1973 Cj5 Tube Chassis Build

I picked this chassis up from facebook marketplace today. It has what is left of a 1972-75 CJ5 tub on it. Looks like it had a small block Chevy in it and an automatic and it has manual saginaw steering. I'll post more pictures later. It came with a Chevy D44 front axle and a Ford 9" rear.

I'm not sure what I'll end up doing with it, but it was cheap and it is really well built. It would be fun to rebuild it to its former glory. I stopped my old fire chief's shop, he used to race jeeps back in the 90's and he seemed to remember it vaguely. I scrounged up a cool hood and a grille for it. I have fenders from my CJ7 I'll put on it.

 

Blown and injected Hemi. Go Fuel Altered drag racing.

 

Gotta dig through some old pics… I wonder if I have any footage of it.

 

That would be super cool if you did. It was red and then got painted blue at some point.

 

Some pictures showing the craftsmanship that went into building it.









Must have had some serious horsepower with all these stickers!



And it looks race ready with the new nose on it!

 

Ted gonna be jealous.

 

I cleaned some of the leaves out and I guess it had nitrous at one point.

 

Ted is happy because he is no longer getting modified.

 

I already love it.

 

I pulled the 350, turbo 400 and np208 out of a junk k20 Chevy I have. I was keeping the truck around mainly to store the engine in. I’m going to stick it in this Jeep for now. The whole thing will fit according to my measurements. I’m thinking it needs a super charger down the road.

I'm trying to keep this build to using whatcha got, like they would have done back in the day when this was built, at least that was my racer friend told me most people did.

 

Straight up mud bogger..

 

I welded the legs from the mock up stand I built for Ted’s tdi swap on to the frame of the race jeep. I cut old brackets off and did a bunch of grinding on the frame to clean it up. I hope to slide the engine and transmission in tomorrow.

 

The crane on my truck made short work of dropping the engine in place.



The engine sure sits low and it looks like there will be enough room for a roots blower. I still have to fab up a transmission cross member.

 

I cleaned up the data tag to see what year it was and to see what engine and transmission it had originally. Looks like a 1973 cj5 with a 3spd and a 304. I’m also wondering if it was a renegade since it was orange originally?

 

mmmmmm bloooower.....

 

X 10

 

https://www.summitracing.com/parts/edl-1551/make/chevrolet

 

Along with this.

https://www.summitracing.com/parts/mll-bp38317ct1

 

I have one of those in my 55 chevy truck.

 

Did a little more research on the paint code. Fount out it was originally Jetset Blue, which I did find traces of on the toe support. The 492 above the VIN is the paint code. So it was not a renegade then.

https://paintref.com/cgi-bin/colorcodedisplay.cgi?manuf=AMC&model=Jeep