MD Juan Tub Kit 1969 CJ5 4CLY (7/2016)

hinges I have are 75° and 6" long with two 5/16 - 18 threaded holes in front edge

 

I was just looking at my picture of the two windshield frames (above), and thinking, "the cutoff angle of my original (red) windshield side channel looks a lot closer to 15 than 5 degrees" (5 degrees being my previous first guess from memory, and the base angle of my first attempt at a fabricated hinge arm).

Congratulations, Ron. You get credit for being (apparently) the first person on the internet to measure and report the correct Early CJ5 windshield angle! No kidding. Every other reference says 90 degrees, which (based on their use of identical wording) came from a single (wrong) root source. It seems no one ever bothered to challenge those erroneous statements by actually measuring and publishing the correct angle.

Either that, or 1969, 1970, and 1971 all have a15 degree windshield angle but earlier CJ5's are at 90 degrees.

Thanks for getting that for us, and for the Early CJ5 "technical record"... and I think the military M38a has the the same windshield angle.

 

I think some of the confusion lies in the frame shape between early and late the upright post on an early is square to the cowl a late frame tips in to the center relative to the cowl looking from the front.

 

I think you are talking about a trapezoidal windshield shape 55" wide at the top with an (unknown) lean to the rear, and I'm talking about a rectangular windshield 59" wide at the top with a 15 deg lean to the rear. So, yea that certainly adds to the confusion if not explained.

My 1969 has a rectangular frame with a 15 deg lean to the rear. We cut the hinge arms at 15 deg today and got a perfect fit.

 

We have a few more possible MDJ issues today. The new hood doesn't fit the cowling.



This is a view looking forward, passenger's side. there is a large formed channel directly under this hood curvature, so reshaping it to fit is a real problem. We think the problem may be with the cowl shape... still checking. We'll have to try the old hood, or the fiberglass hood for comparison.


Second, the cutouts in the fenders might be too small at the shock mounts. Once again, no big deal with a die grinder.





Finally, we also bumped into the cowl support bracket again today; this time passenger side. MDJ added a small flange around the gusset perimeter to strengthen and stiffen it. Nice idea, but it interfered with the tubular battery support bracket when we tried to drill and bolt it to the gusset. Fortunately, the flange is small and easily bent out of the way (with the help of channel lock pliers.)

 

That hinge is looking great! Scary to think about not having that post in there - really glad Ron spotted that. I never tried the mdj hood from my body kit but it did look like a nice piece - even had the m38a1 shovel mounts on the bottom. I thought my original hood lined up to the cowl better than it did on the original body. Only issue I had was the hinge flats did not line up

 

Thanks. If we try my original hood, I'll get a photo and post it.

My original hood was damaged and repaired by the PO at the side hood clamp attachment. His body work was pretty good but I removed all his Bondo looking for rust (found no rust).

Joe thinks we could blend in a sheet metal layer to bring up the cowl height to match the hood. If it turns out to be the cowl that's low, bringing it up may be our best option. Unfortunately, I bought the MDJ tub kit to avoid a bunch of body work I don't feel comfortable doing... just like this.

 

I was trying to suggest a reason for the angle confusion. Totally understand your issue. Carry on you are doing fine.

 

We tried the original hood (and a fiberglass one) and liked the fit of the original better than the MDJ hood... we think it will take less work to dress up the original hood than to 'fix' the MDJ hood, so we'll probably stick with the original hood.

MDJ hood issue:



My original hood:



The original hood repair I'll have to do:



The other thing we did yesterday was prep the second windshield arm hinge for milling and run the engine to heat hi temp paint to cure it. we ran it about 2-3 hours, hood on, with a 4" exhaust hose run outside under the garage door.

We found small coolant leak at the radiator fill nozzle but a neighbor fixes them a nd offered a free braise repair. we have 3 small oil leaks, one under the rocker arm cover, and two at the bolts over the valve adjustment cover.

AND... one really ugly coolant leak seeping through a repaired crack at the top of the block above the distributor... JP Weld? hmmmm.



I don't even want to ask if that is leaking inside too...

 

I think it's great to get this kind of feedback! it didn't even occur to me that others might be referencing a lateral angle. But after your post, I had Joe give me a Gibbs slap on the back of my thick head... duh, the 90 deg Internet reference for early CJ5 has to mean the lateral angle.

'Good call.

Still, thanks to Ron for posting the 'other' aft leaning angle at 75 deg (15 deg off vertical)... I couldn't find that anywhere.

We really like this forum.

 

yes that 75 degree number is a good chunk o information

 

Since Mike mentioned the fit of his hinges, I wanted to capture and post the fit of my hinges:





On this original hood:



I should mention this is not a 1969 hood. The snorkel cut out was discounted in 1966 or so (per Internet). We guess the hood that was blown off in transit was replaced by this one by the PO.

Oh yea... we finished the second hinge arm. "Second verse, 'same as the first...":



I still have to paint them.

We tried the dash so the windshield brackets could be tested. 'Looks pretty good.



We'll be slowing down probably until after the new year. Joe is visiting San Fransisco for 10 days. Say hello and show him your Jeep if you see him:



You can tell he's from Pittsburgh... he'll say things like "yinz" (translation: plural of "you"), or "it needs fixed" (translation: it needs to be fixed"), or "melk" (translation: "milk")... we all sound like that, but "Jeep" still sounds like "Jeep"!

 

Enjoying the show. Keep up the good work.

 

Happy new year! We snuck in a few "Jeep days" between Christmas and new years day

When we assembled the body on the frame, we found the MD Juan fender cut outs at the front shock mounts were slightly off and we got some unwanted contact. So we removed the fenders, pulled out our trusty die grinder, and trimmed the fenders just a little and it worked great!





After a quick reassembly and another quick trim, we called the fit up "good" and we disassembled all the paintable body parts and put the tub back on the rotessery.

Next, we filled all the gaps with ... err ... gap filler.



I know from a comfort perspective this seems a bit silly in a CJ, but maybe it will slow down the rust between layers of metal.



We noted that none of the support channels had any drain holes and we tried to add a few. But every time we drilled a hole, we found an oak (?) board inside the channel. So we gave up on that and plugged our drilled holes. Where we could, we flooded the channels with LPS rust preventative. Hopefully it will penetrate the oak a bit and stick around a while... but I'm probably not all that hopeful about it. But anything else would have been too viscous to wick into the small gap between the wood and the channel... it seemed our best shot so we went with it.

So now we are ready for the body work. Joe did a light sanding which brought out all the high and low spots, typically at spot welds. We hit each of them with a wire brush to expose bare metal, gave the high spots a wack with a sheet metal hammer, and used body putty to fill them.

Edit: the wire brush was too rough and added more labor to the effort later.



It actually wasn't as extensive as it looks in the photo. Most of this putty was removed in the next sanding step. We hit the passenger side twice and the driver side once before finishing for the day.

This was my first experience with auto body work on this scale (thankfully not Joe's first rodeo). I was surprised how similar it was to finishing drywall, which I've done a few score of times or more. The biggest difference for me was getting the mix right; ie, adding the right amount of hardener. And I had too soft a touch when sanding. I had to learn there is no mistake we can't fix at this stage.

We did learn that the MD Juan primer is pretty thick. Some spots we thought were metal ripples turned out to be paint ripples, which cleaned up easily with sanding. The primer seemed to hold well to the metal.

Edit: while I'm thinking of it... We welded in a stud to make mounting the spare tire bracket easier (vs welding in a nut)... I learned at the sanding step why studs are to be avoided...

And you get a look at Joe's car body rotisserie.

'See you next year!

 

We are approaching our first primer coat after about finishing the tub, fenders, dash and tailgate. Joe was not happy with a slight inward depression on the right side where an interior bracket pulled in the tub side (as you see near the passenger seat), so he brought it back up flat.

You'll also notice we filled in the trapezoidal stamping just under the windshield attachment. This was a MD Juan feature the EarlyCJ5 Jeep community convinced them to remove in a later design update, to make the replacement tubs more authentic looking.

You'll also notice the missing JEEP emboss. I didn't have the heart to cut them out of my original tub. Someone is likely to restore it someday.

We are using the original grill and hood. The grill only needed the lower right corner bent forward about 3/4" to heal a former injury, but the hood is its own project.



We noticed a LOT of flexibility in the tailgate so we looked for a way to make it stiffer. Joe had an old steering column shaft laying around (hopefully not for the 1933 (?) Pontiac) which was a perfect diameter. We cut it a 1/4" short and Joe welded it in.



It worked great! Nice and stiff now.

 

My dad had the same idea! Our tailgate was bent so he had us slide a piece of pipe in our tailgate, then he had us cap the ends with a little sheetmetal. Its been that way for over 30 years now. By the way your hood and cowl line up like mine - the flat spot on the cowl for the hinge does not line up with the flat spot on the hood for the hinge. Not a big deal - Keep up the good work.

 

I still have my original cowl section - I could cut out the JEEP stampings for you if you wanted to weld them in.

 

Wow, thanks for the offer, Mike. Let me check with Joe tomorrow. My fear is that we are pretty far down the road and I don't know that it means enough to us to back up and weld them in and redo that much of the body work. Joe has some really, really nice skills, but he probably feels least confident about sheet metal welding (which is mostly why I bought the MDJ tub kit vs. fixing my original). And while I have the knowledge to write decent welding procedures, I don't have the skill to qualify them. We would eventually get it right, but it would be a bit more trial an error for us than feels comfortable at this stage. Let me see if Joe is more passionate than I am about adding the JEEP emboss.

Here is where we ended up today: an all grey (primer) Jeep, sans hood, windshield frame, and grill. This grey primer is actually a bit darker than it looks in the photo. The final "US Navy HAZE GREY" will be lighter, likely with a slight tinge of blue. And (fortunately) it is a "lusterless" paint, so it should be very forgiving our amateur body work.





The filled in trapezoid feature worked out well and the slight depressions in the tub sides and fenders all filled easily in about 3 or 4 fill/sand cycles.

Next week, we focus on the hood, and ...more sanding, filling and painting everything. Plus we have to get the radiator repaired (braze the fill nozzle joint).

I don't know about the rest of you guys, but I think only some of this body work task is fun... shaping with a hammer and anvil is very cool, and painting is fun because you see results instantly, and solving fit up issues is a nice challenge (when it works)... but the filling and sanding part of this hobby is not the fun part for us. ...Maybe I'll appreciate it more in hindsight when I see the final results. I guess I'm not much of an "artist".

 

Agreed. The hinge flat doesn't line up as well as we might like. Perhaps MDJ addressed this in later iterations of the tub design. Remember, mine is the pre-design update model, (and yours too, I surmise.)

 

thats an amazing amount of work on a "NEW" piece of steel...

very well done, but I would be on the other side of gleefull if it were me...