Pete's 1952 CJ3a- "Barnacle Will"

[Pete]

Spent a bit of time on the 3 last night-

Fixed the sidewards install of the passenger headlight. You gotta wonder what people are thinking...

The sheetmetal part of the windshield frame at the top of the glass was bent inward about 1/2" or so, and had a deeper dent on the driver's side from falling on to the wood hood blocks.

I decided to try and straighten it out. I had a piece of tube steel that I clamped to the top outside of the frame.

And a piece of 2x on the inside with a clamp in the middle. I was able to use the middle clamp to rotate downward and push out the bend in the frame opening.

I did the same thing at the deeper dent spot with a smaller block, and some light hammering, and it came out pretty good.

After, it's mostly straight, and probably the straightest part of the jeep now

I made a CAD template of the glass, to take to the glass shop for to get a new piece cut.

A face only a jeeper could love.

I ordered a master rebuild kit for the Carter WO carb. It has seen better days, so decided to give it a complete go through.

And, the steering box parts arrived, so we will be tearing town the Ross box for a rebuild. I can't wait to see what is inside, there is so much play in there not sure how it even works at this point. There must be some serious wear on the sector shaft or worm gear.

More to come...

Pete

 

[Stakebed]

Are those later model parking lights?

 

[Pete]

Are those later model parking lights?

They appear to be a cheapo trailer marker light, and are not Willys equipment... One of the items we plan to change.
Pete

 

[Pete]

Wanted to make sure my CAD template was going to fit, so I cut chunks of the old gasket and installed them with the cardboard into the frame. Seems like a good fit, now to get a piece of glass cut.

Pete

 

[Vintage Don]

I wonder if the dropped cross member isn't part of a second-removed prior caretaker's fabricobble to get an f-head to duck under the hood?

"fabricobble" ....... don't believe I've heard that before - it just became one of my favorite words!

 

[Joe B]

Yeah,
"Fabricobble" is a term I first heard used by a Canadian youtube benchtop experimenter/comedian/engineer: AvE. (Click here for his youtube page.)

Here are translations for this and more of his colorful vocabulary. https://avedictionary.com/browse/

A fabricobble seems to be superior to a true hack job. Sometimes, you need a quick, cheap solution using what's available.

And nice job on the gasket/glass verification, Pete! Good thinking.

 

[JABJEEP]

You seem to approach things much the same as I do. I probably have a picture somewhere of a jeep with nearly a dozen different clamps holding and threaded rods bending, forming, etc. various body parts all at once!

 

[Pete]

Joseph and I spend a bunch of time on the 3A this weekend. We decided to tackle the steering box rebuild first.
Getting the box out of the jeep is a little different than the wagons. On the cj's the the box won't fit down through the space between the frame and engine block, and there isn't an access hole to to up through the floor, so the fender has to come off.

Other than getting the crusty fender off, it wasn't too bad getting the column and box out.

We found a couple of interesting things... The column tube is slightly bent where it meets the dash bracket, apparently someone took a big hit at some point in the past. The bottom of the column tube had also been welded back together where it had torn at the clamp to the steering box. Ouch...

With the box on the workbench, we opened it up to find everything we expected inside... The horn wire tube that seals the bottom of the box was hanging out, and ready to fall out completely. As a result, the bottom roller bearings had been collecting dirt fore decades and there wasn't much left of them. The lube in the box was grease, and you can see that someone had installed a grease zerk where the pipe plug is supposed to be. There was basically no lubrication going on in there at all. The bushings had about 1/16" or more play in them too...

We pulled the sector shaft out, and its apparent why there was almost a half turn of the steering wheel before anything happened inside the box.

The old worn out sector shaft next to the new replacement. You can't see it in this pic, but the shaft is also bent into a slight curve...

The pins were also loose in the holes, and ready to fall out.

The worm gear has some pitting from getting wet and full of dirt, but otherwise is in ok shape. We decided to reuse it as is.

I didn't take any other pics of the box rebuild, but we put it all back together with the new sector shaft, new roller bearings, new bushings, and new seal. We shimmed the bearings, and set the sector shaft play, and then installed it back in the frame. Good to go. There is still a bunch of play in the rest of the steering linkage, but that's for another day.

Next on our list was to try and fix the motor mounts and trans cross member mount. The engine is an early 2A block, and engine mounting plate. The 3A engines had a different mounting plate with the driver's side mount ear facing forward to make room for a dual action fuel pump. The 2A mounting plate has the ear facing the rear, and doesn't align with the frame mount. When this engine was put in, a piece of bar stock was used to connect the engine plate to the motor mount. It had rotated, and moved back some, and sat low in the frame. The trans cross member was also mounted on spacers, lowering everything down. One of the issues with this, was that the pitman arm on the steering would hit the oil pump on the block before it turned fully to the right, limiting the turning radius in that direction by about half of what it should have been.

Here's the way it was before:

And the adapter that used to be available:

At some point, this swap was common, and there was an adapter piece that you could buy to correctly mount the 2A engine plate to the 3A frame. I found pics and dimensions on one of the CJ forums, and decided to make one out of a length of tube steel I had handy. I also had a new set of motor mounts for a 6-226 on my spare engine, so we robbed them for the 3A.

By mounting the engine with this adapter, it moved forward about 1/2", and sits up in the frame where it is supposed to. The steering now turns lock to lock without hitting the engine.

Passenger side

For some reason, several of the body mounts were cut off of the frame, and replaced with a piece of angle that was welded to the frame. The bottoms of these angle pieced hung down below the frame, so we cut them off flush to get them out of the way of the crossmember which had been hung down on spacers.

Once we had the frame cleaned up, we jacked the crossmember up and into place. At this point, the hardware store was closed so we will get new bolts to today to finish up the mount.

Everything seems to fit right in the frame now. Happy that this all worked out without too much grief.

Next on our list is rebuilding the carb. The master rebuild kit should be here on wednesday, and we can get the engine tuned and running right. Then, on to installing the 11" brake kit.

More to come!

Pete

 

[tiretrx]

Some good progress, Pete.

 

[Stakebed]

That is one poor, abused Jeep. What an ugly looking steering box! You're going to become a master fabricator, well both of you actually. Great to see a father/son project.

 

[Pete]

That is one poor, abused Jeep. What an ugly looking steering box! You're going to become a master fabricator, well both of you actually. Great to see a father/son project.

We've been down this road a couple of times already... We spent about 5 years building Joseph's '51 wagon when he was in middle/high school.
It's a great way to spend time together, and I feel very lucky my boys like to spent time on the same stuff I do.
Pete

 

[Stakebed]

We've been down this road a couple of times already... We spent about 5 years building Joseph's '51 wagon when he was in middle/high school.
It's a great way to spend time together, and I feel very lucky my boys like to spent time on the same stuff I do.
Pete

You are indeed a fortunate man.

 

[rocket]

We've been down this road a couple of times already... We spent about 5 years building Joseph's '51 wagon when he was in middle/high school.
It's a great way to spend time together, and I feel very lucky my boys like to spent time on the same stuff I do.
Pete

Pete In "Joseph's 51 wagon build"https://www.oldwillysforum.com/forum/index.php?threads/josephs-51-wagon-build.2989/, midnight burn offered to send you a solid linkage wiper kit because of the snow country you live in. Did you get it,? are they avaliable? and are there any pictures???
Thanks Rodney

 

[rocket]

Great find Pete. Looks like a fun father - son project.

 

[Stakebed]

Pete In "Joseph's 51 wagon build"https://www.oldwillysforum.com/forum/index.php?threads/josephs-51-wagon-build.2989/, midnight burn offered to send you a solid linkage wiper kit because of the snow country you live in. Did you get it,? are they avaliable? and are there any pictures???
Thanks Rodney

thinkin' the same thing.
I saw he hasn't been here since 2015.

 

[rocket]

thinkin' the same thing.
I saw he hasn't been here since 2015.

One of his last post he said he took a tumble and bruised himself up and sprained an ankle. Don't know him, or if he's even still with us.

 

[Stakebed]

Joseph was supposed to buy his frame so I'm sure Pete knows him. I havent read all of Joseph's build thread. No spoilers please.

 

[Pete]

Pete In "Joseph's 51 wagon build"https://www.oldwillysforum.com/forum/index.php?threads/josephs-51-wagon-build.2989/, midnight burn offered to send you a solid linkage wiper kit because of the snow country you live in. Did you get it,? are they avaliable? and are there any pictures???
Thanks Rodney

We used the factory cable wiper system in Joseph's wagon. I don't know if Midnightburn ever followed through on a solid linkage wiper system or not.
Kevin is alive and well, and since we bought his frame for the wagon, he has gone on to found American Vintage 4x4 in Meridian, Idaho, and is turning out amazing Jeeps.

Pete

 

[rocket]

We used the factory cable wiper system in Joseph's wagon. I don't know if Midnightburn ever followed through on a solid linkage wiper system or not.
Kevin is alive and well, and since we bought his frame for the wagon, he has gone on to found American Vintage 4x4 in Meridian, Idaho, and is turning out amazing Jeeps.

Pete

Good to hear he is still around.

 

[Pete]

Joseph and I tackled the carb rebuild a few nights ago. We pulled the carb off, and cleaned up the intake manifold a bit.

I bought a master rebuild kit for the Carter WO from Dan Sharon. It's a nice, high quality, and complete kit.

There are 1 million parts in a Carter WO. Who knew?

Dan's kit comes with ever single part.

Once we had it all apart, I had no idea how it all went back together. Fortunately, Joseph remembers everything he sees, and just put it all back together like he'd done it a dozen times before.

Here's the carb, completely stripped down for cleaning.

Joseph made a little drift out of aluminum rod to put the aluminum plugs back into the carb.

All back together and back on the engine.

The linkage on the carb is pretty worn, and the throttle linkage from the pedal to the carb has been re-jiggered many times, so getting it all dialed in took some work. It still isn't quite right, but it works ok. We adjusted the bits on the carb to spec, and will fine tune it later.

Next we took a better look at the exhaust. What I thought was a new exhaust (glancing at it before we bought it) turned out to be a new Bubba home-brewed exhaust. It's not the correct muffler or muffler placement, the pipe diameter is smaller than it is supposed to be, the head pipe was bent with a bender but pinches down at each bend rather than a clean sweep like factory, and the pipe flange was cut of of a thin plate with a torch/grinder. So, basically a complete hack. With nothing to lose, we cut it up and re-positioned all the bits so that they would clear without rubbing, with the intention of replacing it all at some point down the road.

Once we had the motor mounts fixed, and the rear engine support crossmember bolted directly to the frame, we could locate the pipe and muffler to clear the crossmember and bottom of the tub. Joseph did a bit of cut and paste, and it's all back under there and will fork fine for now.

I'm sure the axle is going to hit the pipe on a deep twist, the pipe hangs lower than the bump stop, and the muffler is under the gas tank which doesn't seem like a good idea long term. A correct new exhaust from front to back is only about $130, so this is definitely temporary. Once we start wheeling this thing, this will get mangled as is.

Last night, after getting the exhaust back on, we fired it up to see if it would run better after the carb rebuild, and it seems to. Still need to adjust the valves, replace the cap and rotor, set the timing and dwell, before it will run like it should.

I ordered new brake rubber lines, and new wheel studs to start the process of installing the 11" brakes. Once we have the brakes done, it should be relatively road worthy.

More to come!

Pete