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

P.S.
... since Joe and I are deliberately sharing a litany of our daily Jeep activities, I probably should mention that Monday we also installed my PA temporary license plate, traced our "no rear lights" issue to an open 3 wire rear harness terminal in the vacinity of the oil pump (duh), and installed the Bimini top over our still seatless cab. Since we are stopped until the timing cover gasket arrives, we spent the last hour Monday doing touch up painting; flat Haze Grey for the body, semi gloss black for the frame.

And, yep, from directly behind, the bumperette completely shadows the last two plate numbers. But since this thing will never enter the toll road with the automatic plate readers, I should be good to go. Besides, anyone (i.e. a cop) passing on the left has a clear view and is unlikely to even notice.

And, the fuel pressure regulator just arrived here at home, so we'll also get that installed on our next Jeep Day at Joe's garage, likely Thursday. I have to admit some doubt about this approach, but you may have noticed my instincts are a bit off the mark on occasion, so what the heck... let's give it a shot.

 

Correction to, "so easily checked". We previously used a perhaps too generous amount of Permeatex "Form a Gasket" applied on both sides of the standard paper gasket... it never leaked a drop, but "bad idea" if you ever have to pull that timing chain cover with the engine still installed. Ouch. And difficult to scrape off the Permatex; no access! We were looking at eachother wondering if we should pull the engine out to make it easier. In the end cool heads prevailed; we didn't do that, but we were tempted for a while.

 

The surprise is that the engine didn't blow up. I and others ran it to test drive it to buy it, and we ran it 4 hours to bake the engine paint. Oddly, despite a 0 psi oil reading, there was oil in the filter element. And after changing the oil pump, we could hear the change in the tone of the engine running as the oil circulated. We are either very, very lucky or this is one tough little engine.

Well, you didn't have any oil pressure (no restriction), but you did have oil flow, and centrifugal force kept oil at the rods and probably protected them, but you are right, it is one tough little engine (plus long stroke and low PRM's!)

BTW, here's a photo of my 1953 CJ3B Navy tribute jeep, along with my newest project, a 1964 CJ3B with 57k original miles!

There's also a 1952 M38 jeep, an M100 trailer, a Bantam T3-C trailer and an M274A2 mule packed in that building!

 

Oh, very cool. You do admirable work. In 1953, I was two. From 1964, I remember Vietnam...

I looked into gov't license plates. PA only allows them it they say "replica" somewhere in too big letters. I see you adopted the authentic lettering (or should I say authentic lack of lettering) ... and I think your paint scheme more authentic than ours. We stuck with an all black chassis, wheels, and bumpers. ...hmmmm...maybe next time

 

I snuck in an extra Jeep Day this week and visited my (other) brother's (Dan's) auto reupholstering shop to work on my seats.

He was out most of the morning so I floundered a bit organizing and assembling the easiest pieces until he returned. I stopped when I needed piping bead and didn't have any. So that is the first thing he showed me how to do.

He already had the center plastic "wire" but it had to be centered, folded, and sewn into a narrow strip of material so the finished piping bead (?) could later be sandwiched between two different parts of the seat as they get assembled.



First I had to cut the narrow strips of material. I used a yardstick as a gage and made my strips that wide by laying the yardstick on the back side of a large piece of leatherette material and indexing the yardstick all the way across. Then I cut along my lines with scissors. It was a bit surprising how much piping/bead I need.

Next, I lay the extreme ends of two different thin cut strips face to face at right angles, sewed a diagonal that isolated the corner, and then snipped off the corner. When I straightened it out, I had one continuous thin piece of cloth with a very neat 45 degree seam. I connected all the cloth strips together that way to make one continuous 60 foot + long thin strip of cloth.

Next, the fun part...with my left hand I held the leading edge of the leatherette material folded with exactly in half (with the outside showing) on the sewing deck and positioned it to feed the folded material with the captured plastic wire under the left side of the stationary foot, and with the separate stepping foot on top of the fold tight up against the captured wire to the left of the stepping foot. With my right hand I fed the plastic wire and folded the material. If humans had been made with three hands, this task would be easier



Here is an end view, sewn. So the left side of the stationary foot rode on the captured back 'wire' and the stepping foot rode in the corner pretty much in the center of the finished piece. You want the stich as close and tight in that corner as possible.

Be careful not to make the strips too thin. We used an extra wide and long industrial grade stainless steel yardstick... hmmmm...just what is a 5 foot long "yardstick" called???

I was painfully slow and the machine had a few issues, ...
and I had to play with my brothers dog...

Here is how far I got today:



Tomorrow morning... timing cover back on, fuel pressure regulator installed.

 

Jeep half day today.

I had to stop at the hardware store for fuel line compression fittings ($12.00 yikes !!). By the time I got to Joe's garage, the timing cover and pullies, and belts, etc were all back together (free!!).

Then we started to figure out the location and piping arangement for the fuel pressure regulator. There was no convenient engine bracket to attach it to, so mounting to the inside of the fender was an easy choice. But since the engine moves relative to the fender, we had to abandon the steel fuel line and switch to a ruber fuel line. So back to the hardware store for hose and different (barb) fittings. When we got back, we fit it all together and then decided to paint the pressure regulator black before we install it. Since we only had a half day today we quit to let the paint dry.

 

Another half jeep day today.

We finished the installation of the fuel pressure regulator, and installed an oil pressure gage in the engine compartment (I don't want another gage on my dash), and we lit her up...



Success! (Shown at a fast idle). After it ran for several minutes we got 40 psi all the time.

We haven't checked out fuel pressure. The coolant temp gage wouldn't come above "C".

We added some oil (new filter), fixed a fuel leak, and we troubled over a coolant overflow (I think we had a bubble that expanded while coming up to temperature until it circulated out). Then we adjusted the idle down to just above the 'AMP' light going out. And that was our morning.

Boy did we want to take it for a ride... but no seats

Monday I work on the seats!!

 

lawn chair

 

Were you listening in at Joe's garage this morning!?!

I went home ftom Joe's and trimmed the hedges (as promised to the "boss") more quickly than ever before, then took off for Dan's reupholstering shop to sneak in a few hours on the seats.

I flip flopped a few times on which way to run the seat 'ribs... horizontal like the used back seat I found on Craigslist (but sans the white stripes),



or vertical like the (3rd layer) replacement seat cover that was on it when I got it.



Today I had to mark the rib lines on the back of the pieces so Dan could sew them (straight) and I decided on horizontal.

Hopefully, Dan can sew the ribs in on Monday so I can finish assembling the fabric into seat covers, and then shift my attention to the foam.

I've decided to try out heated seats. (Dan gets them wholesale). I mentioned the possibility of heated seats to my wife and she really liked the idea, so anything to get her interested is good with me.

I forget if the voltage regulator actually will have to handle the additional current itself or if it just looks at the generator output voltage and adjusts the generator field voltage as needed. I also don't know if the generator has the power capacity, so I appreciate that I am taking a chance of overloading the generator.

Does anyone know the current capacity /power capacity of the 1969 vintage generator? If I knew, I could add up my total load (lights, wipers, heater fan, horn, and heated seats) and see if I'm close.

 

I took my wife to the mall with a smile today... it is 2/3 of the way to Joe's garage .
15 minutes later I was making preparations to attach a low pressure gage to the fuel pressure regulator. Joe showed up and we wheeled the Jeep tail first to the open garage door, attached our exhaust hose and started it up. It impresses me every time that this engine starts on the first revolution.



2.25 psi !! It worked right out of the box.

I didn't have time to pull the air inlet connections off the carb to see if the lower fuel pressure stopped the fuel feed after shut off, so we pushed the Jeep back out of the way and I went back to the mall to pick up my wife.

 

Thanks, Howard. Now I have to decide if a warm tush is worth another $150 - $200 to replace the generator with an alternator.

 

I read in several locations that low setting is 3.5 amps and high is 5 amps. Does the package tell you what size fuse to use?

 

I haven't seen it yet, I just asked Dan to order it.

5Ax12V=60W (...i.e. like sitting on a 60W light bulb). Since the heating elements are sandwiched between the seat foam and the tush, that should get toasty pretty quickly.

If two were 'on' at the same time the heater demand alone would be almost 1/3 the capacity of the generator.

I guess that's what throttle cables are for...

 

I didn't read if that was for both or just one. Good catch on your part.

And as always you are right. This is one I saw and it says:

Electrical Specs

• Wattage: 24~30 watts per pad, 48~60 watts per seat.
• Current Draw: 4 Amps on Low heat setting and 5 Amps on High setting per seat.

 

I think we will check the current draw with of the lights on.

 

Checking the actual current will tell us what size alternator we need if the AMP light comes on.

From what I read, generator's have the structurally weaker current carrying windings on the spinning part, limiting the allowable top speed (RPM) of generators, which therefore forces them to have relatively slow RPMs at idle, too slow to produce much juice. So if the jeep spends a lot of time at low RPM, the generator produces much less power and the battery ends up handling much of the extra demand instead of being charged.

Alternators place the structurally stronger magnets on the spinning part which allows them to have a larger current carrying stationary part, so they can spin faster, (about 3x the engine RPM). Higher spin rate with more current carrying windings means a higher max current. Since alternators are spinning faster than generators at low engine RPM (like idle) they produce more power at low engine speeds.

So we'll see if we need one.

 

I got a few hours on the sewing machine today and didn't have the confidence to begin to sew the ribs into the seat backs, so I started by installing my temporary top's door windows. This has troubled me from the day I ripped out the old cloudy ones.



Ripping them out left a shredded edge all the way around which I could not sew to and could not leave exposed through the "glass". I looked for a binding tape to cover the edge and extend the "glass", but it bunched up on all the turns.

Plan 'B'. So, instead I cut out a piece of the leatherette fabric to match the "glass" shape and wide enough to the inside to both overlap the glass edge (to hide the shredded cutout edge and to attach to the glass), and wide enough to the outside reach good material for sewing the glass to the door.

Here is how it turned out:

Don't look too closely at the stitching... 'still learning to 'drive' Dan's hot rod of a sewing machine.



I should mention that it was a royal pain in the behind trying to keep these three pieces aligned and in the correct position. And then my brother Dan caught me struggling and yelled, "you big dummy!", as he tossed me a roll of double sided clear adhesive tape. Kowabunga! What a difference that made! 'No alignment struggle or problems after that.

Here is the back (not on door frame) with the zipper... 'not too shabby...



I appreciate it's not perfect, but i'm learning and it has progressed from "pitchable" to "usable" (until the new canvas top is ready).

Here is how it looked originally (on the door frame):



After this, I practiced a bit more and then took on the seat ribs. They turned out ok; I'll get a photo next time.

EDIT: Here is a photo of the material for the rear seat back, old left, new right.



I sprayed both the back of the leatherette material and the top of some pink foam material with adhesive, let it dry to just tack free, and pressed them together. Then I drew parallel lines on the exposed face of the pink foam at the desired spacing for the seat face ribs. Then I sewed on the lines from the foam side. Sewing compresses the foam under the stitching. The unstitched foam creates a height contrast in the material vs the stitch.

 

I got a full day sewing today.

I started by laying out the ribbed front seat pattern on the material I made with foam and ribs. I had to pay attention to the center lines I used to start the rib layout so the installed seat ribs would be horizontal and not sloped. After I traced the patern on the back, I cut the ribbed seat piece. I cut 6 ribbed pieces, 2 for the back seat, and 2 each for the two front seats.

Then I started assembling the seat covers. I started with the back seat because I care more about the front seats and if I made a mistake and had to fix it, I thought it might be less noticeable in the back.

Here is a shot of two of the seat pieces coming together. Please ignore the "P" and "G", we had a pattern marking error we caught and fixed later.



I pushed them apart so you could see them. The blue is the back of the leatherette, then it's pink foam liner, then a folded and sewn black bead/piping strip, then the prepared ribbed foam... thats six layers of material.

You sew the prepared pieces together face to face, making sure to put match marks together. I sewed the seam about 3/16 to 1/4 in from the edge. Here is a shot of some pieces coming together.



Here is the rear seat cover (bottom): old at top, new at bottom.



Obviously I deleted the white stripe. I guess it worked on a more modern version, but it seemed too out of place for my '69... besides. The front seat didn't have them.

Then I went to work on the front seats.

Here is how the first set turned out (bottom and backrest): old left, new right.



You'll notice the new seat ribs are horizontal like the new and old rear seat, not vertical like the 3rd replacement cover layer on my front seat shown here.


I was running out of time and could finish the rear seat, but not another front seat set, so I finished the rear seat (backrest). Here is the finished rear seat set (sans bottom zippers):



Next time i'll finish the remaining front seat set and get to work bleach cleaning the frame mounted seat foam... maybe it doesn't need to be completely replaced... not sure.

 

Nice job Jim. Looks great.