Dropping a Greasy Deuce

In this case, “Dropping a Greasy Deuce” may not be what you think it is.

Or maybe it is what you are thinking. If you are thinking about an old Willys Jeep with two DANA axles being dropped deliberately from the frame mounts.

The weather was so nice and lounging around the house was so wonderful that I really didn’t spend much time on Ike. Friday, however, I did stop by a body shop to look at their work and I’m fairly impressed. I’ll obviously be checking around for prices and quality, but for the first stop it certainly set a high bar. The only downside is that the shop is about an hour away in Rialto. Not a huge killer since no matter where I take the stuff it will need to be trailered, but it sure would be nice if it was all local.

Last week I had started to remove the shackle bolts from the rear end when I ran across a problem. The bolt had seized on to the shackle, so the air hammer wasn’t able to loosen it. Fortunately since I had bough new shackles I wasn’t concerned with re-using these ones, so I decided to just pull out my new favorite tool: the air cutoff tool. The awesomeness that is this tool is only overshadowed by my compressors inability to keep up with it. Aside from that, I went through almost 2 wheels cutting the left rear shackle free, the rear axle U-bolts, and the front two shackles which were also seized.

Once I got the rear leaf springs removed, I took an opportunity to look at the wear. The lower shock plates on all four corners show some pretty heavy wear. I’m hoping that these were fairly original to the Jeep for the amount of wear on them. The left rear spring pack center pin also snapped off showing quite a bit of rust erosion along the shaft. The new spring packs certainly look much better than the old ones, but I guess that is to be expected.

So now the frame is nearly ready for blasting. I want to do a few more looks around to make sure that I’m not missing anything and that everything has been removed. The axles will need to go out for a rebuild as well as some cleaning and painting. Once those three parts are completed, I get to start putting the whole thing back together. It’s taken a long time to get to this point, but I’m sure looking forward to having a functioning Jeep again.