New to forum with a 66 commando

Heh all from midocoast Maine. If there are others from the area drop me a line. I have a 66 commando that I am restoring. I have the body off at this point and a taking care of the frame at this point. After examining the body, the rear looks to be in really rough shape in my opinion. At this point what are some of my options with respect to the body. Can I use a CJ8 body on the frame or something. or maybe hack the firewall and back off and make a full cage, or try to find a body maybe. its a rustbucket pretty much. the frame is in excellent shape though. thanks

 

Welcome from Chicago!

The frame would have to be cut to fit the CJ6 body, and you would need to then do something with the rear springs.

There are a couple CJ10s up for auction out your way, you could mount the body from one of those on your frame.

 

The C101 has a lot more rear overhang. (The rear springs are incredibly long with an offset center pin and extend to the back of the frame)

 

Finally found a picture, but not a very good one (don't get me started on spring overs with the original monoleaf)



Edit~ Oh, wait, I foind another one with a SOA, blocks, and an original D30 rear {Shudder}-

 

Yep, at the rear overhang.

Here, check this picture out, it shows the rear overhang. (The frame goes all the way to the back)



Don't feel bad, I have been dealing with the C101/CJ6 frame thing for quite some time (Every time I list a wanted ad for one)

 

Yeah, it's the same rails and crossmembers AFAIK. The rear springs are outboarded by hanging a bracket, at the front, off the side of the frame rail. The rear crossmember is heavier and extends out past the round corners of the CJ-6 body. This is accomodated by the square corners of the C101/104 body.

I think it would be pretty easy to mount a CJ-6 body. You could either move the springs to the CJ position under the frame rails, or extend the body back to cover the rear spring hangers, or leave them exposed (that would look funy though.

 

I wish I had better pix that go all the way back, but this is not the same as a CJ6 frame-





Here is a CJ6 (actually Boyink's old one, upside down)



Boxing, lack of the strapping on the underside, and extra length to support the back of the C101 (Actually C104 in this case) body are all different.

 

No joy with the pictures - only the 3rd one is visible. I could be wrong, but I've seen a few naked C101 frames and thought they were the same (aside from the differences I noted). It would be a great service to post measurements and/or pictures to illustrate the differences.

 

I think that Dan is referring to http://www.justjeepsters.com/. This site really rocks when it comes to fixing up a rusty Jeepster. Have fun!

 

couple of pics of the rear section of a commando frame from Terry Howe's write up.

 

Sorry, I should have just hosted the pix myself, but jd7 did me one better.

 

Yup, kinda how I feel about it...

 

thanks for all the help guys. I am gonna look at maybe seeing if I can either find a better body, or workin with what I have. If anyone has a body that would be usable that might be nice of course. I was thinking I could just hack out all the rusty body parts and replace them little by little. Maybe making the body myself that is. I could do away with the rocker panels, cut the whole rusty tailgate section off completely and give it a traditional jeep look in the back possibly, not sure. I have not really been able to look at a cj6 or 8 or 10 body before so I am not sure how they would look on the jeep at all. I wanted to do a restoration, but my mind is kind of all over the place with all the issues I am going to run into with the body and all. but who knows, maybe all I need is someone more experienced to look at the body to make the decission for me and give me some guidence on where to go. thanks and I will post up some pics of what it all looks like at this point.