Time flies... my LJ pickup is 14 years old

[jscherb]

14 years this month I drove my Retro Wrangler pickup for the first time. On July 26, 2008 I parked my 2006 LJ in the garage and 18 days later I drove it out as a pickup. I had spent almost a year designing the project and building the necessary parts to that design and the result was a kit of parts that went together very quickly. I call the project the Retro Wrangler because my design goal was to build a modern version of the classic Willys pickup.

As part of the design process, I did many concept drawings of what the finished pickup would look like, many engineering drawings of the parts needed for the conversion, and I even built a 1/25 scale model to make sure the proportions looked right from all angles. My projects are always about design - I typically spend more time designing than I do in construction, and that really pays off for me. The model:

Once the design work was done, I fabricated all of the necessary parts before beginning the modifications to the LJ. On July 27, 2008, I parked the LJ in the garage to begin the conversion:

Three days later, most of the disassembly was done:

The design called for lengthening the frame almost 24 inches and the easiest way to do that was to cut the frame at the back of the parallel section of the frame rails behind the front seats, cut a second LJ frame at the front of the parallel section and weld the two together. This provided the needed extra length was accomplished with only one joint on each side of the frame. I didn't know how to weld when I planned the project, but I bought a welder and taught myself to weld and then did all of the frame and sheet metal welding myself.

14 days after the disassembly photo above, I drove the new pickup out of the garage:

Back then I didn't do my own painting or sewing, so I scheduled the truck at a local body shop for paint and scheduled it at a local hot rod shop to resew the factory soft top into a half cab. Today I would do those tasks myself.

For a few months I drove it with the soft top while I worked on the hardtop. The soft top redesign kept the Sunrider feature:

The hardtop was fabricated out of a factory export CJ-7 World Cab hardtop I picked up in Wales when I lived in London two years before this project started, plus some parts from a CJ-10a half cab plus some extra sheet metal.

I haven't used the soft top since February 2009 because I like the hardtop so much.

I believe I met my original design goal to build a modern version of the classic Willys pickup...

JP Magazine liked the project so much they featured it in the July 2009 issue:

Soon after the hardtop was completed in early 2009, I drove the truck from upstate NY to Moab and tested the new truck on the trails at Easter Jeep Safari:

The truck now has about 130,000 miles on the clock (over 100,000 since it's been a pickup) and it's still a daily driver. A few weeks ago I added a 60 year old Willys ladder rack to the bed for carrying long loads (the rack slips into the stake pockets in the bed so it isn't on the truck all the time).

Back when I did this project Jeep pickups were just a memory and the Gladiator hadn't even been thought of yet. I still like my design much better than the Gladiator, I wouldn't trade my truck for a JT for anything.

I've got photos of every detail of the project so if anyone is considering building their own TJ/LJ pickup and has questions I can probably help.

 

[AggieOE]

14 years later it still looks so good and is definitely envied by many.
I never noticed it before but how come you run two smaller spares instead of one full size?

 

[jscherb]

14 years later it still looks so good and is definitely envied by many.
I never noticed it before but how come you run two smaller spares instead of one full size?

A full size spare doesn't fit very nicely on the side of the bed - the bed is the same size as the original Willys pickup bed was, which was way before today's size tires. The spares are compact spares on alloy wheels; when I'm traveling a long distance or off-road where a compact spare might not be a good idea I carry a full size spare in the bed. For example, last week I drove it to Delaware, it's about a 600 mile round trip and I had a full size spare in the bed for that trip.

 

[givemethewillys]

Your truck still looks fantastic, all these years later. It definitely has a classic look, more so than a new gladiator does with that Itty bitty bed.

I would have a heart attack shortly after cutting my jeep in half! I've thought about it often with my cj5, lengthening it to a cj6, but can't bring myself to.

 

[jscherb]

Your truck still looks fantastic, all these years later. It definitely has a classic look, more so than a new gladiator does with that Itty bitty bed.

I would have a heart attack shortly after cutting my jeep in half! I've thought about it often with my cj5, lengthening it to a cj6, but can't bring myself to.

Thank you.

Cutting a nearly-new LJ in half wasn't actually a big deal - I had done a year of very detailed design and spent a lot of that year building all the components needed for the conversion and writing a very detailed conversion project plan which broke the project into very small and easily accomplished steps, so when it came time to do the cutting there really wasn't anything unknown. I knew exactly how everything was going together and going to be done and it was just a matter of doing all the small project steps. It took only 18 days from the beginning of the disassembly until I drove it out of the garage as a pickup, and all of the design work, component fabrication and project planning worked without a hitch. Without all that preplanning and prefabrication I probably would have had a heart attack though .

 

[billiebob]

Very cool truck, using an LJ makes sense too since the LJ is rated to tow 3500# but the TJ is rated to tow 2000#. I seriously considered an AEV Brute but by the time I could afford it they quit building it. So I owned the LJ less than a year. learned I did not need the extra 16" inside and after 40 years of CJ/YJ/TJs I hated the longer wheelbase.

I now have a TJR with a bit of damage and exploded airbags..... The dream is to find a Willys pickup in need of a driveline..... or a CJ8 .... I love pickups.

 

[Zeep]

The attention to detail on all of your projects, is always outstanding!

 

[jscherb]

I've been asked some questions about half tops, both soft and hard, so here's more info than you probably ever wanted to know.

I built the hardtop for my pickup as a second phase of the project; the first top I had was a modification of the factory soft top. I came up with this modification plan:

Work in progress:

I did the mods to the soft top frame and then took the Jeep and the factory soft top canvas to a local hot rod upholstery shop and they cut and resewed the canvas to the new plan.

Since then I've taught myself to sew and I have a sewing machine capable of the heavy duty work required to resew a soft top so if I were to do the project again I'd do the sewing myself.

The soft top was only in use for a few months; as soon as I finished the hardtop I removed the soft top and haven't used it again in almost 14 years.

For a short while I used a Gr8Tops XTop half cab hardtop - Matt at Gr8Tops was nice enough to lend me one, he was interested in testing how it fit on a pickup and I wanted to see how it looked on my truck. It fit and sealed perfectly, but the it wasn't exactly the look I was going for - the original Willys trucks didn't have a flat roof so I was looking for something with a little more profile for my truck. But the Gr8Tops top was very high quality and if it was the look I wanted I could have painted it red and called it a day.

I lived in London for work for a couple of years around 2005 and while there on eBay I found a very rare (and non-existent in the U.S.) Jeep factory CJ-7 World Cab in Wales. I couldn't not buy it, so I picked it up in Wales and stored it until we moved back to the states. At the time I had a 2000 TJ so when I got home I did a quick test fit of the top on the TJ to see what mods might be required to turn it into a half cab.

And from a good friend I was able to acquire a CJ-10a half cab, which would provide the back wall of the pickup cab.

A lot of sheet metal work was required to convert the World Cab and the CJ-10a cab into a pickup half cab; I won't show all of the detail here. Modifications included lengthening the sides of the CJ-10a cab because that cab was way too short:

Changing the shape of the lower jamb to better fit and seal with the TJ doors:

Fabricating new curved upper jambs because the World Cab doors had square upper corners and I needed a jamb to fit the curved corners of the TJ doors:

And cutting and piecing together the World Cab roof:

After paint:

BTW Jeep produced two versions of the World Cab - the CJ-7 version I modified into the half cab, and a CJ-8 version. I may be the only person in the U.S. to have had both, I had a Scrambler with a World Cab in the early 2000's. The only CJ-8 World Cabs that were released in the U.S. went to the U.S. Postal Service in Alaska for rural mail delivery, they were called "Alaskan Postal CJ-8s", and I had one of those hardtops.

Technically the CJ-10a cab is also a World Cab because it has the square corner doors, but it was only used on the CJ-10a aircraft tug for the U.S. Air Force. In this next photo are all of the World Cab parts in my driveway, the CJ-7 World Cab doors with square corners are also in this photo:

I liked the CJ-8 World Cab so much that when I sold the Scrambler and bought my LJ the World Cab was the inspiration for my Safari Cab hardtop design. Here's a CJ-8 World Cab ad and my Safari Cab LJ, which I call the LJ-8 because of the CJ grill I put on it and the hardtop design inspired by the Scrambler World Cab:

Continued in the next post...

 

[jscherb]

After I finished my LJ Safari Cab and Gr8Tops licensed it to put it in production, I built a prototype half cab version of it in the same molds as the full cab. I thought Gr8Tops might be interested in producing that as well but they decided not to, so so far only one example of the Safari half cab has been made. Because it's based on the Safari Cab, which was inspired by the World Cab, the Safari half cab is almost identical to the half cab I made out of the CJ-7 World Cab.

One reason I thought G8Tops might be interested in the Safari Half Cab design is that it's the only half cab hardtop that can be installed on a TJ without modifying the roll bars - because it is modular it can be installed in separate pieces:

Being modular, it also breaks down nice and compact for storage:

Installed with no modification of the roll bars:

Gr8Top wasn't interested, so only the one prototype example was made. After test installing it on the Jeep above in 2011, it's been sitting in my basement ever since.

Probably more than anyone ever wanted to know about my half cab projects, but always happy to answer any other questions anyone might have about the half cabs or the pickup .

 

[jgaz]

Any detail is appreciated, at least by me.
I love your pickup but didn’t realize how much work went into the cab.
Also, 18 days from first cut to driving the Jeep out of the garage is impressive!
A buddy and I chopped the top on a 34 Ford and it took us two weekends and a couple of week nights.