Making My CJ5 Into A CJ6/II

Tarry - thanks for taking the time to post. Both the old stuff and the new work are inspiring. Keep it up.

 

Nope - I wouldn't waste the time on this. I tried one and you couldn't even warm up your hands in front of it.

Note that a typical heater core would be 8 to 15,000 btu/hr. The Mojave one shown earlier is rated at 12,000 btu/hr. There are about 3.42 btu/hr per watt so the back seat heat isn't much heat at 300 watts (about 1000 btu/hr). It's just not enough heat to keep your feet warm.

 

Hey , Thanks for looking!

 

So I got the old wrecked CJ-6 body home and started to roll it around on the concrete behind the shop just to see how it was put together. Of course taking one of these apart is really akin to “Reverse Engineering” something , especially if you want the end result to look as if it was done at the factory and not pieced together from two different bodies a few years apart.

Looking over the Jeep tub I already knew there would be some differences between them all, just from the standpoint there were gaps in panels that were different from side to side and factory welds in one place but not in the opposite told me that humans had to physically touch & adjust these parts while traveling down the assembly line. This may have been more prevalent on the CJ-6’s bodies as I will show you later how much they were really off and how the side panels were apparently sheared to make the extended body joint.

Prior to starting to take this one apart I took several measurements of my wrecked CJ-6 body. Of course what I had to work with was really not that good and had obviously been smashed in from the rear so most measurements were already seriously compromised.

I then asked several members here in the ECJ-5 community that owned an unmolested factory CJ-6 to assist me in getting some correct or least close to correct factory dimensions off their own personal Jeeps……………

A few weeks later I received 5 reply’s from members here all using the same points and guidelines that I asked for to extract these dimensions …………..Although most were close there was still many discrepancies of up to 3/8” of an inch in overall length both L & R sides and even 3/16” in the width.

A Big Thanks to all the folks here that helped and indulged me in this unusual measurement request………I just felt it to be important to have some good solid measurements to reassemble this by just in case someday a hardtop or other accessory was purchased that needed to fit correctly.

Although these Jeeps were assembly lined there apparently were still several functions of the assembly process that were done by hand and I suppose the fixture if there was one perhaps had some fairly loose tolerance’s so no really big surprise here when the dimensions were off some.

On the surface it looked pretty easy to disassemble until I pulled the old scalpel ( sawzall ,spot weld remover & a 4”x.063 cut off wheel ) out and started to make a few cuts…………Turns out it was not that easy , in spite of drilling out hundreds of spot welds , some of which were overlaid by another panel that required drilling through two and even three panels from both sides just to get at a weld that was buried………In some case’s a complete other panel or brace had to be removed just to get at what needed to be released to move forward to extract the center 20 inch extension.

I found it both very interesting & fun, good thing it’s just metal and can be fixed!

So here we go again, enjoy the ride!

WRECKED CJ-6 BODY ON IT'S SIDE







O'BOY WERE HAVING FUN NOW!




MORE SURFACE RUST THAN ANYTHING ELSE......THE UNDERSIDE WAS REALLY CLEAN AND THE FACTORY PRIMER COAT WAS STILL PRESENT.

 

Looks good Tarry,

I would ask how you are going to fix the back end, but I am going to wait and see. I have my guess but I never know what you might do.

 

this all looks very familiar ,
,,looking good Terry

 

hey bud don't throw that away ,,,,,grab those braces under the wheelhouse ,,,to use on the 6 section

 

That's easy..........I'm not going to fix the back end.....keep watching.

 

He's going to make a flatbed CJ-6

 

that would be SICK

 

Yeah, that could definitely be neat. I've got a 6 that the sheet metal is in very lousy shape. I'm thinking of doing a pickup/ute type of setup. I definitely don't have your fabrication skills though. I'm looking forward to seeing what you do though.

 

And we move on. Disassembling this has become quite interesting as I keep comparing the donor CJ-6 clip to my CJ-5 , while making sure that I do not cut away or destroy anything that later may be needed to put it all back together again.



That rear lower cross-member in the CJ-6 donor extension has seen better days........It's cracked in several spots and there is also several panels that are overlapped there that will require working from both sides to extract.

 

My CJ-5 getting ready to go on the Rotisserie.


As I mentioned before there is layers of sheet metal and hundreds of spot welds that need to be removed in order to take my CJ5 apart and ready it to receive the CJ6 extension. Along the way you have to pay special attention to what may need to get destroyed or will need rebuilding as the project starts to go back together. The decisions were numerous and always a challenge. In this photo I'm removing all the spot welds to the Passenger side tool box and at the same time trying to preserve it. It has to be removed to get at that back bulkhead.

You have to constantly rotate the Jeep 360 degrees on the fixture to find and remove all the spot welds that are hidden. Once I feel I have the majority out I will set the body back on my frame Jig which I have just covered with 3/4" plywood to give me a nice flat surface to work off of to disassemble the two bodies.

Tool box out, now releasing the bulkhead from the rear deck

[B]My old 1965 CJ5.... She has just entered the ER getting prepped for the CJ6 extension.
[/B]
The donor has also entered the ER getting prepped to remove its 20 inch center section.

Both on my Chassis Jig

 

did you find the triple layer of metal under the gas tank area ... that was a tough one

 

Yep Steve, Been there seen it.

 

Thank you tarry for your time to reply i appreciate.

I like your jeep build, history its cool. I like old dodge/mopar cars/trucks

My father is garners oldest son, garners other son's are my fathers step brothers.

Drivers from garners race team ware their race gear to his funeral, garner was in the usa army he was mechanic/painter for the jeeps.

 

Kenneth,

Thanks for filling in a few blanks that I was not even aware of about my old Friends........It is nice to look back as part of there life also became part of mine if only for a brief period. I guess his War Time Job later turned into a career..........Like I said they were both men of few words.
I hope all your family is doing well and I hope they all realize that there Grandfathers respectively were at one time the "Go Too" people in the early Jeep parts business.