Mild Willys M38(ish) Build

So. It's been a busy last couple weeks. Had a different project in the shop. Now it is out getting some powder. It's a table base for our Fire Station.



It will get a nice wood beam tucked up behind the letters. Torched and a coat of poly to look nice.

Then I got back to business. Removed everything I wanted from the old frame. Then cut it up into pieces and tossed it in the scrap bin!


Then I cleaned off the table and started laying out the frame. Clamped it all up and started stitching it together.






Finally. Last night I cut a couple tubes to width and tacked them after squaring it all up so I can start laying out a bit. I should have new springs here next week so I can figure out the front and rear tubes some more. I left them longer than needed for now.



Looking for a steering box and still contemplating pedals. I still think it would be neat to re-use the stock ones. We'll see what comes up. Might try to set the body up on it this weekend so I can at least mark some lines and dimensions.

New to me this morning from a buddy of mine. Couldn't turn them down for $500 total... Gonna clean them up and find a nice spot for them in the shop.




Need to clean up a bit today so I can try to get some more work done tomorrow.

Not a ton of progress this week but I did manage to lift the body up on the table today to set it on the frame and measure some stuff out.

Since my new springs came in I decided to measure them up and mock up a little on the computer playing with shackle length and angles.

Tire is a 35. Axle located on the center pins. Springs are the 9 leaf, military wrap rear replacement units from Vintage Jeepers. Shackle length is a 5" center. I am considering the shackle pivot placement through the frame tube but might place it below instead...

First is a rough idea at ride height.


Next is with the springs compressed almost flat.


Last is droop. Or at least what I feel it might be with the shackle almost co-linear with the spring. (probably a little over dramatic)


Also a simple version of the floor of the body to see how it will lay out. I'm also at the point of deciding if I want to stretch the body a little...

Looks cool! The integrate fixed spring hanger design you can do with stock width early CJ springs is so clean! From your drawing it looks like you decided to use rear length springs on both front and rear like Mieser did on Rango? Hopefully you're going with the longer length rears on front, 'cause the stock short ones sure ride rough! Nice to have the long front end to support the longer ones.

Watch out on the shackle getting close to being co-linear with the spring at droop- a good hit would be likely to invert and lock up the shackle. Tough to get it unstuck when it happens. You could add shackle-frame stops to fix the problem, but it's cleaner to avoid the risk of inversion in the first place.

Since you have the fixed hanger positions set by their integration in the frame side plates, you might want to wait to set the shackle hanger (or frame pivot hole position) until you have close to full weight in place and can physically cycle the suspension with shackles temporarily positioned to finalize the location. I had a similar situation in my build. Even though I physically cycled the suspension early on in the build, I wish I had waited even longer to set the final shackle hanger positions. Cycling with more stuff in place behaved a little different from what I modeled out from the spring and frame dimensions, and I was initially too close to inversion on droop - especially on articulated droop. The stiffness added by the axle u-bolt clamps, the amount of droop from axle and tire weight, and side to side articulation behavior contributed to differences from what I had modeled/estimated, and I ended up chasing my tail for a while getting it finally to a good balanced shackle position. Just thought I'd mention it since it caused me some trouble.

Your frame sure is looking great so far, and I like the way the body sits on it. Great work!

Great that you went with the longer rear springs up front! Mieser's idea on that is a great one. I have a relatively stock retro 3B as well as the heavily modified one I've been working on building. Once I get the big build working, I'd like to convert the front springs on the retro one to the longer rear spring length plus a saginaw box. The original short springs really ride rough. How do you like the Vintage Jeepers springs you got so far?

Good thinking on your modeling to figure out your rear cross member and bumper. Yep, putting the eye of the shackle in the frame rail poses an issue with the shackle-bumper clearance. I see that you plan to have your bumper offset upward to help with shackle clearance, which is a nice approach. Doing a boomerang shackle shape could work nice to add further clearance if needed. Mieser provides a good boomerang example on his recent Rango posts, and he also shows a clever shackle stop he came up with to prevent shackle inversion on the front. Just a few additional ideas to throw in the mix. Keep up the great work- looking really cool!