Finishing up brakes...

So it had been awhile since I had done a ton of work to the Jeep...today I made up for it. My original plans were to use the old front 10" brake backing plates from my Jeepster on the rear of Red...but when I found out the wheel cylinders could not fit because of the axle tube flange being in the way...I opted to just put the stock 9" brakes back on the rear. I installed a Lockright locker in the rear, stuffed the axles back in, and here's a shot of the brakes with the drum ready to go on.


Shot of the freshly-stuffed Lockright locker for the rear.

Shot of the freshly powdercoated rear diff cover.


Then onto the fronts, where I did another disk brake conversion on the front. Feel free to email me if you have any questions on how to do this. Essentially you use Chevy truck caliper brackets, which bolt right up to the Dana 30 front, Chevy truck calipers, pads, and hoses, and rotors from a 78-79 CJ7, which oddly enough, fit a 70-72 International Scout too. Everything bolts up like magic. No more crummy 9" front drum brakes!

Brake and axle tear down.

So the next step was to completely disassemble the axles and brakes. I plan on upgrading the fronts to disc, just like I did on my Jeepster. I have the Jeepster's old 10" front backing plates which are going to be put on the back of Red. Should work great. Inside though, there's a lot of work to be done. New Tie Rods and king pin bearings are in order, along with new axle seals in the back. The fluid that come out of both diffs was black molasses. Certainly good that its all being re-done. The rear Dana 44 is being stuffed with a Lock-rite locker. No more open diff..but annoying ratchety noises when I go around corners...you just can't win at everything.

Here's both rear axles...the hubs wouldn't come off, so the backing plate had to come off with it.



The Front.


The rear.
All the loose parts are going to be powdercoated, and I took all of them down to my trusty self-serve sandblasting place for clean up. This is what comes out. Ready for coating.

Floors done, u-pol coating.

So at this point, the interior was masked off and sprayed down with u-pol truck bedliner. It's a 2 part bedliner that's thick and bulletproof. Works fantastic and I'd recommend it to anyone. If you've never used U-pol Raptor liner...it is badass. It is as thick as Rhino lining, you spray it with a provided spray gun in the kit that shoots at 65-70PSI...beautiful. Tough as hell. At this point, the gas tank was put in and secured.



After this, I fixed the 60 some year old turn signal with a little De-oxit and WD-40, and disassembled the brakes. Next step, get the brakes done.

Finishing the floors...

So the next two days of work were spent getting the rear fenders whipped into shape. The trouble here is that the previous owner decided to screw in these repair panels to cover the random rust holes in the inside fender long ago. Did he use galvanized or sheet steel? Nope...he used...aluminum. Super. Can't weld that. I would have just replaced both fenders with new replacements, but to do so requires welding to the walls of the tub, which means melted paint on the outside, which means I was going to be repainting Red before I wanted to. So I opted to fix them with some diamond plate left over from the Jeepster and make Franken-fenders! The bottom of the diamond plate strip is welded directly to the rear floor from the outside underneath. The top is then riveted to the aluminum portion and seam sealed. When its all done and coated in U-pol, it'll look nice.


Here you can see the front fender corners. The driver side (shown here) was really bad...the whole front side of the fender had to be cut out and replaced. Very low temp welding as the metal was paper thin. The edges were cleaned up with the plasma cutter and then ground down to make a nice edge. Right now the front edge is pretty ugly.


Here's the front of that bad fender...welded in...with the rust-ridden piece cut out to the left.


The final stage was to secure the two removable sections. The original system used cage nuts with bolts...and most of those were re-used. In the spots where new metal was put in, I simply used weld-nuts underneath and bolted down. After that was done, all visable seams and weld-joints were coated in seam sealer, and the bare metal surfaces got a mist-coat of etching primer, to prepare them for the U-pol truck bed coating that was next. Next step, to mask off everything that DOESN'T need coated, as the process of spraying U-pol can be messy.

More floors (again)...

So at this point, I managed to score a floor section off of ebay that is original, but damaged. These suckers cost over 500.00 to buy (rip off) if you buy them complete...I opted to buy the damaged one that was just missing the bottom braces and had a cut in the metal. Big deal. Easy fix, cost me 90.00 instead of 500.00. I simply welded two pieces of U-channel underneith for support, and ended up trimming the back anyways. Here you can see the back cargo section mounted, with two carrier bolts securing it to the frame. I re-used some rubber pads off of Betty, my 1950 Buick underneith the bolts.


Here is the front driver floor, where it meets the riser. You can also see the cargo area stitched in. This will all be covered in seam sealer and then shot with U-pol bed liner.



Here's the front of the driver's side, with the matching diamond plate kick piece that helps hold the two seams together.


The center bolt-on sections were sandblasted, and the one repaired. At this point, the bottom side is painted in Eastwood's rust encapsulator, which gives you a bullet-proof rust inhibitor. Next they'll be bolted in place and the front should be ready to seam-seal.

More floors.....

So I took a trip back down to the sandblaster to clean up the center sections of the floors. These sections bolt in, which make it easy to remove for transmission bolt removal...I guess whatever else you wanna do down there. Unfortunately, the sandblasting not only took off 40 layers of paint, but exposed the weak metal under the gas pedal / area where the right foot would be. I opted to cut that section out and replace with fresh metal, which was a pain considering how thin the metal was here.



Here we're marked and ready to cut.


Here the spot welding is done on the center section. It will need to be seam sealed to fill in the little holes as this piece is impossible to weld 100%. I'll end up riveting this piece down so if it does need to be removed, you can just drill the rivets out. I might bolt it down...I haven't 100% decided yet. Lots of welding to do over on this side, but the overall pieces are mocked up, tacked up, and ready to go.

Fan-tetanus!

So the next order of business was the get the rest of the rusty crap cut out of the jeep so I could start putting the floors back together. The biggest pain of all of this is that the step riser that transitions between the cargo area and the front floors was rotted out everywhere. The only thing salvageable on the entire floors is the tool box, located below the passenger seat. This had been replaced at some point in the jeeps life...luckily....replacements are 300.00. Luckily when someone replaced it, they undercoated it as well. The passenger floors had already been replaced by me over the summer, so armed with my newly acquired plasma cutter, the rear cargo area was cut out (both the upper galvanized riveted crap the previous owner put down) and the rusty underneath, the and the riser. With rust scale flying, falled, splattering, and smoke flying everywhere from burning seam sealer and old bondo....we had fun. Pictures look like crap from so much smoke and dust in the area. Here's everything stripped down except for the riser, which you can see rotted out running along side the tool box on the passenger side.



In the two upper pictures, you can see the new u-channel riser spot-welded into place. Everything works around this riser, so it had to start there. If you look right to the left of the crow-bar...you can see where the plasma cutter cut right through 2 layers of sheet metal and right through the frame cross member...lol. (Click on any pic to bring it up in more detail)


Here's a quick mock-up of the floors on the driver's side. The hole in the metal is where the fuel feed line runs under the car (keep in mind the gas tank is directly under the seat in CJ5's older than the early 70's.) The transmission shifter plate will be sandblasted and then sprayed in the same U-pol truck bedliner coating that the rest of the interior will be painted in.