I purchased my 1949 CJ2A from a newspaper ad in 1989. I am a little surprised that I am still driving it 27 years later but once the Jeep juices get in your system, they never leave. Shortly after purchasing it, it started smoking badly. A friend and I overhauled the motor. At the machine shop, they discovered a crack in the block down the third cylinder wall. A metal instructor at the local tech college repaired the crack and we have not have the motor open since.
The restoration began in 1997. I had never taken on a project like this before, but I figured if man built this vehicle, I should be able to rebuild it. Whenever I would get stumped, I would think “if it mechanical, it has to be logical” and proceed to figure out why something worked the way it did. Modern technology has nothing on the men who figured out how to build motors, transmissions, transfer cases, etc. with nothing but a pad of paper and an idea!
My 2A is unique and gets a lot of attention at Willys gatherings from both the 2A and 3A crowds. It was titled a 1949 but the serial number tag places it in the 1948 range, although I have been told many times that these tags were not put on vehicles in any certain order. Most “experts” tell me that my Jeep was manufactured near the end of the 2A run. It is mostly 2A but I have a 3A frame, three 2A springs and one 3A spring, a 3A right front fender (with the early 3A “bubble” for the battery tray) and a 3A air cleaner. I have several “options” that include a passenger side heater, a steering arm shock absorber, a rain trough under the hood hinge, and a trailer hitch. My goal in the restoration was to recreate the Jeep as closed to when it came from the factory as possible.
My restoration was completed while we lived in Minnesota under the watchful eye of Louis Larsen who owned Willys Minneapolis. Since moving to Ohio I have added a rear seat, correct parking lights, and other mechanical fixes from Kaiser Willys. I drive my Jeep often and have taken it to Toledo for the Jeep employees car show a few times (Jeep11 photo). I drive it often and always let kids climb up in the seat to beep the horn in the Jeep!
Bruce Linafelter
Cincinnati, OH