Tailgate Repair

Thanks! I am happy with the way it came out.

 

Still no reply from Mike - does anyone know another way besides the above gmail address to contact him to see if these patch panels are available?

 

I'll get a hold of him and check, he's always got back to me.

 

Thanks!

 

He has them listed on eBay again. I saw them a few days ago over there.
-Donny

 

Found the link for the shorter section, the details say there's another listing for the longer one but can't find it...

WILLYS JEEP CJ2A, CJ3A, CJ3B, CJ5 TAIL GATE REPAIR SECTION | eBay

 

It looks like he's only offering the short repair at this time on eBay. Message Mike through eBay ("contact seller") to see if he has any of the long versions.
-Donny

 

Did that yesterday, will report back if I receive a reply. I can probably make the shorter section work....but would be nice to have the whole shebang.

 

Here you go!

"Hello Art, I found Truckees email in my spam box so I did just send him a email. Thanks for the heads up."

 

Yup he got back to me, and he has these but does not want to do sales through eBay because of fees, for which I can’t blame him.

 

The same happened to me. We handled the transaction using Paypal and it went smooth from there.

 

Got my patch panel from Mike and I can report that it is perfect.

I was 50/50 on whether I'd need to get the "A" section with the hinge bars to replace the entire bottom, or whether I could go with the "B" and just replace between the hinges, so I got the longer one and figured I could cut it if needed and just use the middle (although that would be a waste...). There's some cancer pretty close to the spot welds on the inner hinge bars so I won't know until I cut there and investigate how deep the rot goes.

 

Truckee4x4, your tailgate looks a million ways better than the one I have! But if it makes you feel better, go for it. Better safe than sorry.

 

do you have his email you could pm me ?

 

That's funny cause my buddy and I in the shop were referring to your pics above in this thread as great examples of how to put this patch panel in correctly. I think yours came out great especially considering how rotted it was.

So far the remove/prep part of the repair has been pretty straightforward....there was some rust and rot all the way on and around the hinge bars so I went for the whole piece.



The panel I think comes slightly taller than I wanted it to be; I elected to cut the tailgate metal in away so as to push my butt weld line out and away from the "humps" at each side of the bottom of the tailgate, because I don't trust myself not to grind into the humps when I clean out the weld dots. Or maybe I need to buy a different grinding bit with the right radius and it would be no big deal?

This will necessitate either trimming back the taller section of the patch panel about 1/8" so, or I could just stitch in a small piece of metal to close the gaps at the bottom and have the tailgate end up 1/8" taller than the 14-7/8" it was - Jeeps are supposed to be +/- 0.5" right?



Just wanted to document this for the next guy that comes along and faces the same issues.

 

I would leave it as is and weld a little strip in the gap. That is just me. BTW, great work so far!

 

@tripilio you are right - but I like a challenge, so despite my firm belief to never let "perfect" be the enemy of "done" I set up a plasma trim of 1/16" off the top of the patch panel.

Came out great - I know I could have used a cut off wheel - but I wanted to see if it could be trimmed straight with the handheld plasma at Roundhouse.


The gap needs to be tuned up a bit before welding but I ended up with a nice even straight ~1/16" gap around all three sides.

Look forward to welding it up slowly and carefully the week after next.

 

Some guys have all the patients.

 

believe me I’d love to keep going on it if I had the chance...but, work sometimes is more important than the Jeep project

 

the rest of us didn't go to medical school.