1947 Willys CJ-2a retro-wheeler (build)

[jalbrecht42]

With the drivetrain done, time to get everything put together and installed.



Resurfaced flywheel with new ring gear installed



The new pilot bushing gave me a lot of trouble . I bought two, from two different sources. Before install they were fine, but after install the ID had shrunk just a little too much to fit on the input shaft. I made this little socket-duct tape-emery cloth flap wheel thing and carefully sanded the ID until I was able to get the input shaft to fit.



Found out my old input shaft made for one heck of a nice clutch alignment tool



New clutch from Herm. I miss my old clutch, it was so light! This new one is a little stiffer than what I have in my 1/2 ton pickup, but it's not bad and engages very nicely.

[jalbrecht42]

Here it is all bolted together and ready to go in the chassis



Engine is in but......



The master cylinder, brake lines, and bellhousing are NOT happy. Neither am I.

[jalbrecht42]

So for the 150th time, I have yet another brake MC interference problem. Yay.

This is why I regret not just bending the pedal arm over. Not much space here.



I first tried a set of 90 degree banjo fittings (from Herm). Well, they didn't fit either. The fitting itself was as wide as the gap, there was no way to get the bolt in.

Next I tried adapting some large diameter tubing (probably 3/8") running from the large diameter hole on the brake MC down, to an adapter and into the normal 3/16" diam tubing.

This didn't fit either.

So finally, by pure dumb luck I found out that you can get oversized fittings for 3/16" brake line!! I guess in some cars (probably most all jeeps) they use the oversized fitting on drum brake applications to keep you from mixing things up. Well, with one of these fittings plumbed onto a 3/16" line everything finally fits!!



Yet another reason I hate my local parts stores. It would have been so nice if they would have mentioned this fitting during the 20 some odd times I was there scrounging for some way to connect the big flare MC to the 3/16" brake line.

[jalbrecht42]

OD:

One of my friends sold me an OD off of his M38A1 project remains... I had Herm go through it was all new syncros, bearings and other small parts that he deemed necessary. Since he only charges around 20 or 30 for labor--I decided to go that route vs doing it myself.



The gear assembly on the left hand side is the part that you have to change to work with the various gear tooth count combinations out there (or the low gear kits).

It's a planetary gear set where the output shaft of the transmission drives the planet carrier, and the ring gear/bull gear (the visible gear on the left) drives the gears in the t-case. In 1:1 the planet carrier is engaged to the ring gear assembly and the sun gear (shown on the right) is free to spin along for the ride. In overdrive the sun gear is locked to the case, forcing the planet gears to spin around the sun gear, in turn spinning the ring gear (and the visible bull gear) faster, giving you a .75:1 overdrive.

First, install the planetary gearset/bull gear into the t-case and tighten down the nut with a socket extension (it's square drive, can't remember 3/8 or 1/2").



Next you have to wiggle a keeper and a special 4 lobed snap ring into place deep down inside this thing. This is such a pain in the ass you may choose at this point to remove the OD and put it up on Ebay instead of installing it. But it is worth it.



After that, install the oil pickup rail and plop the rest of the OD into the back of the t-case. This came out of a jeep with a T90 so the shift lever and bracket fit and bolted up to my T90.

[jalbrecht42]

At this point, all that was left were the little details. Bleed the brakes, install driveshafts, torque u-bolts, add fluids, etc.

Eventually I got to the point where I was ready to fire the motor!



We were taking bets, would it fire first time? Maybe?

No.

Like EVERYTHING this was yet another battle. I think it took me about 3 or 4 days worth of tinkering.

I had fuel.

I had spark



I had compression

The motor spun over fast (freshly rebuilt starter, new Optima battery)

Fuel was fresh

Reajusted valves

Re checked timing.



Then rechecked it again

I rechecked my points.

Still would not run.

Also, a nice bonus, I saw that coolant was seeping out all around the head gasket. Nice.

[jalbrecht42]

The pains continued. Like an idiot trying to piss in the corner of a round room, I just kept going around in circles trying to get this thing to work. I had spark, it was happening at the right time, I had fuel, I had compression. WTF!!!!!

Eventually one of the things I tried worked. I polished the terminals on my coil and distributor and put on a new coil wire. And it started!

Short video running at 2000rpm during cam break in.

[jalbrecht42]

I can't believe how rewarding it was to finally have it running!

After the cam break in, I readjusted the valves, retorqued the head bolts (which quelled the head gasket leak), changed the oil, bungee corded the gas can on the front, C-clamped a piece of wood on the frame to sit on and took it for a drive

They call this a "drivable chassis" and no joke, it is. There is even a gas pedal of sorts bolted to the back of the engine. I only took it up to about 10-15mph but was able to hit 3rd OD as well as all the other gears. Ultimate old school go-cart Sorry no pics though.

[jalbrecht42]

So at this point I had a fully overhauled chassis. It was late April and the nice weather was finally here. I decided the best bet was to basically "clean up" the body and reinstall so I could enjoy it for the summer.

First step was stripping out the remainder of the P.O. wiring job. Actually to his credit the wiring wasn't half bad. It was labeled, it was logical, he used pretty decent wire, it even had a couple of fuses (but only a couple). I probably didn't need to replace it, but decided to anyway just for peace of mind.



This is about 1/2 of it...


Tub. (I love west coast bodies)

[jalbrecht42]

Investigating the underside.



Some of the hat channel is rusted out...


But at least the floors are original and okay.

[jalbrecht42]

Scraped off all the oil, grease, crud and loose rust. Washed it down with Marine Clean. Judging by the floor and up under the dash, the original color was Luzon Red.



Treated all the rusty and questionable spots with POR-15



Top coated with a layer of black tractor paint for a uniform look.

[jalbrecht42]

I also painted the fenders and other body panel parts to match.



I just used a little cheapy foam roller for most of this and a regular brush for the crevesses and corners. Worked great! (Don't expect a gloss finish though)

[jalbrecht42]

One last look at the chassis before the body goes on...


Once the paint had dried, we set the body on the chassis.


I hate rusty bolts and decided to go with all stainless bolts on the chassis. Not shown, but I got all new rubber isolator pads too. I thought about upgrading from the stock style reinforced rubber belting to a round poly puck, but didn't get around to it.

[jalbrecht42]

Next up was wiring the chassis. I decided to go with a kit from e-z wiring

I went with their Mini 12 kit because I wanted a minimum amount of circuits, I wanted something small and I wanted something affordable.

In retrospect, I think the standard 12 circuit kit might have been a better choice, but the mini one is fine. Note, by mini, that means it uses those little bitty fork shaped fuses, like what GM has started using lately.

Overall I thought the kit components were of good quality. I thought the wire was good and have had no problems with any terminations. I love having the labels all along each wire.

I have some gripes, but they are very minor.
-The colors are kind of a rainbow assortment of bleh, I think they may offer an all black kit, and maybe that would be better, maybe not.

-The fuse block does not have a provision for mounting it to the body. It looks like it is supposed to clip into some type of bracket, but this bracket is not included. And there isn't any easy way to bolt it down.

-While all the wires are more than long enough, the ignition wires were a little on the short side, which forced me to locate the fuse block in close proximity to the ignition switch. In retrospect, I would have liked to have located it in my glove box. (Oh yeah, the P.O. added a CJ-5/7 glove box to my dash, it's not stock, but it's really handy!)

-The instructions were annoying. They are somewhat condescending, but not particularly informative. All I wanted was a simple wiring schematic, which it does not have. Instead it's more of a "plug this into that" type of thing.

(As you've probably noticed by now I'm not really the type that just likes to blindly follow instructions. I tend to want to re-engineer the whole damn thing, eventually ending up back where I would have been if I'd just followed the directions in the first place )

Only other complaint is that I think the extras included in the kit--butt splices, heat shrink, etc are just the cheapy walmart variety. Nothing wrong with it, but I'd just assume they leave them out and knock 5 bucks off the price.

[jalbrecht42]

First step (for me) was to lay out the harness so that I could understand how everything was hooked up. This isn't something you have to do, it was something I felt compelled to do because I'm just that way.

I wanted to understand what wires were switched with the ignition, which were not, which ones were fused, which ones were not, how the blinkers and such were wired, etc. Like I said above, a wiring schematic would have been nice.



Once I had that mess figured out and had removed some of the extra wires I didn't need (which turned out to be very few) I then laid it out in the interior and started running wires.



Front lights, tow bar hookup and horn circuits


Engine wiring I love flattys.

[jalbrecht42]

At first I was planning to buy some high quality butt splices and connectors, but my friend insisted that every joint be soldered and heat shrinked. I said screw that, I hate soldering... well, he insisted and said it would only take 5 minutes to do it. (Yeah right!) I said he was welcome to it... and he did it! He did a nice job, thanks again John!

One of my quandaries here was the blinker switch. If you only have a double element bulb in the rear, you can't just run a toggle switch for the blinkers. This is because you need to blink the brake light... I considered going with the column mounted switches that everybody else has, but my old CJ-5 had one and I hated it. I have no idea why I hated it, it worked great, but I just didn't like it.

The PO had wired in a 2 layer rotary contact switch (it's basically like a 8tuplet pole triple throw mega switch that lets you do anything you want) and I just reused that for a blinker switch. I failed to get a picture of it, but about 2/3 of that wiring on the left goes to it.



Speaking of blinkers, I wanted my marker lights to blink and mark. The ones on this jeep are from something else, I'm going to guess a later CJ-5? I'm not sure, they came with the jeep. Anyway, using a dual element amber bulb and a matching "Ford-style" bulb holder, some ultra black RTV and a dremel tool I made the following..



Wiring up the rest of the grill. I used a couple of trailer connectors so that I could remove it without having to cut any wire.

[jalbrecht42]

With a lot of the wiring done, but no interior in yet, I decided to scuff up the floor and give it a quick/fresh coat of paint. I only did the front portion that would be harder to get to later. Did not do the back (and still haven't).

[jalbrecht42]

With all the wire terminations done and the jeep at the 95% done point I was really on a role. So much so that the photo/progress ratio started to swing heavy in the favor of progress.

Well, when I was to the point where I thought I had one last long weekend left my buddy decided that enough was enough, him and his wife wanted peace and quiet for a weekend, garage was closed for the weekend. Ackk! I was so close!! (not that I blame them at all)

So what do I do... well, I probably should have just left it there and gone hiking or something, but no, I felt compelled to drag the project back to my apartment to finish.

First thing I learned. When you pull your jeep onto the trailer, make sure the trailer is attached to the truck. 2nd thing I learned. When you drive up on the trailer and the tongue springboards 6' in the air, slides forward and hovers over the top of your new $1000 tonneau cover, DO NOT back off the trailer. Whups. Damn.

But I got lucky

3rd thing I learned: With the trailer tongue resting on top of the bumper don't think you can just drive off without hooking the trailer to the hitch.



Yeah, it was one of those kind of days.

Temp drivers seat



All good

[jalbrecht42]

So once I finally made it home, time to get back to work.


Gas tank in and more wiring..


One note. I chose to make a fresh fuel line with brake tubing. It came out fine, but three things I learned that I would definitely do if I had it to do over again.

1) Put in a drain cock on the drain hole of the gas tank. This way you can hook up a hose and actually drain the tank into a bucket instead of showering everything in a 3' radius of the drain hole.

2) Put a shutoff valve on the bottom of the tank where the fuel line connects



3) Run the fuel line completely inside the frame from start to finish. I ran the last 2' of it around the steering box and I think it is contributing to vapor lock problems.

[jalbrecht42]

Once that was done, all I had left was to bolt on the fender, hood, windshield and seats.

Last pics of the open engine bay. It will never be this clean again...





Almost done...

[jalbrecht42]

After just a few more bolts and wires and headlights... it's DONE!!!

[jalbrecht42]

Interior

[jalbrecht42]

Wait, did I say it was done? hah ha, no jeep is ever done!!

A few other details I did, actually prior to the overhaul. Thought they might be useful for somebody.

Hood blocks. Made these out of some white oak I picked up at a hardware store. Finished them off with some varnish. I made these to the original dimensions I found on the web, but to do it over again, I would have made them probably 1" tall not 1.75". It's amazing how many people ask me why I have a few pieces of wood stuck to my hood.

Dimensions used were:
4" x 1-3/4" tall x 1-1/8" wide
(2) 3/16" holes on 2-1/2" center

I made four since I had that much material and a jig already set up.

[jalbrecht42]

I also added a bar and some harnesses. I didn't want harnesses, but I also didn't like the way the hub of the steering wheel sits about a foot from my nose. Having heard stories (bad ones) about a mouth full of steering wheel hub I wanted to do something. I'm not totally happy with this setup, but here's what I did.

Added a crossbar to the stock hoop:


And some small roundbar keepers to keep the belt centered behind you.


As seen on the ^^ pics I added some really thick padding as a neck/headrest of sorts. I don't really like how this is, but I'm not sure what else to do. With the bar lower the belts would seriously compress your back. You want the belts basically even with the top of your shoulders.

For belts I went with these corbeaus. 2" Y style.


They are a lot easier to deal with than a regular harness. I still have to give everybody a tutorial though. On the one hand, with the cute girls I don't mind. On the other hand the girls with big (.)(.) tend to shy away for some reason. I remember just getting these belts in and me and my buddy and his girlfriend go to go for a ride. We offer for her to ride up front, she sees the belts and is like, "uhhhh.... I'm riding in the back". He looks at me like, hmm, maybe these belts were a bad idea after all.

[jalbrecht42]

And... the one part of my build I farmed out. The exhaust.

I had him use 1.75" tubing routed in the original manner. I think to do it over again I would probably bump up to 2". It seems like it has a little less power now than it did before with the original 3' exhaust pipe that dumped under my seat.

It's really hard to put this much effort into a rig and then farm something out. Reason being your expectations are probably not attainable, at least not for any reasonable amount of money. Overall the guy that did it did an okay job. I can tell he really put some effort into it and really cared about what he was doing and I felt that he really appreciated the hard work I had put into the jeep. He stood by his price (which wasn't bad, $200) and had it done when he said it would be done. So I can't really complain, but I do wish it was a little better.

-There are a lot of (kinked) bends
-Muffler should have been rotated up higher
-I think there were a few places the pipe could have been routed a tiny bit higher (every bit helps)
-The muffler is kind of loud and blatty around idle. (but not when you get on it).

Down pipe:


Pipe back to muffler:


Muffler


Rear view

[jalbrecht42]

Once it was back together, I drove it a lot. Had it out on the trail probably a week or two later...

Step one, find a vehicle even less reliable than yours (so you look good). (sorry Galen)



Next, keep your expectations reasonable. Surround yourself with slower vehicles than your own. (and pass them )



Yee-Haaa!