After a few weeks of purchasing parts, waiting for them to arrive, and doing lots of sand blasting, sanding, priming and painting, I’m only a few steps away from having Ike back together and running. After getting back the radiator, I ordered a new thermostat housing. After getting the new part, prepping, and painting it, I am very glad that I did. The differences are astounding. The fan shroud isn’t quite done yet, it needs a second coat of pain on the front and a first and second coat of paint on the back before it will be ready, but…
Comments closedCategory: CJ-3A
Today I went and picked up my radiator. Charlie at Broadway Radiator did a phenomenal job, and the radiator looks nearly new. Charlie also told me that he was somewhat surprised at how well the old radiator did. Not only did it clean up nicely, but it fully cooperated with the disassembly and reassembly, something that Charlie was unsure would happen. He also made sure not to paint over the tank tag on the back in case I wanted to restore it, he replaced the drain plug, and he extended the overflow tube all the way down the side like it should be. All…
Comments closedMy special thanks to eWillys for putting up a post about me. No idea how he found my humble site, but if it weren’t for eWillys, I probably wouldn’t have found Ike. I look forward to the daily eWillys posts, a great resource for anyone looking to buy one of these great Jeeps.
Comments closedIke’s previous care taker sent me a nice little message today along with this picture of Ike while driving around the Imperial Valley desert about 10 years ago. I like that sticker so much, I’ve decided that in some fashion, Ike will have a “name tag” and maybe even an ‘I Like Ike’ something or other 🙂
2 CommentsI got a call from the guy I found to repair/clean my radiator. But first, some missing parts of the story. I took the radiator in last week to Broadway Radiator in Hesperia. After calling around to various radiator places, one name kept coming up as soon as I said “I have a radiator from a 1950 Willys that I need looked at” and that name was Charlie at Broadway. Charlie said he hadn’t seen a radiator like that in many years. Apparently, I have what is known as a v-cell radiator. Essentially, there are parallel channels that run vertically…
1 CommentAfter all the cooling shenanigans this past week, time came to remove the radiator from Ike to be rebuilt. After pulling the hoses, the “liquid” that came out was the consistency of chocolate milk and had a nice bright orange rust color. After a little while of finagling, the fan shroud was discontented from the radiator and the radiator came out along with the shroud. Running water through the radiator revealed my problem this past week. Water flowed much faster out of the hole the water was going into than out the opposite side. Somewhere in that mass of metal…
1 Comment“Thar she blows!” Today was a “must drive the Jeep” day. Due to some minor issues on my primary car, I had my dad take it into the dealer for some warranty repairs. So, with the daily driver out of commission, I had a perfect excuse (as if I needed one) to drive Ike to work today. With the slightly warmer weather and longer daylight hours, today was the first drive to work where I didn’t need lights and gloves to get to work in one place. After work was done for the day, I decided to run to my…
Comments closedThere is nothing that annoys me more than when someone doesn’t fully understand the capabilities of the vehicle they are driving. Most of the time, this is someone in a little sub-compact or compact car attempting to outrun a light with an underpowered four-banger with a ridiculously loud muffler. However, there is a special class of people that drive trucks that have no idea what a truck is truly capable of. Rather than trying to do too much with their vehicle like the 17 year old attempting to redline a 20 year old Honda, they treat their trucks like a…
2 CommentsAfter doing as much research as possible on my Solex carb and coming up with almost nothing (@#$!@^%$&), I finally got Ike idling like he should. Again. My thought was that the choke was stuck open when the first adjustment to the idle was made by my dad (someone had to sit in the driver seat and keep the idle up while the adjustments were made), which caused the mixture to eventually lean out after the lever on the back of the carburetor began to drop back down. Turns out, the adjustment that needed to be done was on the…
1 CommentOn Sunday Ike got another treatment with the degreaser and power washer. I focused some more on the engine block, but also finally got to the transfer case and transmission. There is an old saying about Jeeps and their transfer cases/transmissions: “If it stops leaking, it’s out of oil.” Looking at the amount of crud on the skid plate, that couldn’t be more true. I had thought that the skid plate was almost flush with the transfer case, until I started removing some of the built up oil/grease/dirt, to find that was not the case. I was also met with…
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