Jeep Thrills

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I miss my Jeep. Not the new one. I still have the '99 Cherokee. No, the one I miss is the '48 Willy’s CJ-2A I used to have.

On a level street, with the windscreen down and the driver hunkered down behind the wheel, I could actually get it up to 60mph! (Poor little engine!) So it wasn’t fast. But it could climb pretty well. And tough! I could have hit the thing with a 2x4 with no damage. It was a thick-skinned little beast. Didn’t even have to worry about the paint. It was an oxidized sand colour. Since I lived in the desert at the time, I didn’t have to worry much about rust.

A funny thing happened in the little Willy’s one day. I came upon a gully. I stopped so I could go to the low range and my passenger asked me incredulously, “You’re not really going to drive down there, are you?” I told him I was, and proceeded. He bailed out. :eek: When I got up the other side, passenger was limping. He’d landed wrong and twisted his ankle.

Two of my friends and I were in the jeep when it ran out of fuel. (The guage was very inaccurate; and even though I used a dipstick, the stick wasn’t calibrated. We pushed and pulled our heavy ride for about three miles. Finally a drunken man pulled over and took me to get some gas.

Ex-SO drove the jeep for the first time. She hadn’t yet grasped that this was a high-CG vehicle, and that 90º turns should be made slowly! She nearly tipped it over, but I grabbed the wheel and we wound up in someone’s driveway.

It was just the thing for exploring dirt roads and trails in the high Mojave.

I was going to the Fox Field airshow one year; and as I pulled into the parking area, I heard a mother exclaim to her young child, “Look at the funny old Jeep!” I didn’t think it was a “funny old Jeep”. I thought it was a fine old Jeep.

Alas, lack of funds, a move to The Big City (AKA “Los Hideous”), and general stupidity led me to sell “CJ2 EH” (it’s license plate). Sure, I’ve splashed mud over the top of the Cherokee. It bounces along like a real Jeep! And it looks swell after hitting the mud puddles. But it’s just not the same as bouncing along in a little open 4-banger that’s decades older than you are. The mighty little “1/4-ton truck” passed it’s genes along to the citified creatures prowling the 405 freeway, but the newer ones have thinner skins and interiors you actually have to take some sort of care of. No more hosing it out at the end of the day. You can pull the carpet out of a Wrangler, of course; but be sure to remove the stereo too. The old Willy’s didn’t have a stereo. Or carpet. Just hose the mud out through the scuppers the factory in Toledo so thoughtfully cut out for you.

Yeah, the Willy’s is missed. I’ll find another one someday real soon. I may even give it a good coat of paint.

2

We’re just in the middle of giving our Canadian-built 1942 Willys MB some much-needed TLC. It was running back in the mid-80s, but has been on static display since about 1989. Lots of things are seized, or perished, or rusted.

We have dismantled it–fenders, axles, tranny, etc–about as far as we can, and have stripped every single piece, “Conquested” (a tannic-based anti-rust formula), primed and triple-coated each tiny bit (or at least we’re half-way through). I was very excited to discover, when we took off the fenders, that the previous restoration (about 1984) crew hadn’t taken the fenders off when repainting, and a small band of original WW2 oive drab remains. We were able to get a much better paint matchup, and it is going to look terrific when done.

Johnny L.A., do you know of anyone down there who is reproducing rubber stuff like the seal for the windshield, boots for the low-range and regular stickshift, etc? I know that there’s lots of surplus dealers, but I’d like to find newly-made parts rather than get pieces that are already starting to perish.

About 40,000 jeeps were made in Canada during WW2, and many in this neck of the woods were driven by CWAC (Canadian Women’s Army Corps) drivers. We’re getting a reproduction CWAC battledress uniform made up, so that next summer (if all goes to plan), we’ll have a running 42 Jeep, with a correctly-attired driver running around the Fort!

3

I miss my Jeep too. (see sig)

4

Rodd Hill, I always got my parts from Surplus City in Sun Valley, CA:

Surplus City
11796 Sheldon Street
Sun Valley, CA 91352
818/767-3666
Willys, Jeep parts and literature ask for Woody

I didn’t find a web page, but then I didn’t look too hard. I guessed it was the name dot com, but that was a place in Colorado that didn’t appear to carry Jeep parts. I lived in the desert, so I never replaced the rubber. (Besides, it was fun after a rain. I’d hit a puddle on a dirt trail and the water would spray up from the shifter hole. ;))

One of my cousins inherited my grandfather’s '42 MB. Originally it had a snorkel, and it still had the exhaust pipe running to the top of the windscreen. Apparently it was used for fording fairly deep streams or something. I asked my cousin about it at my dad’s memorial service a couple of years ago, and she said it had recently been fully restored.

Gunslinger, sorry to see your Jeep in that condition! I like the Wagoneers. How’d it happen? Can you fix it with the bent frame and all?

5

This page has some weather stripping. http://www.surplusjeep.com/cj-2a.htm I don’t know how new it is, but there is an 800 number.