CJ5 Resto-Mod Project

You are correct, it has the 4 bolt box with the 3 bolt frame. Do you think it will still need the brace in light of the fact that it's not a rock crawler and only running 31" tires?

I have had pretty good luck buying replacement panels from Classic Enterprises. Installing the parts...? It's like hanging a door casing on a crooked door jamb. Do you want it plumb and level or do you want it to look right? These transition era Jeep bodies were not very well built to begin with, having variances from side to side so that measurements taken on one side do not match the measurements taken on the other side. I'm doing as much as I can to fix these problems, but I have to draw the line somewhere.

It's going to look great when it's done, but the work to get there may not have been worth it.

Yes, but you could never turn the wheel lock to lock on dry pavement with one finger before.


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So I should brace that 4th hole then. Thanks for the input.

Speaking of power steering. I had a hell of a time finding the brackets for the power steering pump, and I eventually gave up when I found out how much people wanted for them. I made my own bracket and sourced my own pulley to use on the CJ7 pump. After hearing from friends in the industry how hard they are to track down, I've decided I want to make them for sale.

If anybody here needs a setup, let me know.
 
So I should brace that 4th hole then. Thanks for the input.

Speaking of power steering. I had a hell of a time finding the brackets for the power steering pump, and I eventually gave up when I found out how much people wanted for them. I made my own bracket and sourced my own pulley to use on the CJ7 pump. After hearing from friends in the industry how hard they are to track down, I've decided I want to make them for sale.

If anybody here needs a setup, let me know.

03f87f8982d62e7e4f087e949f76e02c.jpg


A picture is worth a thousand words. This is what I was talking about and should keep that cast steel mount from becoming a grenade on you. Watch for cracks and enjoy. You will have a head turner for certain.



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Got the majority of the work on the tub finished. Probably only one day left, and that's all fine tuning. The tunnel cover will be installed before paint, so it has a factory an appearance as possible, so I need to prep and paint the mating surfaces and then bolt it up. More on that later.

Below are some of the floor pan install pics. You'll see how I painted the interior of the box sections before welding.





All welded and feathered in. Even without filler, it's almost impossible to see the welded seams.



This area was particularly troublesome. There was a bit of rust in the tunnel here, plus all the aforementioned holes drilled and even a couple spots where someone attacked it with a cutoff wheel. It's pretty straight, but spot putty will be needed to make it perfect.



The underside of the tub has been finished too, so that even when looking from the underside, it will be hard to tell that any welding has been done. I'm a stickler for details.
 
At some point in the life of this Jeep, someone installed another fuel tank under the driver's seat, which meant cutting a hole in the outer body skin for a filler neck. That had to be patched too.



More attention to detail up front means a lot less work later. In this case, making the patch panels fit perfectly, and then TIG welding them in means less warpage and less welding to grind off, plus minimal potential for pinholes in the weld.

Since the hole was cut into the profiled area, a couple bends were made in the patch.





Perfect fit.



TIG welded in place.

 
Five weeks later... body tub off to paint on Monday. I've spent a lot of time fine tuning all the panels, seams, joints, etc to make sure this Jeep doesn't look "over restored", by that I mean, where there's a factory spot weld, I want it to show, where a seam was sealed from the underside, I too applied seam sealer from the underside so as to not show it, and the panels are not "arrow straight" as this would be a sure sign of thick body filler.

I did, however do some body work on the interior panels, just to smooth out some wrinkles (so to speak) and I did apply a skim coat of filler on the entire body sides, because as they left the factory, there was much to be desired. The thickness of the filler is no more than a credit card. The hardest part of this process was sticking to my plan of not over restoring it.

One final touch I will be doing, before it goes to the painter's, is to seal the tunnel covers to the floor using seal sealer and OEM bolts, so that the seam sealer and bolt heads get painted...just like stock.

Here are some pics of the progress.

Drying after metal etch and pressure washing.



Interior skim coat.



 
Paint choices? I've narrowed it to two.

Working from color charts and misinformation (the web sucks), I think I have narrowed it to "harvest tan" and "autumn wheat". And searching for harvest tan, autumn wheat actually comes up first. Massive cofusion... My other worry is that the darker color won't look right on the CJ5 front fenders. Looks great on a flatty, but the bulbous fenders of the later body style might give too much color to the frontal area. Maybe I'm overthinking this.

So here are the two choices.



 
Why black windshield frame? There's a precedent for it and it will break up the body colors into the right proportions. I want it to feel like a farmer's Jeep from the 60's, not a beach bikini or military Jeep.

 

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