First time Willys owner, new project

I've also been looking for a safer way to have a tilting front passenger seat for access to the back. What do you guys think of trying to adapt the latch from the front pass seat from a K5 Blazer?

Les,

Stev wrote: Les, This is a photo of the passenger seat arm rest  in my trail jeep.  It was made from an old drivers seat front leg.  I hammer shaped the ends and welded them to the passenger seat frame.  The pad is on the seat.

Edited by LesBerg - 02 July 2017 at 4:15am

Is that the willy tool box I keep hearing about too?

Rear disc brake upgrade:



Thanks for the plate plans, Stev!

A few things I discovered during the install:

Use a 1/2" caliper plate.
If the shop you're talking to can't cut a 3/8 hole in a half inch plate, find a new shop. You want a water jet shop, not a plasma/laser shop. There is some limitation to many plasma and laser setups (which I can't explain) where you can't cut a hole with a smaller diameter than the thickness of the metal.

This clears up several issues:
It eliminates the need for a spacer/washer between the caliper and the mount plate.

It also allows the use of the stock bracket-to-caliper bolts, no trimming required. If you're sourcing parts from a salvage yard, they probably followed you home anyway.

If you use the 1/2 plate instead of 3/8, you can use 3/8-24 x 1 1/4 bolts and not need to trim anything. In the above pic you can see that with lock washers the 1 1/4 bolts are exactly the right length, so again there's no need to grind off extra threads for clearance.

I haven't checked this out for the front yet, but IIRC, the front bolts were about 1/8" too long. If I had used a 1/2" plate instead of the 3/8 they would have been perfect as well. I don't recall the actual bolt length, though.

Of course you need new wheel studs.
The stock units are actually long enough, but the shoulder is too tall once you remove the brake drum. Where the brake drum mounts over the shouldered section of the stud, the disc mounts over the shank, so the originals don't work.

There have been a number of suggested replacements, but they all involve some kind of work-around. You have to drill out the hole in the hub/flange larger for a bigger stud shoulder, or you have to drill the holes in the rotor larger, etc.

I discovered that the stock wheel studs used for the later model Willys brakes are nearly perfect. You want the studs used for the drum on the outside of the hub, not behind it. The shoulders still protrude slightly - about 1/16 of an inch, but the design of the stock rims and the spoked units I'm running clear it just fine.

Left-hand thread wheel studs from stock Willys drum-over-flange setup.

Additionally, using the drum-over-hub wheel studs allows you to retain the stock left-hand thread studs on the driver's side wheels if you choose to.

Other Stuff
I also installed an adjustable proportioning valve on the rear line. My jeep has been stretched, and when it was done the installer elected to splice in a second tube to lengthen the rear brake line instead of replacing the whole thing.

The splice is even with the front eye of the rear spring, so I just installed the unit there. It's handy if I want to make a quick adjustment when I'm loaded for camping. I just reach under to the inside of the frame rail at the front of the spring and twist the knob a bit.

The local yard I bought my parts from is a pull-it-yourself affair, so I grabbed the rotors, calipers, rubber lines and a few inches of the steel lines. This let me get all the fittings required to do the swap. No extra parts to order. At that point, all I needed was the plates, brake pads, and bolts.

The other reason I elected to use the stock Tracker lines is it's far cheaper and I can buy replacements at any auto parts store.

I welded in some line tabs to hold everything in place. The routing is a little goofy, but it's out of the way and it works:


Now I have disc brakes on all four corners. It stops way better than before, and fairly inexpensive.

Parts list for the rear disc brake upgrade:

• Rotors, calipers, and lines at Pull-N-Save $36
• new pads $17
• Bolts $6
• Caliper plates $60
• DOT 4 brake fluid $9
• Adjustable proportioning valve $47
• brake line tabs $10
  

Total cost: $185

Can't beat it.

Edited by LesBerg - 12 Apr. 2018 at 6:48pm

Are you kidding? Those are far harder than 'Idaho batholith' granite found around here!

I was actually thinking about hacking them off last weekend, but I don't know how much meat to leave on them for adding spring plate skids. Do I even need skids on them?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯