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

Thanks, REJEEP...I was wondering about that too and this is what occurred to me:
(1) we may have put in more than the minimum work needed, (a) we are amateurs and it takes us more effort than a pro. (b) Joe sets a high bar for what he'll accept and I'm especially grateful for that (as is my wife .
(2) we didn't have a strong expectation for what was an appropriate amount of work needed to prepare the MDJ parts. We expected to do some body work, holes, even a bit of trimming, per previous comments on the internet. That said, the hood not fitting was a huge disappointment which Quadratec/MDJ is going to hear about. (Quadratec previously invited me to contact them with any issues).
(3) We have the time. We are both retired with no real deadline. So we simply play it where it lies. That tàkes away a LOT of stress. And we have fun every "jeep day".
(4) This is still a LOT easier than the alternative. The original body has rust holes or damage in every individual piece except the tailgate and the (swiss cheese) firewall. And (for my year) the MDJ tub/fenders/tailgate/windshield frame kit was within a few hundred bucks of the net cost of just the prefab tub repair sheetmetal pieces I needed.

So we are still very happy with the path we took.

 

Any aftermarket and some factory parts need work to bring to an acceptable finish. Keep up the good work.

 

Hey, Mike.
I talked to Joe and he said "heck yea!!!" we should accept your offer of the "JEEP" emboss for the two sides. There he goes again raising the bar . I'll send you a PM to exchange info. Thanks so much.

Joe says that we will cut a hole a bit smaller than the pieces you send us. He has a tool that creates an offset flange "seat" which is recessesed by the thickness of the metal. Your piece will nest against the fabricated inner flange at just the right depth and we will glue it in and fill the gap around the circumfrence. I had no idea they make tools like that! Very cool.

We'll take lots of pictures!

 

Just a comment - new Jeeps were never as smooth as that. There was no skim putty from the factory - the bodies were welded together from the stamped parts, electrocoat primed, and painted. The factory stampings were likely better than the MDJ stampings, but they still had a lot of flaws, like spot welds that telegraph right through the paint, bits of welding wire stuck in the joints, etc. It's great that you can complete this to your (obviously high) standards.

 

Have no fear Focker. Scratches will be easy with a brush, no luster paint is a great thing.

 

As someone who went this route.....I over did it and made the body WAY nicer then it ever was coming from the factory. I'm glad I went the extra mile with the body. I have scratched it, but that what it was intended for. I don't regret it at all. Don't get discouraged, you are doing a great job! Beautiful JEEP!

 

yes if the customer is looking for authentic restoration by all means match the factory,my self i prefer smoooooth and shiny as do quite a few of my customers. that said, often factory parts need massaging to reach an acceptable finish.

paint isn't permanent just a passing illusion...

 

We are enjoying all the comments. (And no, Focker, you didn't come off at all as discouraging to us). If we learned anything on this forum, it's that it's OK to make your Jeep into anything you want it to be. It can be so many things; and if it's 45 years old like mine it probably already has been. It's both rewarding and worth it to us to put this extra effort into a "NAVY tribute" Jeep.

If the truth be told, this body work is shaping up as great practice before we tackle Joe's 1939 Pontiac. And, pretty soon I'll be able to drive my first ever Jeep to Joe's garage. I don't particularly care to have a car out live me, so I intend to drive this thing as much as my tolerance for attention (and its 10 mpg) will handle.

Mike is sending us the JEEP emboss for the sides (THANKS, Mike), so until they arrive we'll likely shift focus to the windshield frame and (oh boy) my lumpy hood.

 

Don't know if you have your jeep top yet. I would fit the top before you paint, severial holes have to be drilled in the Jeep tub. When installing the top, it pulls the windshield back, that 69 inch measurement should be about 72 inches, in my opinion. Door fit is affected by windsheild angle and how the lower part of the door fits in the tub. I ended up drilling more holes in the tubing, (lower) that supported the rear of the top and shimmimg the windsheild forward, with 3/16 inch flat stock metal. I fought that top severial evenings. Search the site

 

I keep telling you Jim, it is a 1933 Pontiac

 

Hi, Steve,
Thanks for joining in and thinking ahead with us!

Yea, I've been wondering about that... The top I want is a "Standard" using two vertical bows... The top I have is (we all think) a 1970 Whitco with a set of "V" bows. Since I plan to sew my own Standard top (yes, Joe, after the 1933 Pontiac is done... 2017??). {editorial comment 11/1/2021: 1933 Pontiac ...almost... finished. had to buty a re-cored radiator -$3000. Joe just got it back; still not installed. That will finish it!!) For now, to make my wife happy, I have to live with the Whitco. ...'Trouble is, all the clear plastic windows in the Whitco top were too cloudy to use, so I cut them out and just bought replacement film. I took an industrial walking foot sewing class at TechShop so I could work on my Whitco repair (and my new Standard top later). I also have to do some minor repair and reinforcement of the Whitco top too.

Since I can sew/repair/modify the top myself, I'm not limited by the existing dimensions of the top I have... I can make my own adjustments (within the limits of my fabric and skills). Also, I have a (probably non-OEM) roll bar I have to work around.

Rather than drill holes to mount the Whitco bow attachment bracket to my tub, I thought to create a sub base for the Whitco bracket which will insert into the existing Standard bows' sockets in the top edge of the tub. I appreciate I'll need to attach several male snap halves to the body, but I expected to drill them into the finished body any how. My plan is to match the later Standard top snap locations to match the current Whitco, once installed.

...Bottom line, I think I'm ok to attach the top later. Since I'm using a military (US Navy - grey) lusterless paint, touch up later should be no problem.

 

Darn... Ok... Dad was 5 years old. I can remember that.

 

Ok... good start to the week!

We spent the end of Monday undercoating the fenders and coating the bed with "Chip Guard". It left an attractive flat, paintable surface.

Joe continued prepping the tub; I spent all the rest of yesterday on the hood, and all of today on the windshield frame. I expected the hood to take a day; I expected the frame to be 10 minutes... no such luck.

Yesterday: Here are a few photos of the hood... we had to beat out several dings.



And did a lot of filling and sanding:



This was the 5th filling/sanding iteration of 6 before Joe blessed it as paintable:



We'll post a finished shot when it is primed. It's not perfect, but acceptable. The hood latch attachment flats were the hardest (and still the most flawed).

Today we focused on the MDJ windshield frame. The glass easily popped out of my damaged original frame and we pulled off the undamaged gasket to remove old red over spray. Some lacquer thinner and a sharp knife scraped sideways made short work of the overspray:



Then we tried to fit the glass into the MDJ frame... nada... not even close. Hmmmmm.

We took some measurements of the frame flange (which the outside of the gasket fits to). I used the glass tool as a gage in several spots and you can see the flange dimension varies a lot:





We tried centering the glass in the frame opening and couldn't prevent some spots contacting the glass... i.e. no room for the gasket. I don't show it, but we then took the glass, traced it on cardboard with an additional 1/4" (for the gasket) on all sides. We used that template to trace a mark on the frame flange to highlight interference areas needing to be removed.

With a die grinder we cut the frame on the tracing line made with the cardboard template you see below the sparks:

{editorial note: a moment after this picture was taken, a shard of metal bounced off the underside of my hat brim, through the space between my safety glasses and my forehead, and into my right eye. It damaged my cornea. I now see three images with my right eye. Fortunately my brain picks the best of the three and matches it with my left eye to let me see "normally", but a bit less clearly.

I now wear only completely flanged safety glasses for everything now.}



Oh... and in the above picture, that be me, "Jim".



...and then we tried to insert the glass and gasket again. This time success!

We pulled the glass and gasket back out and sanded the frame to prep it for painting. We decided not to fill and sand all the surface "flaws" this time but to accept it as made.

I think we'll be able to paint another primer coat tomorrow.

 

Busy, busy day.

We put a few more hours into the hood then gave it a final sanding (400 grit) to prep it for dark grey primer. Joe then primered everything we had either repaired or touched up.

We wanted everything to have the same color primer so Joe re-primered parts alrwady having lighter grey primer, but we ran out of paint before finishing the old grill, so it just got a second layer of rattle can grey primer.

We are finished with primer!

We spent the rest of the day sanding every already primered part with 400 grit in preparation for topcoat paint.

Joe also topcoat painted the black parts today.

Tomorrow, we expect to topcoat all the loose parts (i.e. everything but the tub). By the end of today, we had them all prepped and hung as you see here. Fenders, dash, tailgate are not shown.


Next week finish painting, then finish any open items on frame/engine/mechanical systems, then mount tub on frame and begin assembly.

So... by the end of January/early February... we should look like a JEEP. Wiring and detailing in February/March. Shakedown in March/April.

Whew... a year to complete it!

 

Painting day!

That be Joe.

Special thanks to Mike Framer for the generous contribution of JEEP emboss pieces for the cowl sides (and some soft top channels -unexpected, but appreciated!). We'll install them next week, (Monday?).

Edit: all loose pieces are painted Navy "Haze Grey" plus hood underside and inside of grill.

(No, it is NOT primer, Joe.)

And we got Mike's JEEP emboss pieces stripped & trimmed, marked their centerlines, and traced their locations on the Jeep. Monday, we'll cut a hole in the Jeep cowl a 1/2" smaller than the logo piece tracing, press in a 9/16" recess around the edge to make a flange, glue them in, and fill their edges. We may need a second day to finish them, but by the end of January painting should be finished and assembly started.

 

Joe has an air tool to press in the recess on the circumfrence of the rectangular hole. The air tool overlaps the hole edge by 9/16". Pull the trigger and the edge is pressed down about 0.050".

The problem is, the tool reach is 100% perpendicular to the edge... and the hole has to be an inch + smaller than the piece we are adding. So we can hit 4 sides but not the 4 corners. We can of course trim a square out of the corners of the emboss pieces we are adding, but I'm wondering if any one familiar with this tool knows a trick for recessing the full corner of the cowl cut-out hole so we don't have to trim the emboss pieces. I'm also concerned about how two flanges at right angles will deform the corners if they do not include the corner... hmmmmm...

I guess we can walk the tool around the corner and pick up at least a little bit of it... at least we wouldn't have a sharp corner if we have to trim the embossed pieces...

Any thoughts or comments will be appreciated.


Navy_Jim

 

If anyone can help us identify these, it will be appreciated. I thought they were part of the clutch or brake pedal assembly, but we put all of that back together and here they are sitting on the shelf... (please ignore the rod, we know it is part of the side mirror assembly)... it's the multi-angled brackets with the large hole with the small edge impressions which we are in the dark about.


Thanks

 

We expected not to work today and only to store our freshly painted parts, but we actually kept going for a while longer. I cut out the hole for the JEEP emboss (I'm "Mr. Die Grinder" in this garage.) After my experience cutting the windshield frame I started wearing gloves and a full face shield and a mask!





We got the logo pieces a very nice size, but we had to trim them smaller than we liked. There is a body bracket on the back side of the cowl towards the rear which interfered with the flange tool. It will make it a bit more difficult to blend in the logo piece with filler... not much room for any surface transition.

Joe did his thing with the flange attachment on his air chisel gun.





Her is how we handled the corners:



The tool needs two hands. We found out you have to pull out on the built in backing "dolly" (front hand) while pushing in (not too, too hard) with the back hand on the air gun handle, to get it to work. We also did some manual hammering in the corners with a peking hammer and flatter hand dolly.

It wasn't pretty in the corners, but filler will neutralize it.



After wire brushing to remove all the paint and filler, we were ready for the JEEP plate.



One MDJ cowl side was curved a bit right where the JEEP logo goes but a very slight bend to the logo handled that.

Joe stitch welded it in... (We originally planned to glue it in, but gluing would require clamping... which we had great difficulty with.) A second guy pressing the logo piece tight against the recessed flange let the welder focus on part alignment and welding. As Joe stitched it, I pressed it tight immediately next to his tack.



Right side.


Grind it...



Left side.


Call it a day... a "JEEP DAY".

Fill and sanding begin again on Monday.