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Offline Doug_3B

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My 1963 CJ3B Build Thread
« on: August 27, 2020, 05:51:27 PM »
I am going to re-do my build thread onto this site.  It is the third build thread for this jeep, but the other sites are now unused and the links to photobucket are dead since I pulled all of my photos from there.  I've had my CJ3B since 2005.  My life has gone through many changes since then:  at least 5 moves, a divorce, remarriage, bought and sold a '69 Bronco, bought and sold a '69 CJ5, bought and sold numerous other vehicles, bought and absolutely love a '91 YJ, neglected the old 3B, thought of selling the 3B, and most recently, re-found my love for the old girl.  She has remained by my side and one of the only constants in my life for the past 15 years.

Since she sat, mostly unused, for much of 2+ years, I now have a list of things to do on her as long as my arm.  I'd like to ensure that everything is documented, from the beginning, in one location.

I'll post more later!

-Doug
1963 CJ3B - F134 Hurricane, T90C/D18, OD, D27/44, alternator
1991 YJ - 4.0, AX-15, D-30 front, Ford 8.8 rear, 4-inch lift

Offline Rus Curtis

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Re: My 1963 CJ3B Build Thread
« Reply #1 on: August 27, 2020, 08:01:39 PM »
Good!

Looking Forward to it!
'54 CJ-3B "Green Gruntt"
Bantam T3-C

Offline Doug_3B

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Re: My 1963 CJ3B Build Thread
« Reply #2 on: August 28, 2020, 03:01:47 AM »
I just looked on the old 3B Board, and there are a lot of build threads on there.  I hope some others take the time to move their threads over before they're lost.  There are a lot of awesome transformations documented there!  I am going to copy/paste from the previous build thread, and edit just what I feel needs to be edited.

I was first introduced to CJ3Bs when I was a kid.  My Dad had one - I believe a 1958.  From what he told me, the 3B body sat on a CJ5 frame and had the V6 Dauntless.  I vaguely remember riding in it when I was 4 or 5.  I remember running his trap line with him in the 3B during the winter.  By the time I was 6 or 7, Dad's 3B sat unused and slowly rusted away over the years.

My 3B went from a hacked up trail rig to a fairly stock machine. I tend to get a little long winded some time, so if it gets too boring, let me know or just ignore the writing and enjoy the pics. Hopefully someone can learn something from some of the bonehead stuff I did and I hope everyone else enjoys the pics.  I bought my 3B, my first jeep, in October 2005 on eBay. Looking back on it, it was a pretty bad deal. I will think long and hard before buying another vehicle without seeing it in person.  What can I say - I had been reading A LOT on The CJ3B Page and I had the fever!!

Being the brilliant person I am, I waited until I had sold my truck to decide to buy a jeep that would require a truck and trailer to tow it home. Luckily my good friend was all up for a road trip - all 1600 miles worth  Mountain Home, ID to Denver, CO. We drove straight there, losing a serpentine belt on the truck in the Middle-of-Nowhere, Wyoming!!

Upon seeing the jeep in person, my heart SANK. I was very disappointed to say the least, as it looked MUCH worse than the pictures. But, I had committed to the buy and we had driven all that way, so I became the owner of this bad boy. These are actual pictures from eBay:





After completing the paperwork for title transfer and sale, we loaded up the jeep (it actually ran and drove onto the trailer). This was about 7pm, we had been on the road since about 6am. We decided to head straight back home and all went well until we hit Cheyenne, WY. While stopped for fuel, we discovered that we had a flat on the trailer. Try finding a place to have a tire changed at about 10pm on a Friday night. We did, though. That was the last problem we encountered until we tried to unload the jeep.

The jeep would not start when we tried to take it off the trailer. There was no ignition switch, just 2 toggle switches and a push button to start. We ended up pushing it off the trailer and into the garage - a single stall garage that, per the landlord, no major automotive work was to be performed in.
-Doug
1963 CJ3B - F134 Hurricane, T90C/D18, OD, D27/44, alternator
1991 YJ - 4.0, AX-15, D-30 front, Ford 8.8 rear, 4-inch lift

Offline Doug_3B

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Re: My 1963 CJ3B Build Thread
« Reply #3 on: August 28, 2020, 03:23:46 AM »
Here are a few more pictures after I got it home.  Sorry for the poor quality, these were taken with a 35mm, sent to the store to get developed, and several years later, scanned into the computer LOL





Grille moved forward to make room for a 283 SBC:



The amount of holes in the dash, to this day, boggles my mind and the wiring behind the dash was nothing short of atrocious.



If you run out of room for the battery under the hood, I guess the next best place is to just sit it on the passenger floor - near the fuel can between the seats.





Here is a shot of the drivers floor. You can see that it was cut up pretty bad to fit in the Muncie M20 4 speed transmission. The original floor was cut out under that raised piece of aluminum to allow more brake pedal travel.



Those are just a few photos showing a few select areas of the Jeep.  Believe me, everywhere you looked, more problems showed up!

I found that the coil went bad for whatever reason and that is why it wouldn't start when we got it home. I replaced that and got it running. After a short, but hair raising trip down the block and back, I was VERY uncomfortable driving the jeep. It was loud, the steering wheel felt like it was going to come off in my hand, and between the modified drive train and the spring over lift, felt very unstable. I pulled back into the driveway just as my wife came out of the house at the exact moment to see the headlight ring fall off. She thought it was humorous and ended up naming the jeep "The Bondo King."

After that outing, I knew that I had to do something with it since I wasn't comfortable driving it. Without a real plan, I decided to to tear into it and find out exactly what was going on under the surface.

I removed the roll cage and cringed to find what it had been resting on on the rear fenders.



Good thing I didn't roll it when I drove it down the street
-Doug
1963 CJ3B - F134 Hurricane, T90C/D18, OD, D27/44, alternator
1991 YJ - 4.0, AX-15, D-30 front, Ford 8.8 rear, 4-inch lift

Offline Rus Curtis

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Re: My 1963 CJ3B Build Thread
« Reply #4 on: August 28, 2020, 10:15:58 AM »
Wow! I didn't remember all this.  Good idea transferring from the old site!  I wished I'd taken pictures of mine right after purchase.....
'54 CJ-3B "Green Gruntt"
Bantam T3-C

Offline Doug_3B

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Re: My 1963 CJ3B Build Thread
« Reply #5 on: August 28, 2020, 02:32:49 PM »
Wow! I didn't remember all this.  Good idea transferring from the old site!  I wished I'd taken pictures of mine right after purchase.....

I hope some more people decide to do this Rus.  There were some amazing builds documented.  Seems like we lost a lot of people in the last forum move  :(
-Doug
1963 CJ3B - F134 Hurricane, T90C/D18, OD, D27/44, alternator
1991 YJ - 4.0, AX-15, D-30 front, Ford 8.8 rear, 4-inch lift

Offline Doug_3B

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Re: My 1963 CJ3B Build Thread
« Reply #6 on: August 30, 2020, 10:46:33 AM »
One thing that I learned pretty quickly is that with a vehicle like this, the deeper you dig, the more problems you find. I started to dig.  I think that I was still trying to wrap my head around this project I got myself into.  I had never tackled anything like this before. 







I removed the tub.  It was really, really trashed.  You saw pictures of the rear fenders. The rear floor was totally gone and had been replaced with diamond plate. The passenger side toolbox was missing and the front floors were pretty rough shape. The dash looked like Swiss cheese. I guess, like many other old jeeps, the only good part of the tub was the cowl.  I'd never do it again, but it was my only option at the time:  I took the tub off in pieces.  No matter how rough the tub is, somebody can fix it. 







The tub being off exposed more problems, and my heart sank.  This monstrosity I had sitting in my garage looked almost nothing like what I was seeing on The CJ3B Page.

This homemade spare tire and jerry can holder, let me tell you, it was solid!  Must have been 3/8" steel they welded onto the rear crossmember.









This bracket setup - maybe for a plow setup? 



Piece of steel cable between the motor mount and axle  ???



I was still trucking along on this project with no real plan other than to get it on the road as quickly as possible.









-Doug
1963 CJ3B - F134 Hurricane, T90C/D18, OD, D27/44, alternator
1991 YJ - 4.0, AX-15, D-30 front, Ford 8.8 rear, 4-inch lift

Offline Doug_3B

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Re: My 1963 CJ3B Build Thread
« Reply #7 on: September 06, 2020, 09:39:17 AM »
I started to bog down on this project.  Many of you can probably relate.  I just kept finding more problems, saw never-ending work, and mountains of money that would have to be spent, but didn't see an end in sight.  I bought this Jeep to drive in the mountains, and I could plainly see that I would not be driving it anywhere in the near future!  I had to get a lot of inspiration from The CJ3B Page, and a lot of help and advice from the CJ3B Bulletin Board!  A guy at work told me this Jeep would never see the road again.  That REALLY lit a fire under my butt because now I had to prove him wrong.

I got to work and cut the homemade rear tire carrier off the cross member.  Took me forever with a cutting torch.



The cross member and V brace were in rough shape.





I found a donor frame at a local junk yard.  I still don't know what Jeep that frame was from, but I took the rear cross member for my use and ended up scrapping the rest a couple years later.

Here is the new cross member welded on:



Here it is with a little bit of POR-15 on it (not the best picture):



And finally, a comparison shot - the old with the new:



In some of these pictures, you can see that the Muncie M20 transmission is now gone.  I still planned to keep the 283, but was going to adapt a T-90 to fit it.  The Muncie caused too many issues that I did not want to deal with.  I was also keeping the local stores in business buying wire wheels for my drill to bust rust on the entire frame.  I was also able to locate the serial number on the frame which is good since the serial number plate on the firewall was long gone.  Busting rust on a Jeep frame is a dirty, nasty job.  Someone should invite Mike Rowe over to work with them for a day when they've set to that task. 

Here's a shot of a much younger me doing my most hated of tasks  (trying to catch the engine on fire  ;) ): 

-Doug
1963 CJ3B - F134 Hurricane, T90C/D18, OD, D27/44, alternator
1991 YJ - 4.0, AX-15, D-30 front, Ford 8.8 rear, 4-inch lift

Offline Doug_3B

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Re: My 1963 CJ3B Build Thread
« Reply #8 on: September 27, 2020, 09:25:00 AM »
After the rust was mostly gone, I painted the frame with POR-15.  It sure looked nice.




I threw the grille on it because I just HAD to!


About this time, I made the decision to take the Jeep back to stock.  I went out and found a stock steering column and an F-head, both from the CJ3B Bulletin Board.  I recouped my money on the F-head by selling the SBC.  Here are the engines side by side:


I finally had a solid plan.  First up though, I had to repair the front of the frame.  The battery box and original motor mount brackets were gone as was most of the crossmember and the front frame horns on both sides.  I got in contact with a guy on the Bulletin Board who had a rotted out frame, but the parts I needed were all good.  He agreed to cut off the parts and ship them to me.  I wish I remembered his name, super nice guy.  If you look close, you will also see that the springs once again sit below the axles.  Anyway, here is what I started with on the front of the frame:


It was a little sketchy getting things lined up with that cross member.  You can see that I didn't follow the measure twice and cut once thing; it's a good thing I was working with metal and not wood.  I ended up measuring once and welding twice!


I didn't get a ton of pictures through that whole project, but here is the final result:




-Doug
1963 CJ3B - F134 Hurricane, T90C/D18, OD, D27/44, alternator
1991 YJ - 4.0, AX-15, D-30 front, Ford 8.8 rear, 4-inch lift

Offline OnlyOneDR

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Re: My 1963 CJ3B Build Thread
« Reply #9 on: October 07, 2020, 04:18:40 PM »
I love reading these stories!  Keep it coming.  My 3A is in 500 pieces and my Blazer has not driven in years...
Searching for time to put it all together...
1950 CJ-3A #37751 In Pieces
1969 Chevy Blazer Resto-Mod Waiting for its day...
2001 Nissan Frontier Crawler Adventure Rig

Offline Doug_3B

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Re: My 1963 CJ3B Build Thread
« Reply #10 on: November 13, 2020, 07:30:16 AM »
I love reading these stories!  Keep it coming.  My 3A is in 500 pieces and my Blazer has not driven in years...

I've been there!  Keep after it, even if it's just something small each week or two.  You will reach a point where it starts to come together and you know:  I'm going to finish this thing! 
-Doug
1963 CJ3B - F134 Hurricane, T90C/D18, OD, D27/44, alternator
1991 YJ - 4.0, AX-15, D-30 front, Ford 8.8 rear, 4-inch lift

Offline Doug_3B

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Re: My 1963 CJ3B Build Thread
« Reply #11 on: November 13, 2020, 07:53:05 AM »
Somewhere around this point in the project (Sept, 2006), I ended up with an extended stay in Iraq, courtesy of the Air Force.  I was a civilian advisor embedded with an active duty mobile radar unit.  During some downtime in those 4 months, I continued to amass parts for this project.  Seemed like it was nearly every day, my wife at the time would come home and have to wrangle more boxes of parts into the garage. There were grilles and transmissions and pretty much any other part you can imagine. Here's a picture of the stash of loot part way through:



Once I returned home, it wasn't long before I was back out in the garage wrenching on the Jeep.  Ahhhh, look at that.  I was so young.  And not gray....





Here's a shot of the Hurricane going back into this Jeep for the first time in who knows how long



Here, most of the drive train is installed.  I was slamming parts together without rebuilding them.  Please don't do this if you find yourself in a similar situation!



She was starting to look like something again!



I was really getting excited to see things start to come together; however, I knew that I had a problem. This thing wouldn't be back on the road without a tub.  I wasn't ready to spend $2k+ on a prepro tub.  My search for a tub began.  In the meantime, I wanted to fire it up!  At the time, money was a bit tight, so I could only spend about $100 per paycheck on the Jeep.  I don't know how many of those $100ish orders I placed with Walcks for parts.  Each time I told my wife:  "this will be the last order before I can fire it up."  I wasn't lying; I truly believed that each time.



-Doug
1963 CJ3B - F134 Hurricane, T90C/D18, OD, D27/44, alternator
1991 YJ - 4.0, AX-15, D-30 front, Ford 8.8 rear, 4-inch lift

Offline Doug_3B

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Re: My 1963 CJ3B Build Thread
« Reply #12 on: November 13, 2020, 08:12:18 AM »
Somewhere around February, 2007, I located a guy in Cody, WY that had a nearly complete CJ3B for sale.  He was asking $500.  We made a deal where I sent him half and he held it for me until the roads through Yellowstone opened.  Travelling through Yellowstone saved several hundred miles on that trip.  What I ended up with, was a complete CJ3B, minus a gas tank, for about a third of the price of my original Jeep.  The important thing was the tub was in pretty decent shape.  My plan was to take what I needed, and part out the rest.

Here we are pretty close to the east gate of Yellowstone.  I think this was around May 2007.


And at some point inside Yellowstone


The Jeep actually got us out of a speeding ticket in the park.

We got the second Jeep home and in the garage








Several days later, after having a chance for closer inspection, I found this whole Jeep to be in so much better shape than my original.  Thought about getting rid of what I had been working on and starting over on that one.  But, I had done too much work on the original at this point.  I finally decided that I would take the tub and what other parts I might need and part out the rest.

The tub was in good condition, but not without its problems.  Floor pans were a bit rusty




And they had caved in the rear fenders, I guess to make extra room for seats?




With the second Jeep in a 1 car garage, I didn't have any room to work.  I disassembled the second Jeep and stored most of the parts outside until I could get around to working on them.
« Last Edit: November 14, 2020, 09:43:47 PM by Doug_3B »
-Doug
1963 CJ3B - F134 Hurricane, T90C/D18, OD, D27/44, alternator
1991 YJ - 4.0, AX-15, D-30 front, Ford 8.8 rear, 4-inch lift

Offline Rus Curtis

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Re: My 1963 CJ3B Build Thread
« Reply #13 on: November 13, 2020, 10:31:41 AM »
Yes......   A decades long rebuild....  I know it well.

Keep it up!!
'54 CJ-3B "Green Gruntt"
Bantam T3-C

Offline Doug_3B

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Re: My 1963 CJ3B Build Thread
« Reply #14 on: November 14, 2020, 12:42:38 PM »
Now it was time for me to find out exactly how much I dislike body work.  And I know:  Jeeps are simple compared to most vehicles.

I patched the "new" tub, it was from a '53, with whatever good sheet metal I could pull off the old tub.  I was a complete novice; never welded or done any kind of body work in my life.  Screwing things up with the MIG and fixing them with an angle grinder.

I didn't have a lot of room to work.  Due to the noise of the grinder, I stayed in the garage so as not to annoy the neighbors.


If I need to spin the tub for any reason (and there was on multiple occasions), I carried it out the back door myself, spun it outside, and took it back in.  The garage was not wide enough to spin it inside.


Passenger floor patches are in.  Ugh.... the welds are hideous I know




I have the drivers side patching done and you can see that the old tub was able to donate the front of both rear fenders to replace what had been caved in:




There was an insane amount of grinding involved in all of these welds.  I ended up taking an entire week off of work just to get this over with


Here is a closer shot of the fender repair.  That must have taken me 3 hours to grind those welds flat LOL!


Here is what I was working with as far as the old dash went.  I was originally going to patch the old dash, you can see I started.  The plan was to swap out the entire dash.  I wanted to keep the '63 authentic with the large speedo cluster, and at the time, I planned to use the speedo from my Dad's 3B.  It was one of the few things I pulled from it before it was sent off to the junk yard.


The dash on the '53 tub was just about as perfect as can be:


Perfect as can be, at least until I started messing around with it....


Here it is mostly pieced together except for, you guess it, more grinding....


And finally, when I was finished patching and modifying the tub, I set to painting the underside with POR-15
-Doug
1963 CJ3B - F134 Hurricane, T90C/D18, OD, D27/44, alternator
1991 YJ - 4.0, AX-15, D-30 front, Ford 8.8 rear, 4-inch lift