Like a Hurricane - 1960 Willys Pickup Project

I'm starting this thread so as not to clog up my garage thread, but the 2 kind of go hand in hand. I hope in this thread to chronicle the -likely slow- progress of work on my 1960 Willys pickup. I bought it back in March of 2012, and began a blog about it here: http://willyspickup.blogspot.ca/ . As for clarification on the title, I chose a Neil Young song, with reference to the Willys 'Super Hurricane' engine that lives under the hood.

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I think, in order to do the storyline justice, rather than having you flip to that blog and back here, that I'll simply copy over the pertinent posts to this thread and then take it from there. Since I just recently moved it to my own shop, hopefully the progress will be faster then before. Anyways, Intro over, lets get cracking.

Oh man fantastic I'm following for sure. Subscribed.

I'm in.

Intros

31/3/2012

Having found another Willys Jeep Pickup while casually browsing an online classified site, I got to thinking, “Yes, it’s time for another project.” I spent the winter going stir crazy wanting to get my hands dirty again and tuck into something that needed a bit of automotive salvation. With that in mind, I set up a time to view what would become my next project.

The Basics:
- 1960(ish) Willys Pickup. (late 1960 saw the intro of the 1-piece windshield)
- Original Willys Super Hurricane Flathead 6, producing 105HP and around 195lbft of torque, when new
- Original Borg Warner T-90 toploader 3-speed transmission, mated to a Spicer 18 transfer case.
- Original bed, albeit very rough and rusted, rare to find a truck so unmolested.
- Original Interior components (where surviving). Pedals, shifter knobs, dash knobs all still intact. Looks like some door components are missing – probably have been for ages – will need to find new ones.
- Meyers SP78 added at some point in the past. This was done in a more “professional” manner using bolts and standard hardware, rather than welding it to the frame as I would expect on a truck of this age. Since I already have a plow on the other Willys up north, I figure having 2 is likely overkill. This one is closer to resto than the ’51, so I think that’s exactly what I’m going to do.
- All glass, surprisingly uncracked. The passenger window is missing however, but should be an easy replace by templating the driver’s side and getting one made up (will make a temp Plexiglas one).
- This truck has rust in most of the usual spots. The bed is really now just fenders and a top rail, the floor/mounts of the cab are basically non-existent, and the frame needs some patching on a cross member. This means welding, lots of welding, and a lot of good old fashioned fabricating. This is exactly what I wanted.
- Extra goodies included the aforementioned plow, and a set of 4 spare tires all on matching rims (3 of these tires nearly match the spare on the truck). I am well cared for in the Willys tire department.

The plan in general with this truck takes a different approach to the Wagoneer I spent 4 years rebuilding. On the Wagoneer, it wasn’t really worth the investment to make it sparkling new, since it was just so beat up. This vehicle is made mostly of flat steel, so my plan is to reproduce the pickup bed in CAD and get the shearing work done at the same place that made my bumper, then weld it all together myself at home. It will be slightly more expensive than doing it yourself, but very pro and a lot faster than messing about in my garage with massive pieces of steel. With this reproduction I should be able to visibly duplicate the factory bed, while making some much needed structural improvements.

The bottom of the cab will receive a similar treatment to the bed, with most of the underside forming work being done by a manufacturer. 14 gauge sheet steel is not wildly expensive or hard to work with, so it shouldn’t break the bank at all.

First steps with this truck will be to get it running so I can move it around the driveway. I need to patch a brake line that sprung a leak when I pushed the pedal… should be relatively easy to fix. Also going to try boiling the carb and fuel pump to get them all limbered up and ready for service, a trick I learned from a classmate in college.









Otherwise I spent my time browsing the interior, marveling that although not 100% complete, it is remarkably unchanged and original. The cardboard glove-box is still intact and housing old bits and pieces, and the cable driven vacuum wipers are still in place. This level of completeness demands only one thing; RESTORATION

>Editors note: I copied these images from my blog, but I'm not sure how to resize them. Future non-blog images won't be the size of Texas, I assure you<

Fuelling the Rig

10/4/2012 – 15/4/2012

After browsing the vehicle and deciding that it deserves to be restored for active pickup truck duty (and not a wussy trailer baby), I purposed that the first logical thing to do would be to check for a heartbeat. I knew that with the fuel pump already out it wouldn’t be drinking on its own, and since the carb had a stuck butterfly it wouldn’t be throttling on its own either. First a check of the main belt driven parts to check for seized parts; with a green-light here I slotted a good battery in and hooked up the decrepit battery cables to see if the vintage Flathead would pulse. I had music to the tune of about 3 seconds of rollover before the old battery cables gave up to current, but it told me that there was life in the starter, and that the motor wasn’t seized (it has been sitting with new oil in the pan so that is a huge plus).

With this in mind I didn’t fry anything else by continually rolling it. I will simply pick up some universal cables and re-wire the battery so it is less prone to shorting on the body. About 4 minutes of work had the tall-stack Carter Carb off of the side ported cast manifold and in my hand (leaking thick stale gas everywhere) bound for some rebuild work. I will shop around for a rebuild kit but for now the guts looked ok.

Taking the fuel pump apart revealed that the workings were a bit frozen from lack of use, but freed up once I got it all apart. The diaphragm’s inside looked ok too, but re-hosing everything will be a bit of a trick. Taking the carb apart revealed that several years of sitting rendered this carburetor a sludgy mess. It was in desperate need of a cleaning beyond what an old toothbrush can offer, leading to my recollection of a classmate who boiled his bike’s carb in lemon juice to clean it all up.







El Cheapo no-name Lemon juice in hand, I poured “the equivalent of 42 lemons” into an old drawn-steel soup pot; nice and deep for the legendary foam lemon juice creates. I brought it to a rolling boil and slipped the carb parts into the bath, bringing the juice down to a simmer to hold the boil without going overboard. The recipe (if you want to try this at home) goes like this:

- 1 pot; large enough for your parts and the juice, deep enough so it won’t boil over
- Enough lemon juice (even cheaper is white vinegar, which I found out about after) to just cover the part. I used 2x946ml bottles. You can add water to bring this level up
- Bring juice to a boil and set parts in. let simmer/boil for 20 minutes, moving the parts around periodically and turning to allow total penetration.
- Remove parts and place into tub of hot water with dish soap. Scrub off the lemon juice varnish with a toothbrush.





The results this method produced were unbelievable, working on both the white metal (or aluminum, I’m not sure) of the carb, and even better on the cast iron of the main butterfly section. I have no doubt that with this carb back together and properly adjusted; the engine is going to purr. Next is to try boiling the pump in vinegar to see if that manages to do the same thing. With standard vinegar having a 5% acetic acid content I should be fine. Next steps are to put these pieces back together and mount them back on the truck. I am tempted to give them a shot of paint to give them a cool shot of colour and protect them from future grime buildup.

I Think it's Stock, But it Has to Go
14/4/2012

Somewhere in the past, and I'm still not certain whether it was in Toledo, a Willys shop, or the 5th owners garage, a heavy checker-plate steel bumper was added to the rear of the truck, complete with mount points and a trailer hitch. I believe it to be stock for a few reasons. 1 is it's build quality and it's use of machined mounts. the second is that I've definitely seen bumpers like this while scouting the web. The fit was good on the thing but the mount points are now mostly broken and the welds on the fenders were about all that held it on.

It's a semi-sad sacrifice to see the bumper go... and I'm not sure if I could sell the bumper to another Willys owner (it's salvageable), but I just don't like it enough to put it back on. It weighs a good 80-100 lbs so it certainly takes a lot of weight off the back of the truck.



The removal of this piece allows for a much more aggressive departure angle from the back of the truck, and allows you to see some of the original design intents such as the side skirting behind the fenders, and the rear frame rail.



The welds along the fender edge were pretty thick from years of being beaded back together, requiring some serious plunging with the cutoff wheel.. some large torque with the Johnson Bar allowed the mount bolts to shear and I finally dropped the heavy wraparound bumper off the back of the truck. This gives the truck a much more aggressive back end. Unfortunate that, like so many old pickups, the tailgate is missing.

Vinegar Boil Off
18/4/2012

Since my lemon-juiced carburetor came out of the pot looking like a new part, I opted to boil off the Fuel pump in the same manner, this time giving the "boil it in vinegar" approach. The big attraction to vinegar is the fact that it costs about 25 cents a litre, making it 1/8th the price of lemon juice. it's 5% acetic acid content means it will have some eating power on older parts, but due to it's lower concentration it needs longer in the pot to work on the part you put in.



I wasn't in the mood to totally strip the fuel pump, so the main diaphragm stayed put, and i just brought the vinegar up to it so i wouldn't damage it. Vinegar strangely seems difficult to bring to a boil, unlike lemon juice which froths up on heat 3 of 8 on the stove. Vinegar on the other hand needed a constant 7-8 to keep it approaching a rolling boil. since I was using a new el-cheapo pot.. that might be the culprit.



Parts were left in the bath for a good 20 minutes of boiling time, and the vinegar works excellent on built up dirt and fuel stains. it seems to take issue with oil deposits though, and didn't touch them at all (unlike Lemon Juice, which slams oil back into the ground with an iron fist). I think for oily parts in the future I will boil for longer, over a fire, in a bigger pot, and add maybe 1 part lemon juice to 3 parts white vinegar.

All in all for this experiment, I was pretty pleased with the results. for about 30 cents, I cleaned the guts of the fuel pump very well, so I am happy about that and will modify my recipe for future boiling. As for now the pump is back together and ready to be re-installed.



Update: as of about 5:30pm on April 19th, with the tall stack carb back on and the bowl loaded with fresh fuel, the straight-six drew breath and fired for the first time in several years. It ran for about 25 seconds before draining the bowl dry, but proved to me that things seem to be in order. I do need to rig up a fuel delivery system under the hood so I can move it around my driveway, and probably give the points a good cleaning while mating them to some new spark plugs. All things considered it sounds pretty healthy for its age and wasnt coughing up blood and guts on my driveway.

Cutouts
April 20, 2012

Fuel pump gasket was half on the block and half on the pump, rendering it's sealing capabilities to nil. I did manage to scrape it off with an exacto, giving me enough of a shape to draw up a template on a cork coaster (IKEA, on sale for like 40 cents for a pack a few years ago.. knew these would be handy). The new gasket looks like it should work, though it is a touch thicker than the previous gasket (I'm hoping it will crush down). I figure that since this engine has a vented oil fill tube, there really isn't any great crankcase pressure - meaning this cork gasket should hold up as well as the old fibre-paper style one.



Also found a link to a cool PDF of the older 4Wheel Drive logo found on these trucks in the earlier 50's (on the CJ3B page). Since it was a free file, I downloaded it and print off a 1:1 scale on thick cardstock. Then with a straightedge and an F11 knife I cut out the old vintage letters, figuring i can use this to stencil the logo onto the truck (same logo was photoshopped to form the header panel on this blog. the colour combo of orange and steel blue is just something I've been kicking around lately (blue body, orange rims and lettering), paying homage to Jeep's recent Mighty FC concept.

Revisions
January 30, 2013

First post of the new year, again a short one. Back when I worked on the replacement bed, I had figured on cutting the old 'cap rails' off the top of the bed and welding them on. Had this been a warehouse find that had sat since 1961, that would have been ok, however the current bed is pretty beat up and rusty, so I opted to redo the rails as well for a fresh look.

I left enough steel in the cap rail to allow me to bend it around a die to achieve the rolled rail, and made the bed from 2 pieces that meet in the middle. I designed it in 14 Gauge for strength, but the factory stock 16 Gauge would be doable if 14 is too expensive. I nixed the custom bed supports underneath to save some pennies, and can use pre-fabbed steel for this, or just bend my own supports in the garage.

Lastly, I added the maple strips and gave the model a nice blue for looks.



At the moment, I have loads of other higher priority things on the go (wedding soon, new house, etc), but I still sent the parts in for quote... who knows?

Better Than Stock

February 15, 2013

When my quote came back from the fabricator and I found it to be less than 1/10th the price of a reproduction bed, it felt like I’d discovered some secret restoration cheat code. Granted, the bed I designed does not have a corrugated floor, and none of the alignment holes have been drilled, but for savings of about $3100 over a reproduction bed, I can easily live with that. The other plus with this bed was that the difference between 16 gauge and 14 gauge was only about $20, so I opted for the thicker steel, giving me an extra .015” over stock thickness. This may not sound like much, but the heft is considerable, and should stand up to years and years of use without showing as much wear.





Getting this load home in the little echo was not a task for the faint of heart, as it hung out the back of the trunk and touched the back of my seat. I did manage to mock it up in my garage for some pictures and an oiling, since I won’t be welding it for a little while. Note that the bed floor is placed in upside down, otherwise the centre flange wouldn’t let it sit flat.

Ok, that's phase 1 of the trucks life mostly taken care of. There were a bunch more posts on that blog, so you can check it out yourself if you like, thats all I wanted to bring over though. Basically, it ended up sitting in my parents garage for a few years while I got married, bought a house, etc etc. I was able to bring it over to my place recently, flat towing it with a homemade tow bar and light setup. I copied the post from my Workshop 88 thread, so now phase 2 starts.

-Start of copied post-

Alright, let me start by saying, everything went very smoothly, and I learned a lot about flat towing in the process. Maybe I'll give you guys a recap of this weekend's events.

Saturday:



While poking around the scrap steel bin at work, I came across some nicely welded roll-formed channel and said "hey, this will bolt up perfectly to my frame." So I brought it home and chopped the lengths I needed (it's in the background of the pic above). I also grabbed my wife's grandfather's homemade toolbox, and loaded it with the tools I'd need for towing. As a side note, I love this box, I might have to make a few more for myself, they look real real easy.



The first order of the day was fitting my new custom tow mounts to the frame. The frame on the Willys trucks have 2 holes near the front of the rail for the bumper, 6" apart. the pre-punched holes in the profile lined right up. I also fed my heavy safety chain into the channel and passed a mounting bolt and the tow pins through it to secure it. This whole setup was cheap as free, everything was repurposed. Scrap steel frame mounts from the garbage bin at work, the coupler off a junk piece of farm equipment, the tube steel off a 1960's railing I took out of the house, bed-frames for the angle iron stiffeners, even the hardware and pins were cast-off used hardware from work. at $0, this was great.



Next Step was fitting the Fleetmaster DeepLug on the back. what a cool looking tire. This is the spare off my other Willys truck, and I'd never used it. Note, Willys uses a reverse thread lug nut/stud. This is very perplexing the first time you go to take the wheels off.




The final order of business besides cleaning around the truck was to mount up the towing lights. Again, I didnt drop a nickel on this. The wire was all old trailer wire, and the lights I've had for years. They were on sale for $4 at princess long ago. A few holes and a bunch of zip ties and I was off. My dad threw together a nice 'In Tow' sign, as you'll see, as well as some pylons in the back so it all looked official.


Sunday, 5:45am

As these things go, I forgot to take any 'en route' pics. Frankly, I wanted to get it all over and done with. I had the t-case in neutral for towing, and had done a few test runs to check the tracking, etc. With all systems go, we hit the road.

It took about 45 minutes to do the 14km drive, sticking to max 25km/h. Given the time of day, almost nobody was out, which lightened the stress levels.




I was fairly impressed with my hitch setup. It seemed plenty strong and the safety chains were probably overkill.



With my dad's Jeep out of the picture, I had to get the rig up the driveway, so I had nabbed the gas tank out of an old riding mower a while back. A few more zip ties had it secured to the grille support, while a hefty magnet and scrap chunk of aluminum ruler formed a temporary support for the bottom. A few lengths of rubber gas line allowed me to route it through an inline filter and a small shutoff valve.



The old battery needed a jump even after a few days of trickle charging, and with a quick swig of 2 stroke mix fuel (all I had on hand) down the throat of the carb, the flathead 6 drew breath and fired off, filling my neighbourhood with a nice plume of 2 stroke smoke. After easing off the choke, I slipped the Spicer 18 transfer case into low (no brakes, remember), and clicked the 18" shift lever into 1st, gently maneuvering the rig around to line it up into my driveway, where it sits for now, waiting for some much deserved love. I think this has got to be as good a shop truck as any, I can even picture a hand painted old-style logo on the door.

nice ride.. pictures are too big.

e30bradley said:

nice ride.. pictures are too big.

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Thanks. I know the pics are a little on the large size, I copied them over from my blog which has em at 1600x1200. I didnt feel like resizing them all to upload on here, and they wouldnt upload on flickr, so I decided to just leave it. future posts will have regular sized 800xsomething sized images.

I love it. I'm in.

By the way... never forget

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Subscribing to this one, Mr. 360. Gonna have to remember that boiling trick.

Love the truck, and the work done so far. I have flat towed a few vehicles over the years and it has never been fun, good job on the tow setup, over kill on the side of safety is never a bad thing.

I have one sitting in front of my garage. Its not mine though, My dad has a soft spot for them. I am supposed to swap the body onto a Mercury mountaineer frame...someday. I think this one is a 48?
Neat old trucks!

As a fellow Willys aficianado, working on a 48 CJ2A/M38 Franken jeep restoration myself. I'll be following, Congrats on finding such an unmolested candidate!

Galvonzo said:

Subscribing to this one, Mr. 360. Gonna have to remember that boiling trick.

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Honestly, one of the best tricks I've tried in a while. You must wash it right away after though, as the lemon juice is all sticky and will dry on fast. Pull it right out of the pot and into hot water so as not to crack it.

Thumper68 said:

Love the truck, and the work done so far. I have flat towed a few vehicles over the years and it has never been fun, good job on the tow setup, over kill on the side of safety is never a bad thing.

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My dad told me of how he once CHAIN towed his grandfathers 58 Vauxhall Victor behind his dad's 72 Bel Air about 20 miles on highway 401 (prettymuch the busiest highway in Canada). That made me decide to a) drive slow, b) take back streets, c) tow at about 6am, and d) build overkill into every aspect. I think next time flat towing I'd drop the driveshafts and steering linkage, but for such a short trip, I didn't bother.

BDAZSVT said:

I have one sitting in front of my garage. Its not mine though, My dad has a soft spot for them. I am supposed to swap the body onto a Mercury mountaineer frame...someday. I think this one is a 48?
Neat old trucks!

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I definitely have a soft spot for these trucks. My wife would love an FC150, I guess it runs in the family. As far as 48, are you referring to this truck? 48's had a flatter nose, and split window (easiest way to tell). They went to full 1 piece windshield sometime in 1960, so this rig was built just after that I believe.

RustnGrease said:

As a fellow Willys aficianado, working on a 48 CJ2A/M38 Franken jeep restoration myself. I'll be following, Congrats on finding such an unmolested candidate!

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I love the 2a's, almost bought one once but it was pretty rough.

Just for fun, a few gratuitous engine shots.



The main shot, this engine is pretty much 100% all there, from the mechanical fuel pump to the vacuum driven wiper motor. It was obviously either owned by someone who cared, or in storage for a long time. At some point, I would like to add a period remote oil filter, and wouldnt a dual carb setup look cool?



I love this casting. I might have to paint the embossed letters to make them pop.



You likely can't see it, but just to the left of the wiper motor, beside the hole in the firewall for the control cable, someone scratched "COMPLETE TUNE UP, NOV '85". Granted, that's 30 years back now, but I think some of those tune ups are still evident. the truck runs pretty well, doesnt smoke (unless i pour in mixed fuel), and seems pretty responsive. I need to pick up a compression tester to check the health of each cylinder and the valves.



This one's interesting. Note the odometer reads '39417' miles (63500km). to me, that's either impressively low, or it's spun around once or twice. judging from how well it's survived for a Canadian truck, I'm guessing that's all it's got on it.

Judging by the pic the odometer numbers look spot on, as in level across the board. i've found once they roll over, they dont line up like that.

That flatty is awesome looking. I love the lettering, you definitely have to pay some extra attention to that!

I had a '51 with a slant 6 in it for a work truck. Tough as nails, and just plain cool too.

I guess its not as old as I thought.


I can't believe the price for rear fenders!!

RustnGrease said:

Judging by the pic the odometer numbers look spot on, as in level across the board. i've found once they roll over, they dont line up like that.

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Good eye, I wouldn't have thought of that but you're right.

longlivepunk said:

That flatty is awesome looking. I love the lettering, you definitely have to pay some extra attention to that!

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I will be for sure. I saw it once on one of these and it looked great.

stikman56 said:

I had a '51 with a slant 6 in it for a work truck. Tough as nails, and just plain cool too.

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I have a 75 dodge power wagon with a slant 6 and it won't die. Good engines

BDAZSVT said:

I guess its not as old as I thought.
I can't believe the price for rear fenders!!

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Not far off though, that's a 50-53 model. You can tell by the pointer nose with the 5 bars, and the small rear Window. Nice truck, but parts can be pretty dear for sure

This is gonna be good! I'm staying tuned in!

I will be follow this project.

Cool truck

Very cool project you have going on and very well documented! Thank you for sharing and im looking forward to seeing the progress on this!

Very cool truck, subscribed to follow and to support a fellow Canuck. Very coincidental, I was just looking at this posting yesterday:



http://www.kijiji.ca/v-classic-cars/barrie/1959-willys-jeep-suv-4x4/1032232308?enableSearchNavigationFlag=true

A little too much work for me, and pricey. I'll live vicariously through your project instead.

I'm not much into the older military stuff but a friend of mine once was. Pretty cool build though nonetheless. What is more interesting for me is that you are likely just down the road from me. I am just north of Ajax. I'd love to drop in to see what you are doing with it sometime.

tinbender 66 said:

This is gonna be good! I'm staying tuned in!

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HOTFR8 said:

I will be follow this project.

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BBChevro said:

Cool truck

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Stooge said:

Very cool project you have going on and very well documented! Thank you for sharing and im looking forward to seeing the progress on this!

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Thanks guys. There's a good bit of work involved in this project, so I'm sure you'll be able to watch for a long time

coldh2o said:

Very cool truck, subscribed to follow and to support a fellow Canuck. Very coincidental, I was just looking at this posting yesterday:



http://www.kijiji.ca/v-classic-cars/barrie/1959-willys-jeep-suv-4x4/1032232308?enableSearchNavigationFlag=true

A little too much work for me, and pricey. I'll live vicariously through your project instead.

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Funny, I saw this one as well, up near Penetanguishene. I agree the price is crazy at $4k, but someone somewhere will buy it im sure. I picked up my truck for $900, and the guy even had CAA float it to my house on his dime. I then turned around and sold the ancient Meyer snowplow off it for $300, so I'm down to $600, which I feel is a good deal for an unmolested Willys. There was even a set of spare tires thrown in, 3 identical 60's era tires that look never used on military rims, and another bald tire on a matching rim. I guess I could sell those too, and recoup a little more of the initial investment.

Techie1961 said:

I'm not much into the older military stuff but a friend of mine once was. Pretty cool build though nonetheless. What is more interesting for me is that you are likely just down the road from me. I am just north of Ajax. I'd love to drop in to see what you are doing with it sometime.

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Just make sure you wear your work clothes

I think everyone that has ever tried to restore an old vehicle, particularly an old truck I would imagine, due to their use, has come across some interesting fixes. Here's one..



I think what happened here, is the door got mashed in the bottom corner, and someone broke out the torch and did some brazing, without fixing the massive crumple. They then bondo'd the whole thing with no regard for body lines, covered it in paint, and called it a day. I'll have to clean off all the gumbo still left on the door to see the damage and go from there. Have yet to see whether it needs a patch panel for the whole lower part, or if I can form my own. Right ahead of it, the cowl has been 'repaired' in the same manner. I think this was for rust, looking from inside. The bondo here is terrible, not to mention that the whole leading edge of the door is folded in slightly because the door-stop is broken and it's been opened too far many times. This, along with the multi-layer floor, are probably the worst bits. Oh, and did anyone notice the gobs of weld holding the fender on at the bottom corner? that ought to be fun.

While this truck is surprisingly original and hasn't had the snot beat out of it, it does come with a few foibles. The passenger door for instance, is devoid of glass, winding guts, handles, and door panel. The guy I bought it from had bought it off a friend who had a collection of military vehicles. I'm guessing thats where the green paint and surplus tail lights came from (I was told that this truck used to be used at the CNE in the 80's. it had a big army canvas tonneau made for the bed. however, it had been folded up sitting in the bed outside with pine needles for years, it was totally rotten). I figure he may have robbed a couple parts off this truck for another one. also missing, is this.



The bottom end of the bell housing is missing. I'm guessing they took it off for servicing, never put it back on, and the vehicle was sold... or as with the door, robbed it for another truck. This should be an easy replace, or I could probably just make one. i dont know how long its been off... cant be good for the clutch

I noticed you were going to try and make the embossed letters on the head pop. Here's what i did for mine. Eventually when the body is done, it'll be painted in a similar red, also going to paint the Willys embossing on the hood black. Should somewhat tie everything together. Dont mind the dust, it's a work in progress lol. Also check out the east coast willys association, either on the webs or facebook. Decent group of guys.

Nice truck! I have two of its later siblings - Jeep J10's, and I just bought a place a little bit north of you.

RustnGrease said:

I noticed you were going to try and make the embossed letters on the head pop. Here's what i did for mine. Eventually when the body is done, it'll be painted in a similar red, also going to paint the Willys embossing on the hood black. Should somewhat tie everything together. Dont mind the dust, it's a work in progress lol. Also check out the east coast willys association, either on the webs or facebook. Decent group of guys.

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Thanks for the tip, I'll check them out for sure. Something like what you painted is probably what id be shooting for, though perhaps in my case I'll just paint the letters i think. Did you use a high heat paint?

RacerRick said:

Nice truck! I have two of its later siblings - Jeep J10's, and I just bought a place a little bit north of you.

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I love the J-10s, they're a great truck. a friend of mine has a late model with the 360 mated to a 4 speed. it's their $200 farm truck. I keep reminding them that someday if it dies, i'll kindly take it off their hands. I'd like to use the motor-****** combo in my 91 Grand Wag, since auto just isn't anywhere near as fun.

yeah high heat engine enamel if i'm not mistaken, it's been a few years since i painted it. The Jeep has been on the back burner for a little while.

Hey 360: Great thread; it's in amazing condition! You got a smokin deal on that Jeep. I've seen some of those Jeep pickups from the 50's, and many/most appear to have a lot of cab rot behind the door, as well as frame rot near the back of the cab/front of the bed.

RM209

Hello Mr. 360

Nice project you have going there. Also my
son has the engine, transmission & axles out of a 62 wagon. If you need any, let me know as I'm sure he would part with them.

Capt
Chrysler