Willys M170, " Sad Sack"

Here's a few more pictures of most likely restored M170's.

Passenger side view showing spare tire and jerry can.

Close up showing spare tire holder, axe, and jerry can. Also shows the passenger seat. I'm not sure how anyone could get in the passenger seat with all that stuff in the way, but looks like they made good use of the space.

Really nice looking Jeep with the full winter canvas top and sides. Notice the upper and lower stretcher handles sticking out the back.

And here's a rear interior view showing the padded cushions on the sides. I'm assuming that's where the medics sat when they were carrying the wounded.

If anyone else has additional information feel free to add it. My Dad served in Korea. He was in Army Intelligence. He doesn't remember seeing any M170's. He was familiar with the M38's and the 2.5 ton 6x6 trucks. He said they tended to get the older vehicles.

 

Thanks, that's my plan. When I first took the top and shifter assembly off it wouldn't move at all. I've got it moving fairly well. I just have to get it to loosen up enough to allow it to change gears. I'm going to clean the gears as much as I can with it in place, fill it with oil, try to get the gears to move, drain it to get the crap out and refill it with fresh oil.

 

So I was able to spend some time yesterday working on the M170. On the transmission I used a brass wire brush along with WD-40 to clean the gears as much as I could reach. By turning the crank with a large wrench I could rotate the gears and have access to all "sides" of the upper gears. Without disassembling the transmission I can't reach the lower gears. I drained the transmission and mostly water came out first and then a small amount of oil. When I first brought the Jeep home pushing the clutch pedal had no effect. After some lubricating and cleaning I'm able to get enough movement to release the clutch when I push down on the pedal. Likewise the transmission wouldn't move at all. After cleaning the gears I filled the transmission with a half a gallon of gear oil and a half a gallon of ATF. I had read that the ATF had some detergent in it and might assist in cleaning. We'll see.
After reinstalling the transmission cover I'm able to get the transmission into neutral and first gear. It will move partially in the direction of second and third gears. Reverse, not at all yet. It's been soaking overnight so I'll try again today.
Just for comparison here's the before picture of the transmission and then a picture of it with the mixture of gear oil and ATF.

 

I also pulled the rear diff cover yesterday. The gear oil looked pretty good! I suspect the level of oil may have been somewhat low, but otherwise I didn't see any problems. Here's a picture of the gears. Let me know if you see anything I should be concerned about.

 

And finally I began to prep some parts for paint. While I'm sure Willys spray painted the Jeep at the factory it sure looked like the military may have painted it in the field with a brush. Some of the paint I could scrape off with a putty knife. Otherwise I used a handheld wire brush and a wire brush in my cordless drill. That worked fairly well. I have the dash gauge panel, the rear diff, and top of the oil bath air cleaner ready for some Evaporust. The body of the air cleaner still needs some more cleaning. Here's a couple of pictures.

 

The folks over at Weebee Webbing have a restored M170:

1955 M170

 

UH-OH!

I came home from a trip to Wally World and found this.

While I knew that the transmission and transfer case shared their fluid I clearly wasn't smart enough to place a drain pan under the transfer case and it proceeded to dump the contents on the garage floor.

Of course I had a pan under the transmission but it caught nothing.

Here's a picture of the leaking transfer case. I guess at a minimum I'll be pulling the transfer case.

 

Oh man, I can smell it from here.

 

Yeah, I forgot to mention the smell.

 

Today I removed the two battery trays. If you're not familiar with the M170, the battery compartment is located in the cowl in front of the passenger side windshield. I think the M38a1 is the same. Since it was originally 24 volts it had two 12 volt batteries wired serially to produce the 24 volts. I had been periodically spraying the bolts with PB Blaster to loosen the bolts. What I didn't realize was that the interior of the battery compartment had been sprayed with some tar like substance that also covered the bolt heads and made them so that most of them wouldn't fit inside the 1/2" socket head.

Is it just me that everything I attempt to do on this old Jeep takes much longer or is more difficult than I thought it would?

So after using brake clean, a wire brush, and a file I was able to remove enough tar to get the bolts out and remove both battery trays. Here's a picture of the trays.

The top tray is missing the lower corner, but otherwise is pretty solid. I don't think it will have any problem supporting a battery. Probably just spray it with undercoating and call it good. The lower one has a little more damage. I can get a replacement, but the best price I've found is $75. I could just run one battery, but the size that fits is a 51R which is small and an agm battery that size has about 450 CCA and 75 minute reserve capacity. Not sure if that is sufficient or if I should run two batteries wired parallel.
Here's a picture of the battery compartment.

 

I am experiencing the same thing on my M38. Some layer of paint was brushed on mine as well. I scraped it off with a gasket scraper. Sounds crude but it is actually faster than a sander. It does take time...

You are doing great. Hang in there.

 

All those battery trays are like that. Use cardboard to make a pattern of the corner. Cut out the pattern on two pieces of plywood. Cut some 18/16 gauge steel a little bigger for the overhang fold up part and clamp it between two of the plywood pattern pieces. Hammer the edges over to make the lip a little at a time and weld it in. I've made a lot of replacement panels this way. They call it hammer forming. Made my battery trays look brand new. Made the bottom of the battery box this way also.

Dave

 

To make the Hammerform:
Once you make your pattern out of plywood (both pieces), you can wood screw them together and sand (shape them) at the same time to fit the corner using the better tray to check fit.
You can use one piece of your hammer form to lay out your cut line by clamping one on the new sheet metal and trace around the plywood block transferring that pattern to the steel. I use machinist blue die to show the line and use a scribe the scratch the line (it really shows up in the blue of the ink). For the lip turned up, you can use a washer to mark the offset of the lip. The washer will roll around the block while the scribe marks the offset since you hold it tight against the block. The offset of the line will be the distance from the outside of the washer to the beginning of the hole. Got lots of scribes, but my favorite is an old Coca Cola ice pick ground to a sharp point.
Cut outside of your line and then final trim with your snips or hand shear. Now you can clamp the new steel between the blocks and hammer the lip with glancing blows agains the wooden buck. Work around slowly so you don't get a fold in the steel.
When you are finished it looks great. Easier to do than to explain.
For the X, you can cut a slot in plywood, put the sheet metal over it and use a piece of pipe and hammer down on it over the slot to make the rounded part of the slot. The metal will distort so you till have to hammer the edges flat.

Hope this makes sense.

I will have to try to find some pics but they are on the old (dead) lap top.

This project will be one little bite at a time, but its fun learning new skills.



Dave

 

Thanks for sharing that process. You did a good job explaining it, I'm pretty sure I understand what you're saying. I could envision how to form the edges from your previous post, but had no idea how to form the "X" that crosses the center. Super idea in your recent post! That makes a lot of sense. Thanks again.

 

Went out to the shop and took some pictures of the restored battery trays.

These need complete rebuild, the others were just needing outside corners.




The ones I repaired;




The bottom of the repaired tray;


Not pristine, but they will work.



Dave

 

Looks good, certainly serviceable. Besides once the batteries are installed no one's going to see them anyway. Good job!

 

I have been able to strip, prime and paint some of the parts. All parts have 3 coats of red oxide primer and 3 coats of paint. I primed them last week, but didn't want to paint until yesterday. We had a lot of rain and high humidity until yesterday. I've also been ordering parts and bolts, etc.

I got an idea to paint a diff cover an accent color. Not too sure if I like it or not. Anybody got any thoughts? The one on the right is the original cover which is thin stamped steel. The one on the left is one I removed from the Jeepster Commando when I replaced it with a Dana cover. It's pretty heavy cast iron I think.

 

HELP! Advice needed.

In trying to get to the point where I can start putting accessories back on the engine to try and start it, I keep finding other things that need attention. The thermostat housing had no thermostat in it and the water pump turns, but maybe not as smoothly as I thought it should. In removing the hoses a tube or pipe that goes from inside the head and extends out where a short hose connects it to the water pump sheared off mostly flush with the head. What do I need to do to repair this? Hopefully I explained this okay. Pictures below.

Also there is a fair amount of crud inside the water jackets. Would it be okay to put a garden hose inside the thermostat opening and flush this out?

 

Welcome to the old Jeep club. Mines been running good for a year but I find stuff to work on every week.

 

You can try hitting the top lip of what’s left with a small chisel. It doesn’t look like there’s much material left in there; maybe you will get lucky and break out what’s left. Worst case scenario, you’ll have to drill it out completely and tap it up to the next NPT size. There’s plenty of material to work with in those heads.

You can use a hose to flush the system, just be cautious of what comes out if pets are around.