New To Me Cj2a - Frame And Engine Questions

Hello everyone, first post here and little to no experience with these old Jeeps.

I ended up with a 46 CJ2A from a family member for no cost, who bought it about 10 years ago so plenty of info lost to time.

I'm starting to dig into it now and finding some things that I hope won't stop me from getting this old Jeep going.

Frame is cleaned up and painted. At first glance it looks pretty straight, but the front passenger side horn appears to have some issues. It has cracking around where the frame meets the front tubular cross member. I've read this is not uncommon for this model at that point on the frame. It also appears that it may have had a front end collision at some point, due to a some buckling on the horn 'arm' The left horn definitely sits about 3/4" lower than the right. See the pics for the crack. Not sure what the best action to take with this.

Side, cracked near cross member.



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The second issue is with the engine and how it's somewhat of a Frankenstein. It has a block stamp of 1381623 which as far as I could tell is a 225 Dauntless block. The part where it gets interesting is that the heads are stamped with b-1262098, the intake manifold is b-1262204-b, and the distributor is 110668 DR. The b stamped parts are Buick parts and apparently for a 231? The distributor is odd-fire after taking the cap off and confirming with other research on this forum. The question I have here is are those parts generally interchangeable between the 225 & 231?

Thanks!

 

You can buy replacement frame sections. I had similar issues with the passenger side on mine and just replaced it with an aftermarket frame section. I'm curious about your steering - looks like a Saginaw box mounted behind the crossmember with the pitman arm pointed back toward the tub. How does that bolt up to you steering linkage?

 

Thanks, I was afraid that I would have to patch that up. I do plan to do some more measurements when I get a chance. Was told that the collision was on the driver’s side, but that doesn’t seem to match up with what I see.

The steering box is a Vega steering box, I can post some pictures when I get a chance.

 

I prefer a reverse rotation steering box like that mounted behind the crossmember. I plan to use a Ford Bronco steering box on my next build.

They sell different length frame horns for repairs like this. The tube crossmembers are bad to rust out on the end and it looks like yours has on that side. They sell new crossmembers too.

Cheapest fix is to weld in pieces to span the cracks and gaps with gussets going from the frame rails to the crossmember to help support it.

Best fix is to buy new frame horns, the longer ones, and a new crossmember and splice those in with gussets inside the frame rails to strengthen the joints.

Many parts will interchange between a 225 and 231, as your engine demonstrates. Both engines were used by Buick.

 

Thanks, might not be a bad idea to replace those sections. The rest looks to be in pretty good shape aside from some prior handy-work in the past.

I was mainly worried that someone just threw something together in the engine compartment to get rid of it.

I still am tracking down parts to get it running, but at least it turns over and looks to be in pretty good shape.