My intent when I got the CJ was to use it in this spring's novice run and figured I would document how I got it there.
My start to the novice ride actually began back in October of last year when I brought home a stock 79 CJ7 that my father made me tag along with to inspect for him to purchase. When I saw it sitting on the side of the road my first words were "hey that would be sweet on a novice ride and to run to the store for ice cream runs on the weekends.". 6 months later I would do both on the same day. I have always liked old CJ's and was really in the market for a Willys.. specifically a CJ3B since the high hoods are sweet. I would have also liked a CJ5 since its dimensions are similar to a Samurai and figured a 30-33" tire on one would be a sleeper trail rig like sammies are. My dad waffled on buying it due to the lack of power assisted necessities and I ended up bringing it home to either fix and sell or use as a mild off roader.
So the road to novice began with the purchase, while looking at the jeep we saw a good frame, T18 trans, and it seemed to run okay (I have low standards limited to does it hold oil in the pan while running and doesnÂ’t burst into flames. Check!) But it had body rust, no power steering or brakes and someone used a tree to stop with the passenger front fender with damage limited to the bumper, fender and a bent leaf spring. Mental list: to go off road it needs brakes gone through, oil change and carb rebuilt.
Time and money were an issue for many months, it took a month to save up and rebuild the carb, another 2 months to go through the brakes (good thing I did, only 1 caliper worked out of the whole system) and while poking around I found 10 out of 11 body mounts had rusted out. It got a fuel and ignition tune up using Ford 300 6cyl ignition parts for the big distributor cap and new upper/lower radiator hoses. It looks like the radiator has been “repaired” from the tree incident where the fan and radiator kissed but I have not had any cooling or leaking issues so it’ll stay put until a good use one can be found or I can pony up the $300 for a new brass one.
Body mounts were kind of a buzz kill, had to weigh the options of completely replace, pull tub to fix properly or just have some plates cut and plop them on top of the rusted out mounts to burn in place for a speedy repair. I opted for the last option due to time, space and cost. Removing the old mounts went better than expected with only 3 broken bolts and 1 rear body mount completely gone from the body. All other body mounting locations were structurally sound and we only had to open up one hole under the rear seat to get to a bolt lodged in a cage nut. New poly mounts with new hardware were installed and temporary fixes done to the body side of the rear cross member mounts out of ¼” steel.
With a solidly located body I drove it across town to the local muffler shop to fix exhaust pipe leaks. I had already installed a new down pipe donut gasket and put a Felpro exhaust/intake manifold gasket in to ensure no leaks since from the factory there was no exhaust gasket. My aim was to ensure no fumes in the cab since my son loves to go for rides on our property in the “rock crawler”. The original converter likely blew all its fillings into the original muffler and was deemed trash. The final product from the muffler shop was a nice, clean and very tucked install that left the edge of the tailpipe flush with the end of the rear bumper. Love how quiet it is vs the 4runner that sounds reminiscent of a V8 and is a little too obnoxious for a stock vehicle, my argument on the runner is it sounds like it looks but I might be getting a little old for the noise now.
ItÂ’s funny how all of those seem sort of trivial given what we do to modify vehicles for trail duty with axle/engine swaps but it felt like a ton of work!
The one thing I stayed up working on but could not finish was getting my old Warn 8274 winch mounted. My father had gone through it a few years ago and cleaned/ greased it up and found 1 bad solenoid. We also were missing the controller but a simple industrial hoist switch was rigged up in the interim since replacement remotes are about $80. Unfortunately the winch was mounted to an old Warn universal mount and not the CJ specific mount that offsets the winch for headlight clearance so it has yet to be installed but is on my list before another trail ride.
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