1963 Us Navy Dj-3a

You Sir, are a much better fabricator than me.
That looks great

 

I was tired after work and dinner, so I didn't do much. I did get the holes drilled and Riv-nuts installed though.

Riv-nuts in the floor:


Same pictures as last night, but now with bolts!




It seems to seal tight enough to the floor that some Mortite will fill that gaps the final time I install it.

I'm not doing the Riv-nuts for the tower until the shift boots show up. They may affect placement.

Tomorrow, I'll tackle the upper tunnel plate. Need to do some firewall trimming, some shaping, a little welding, and then more Riv-nuts.

 

Great work, that really came together nicely!

 

Worked on the upper floor plate tonight.

First, the hole needed to be cleaned up. I wasn't impressed with the PO's job here. I also wanted to expand the opening so I can get to the upper bellhousing bolts. Cutting roughly where the squiggly Sharpie line is:


Running the angle grinder up under the dash sure is fun:


Trimmed, bellhousing bolts accessible now:


Fitting the upper pane that came in the Jeepl. The edges are a mess and there is a hole on the upper right side that needs a patch added:


Edges cleaned up and patch panel added. It seems to fit up, so it's time to start installing Riv-nuts:


The Riv-nuts were going great until I broke the mandrel in the tool. I didn't have the depth set right and it's hard to do it by feel working under the dash. Amazon can't get me a new mandrel until the end of next week, so I installed the rest of the Riv-nuts manually. You can use a bolt and a nut to squeeze it:


The Riv-nuts like to spin in the holes, so lightly clamping some vice grips on the back side helps:


This is the process under the dash. Keep the bolt from turning with an allen wrench while the vice grips keep the Riv-nuts from turning, and tighten the nut:


Finally got them all installed after a lot of futzing around:


Top plate bolted in:




I need to make a mount to attach the seat frame the lower tunnel and I'm ready to call this task done until the shift boots show up.

Then I can clean the Jeep out and rust-treat/paint the floor.

 

Very cool project! Man, those floors turned out nice. Crazy, how you saw this rig in the old Navy DJ3a. You build some really great Jeeps.
I love the CAD (Cardboard Aided Design). This gets me fired up to get out and do some work on the 64 CJ5.
Thanks for taking all the pictures and doing such a great write up. That is gonna be a great Jeep for cruising those mountain trails.
Your sheet metal work is great!
Great Big Like for this project!

Dave

 

Use a shorter bolt and drill out the threads on the serrated nut, stack washers between the bolt head and threadless washer to act as a bearing.
Also take a small file or saw blade and key the hole. The nut will expand into the little slot and stop rotating.

We have a few kits for field repairs and it works a lot better than trying to back a threaded nut onto the nutzert.

 

Thanks all for the nice comments. I really appreciate them and they motivate me to keep getting out to the shop to work on the thing.

 

My wife bought me a $250 58" TV from Walmart yesterday and we mounted it high up on the wall over the bench. Now I can watch Freiburger and Pewe drink beer working on a Jeep while I drink a hard cider and work on my Jeep:


I finished the last round of fab work on the floor today. The frame that mounts the seat used have a support post in the middle bolted to the floor. That part of the floor is now gone, so I made tabs to mount it to my new tunnel. Tabs made, Riv-nuts installed:



After grinding tons of surface rust off the seat mount, I put the tabs in place for tack welding:


After full welding, the center of the seat mount is very sturdy:


With my tunnel finally done, I can think about finishing up the floor. Huge pile of tools removed and all vacuumed out:


I had already hit it with an abrasive wheel several weeks ago:


Treating it with Rust-Mort (phosphoric acid) to convert the rust:


All the rust should be black iron phosphate by morning:


When that's dry, the floor is getting a coat of Rustoleum semi-gloss black. After paint, It's going to get some galvanized tin screwed over the big holes with self tapping screws. Good enough for this iteration of the Jeep. I'm not wasting time replacing floorboards right now.

Speaking of semi-gloss black, I've got the first coats started the seat mount and new tunnel:

 

I like your seat mounts, very nicely done. How much lower do they get you from the stock frames?

Also, did the dj-3a not come with a tool box? I'm curious if there's a rational reason why someone would do away with it. Convince me....

 

Excellent work! I am looking forward to part 2 of Freiburger's & Pewe's cross country jeep adventure. Hopefully it will be posted this week.

 

Great work on the floor! Looking forward to wheeling with this thing while leading you down some brushy, scratchy goat trails.

You might want to look into getting a roll of crystal clear wrap for that tv to protect it from errant sparks.

 

Thanks! Looking forward to it. This Jeep is basically being built just for following you.

 

I don't have any stock flatfenders seats to compare to, but it's definitely lower because it occupies the space the gas tank and tool box normally would.

Not only does it not have a tool box, it doesn't have any sort of glove box. I'm not sure where I'm going to keep the registration. Maybe I'll need to get one of those old steering column registration holders:


I'll eventually have to make some sort of way to secure stuff under the seats. Flip-down door, slide-out drawers, ....something. I think when I tie the cage to the frame, the thick power seat mechanism on the driver seat will get removed, and this Seat mount will get replaced with one that's higher up to make more room for storage under the seats.

 

Paint is drying. You can see my manufacturing dents much better in the black. Bodie seems to approve anyway:


Hmm. Now that the rust is treated on the floor, I'm liking the patina too much to paint it black. Now I have to waste an hour and half driving to Walmart tonight to get some clear paint:

 

While you are at wal-mart get the small plastic phone case from the camping section and the industrial velcro. Stick your docs in it and velcro it to the kick panel or behind the dash for now.

 

Floors post coating in Rustoleum Satin Clear:




Some folks may not like the hackery that follows, but this is my low cost/effort approach to rust repair on a Jeep I'm building for beating up in the woods.

It starts with an 80 year old piece of galvanized tine grabbed from the yard:


Continues with using tin-snips to cut out patches to cover any rust holes in the floor:


For example, this is the cowl brace are on the driver side. That's right behind the tire and is going to let a lot of water in when going trough puddles:


Not with this patch though:


The patches got attached with seam sealer and self tappers. That haphazard look is intentional since it's a janky repair anyway. It will get covered with rubber mats in eventually:




Did the same treatment for the external rust holes at the driver side windshield pivot:




I also added some sealer where you could see daylight through this seam:


And that's how you farmer "repair" rust.

I'm not too worried about rust continuing behind these patches. The Jeep will park inside, and we live in a very dry climate that drys things out very quick when they do get wet. I can always do real repairs in the future if I decide to make a presentable Jeep out of this thing. In the meanwhile, it will keep water from gushing into the cabin when it gets caught out in the rain once in a while.

That's it for floors and body work on this Jeep. I'd put the interior back together, but I'm still waiting on shift boots and it's easier to install them with the tunnel out of the Jeep. With the assembly sequence being tunnel, seat mounts frame, seats, I really can't assembly any of the interior yet.

I think I'll move on to building the exhaust. I'm headed to Seattle to see my dad tomorrow, so that will have to wait until Sunday.

 

Actually, I might do the dual master cylinder conversion before I reduce access routing the exhaust past it.

 

Another thing I wanted to get done before the exhaust is adding a floor pivot gas. My foot already started to hurt after driving a few minutes with the suspended pedal it had. I want something more like my '71 has.

I decided to try this complete $60.00 kit from ebay that mimics a similar unit from Lokar that's $249 without any cable or carb bracket:


It has a lever that sticks through the hinge and actuates the cable below the floorboards. I like the cleanliness of this idea and it also means I don't have to fight things up under the dash to install it.

Here I am drilling out the holes to mount it. I used a step bit to widen the holes at the end of the rectangle, cut out the middle with and angle grinder, and then cleaned the hole up with the die grinder:


This is where the pedal ended up. I like it:


This is what the bottom looks like. It just clears the clutch cable with both the clutch and throttle in all positions. If it interferes when twisted up, I can fab an offset bracket. I still need to cut the screws shorter:


You can trim the cable to length as needed. I needed to lop off about a foot:


I used the masking tape and cut-off wheel method:


All hooked up. The kit came with the carb bracket and dual return springs:


The only issue I have with the kit is that the retaining clip on the ball joint would not keep the cable end on the ball that came with the kit. It would just fall off. I broke the clip trying to bend it tighter, hence the double wrapped zip-tie in the picture.

I have a higher quality Lokar cable end on order, but the zip-tie will keep it in place for now.

Overall, I'm very happy with the pedal kit for the price.

 

I like that pedal setup. It reminds me of the stock one on my '57, but improved with a cable.

 

I like the looks of that,
I may look at one of those for the Willys pickup.