Build Thread Bill's 75 CJ5 ground up rebuild

Build Thread Bill's 75 CJ5 ground up rebuild
Poppa - Thanks :chug: I'm a little amazed at how far I've gotten with it too, but with the weather we had from Feb. to May, was able to spend a lot of time in the garage, cause it was too nasty to be outside. I'm hoping to have it driveable by the end of summer, then finish all the detail stuff as I have time and money.

I got a bit of an early Christmas present yesterday from a client my company just finished a big remodel for (building garages for his toys). This guy has been building 4x4's for years. He gave me a large box full of accessory stuff for the Jeep. Taillights, marker lights, some Auto Meter gauges, head light rock guards, a radio, chrome hood hinges, hood holdowns, a billet aluminum battery hold down and a bunch of other stuff I'm still sorting through. He had a 76 CJ5 that he sold and just wanted to clean some of the stuff he still had for it out of his garage. Most of the stuff is brand new and still in the packages. It's a lot of small stuff that now I won't have to buy. Really helps the build budget. :)
 
Progress has been a little slow the last week or two. I've been trying to get all the old crud off the tub. The PO and PPO put undercoating and bedliner over the rust and dirt, so it all had to come off. :bang: Lots of paint stripper, scraping and pressure washing, but most of it's off now. Found rust in the usual places, floor pans, under the roll bar, front body mounts and up the front cowl braces. I started cutting some of it out to see what I could salvage, but decided on new floor pans and new front floor supports. I got those on order from Classic Enterprises and hopefully they will be here next week.
 
It's amazing how much time it takes to remove 35 years of crud and rust from a Jeep tub. It's been almost a month since my last post, and scraping, sanding grinding is pretty much all I've been doing on it. Of course, trying to run a business in between all that takes some time too. :rolleyes:

But I'm starting to see some light at the end of the tunnel. I got the underside cleaned and in primer. The interior of the tub is almost to the same point. Just the Transmission hump and one foot panel to finish. The old floor pans have been cut out and just about ready for the new pans and floor supports. Hope to haul it over to a buddy's shop in the next couple of weeks to get all the welding done on the body. Once that's done, I'll do what little body work it's gonna get (it's a trail rig, not a show car), spray another coat of primer on the whole tub, then bedliner the interior and under side and camo the outside.

Anyway, here's some new progress pics. - Bill
 
I got the tub and front end assembly completely in primer over the past several weeks. I needed to get the tub and stuff out from under the front deck, because we're trying to finish painting the house. So decided to set it back on the frame for now. Gives me a chance to see how it's going to look and also check fitment on stuff that needs to go back on. I got the floor pans trimmed to fit and ready to weld in. Still need to finish cleaning and priming the tranny hump, but the hard stuff is done. I also picked up a roll cage off CL for $50. Needs a little cleaning up, but I think it will work.

Starting to look like a Jeep again. :)
 
Looks really good! I hope to do this too to my CJ7 . Really enjoy your thread.:notworthy:
 
:notworthy:. Lookin really good. I'll be blowing mine apart when I decide to tub swap. Nice to get a preview of what I'll be getting into.
 
C dubya & Petescj -

Thanks for the encouragement guys. It's been a lot more work than I anticipated when I got it, but I'm really enjoying seeing it come together.
Was hoping to have it drivable by the end of summer, but it's looking more like next spring now. Oh well, it'll give me something to do over the winter.

Bill :chug:
 
Great post, thanks for the pictures of the tub, I'll be repairing my CJ7 and there is not enough there to even let me know what it is suppose to look like. Great job.
Greg
 
Bery nice Bill!!! :chug:
 
Greg & JR - Thanks guys. I've been trying to get as much work done on the tub as quickly as possible, so I can get it into my friend's shop and get the welding done before the snow flies. He has a paving business and uses his equipment to plow snow during the winter. Once the snow flies , his shop is always full of tractors being repaired and maintained. Anyway, I'm hoping that will happen next week.

Bill :chug:
 
zuba - thanks. Like I said, I'm really enjoying seeing it come together.
 
So I've gotten to the point where I'm realizing that every single thing on this jeep needs some kind of fixing. I decided to get the pedal assembly cleaned up and rebuilt because I need it to sit in place so I can position the new steering column. When I looked at the brake pedal, the pin that the rod that goes to the master cylinder rotates on was about half way worn thru. I cut the mushroomed end off and drove out the pin. Took a tap and threaded the hole. Built a new pin from a bolt and started reassembling. I got it about half together when I realized that the nut I had installed on the pin to keep it from backing out, wouldn't clear the bracket that holds the pedals. So I cut it off, and mushroomesd the end. Then this whole over center spring on the clutch pedal made no sense to me at all. I guess I just don't think like an engineer, Anyway, I think I got it figured out and installed properly (let me know if it looks wrong).
 
The other thing I couldn't really figure out was how the brake light switch was supposed to work. My neighbor, whose an EE, and I tested the old switch and it was functional, but neither of us could make any sense as how it was activated the way it was installed. I finally decided to go with a modern switch that was activated when the pedal moved away from the switch, so I fabricated a bracket to attach it to. At least I know that if it breaks, I can get another one.

Also did some refurbishing on the cowl air intake box. The rubber at the damper or flapper was shot. I can't believe they welded those 2 plates to the rod with rubber between them. Anyway, I drilled everything apart, made new parts, re-attached the 2 plates together with bolts, drilled the plates and rod and attached them together with cotter keys. I also had to do some repairs to the box where the duct attaches. I used some fiber glass to rebuild the broken sections. It seems like it should all go back together OK and work fine.
 
I've spent the last couple of weekends fitting a tilt steering column into the Jeep. I got a GM column out of an early Camaro or Firebird, from a friend of my brother, who said he had installed one in a CJ he had. Said it was pretty much a slam dunk. He either has a lot better mechanical skills than me or a lot different idea of what a slam dunk is. :rolleyes:

I spent a bit of time just trying to figure out how the column itself worked. My big concern was the lever at the bottom of the column. I really didn't want to cut a bigger hole thru the firewall to make it fit and didn't know what to attach it to if I did. After a bit of research and a little bench testing of the column, I found that the lever was intended to attach to the tranny linkage. When the tranny was put into park on an auto or neutral gear on a manual, the lever turns the shift tube inside the column, which in turn rotates the shroud just below the tilt assembly. This does several things. It keeps the steering wheel from locking and the key from being removed unless the tranny is in park. It also locks the tranny in park when the key is removed. I determined that if I held the shroud fixed in the unlocked position, all the column functions worked fine, except for the anti theft stuff. After I got that all figured out, I disassembled the column, so I was dealing with the tube.

After spending all the time cleaning up the brake/clutch pedal assembly, I realized I needed to make some serious modifications to the bracket to get the new column to fit. I cut out the pedal bracket to get the steering column cradle bracket to fit into it. This took several times of bolting stuff into place to see how it would fit and then taking it all back apart to make further cuts and changes and the refitting. I wanted to keep the "ears" on the pedal assembly bracket, where it bolts to the bottom of the dash, so I had a reference point to maintain the poroper angle for the column. I also had to cut out the plate that bolts to the dash, so the column shroud would fit into it. Once I had everything fit, I pop riveted some sheet metal plates to the brackets to hold them together, until they can be welded up.
 
After I got everything on the steering column fit together, I decided to add some supports to the assembly so that it was all being held by something more than the dash panel. I bolted a piece of flat bar at the bottom of the cowl, then fabricated a couple of struts out of 1" angle to go between the flat bar and the column cradle. I also had to make a new "U" bracket at the bottom of the column, where it goes thru the firewall, because the new column is a bigger diameter than the stock, non tilt column. After I got all of this sorted out, I reinstalled the dash (and everthing else involved) so I could mark the shroud in the proper position so it can be welded to the dash escutcheon plate. This will permanently hold the shroud in the unlocked position. I think it's pretty much together now except for welding everything up. Even without the welding, it's a pretty rock solid installation.

Just a side note, I don't know if I would have had as much success getting this together if the Jeep hadn't been completly apart. I can imagine this being a real bear with wiring and everything else in the way.

Hopefully I can get on my brother's schedule soon to get this stuff welded up, along with getting the new floor pans welded into the tub.
 
Thanks zuba :chug:

Pretty happy with how that all came together. Yesterday, I cleaned the garage up to get ready for the next batch of projects. Pulled the heater apart, so I could start refurbishing that and started working on a plan to mount the seats. I want to build some kind of a frame work that I can incorporate some lockable, under seat storage.

Bill
 
I can't believe it's been almost a month since I posted any progress, but it has. I got the dash escutcheon welded on my steering column and the pedal bracket welded up. Got those pieces all ground, sanded and painted. Once that was done, I got the steering column completely reassembled and ready to install. Then I tore apart the e brake pedal assembly and cleaned that up and repainted it. So I've got a bunch of parts ready to bolt back on to the tub as so as I get it ready to bolt back on the frame.
 
Last edited:
Last week, my company was between projects and my brother was pretty much caught up on his honey-do list, so I was finally able to get some of his time to get the tub welded back together. We hauled it over to a friend's shop so we could use his MIG. He's a paving contractor, so the shop is equiped to work on all of his equipment. It's really great having access to tools like that. Anyway, we ground all the primer off at the joints, then welded in the new floor pans and floor supports. We also took some 1" angle and some sheet metal and built a new tailgate for it. Then I ground all the welds down, caulked all the seams with 3M seam sealant and did a little bondo work to smooth the transition a some of the lap seams. Then got all the new stuff in primer. I still have a few unused bolt holes to fill in, then I can get the bed liner painted on the underside and inside and get it bolted back on the frame.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Jeep-CJ Donation Drive

Help support Jeep-CJ.com by making a contribution.

Help support Jeep-CJ.com by making a contribution.
Goal
$200.00
Earned
$25.00
This donation drive ends in
Contribute
Back
Top Bottom