The Resurrection of CJ2-26

Ol' Unreliable wrote: I would never have thought of turning the photo upside-down to make the letters pop out.  Thanks for the tip, Jeff!  And yes, it is weird!

 I thought it was sunken in too. Took me for ever to see it wasn't either. I looked at the bottom part of the "P" and then it all pops out. ( For me at least)  Weird optical illusion!

Oilleaker1 wrote: Fred, interesting how it retains the WW2 arms for the tie rods on the knuckles and the steering bellcrank is up on the frame already. I wonder if those arms are different from WW2 Jeeps.  If you decide to retain the aluminum knuckle type seal holders and need a set, I have two sets of them.

John:  The front axle installed and pictured is an early CJ-2A axle assembly.  But both it and the original front axle for the CJ-2 (which is long gone) use MA upper steering arms A-822 (right) and A-826 (left), not the MB steering arms A-1710 (right) and A-1712 (left). The front cross member mounted steering bell crank bracket, W.O. 640208, is new to the CJ-2 frame. I'll keep you in mind for the knuckle seal holders when I reach that point in the restoration.  I think I have a pair or two but haven't looked for them recently.

Fred, I think of you and your smiling face often. Watching you use the heck out of your  Agri Jeep astounded me because of it's rareity. I was thinking of you in relation to the exotic Jags: 12  E type lightweights, worth millions being raced. 57  D Types being raced, worth millions. Now the cool thought: 3 Early known priceless CJ2's being trailed. You have them beat.  Only 3.  I think you are the winner.  I love to rub elbows with the rich and famous. They take a shower at my house all covered in trail dust. Eat doughnuts in Bune Vista!.  ( see me about Weimar's doughnuts in Sturgis )  I also want you to introduce me to this bar in Buffalo Wyo. sometime. See me about that too!  Carry on, Oilly

lowenuf wrote: Fred, when you reach the determination on front floor pan replacement, I have a die here to replicate the passenger side indentation that was placed in conjunction with the hat channel to even the underside for the exhaust hanger bracket.

Low:

Thank you for mentioning that.  I'll be in touch when we review the passenger side floor, which is particularly rough underneath the "rust containment box" Willys thoughtfully placed there.

The past few days I have been battling the tapered pin that holds the bell crank vertical shaft in place.  It is a replacement pin with the small ended threaded for a nut, lock washer and tapered wedge washer.  After removing those I put the nut back on to preserve the pin's threads.  At first I tried gently hammering on the nut to loosen the tapered pin, but it would not budge.  The next day I escalated my efforts by employing a small hydraulic jack to push it out: 



No dice.  It still did not budge even with the jack hydraulically locked after the pump handle would no longer move. So we heated the bracket with a cutting torch while keeping the jack in place.  Nothing moved.  So we got a bigger hammer; no help. Then we removed the drivers side front tire and added a big long punch to increase the arc and power of our swing.  No go.  Then we got a bigger sledge hammer and swung away.  The pin slowly began to imperceptibly move as we added heat, more Kroil, candle wax and many more swings. It is still in there after much exertion.  I'm now thinking of cutting off then drilling out the fat end to relief the stress on the pin and reduce its structural integrity, then swinging away some more.  Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated! 

Moving on to something more achievable, I removed the rivets from the destroyed upper gussets for the front bumper.  Rather than grind off the rivet heads with a small grinding wheel, I first tic-tac-toed them with a thin cutting wheel. Then I chiseled away the perimeter pieces. Finally I whacked the small standing center with a 4 lb. sledge until the rivet popped out the bottom of the hole.



 
The next task is to cut the welds along the sides of the upper gusset plates and knock them loose. I'll remove the front spring hangers and bottom gusset plates after turning the frame upside-down to get a clear shot at them, after the axles and springs are removed. 

My final small accomplishment was removing the frame tag. I flattened the heads of the drive rivets with a hand file, then drilled increasingly larger (but still very small) holes in the drive rivets until their heads spun off. The frame tag then dropped off into awaiting hands. This morning I cleaned off its paint with the wire wheel on my bench grinder, revealing the frame tag in all its naked and well-worn glory:



I'll paint in the letters before clear coating and installing it on the repaired and refinished frame.    

John:

Thanks for the suggestion to thread the hole drilled through the tapered pin and use a spacer and bolt as a puller to remove it. 

Fred, cut the head of a HT 1/2" UNF bolt, weld it to the protruding part of the big end of the pin , slip a pipe over it fit a hardened washer and pull the pin out through the pipe by doing the nut up.

Its a very direct way of getting a lot of weight on a small object.

Thanks guys, fascinating thread

Fred Coldwell wrote:

The only thing cooler than a two digit serial number is a ONE digit serial number!
And Fred has both. Awesome!

Thanks, Stan.  For comparison here is the frame tag from CJ2-09:



As you can see, the first digit of its two digit serial number counts for naught.  

Before placing them side-by-side, I had assumed these two frame tags would be identical. But thanks to your compliment, Stan, we just learned the frame tags are different between #9 and #26.  This means that even the frame tags are different between the first twenty CJ-2 AGRIJEEPS and the second twenty CJ-2 stamped "JEEP"s.

As is now apparent with #26 cleaned off, the fonts used for "JEEP" are different in shape and thickness of the letters; the "CJ-2" is pre-stamped on the frame tag for "26" when it was made vs. hand-stamped on the frame tag for "09" after it was made; and thicker bold letters are used for all the lower data on the tag for "09" than on the tag for "26".  Except for the information, there is no standardization between these two CJ-2 frame tags.  This restoration process continues to teach me new things.  

Edited by Fred Coldwell - 02 Apr. 2017 at 1:04pm