CJ-2a Restoration, Let the fun begin

Finally got to lay down some paint, two coats of epoxy primer followed by single stage Acrylic Urethane. Yes, it is yellow vs. Olive Drab. If anyone has followed my other thread debating whether to go originality or military tribute, you'll recall I opted for the military tribute. Obviously, I changed my mind...got some splain'n to do.
Anyway, I'm anxious to flip her over to do the topside and finally get it back on the chassis.

Floors and bracing...FINALLY! This turned out to be a much longer and tedious task than I had anticipated. For one, I opted to bend the floor panels into the trans tunnel vs. making hard corners. My mistake, the PO (Bubba) replaced the DS pan with bends so I assumed that was the "proper" way. Obviously, he had access to metal shaping tools and abilities than I. The PS floor was pretty much gone so I had no reason to believe the floors were installed with anything other than bends. That's my excuse and I'm sticking with it.

Anyway, after many hours of whacking, heating, cutting, patching, nudging and swearing I got the pans to look pretty decent. I still have a bit of oil canning, but not enough to notice when you step on the floor. I'm thinking I can correct a lot of it with a bit of heat and water.

The main issue with the bracing was simply locating the body mounts in the correct locations. I had one body mount (left rear) left on the body after removing all the bad stuff. I mapped the mount points on the frame and transferred those dimensions to the body using the one body mount I had left on the body as a reference point. Just as a bit of insurance, I'm going to open up the mount holes on the frame to 3/4". This will give me a little leeway in case the body distorted during all the pounding and welding it went through.


What's left on the underside of the body is just to clean everything up in preparation for paint. Thankfully, Bubba did a repaint with cheap paint and for the most part, I was able to remove it with a sharp chisel, the final cleanup with a flap disc and a good particle mask. The red you see is what I assume is the original factory paint and it's as solid as can be, a tribute to the paint technology and production of the time. It's going to stay and will get overcoated with epoxy primer, hopefully next week.

I formed my trans tunnel pieces with a hammer and 1 1/2" steel pipe - just bend around the pipe for the transition you want.

Got the old floors removed, cleaned up the perimeters and installed the passenger side...all in only a day and a half. The major time consumer was inducing 18 ga. steel into compound curves. I heated the bends as best I could with a propane torch to soften it, but there just wasn't enough heat to make the metal pliable. So I ended up whacking away at it with the help of my wife (she's a keeper) providing backing on the other side. With a little more cutting and patching, I finally got it reasonably close to correct. If I had more heat available I would have tried the heat/water trick. Anybody got a method to caress these floors into place?
Here's the final product.


Only one more side to go.

First start today and it runs great! Actually, I tried starting it yesterday, but all it did was pop and die. Finally figured out I was flooding the crap out of it. I pulled the carb and there was a pool of gas sitting in the intake manifold. Soaked it up and blew some hot air into it, replace the carb and it fired right up and purred like a kitten.

That pretty much covers everything I could do on a bare chassis, so now it's on to bigger and better things, namely the body. WooHoo!

Good catch Ben, it indeed does look like some kind of skid plate for the e-brake, once it's turned over. However, not sure how much protection it would provide in a hard hit, especially since the free end attaches to a bolt on the transfer case. It might save the e-brake at the expense of the TC, not a good trade.

I have to say, whoever fabbed this thing up did a very nice job, despite it being a bad concept. I'm pretty sure one of the PO's worked at a local shipyard and this was a "government" project.

Joe DeYoung wrote: I don't recognize that as a 2A part.

Or skid plate?

I thought I took pictures of everything as I disassembled, but I missed this one. I'm going to flip it over and see if it makes more sense that way. It appears to be a cast or forged item so unlikely that someone fabbed it up in their shop as a one-off.