Build - 1970 CJ5

Its crazy how time consuming this is... The passenger side just below the JEEP was indented, trying to raise that without affecting the stamp was a challenge. I'm excited to get this part done so I can move onto assembly. Then onto brakes and steering around the time we get the new harness in to make it road worthy.

 

Gearing up for paint! Body work is coming to an end. Time off is scheduled for the last weekend of this month and I'll take the body back up north, and hopefully get it back on the frame, mocked up, torn back down and painted in time to come back south with all of it together for the most part. Final parts are coming in the mail. Got the windshield tie downs for the hood, glove box door, the dash, body mounts, and the 405 piece stainless hardware kit in the mail which are the last of the items I needed before paint.



There are some small details I will work on for the next couple weeks. Apt is scheduled to get floors rhino lined next week. We are going to attempt to paint the rhino lining, fingers crossed. Here are some more current pictures.











The bottoms of each side aren't perfect which kinda bugs me but its kinda as good as its gonna get..

 

Got the tub back today from having floors coated with rhino lining. I'm very happy with the results. I chose rhino lining because i didn't want the roughness of the hercules liner and I also have Line-X in my truck, it is not as "rubbery" as the rhino lining. IAm going to attempt to paint over it, the guy at the shop said its been done before, so fingers crossed on that. Here are a couple pictures. I left the transmission cover off as I just want it to be gloss black on top of hopefully a red floor, also took the visible bolts out, I will put new stainless bolts in without any paint on them.

 

Tailgate hinges and tailgate mounted yesterday. I am having second thoughts though. Was planning on painting tailgate hinges/bolts along with the hood hinges/bolts while already bolted on the body, to avoid damage to the paint while installing them later. Also I believe thats how they rolled off the line, from research people say they had primer under theirs from the factory. However, I am getting the feeling I will be happier with the stainless bolts showing on the red hinges. Not 100% on what I want to do but I have the week to decide. Also got the inside of the fenders sprayed with undercoating that I will topcoat with something, not sure what yet, thinking plasti-dip actually since its pretty tough and easy to clean with a plastic brush, also very easy to touch up.

Leaving thursday with everything and will be painting this weekend, weather permitting. Everything is basically done on the body, just some final sanding left to do, went over the entire thing yesterday with 150 grit and 220 using DA sander and its looking good. Still not thrilled about the bottom of each side but I dont want to use that much bondo down there, hopefully its just visible sitting up high on the trailer and wont show when its on the frame. I'll post a ton of pictures later in the week so I will hold off for now.

 

A lot of work is getting done before I get up north with the body, I am very lucky. The engine is back in the frame and running. Also it has been painted. This will save me a huge headache of trying to find someone I trust to work on the mechanical aspect in the future.

Here is a video of the buick 231 we swapped in running/painted back on the frame.
http://youtu.be/n0Hc34nkm5M

 

Nice Job...........keep up the good work , your project is coming along nicely.

 

Thanks! Doing my best for a beginner!

 

We are putting some time in on this thing. About 6 hours on thursday when I got in, and about 13 hours friday, we just called it a day today so about 11 hours of work. I am exhausted and so are my father and brother! A lot has happend though, I am just not getting a chance to get an update here.


Thursday evening we got the firewall, inner fenders, underside of the hood, and a couple coats on the floor. Not much else done other than prep and a couple small things here and there. We also drove out and got a couple parts to finish assembling the transmission/transfer case, and finished installing them and filled them with oil.





Friday we started with getting a couple more parts painted like the top side of the hood, tailgate, hinges, dash, glove box door, headlight buckets, etc. Also spent a lot of time getting the tie rod flips from goferitoffroad in, cutting the rear of the body to fit over the A section of the frame, and lastly installing the master cylinder and clutch, which by itself took about 3 hours and was a nightmare as nothing seemed to line up or want to go back together.












Today (Saturday) we took the body and placed in onto the frame, got the body mounts situated and snug, the stainless bolts from 4wd.com worked great. We had to weld new body mount brackets on the rear of the body to attach onto the rear crossmember. We placed them further inside as I am planning on cutting off outside portions of the rear cross-member near where the bumper mounts attach. We drilled holes into the rear floor to attach 2 more body mounts, I thought it was weird there weren't any. We drilled out the holes in the floor and inside the toolbox from underneath through the floor supports and everything mounted fairly easy. Then it was onto more final prep on everything and we painted the rest of the entire jeep. The paint is 100% done other than a good wet-sanding which I want to wait a good while until everything is really cured to do.





















Overall I am very happy with the paint. It has a couple bugs in the clear coat because we painted outside but I think after wet-sanding it wont show. We put about 5 coats of color and probably a good 4 heavy coats of clear. The body is sitting WAY higher than I thought it would and its sitting on small tires right now. Its high enough that 33's are going to look wayy to small I think. I might have to go with 35's which was not something I wanted to do. I read on a forum though that 35 BFG KM2's at 28 psi measure 34.2... so that might be a good option but they only come in 12.50 width, I'd rather run a more narrow tire. But we will see. I'm sure I will feel the need to update something else here soon, but that's all I can think of about right now.

 

Nice Jeep
Any trouble with the paint sticking to the rhino lining?
Thinking about putting some on the floor of my Jeep and painting over it.

 

Not as of now, It seems to have bonded just fine. I used an adhesion promoter on it but i don't think it was necessary. Just cleaned it with some acetone and it stuck really good.

 

Alright, just wanted to ask someone who has done it.
Can't wait to pull the rest of the carpet off the Jeep's floor to see what surprise is waiting for me.

 

Spent a few hours working on it today, wasn't expecting to have time so that was nice. The main things I got done today were mounting the rear bumper and spare tire carrier, mounted the tailgate because I just couldnt help myself, and started repairing my steering wheel.

For the rear bumper, I used 8 "Grade 8" bolts. And just to re-cap, 4 of them tie into the frame with the bracket welded in the previous post. So one problem I noticed right away, my passenger side brake light is going to be covered up by the spare tire carrier... Not too sure what to do about this yet. Thinking I'll just get a hitch brake light, since I am planning on putting my tag in my spare tire. I really dont want to mess with the "stock" look of the lights.







Just for the heck of it I made my fiance snap a picture while i held the front bumper on. Gonna wait to mount until wiring is done since its easy to get under the hood without it there.


Using sandable epoxy to fill in the cracks on the wheel. Will need to sand and apply more epoxy before it gets painted.

 

Hood is mounted, dash is mounted, battery tray from a 76+ cj is mounted. I had to drill 2 holes in the firewall, and radiator supports in. Happy with the way the stainless bolts look, glad we didn't paint over them. Also got some more work done on the steering wheel. Spray painted the transmission cover and steering tube. Doesn't look the best but will work until I get the funds for powder coating. That's about it for now.

 

Day 1 of a 2 day streak on the jeep is over. Got a reasonable amount of stuff done. Mounted the front bumper, used total of 6 grade 8 bolts. Didn't use grade 8 washers though and they kinda bent.. Something to do in the future... Also had to so quite a bit of drilling and making some holes bigger. Our fix for the front of the frame also made it very difficult to get the washers and nuts on the bolts.

Anyways, today's work also consisted of mounting the headlight buckets, radiator went in, mounted the hood latch and lock, mounted the fresh air hose thing on the grill with the mesh (it's late), painting shackles, painted the radiator and flushing it. There is 1 tiny leak... It's right on the outside edge of a tube so it shouldn't be a bad fix. Also would like to say that the stainless steel bolt kit from 4wd.com is a must, there were some bolts and nuts i still had to purchase like nuts for the dash bolts since my threads were no longer present. I am very happy with how much easier things are using this since everything is labeled and fits perfectly. Oh also finishing up the steering wheel , got a good coat of primer and sanded, then 2 coats of gloss black on the top. Will coat the bottom tomorrow.

I attempted to mount the glove box door, but the holes from a walcks dash and a door I ordered from walcks were not even close. So after more drilling it the doesn't close. So it's just hanging there. My main goal today was to get all the remaining painted items on the jeep so I could get my garage back.

I can't figure out if I am spending more time cleaning/organizing/more cleaning the garage than working on the jeep. But here are today's lot of pictures.



I used red plasti-dip to paint the portion of the bolt that goes through the bumper eyelet to avoid scratching and clanging driving down the road.



Had to mount the radiator 3 different times, got it in once and the bracket on the drivers side was bent, pulled it and straightend, installed, then realized I am a dummy because I couldn't get the hood latch and lock in...


Looks silly with the tiny tires but here it is.. The paint I used on the shackles is rustoleum cherry red. It's the closest match I have found from trying and looking through old threads.



Steering wheel




Side note, it actually looks like a jeep in my backup camera!

 

Yesterday I cut th glove box door to fit the latch I had on hand. Was pretty nerve racking and should have been done before paint but was one of those small things I didn't think about. Also got the rear driveshaft ready for install with new u-joints, just need to purchase the transfer case ebrake things. The PO sold everything involved with the ebrake before we got to it... So I'll have to do some research to figure out what all I need. Also started wetsanding. Hit the entire jeep with 1500 grit and need to hit a few more spots with the 1500 to get the majority of the orange peel off, then will finish with some 3000. So far so good.

Glove box






Wetsanding, there were some runs in the clear coat that came out nicely. Used the razor blade technique first then used the 1500.

 

Finished wet sanding the entire jeep. Took 2 days of sanding, then 1 day of compound, it will take another day for final polishing. Decided to stop using my high speed buffer after I messed up a place on right side of hood just above the hood latch location.. So it's taking a lot longer to do it all by hand but still turning out nice. Some other things that I have been getting done are painting the seat frames I got from AbqMtnJeep, thank you if you read this!! Was going to get them powder-coated but after using the rustoleum "universal" (I think, it's got the weird sprayer on top) gloss black on some things I was impressed with how it cured and cleaned like regular paint. So I figured I would give it a whirl. Same thing with the windshield hinges. I have put the majority of the stainless bolts in the floor, the rhino-lining made it difficult since it's softer and the paint cracked in a few places even though I didn't tighten them very much since we welded the larger transmission plate onto the floor.

I got the steering column floor bracket I was missing from jwjeep, which was nice since I got to return the sheet metal I purchased to make one and it was the same price they charged for the ready to bolt in one. Other than that, the upper windshield hinges took up some time because the old rusty bolts broke off inside the top bar, drilled and tapped them today.

After meguiars "mirror glaze" 105 cut/compound.




and just for the heck of it, I polished a fender. Very happy.


upper hinges


Halfway through the seat frames, used the rusty metal primer then the gloss black.


Floor

 

Looks amazing!!

Keep up the fantastic work, what tires are you going to run? by the sounds of it you are going to go bigger.

 

Jeep is looking great. The paint turned out beautiful. Nice job.

 

Thanks!!

I would like to keep the factory wheels, and I am unable to find a replacement wheel that's similar and has the large center hole in a 15x8 so I could run a 12.50 tire. Also don't feel like dealing with shipping these off to get widened. I'd love to get a set of 35x12.50 bfg km2's. They measure 34.2 inches at 28 psi new so it's a great size for the 34" rear fender. But can't run a 12.50 tire on these wheels. I'm probably going to get a set of 33x10.50 tires, either bfg at or km2, and hope it looks good, and not like it needs bigger tires. There is a set for sale locally and it's taking every fiber of my being to not go buy them, too many other things needed before tires....

also decided on a color for the wheels. I know the "normal" thing to do is the ivory, but after looking and looking I decided on a color between white and the ivory. My research included going through tractor forums actually. Here is the color I picked, it's called canvas, made my rustoleum, and after they are painted, I will put a normal clear coat over them.

 

Looks great!!!!