and so I begin my journey now hoping for a happy ending to the story... hopefully in not so distant future, hoping that this project won't drive me mad or won't be basis for a divorce. I have been sitting on a fence for way too long now. I knew that one day I was going to get me another Cherokee or a TJ to build out. I had that itch and I had to scratch it rather soon. One day though I was browsing through that pages and pages of trucks on eBay and I have stumbled upon this beautiful thing called Willis CJ-3A... you can call it love at first sight... you can call it destiny, you can call it whatever you want. Right there and then I knew I had to get her. Even though she was about 1800 miles from where I was sitting... I didn't care. I had to have her and so I placed my bid... and I waited and waited... fortunately for me nobody else fell in love with her as bad as I and so I got her... and here she is. 1950 CJ-3A, 90% complete, has been sitting in a Nevada desert since 1981, not running of course. Not bad as far as rust goes but in a desperate need of attention, lots and lots of attention as there is not even one piece of sheet metal that would not be bent, dented, rusted and welded over. Rodents used her nooks and crannies as their storage. I know tub will need quite a bit of tweaking, fenders might even have to go. Frame seems to be in very good shape with a few mods here and there, plates of metal welded to it at one place, front bumper welded shut. Engine might be beyond repair as she was sitting in the open with cylinder head off. At the moment I'm still trying to disassemble her and get things sorted out. First I wanted to convert her straight into an MB... but it would probably require way too much work and I'm perfectly fine with the way the front of the CJ-3A looks. My idea now is to convert her to 50-52 M38. Time will show. I'm not one of those puritans that would try and turn back time and make her look the way she rolled off the assembly line (she's not going to be a trailer queen). No, I will probably straighten the body out a bit, cut all the rust out and replace it with fresh metal and put a fresh coat of flat Olive Drab paint on it. Frame, drive-line, electrical system, brakes will all be brand new, not going to cut corners there. Time will tell... for now here she is. Every step of the way I'm going to keep this journal so I can reflect later on all the late nights I spent in the garage.
I'm pretty sure I'm gonna have plenty of questions during the process. I'm not new to this. I have built a couple of Cherokees and three off-road capable Explorers... this is going to be different though.
thanks for listening
