First CJ5 Build

[Raforan]

Well i purchased a 1978 CJ5 off a guy though a mutual friend that needed money. i got it for a good price from what i have been researching. it has a 350 swap in it and my wife and i decided to restore the whole thing from the ground up. I am a auto painter by trade but now i work in the prison and teach offenders basic bodyshop and paint operations. we also do spray in bed liners. so the paint and body side of this ordeal is going to be relatively cheaper then normal. my hang up right now as i am on the tear down stage, is the wiring. this thing is a rats nest. there a wires spliced into spliced wires and stuff just coming out of everywhere. i have seen some the painless wiring harnesses that would rewire the whole thing and i am leaning toward this option but i am not a wire expert. how hard is this adventure? pretty straight forward or do i need a degree from yale? attached is the teardown photos

thanks for the help

 

[Torxhead]

Welcome to the forum, that looks to me like a CJ7 , btw. I would suggest doing your own wiring work. Your old CJ probably does not need a new wiring harness, but just a repair and a few improvements. I would suggest getting a wiring schematic so you can see just how everything is laid out and go from there. Look up Prospero's Garage on the net as they sell a really sharp diagram.

 

[Raforan]

Thank you. What makes you sayou it's a CJ7 ? I don't know the diffrence to tell you the truth it's my first jeep besides an jk

 

[Torxhead]

https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=jeep+cj5&qpvt=jeep+cj5&qpvt=jeep+cj5&qpvt=jeep+cj5&FORM=IGRE

 

[JR74CJ5]

easiest catch is the door opening shape. A 5 has a funny hump, the 7's are more open.

7's are a bit longer too. Makes swaps and driveline angles a bit better too.

Nice rig!

If you do decide to go with new wiring, just because, look into EZ wire instead of painless in my opinion - the wires are still color coded and labeled and the kit is cheaper...

I agree with Torx you probably don't need it, but I did and love that I know where and how every wire is ran in my jeep - electrical troubleshooting is much simpler now.

:ww:

 

[HackFabrication]

CJ5 's are like rattlesnakes, once you see one, you'll know what it is:



Note the door opening and shorter wheelbase. The CJ6 has the same 'S' shaped door opening, but a longer wheelbase.

 

[gr8dain]

And the CJ8 is the long version of the 7

Nice 7 by the way. Have fun with it. I just replaced the frame on my 8. Loved doing it. Learned every nut and bolt on my Jeep. Best thing I ever did.

 

[Raforan]

thanks for the replies. it is in deed a 7 his paperwork (title) says 5 but vin matches a 7 and frame as well. well my single 7 went from 1 to two in less then a week. body is redone as well as frame. rebuilt Transmission and AMC 258 i6 / 4.2l on the newest one bought it off a family member for 1k with a ton of extra parts. total investment of 3100 for two jeeps. alot of projects ahead.

 

[Raforan]

spent friday ensuring the new engine isnt seized up and everything seems to check out. no its alot of research and looking at the 15 boxes of parts (some new some old) and making a list after list of what my wife wants and or needs to get this boy on the road for her. looks like the green one took a step back for a bit. might throw it together and drive it till i get the one out of the way. any suggestions on best place to order parts from. jegs gave me the military discount and the second weekend of april i am going to a jeep rally in Virginia beach. if any one is interested check out Delmarvajeepevents.com its a friends group that puts on alot of stuff through out the year. they are who to blame for this adventure.

 

[gr8dain]

Seems like you got hid with the addiction. Nice project(s).

 

[djnineball]

there are two versions of the painless wire harness. the cheaper one does not have the ends done, you have to do it. much like jr said i did everything when i put the new engine (and everything else under the hood) mostly for piece of mind. now i know everything is wired as it should be with no splices to go bad at a later date and cause headaches. i prefer the one-and-done approach - spend a little more now vs potentially a lot more later.

-edit-

stay away from the clifford performance upgrades. i bought their intake/headers system and it was a pain in the you-know-what. they sell the carbs as "pre-set for your jeep" and it was anything but. i spoke to the head guy at weber and he said they have had tons of calls from people who bought the kit from clifford with lots of problems. in the end i had to send it back to weber for an exchange as clifford was not helpful. the intake manifold was anything but precise, which is believable since they designed their own and have them made in small batches. that bit was out of my realm of expertise so i have a very trustworthy shop do it for me and he said they needed to modify almost every inch of it to get it to work right. nothing had the same clearance/tolerance. overall it required a lot of extra hours to get it to work right, right down to the crappy gaskets it came with. i would have been better off to just keep what i had vs the supposed "70% increase in hp and torque" that they claim (truth be told i never dyno'd it so i can't tell you if it is true or not).

 

[81CJ7WY]

I found looking up s/n's helpful for being sure of what I had. This will be true through out your vehicle. Jeep in the late 70"s early 80's were deep in $ trouble. They were starting to use up inventory parts to cut down on production cost. So it's not cut and dry what components you have. But a 78 model is better than an 80 or 81.

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[81CJ7WY]

Concerning your concern about doing electrical stuff: I hope what I have to say here helps understand some of the language of electricity so as to take the magic out of it of you decide to do your own rewire.
A battery is a DC system. DC, direct current, goes one way, positive to negative, (which theorists debate) and is the easiest to work with for me. And in my simple mind I figure amps, (current) and volts, goes out one end of the battery, through some type of load, then back to the other end of the batterry, less the energy the load took. The size of the battery (amps) determines how much current (amps) can be available. So if a "short" accures( a shorter path back to the battery other than the load it's spose to go through) the full power of the battery will go there. So that is why it goes through a fuse, as a limit to the current. A sacrficial protection to that path.
Disconnect the battery, before doing anything, and you interup the return path back to the battery. Any wiring you do now is a mechanical process. Laying down a new line for the current and volts, or improving the flow of it by cleaning contact points. And to help it be organized, each wire is color coded to indicate where it's going to or from. googled a color schematic. I found a free clear one, then had office max print and laminate it.


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