Andre van der Sandt
The story of my Willys.I bought the Willys for $1500. It had a fibreglass body with a Ford Essex V6
and a homemade chassis. My plan was to fit a Toyota 4Y motor as it already
had the gearbox and t/case. We started by obtaining an original chassis
which was butchered quite severely. We proceeded to repair the chassis and
fitted the motor and gearbox.When I visited a friend who was also in the process of building a Willys
CJ-2A, I saw that he had a set of original rims which he was not planning on
using. As I already have a lot of extreme 4×4`s, I changed my plan
completely and decided to build an original looking Willys. I then had to
cut the body lift out and proceeded to build it to be a practical 4×4.It has disc brakes front and rear, a home built steering column with a
non-power assisted Toyota steering box and 7.50×16 tires with 4.38 diff
ratios. It is able to cruise at 70mph and draws a lot of attention wherever
I go. I drive it daily and with the setup as it is, it will not require big
maintenance as all the components used have a reputation of lasting forever.I did a round trip of around 200 miles yesterday. On the hills and against
the wind it cruises at 57mph, on level roads I managed 65mph and downhill
75mph. I think my motor needs a tune as I did not expect to lose speed on
hills although the motor has only done 400 miles since new.Regards
Andre` van der Sandt
South AfricaPs next projects are a Unimog 404 and an FC150.
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