Just rebuilt the 4-134 engine all parts are from Kaiser Willys.
So I don’t really have a love story about this Jeep. It wasn’t my grandfather’s. Nor was it my boyhood dream. And my wife and I didn’t have our first date at the drive-in movie in it. It’s a Jeep that I bought from a guy in New Jersey on Craigslist about 5 years ago and I tossed out the metal top and doors, took it to our beach house and used it to drive on the sand to surf fish or to drive 2 miles to my boat.
Recently I told my wife that I needed another car project. I have a lot of cars. She got worried that she would lose her space in the garage and suggested that maybe I should restore the CJ. So I trailered it back from the beach (wouldn’t dare drive it at highway speeds) and took the body off of the frame and used it to refine my very poor welding techniques. I cut so much rust out that I had to use angle iron to hold it together. I made a rotisserie for it with two engine stands.
Lots of my money is now invested with the guys at Kaiser Willys. But here is the finished product… well almost finished. It is painted with bed liner bumpy finish to cover up my poor body work. The hurricane 4 engine rebuilt, new mag wheels, new seats, new tail lights.
Oh so what is it? Â It’s actually a 1962 CJ-5… even though it looks like a CJ3. Â Someone in its past life cut off the front fenders.
With all this work, the single biggest problem that I had was changing the left-hand wheel studs to right hand studs… I couldn’t get the rear wheel hub off so I had to do it in place… why did they do that back in the 1960s?