Building a 61 Willy's Wagon Rockcrawler

Structurally the body wont even matter by the time I am donw integrating the cage into the roof, side body, and frame. The intended use of this vehicle is to take myself and my family on some of the hardest trails in Colorado. Safety and strength of components are foremost in my mind when going about this "restoration".

My 2 1/2 year old saw the hole in the roof and said "Daddy, I want to roll it".

There are issues with removing body parts anytime you deal with a unibody such as an XJ, but with a body on frame vehicle as long as the body is tied firmly to the frame you should be alright.

Then again, I am not an engineer

 

Pulled the rats nest of wiring off of the V8 and from behind the dash and started installing the Painless Wiring Harness.....

No pics for ya as its pretty boring...

 

The wagon will be leaving the garage....more later

 

Alrighty, I have reached a point where my garage is no longer working for me. Today I am moving my project to the Automotive Shop at my High School where every singel tool and piece of equipment known to madfabbers is availible.

There I will be able to really crank on this thing, and hopefully have it ready to go SOON

In the meantime here is what it looks like out of my tiny garage...

 

Out of curiousity, what is the strap attached to?

 

my 2 year old was holding onto the strap while I took pictures so that the truck wouldn't roll down the driveway. No brake lines and no drive shafts....













j/k Tied to the main steel support beam in my garage. Not used for anything but just in case it got away from us while we were rollingh it our of the garage.

 

getting ready to kick into building OVERDRIVE

stay tuned for details

 

yep ya thought I was dead eh?

sorry just bustin my arse...

It runs......

 

That is one awsome lokking truck

 

Welcome......enjoy the build, it becomes real addictive

 

yeah sorry no pics...Ill try to get some up later

The engine runs, but I need a new ecm chip as the ecm I junkyard sourced was from a 305 not a 350 (oops my bad)

I am going to be building the cage in the next 3 weeks. After that its just some misc wiring to make it street legal, and then some shakedown runs to find the bugs.

 

Cage is almost done...pics tomorrow

 

Okay okay pictures of the cage work.

everything is just tacked in, I still need to fully weld.

After day one we had the main frame done.


Matt M. tacking the dash bar in place. (you guys should see what he is doing to a CJ2a and a has done to his 67 Commando...)


Top view rior to triangulation


Passenger side view


Front view


Top View


Passenger side again


Pretty much completed


Close up of dash bar


Just that much closer!

 

That cage looks sweet. Nice 61 Willys wagon. I just bought a 47 wagon gonna place it on a 67 commando frame.

 

Gotta ask. What's with the circular saw?

 

Yeah I use a circular saw with a metal cutting blade to cut plate steel. it works really well. I can rip long sections, or just cut small ones. I used the saw to cut plate for mounting and backing plates for the cage.

Also used it to cut the roof. Its WAAAAY easier than using a sawzall or a cutoff wheel on an angle grinder.