67 Cj5 Build Thread By A Rookie

I’ve been off for a few weeks, so it was good to get back in the garage. I spent today doing body work. I fixed my rear passenger corner, cut out the parts of the rear panels that were modified for flush mount rear lights (I am putting in repro rear lights, reverse lights, and rear gas filler), cut out and stitched in the old fill hole, and filled in a bunch of other holes.


Next up is cut out some cancer where rear wheel wells were modified, stitch in new rear panels, fix the rest of the dents and dings, then the tub will be ready for paint.

The brackets that hold the tub to the frame were cut when the PO put in lights. Do you guys think they need to be fixed, or just roll with them since they were already working?

 

Fix or you will be doing it later as it will be stuck in your head.

 

Was it worth 1.5 hours to save buying a tail light panel?

Heck, yeah!

 

And… done.
On to the wheel wells…

 

In progress…
Hopefully, I’m going to be done with the tub tomorrow, quick sandblast next Saturday, and then prime Sunday morning! I put in a few orders with the help of @vtxtasy so I can get moving on the brake and fuel lines after that.

 

I didn’t get as much done today as I had hoped, but I finished the wheel wells and got some other areas drilled out to be repaired. I also gave a blood sacrifice to the jeep gods. I hit the area I built with primer to prevent rust and to see if the welds looked ok enough for the final paint. Any suggestions how to touch up the welds in the inside of the patch work? It was tough to get an angle grinder in there.

 

First brake line! (2nd attempt) Tim isn’t lying about nicop. Really easy to work with.

 

And the front lines are done-ish. The front passenger line contacts the frame when it runs through a mouse hole (beneath the oil filter in the photo below) to the brakes. I will probably put some fuel line over that part to protect it. I put the PV where the old 4 way splitter was located.

 

Just a heads up, put your radiator in and check your clearances. Ask me how I know this…front brake line and radiator were rubbing and brake line ended up with hole in it.

 

Please tell me anything and everything you guys don’t like about these brake lines.


I “finished” the brake lines minus the 2 segments over the rear diff. By finished, I mean that I have brake line in place. For routing, I went with a combination of what was already on the jeep, what is shown on pics in this site, and what seemed logical.

Thanks in advance for your feedback.

 

Rear brake lines finished. I started working on fuel lines. I ran flexible hose to the mostly straight segment of hard line running through the passenger side rail, then finished with an L that hopefully will lead to flexible tubing on the firewall. It was pretty difficult feeding the fuel injection hose over the bubble flare I made on my lines, I assume because of the rigid mesh integrated into the power steering hose. I still need to get hardware to hold the lines down to the frame.

 

Headers powder coated and installed! This was a process called Cermakrome which supposedly helps with heat shielding.

 

I might be getting old…but after my JEEP was running fender well headers with glass packs for over 50 years and switching them out to Novak block huggers and running exhaust out the back has been one of my favorite upgrades, nice and quiet! That being said yours looks great.

 

Looking good Fritz.

 

I think I have finally finished the body work on the tub - at least I’m finished for tonight. I used a drawing from @Howard Eisenhauer to identify and fill rogue holes in the firewall.

I fixed the damaged rear fenders in the tub using a strip of 14ga to reinforce the edges and span the cracks.

I rebuilt the padding mounts on the front toe supports.

I finished patching all the rogue holes and damaged panels in the rest of the tub.

Best of all, I met a CJ3A owner at a local car show yesterday and got some great ideas.

 

First coat of primer. I got to the point where I got the tub good enough and wanted to move forward.

 

Project 1 today was to drill the rear panels for tail and reverse lights. I also cut down my fuel filler insert to work as a stand alone flush grommet on the rear panel, but as I started dry fitting parts, it looks like I could either flush mount the filler or use the inset insert. See pictures below. Any reason o e way would work better than the other? The filler neck feels like it wants to tilt up, not sit flush, based on the orientation of the preformed gas line and vent.

 

My other project was to spray bedliner on the bottom and the interior of the tub. I used a tintable bedliner by Dominion. The color looked nice, but, man, you don’t feel like an artist like when you spray a car with an HVLP gun. It’s more like watching a hippo fart, but holding the hippo! The setup comes in a pack with a spray gun and 4 ready to mix bottles. You add 3-3.5 oz of color (separate purchase), shake, and spray. Unlike 2KU paint that forms dust on the floor, this leaves a layer of paint that won’t sweep off. Not a big deal for me because I’m going to redo the garage floor after I finish, but otherwise, it would have been smart to use a tarp.

It is probably going to take 1.5 packs of the bed liner (6 bottles), but this may be because I am spraying too heavily.

 

Looks like it is hard to get good coverage. What is the final color going to be?