For several months, Meyers — who is a member of the Canyon Lake Fire Department — kept herself extra busy working her way through paramedic school. After graduating and getting her license for that, she felt a trip was in order.

She took a Valentine’s Day excursion to Big Bend, a place where the Prickley Pear cactus grows wildly, for a little relaxation. And of course she planned to get in some prime wheeling. 2015 Jeep Wrangler Sahara JKU 3.6L engine Automatic transmission 33-inch tires with 20-inch rims Dana 30 axle in front and Dana 44 axle in rear