'53 CJ-3B #8642

[BrJeeper]

This is the last jeep missing in my dad and I's collection, a 3B, completing the timeline from Flatfenders to Brazilian CJ5s

I actually found it on Facebook marketplace over a year ago, and dad negotiated it, but due to bureaucracy issues, we had to hold back for a whole year before picking it up.
Pictures and descriptions are in chronological order.

Pictures from the ad. the previous owner had it for 32 years, and it pretty much encapsulates the look of early 90's Brazilian Jeeps.
Also note the MB steering wheel and pedals.



The day we picked it up (last week). It had sat for years, over a decade at least, but fired right up to climb onto the trailer.


Original color showing through, Likely Woodstock Green


Stickers and bolt-ons removed. The top was temporarily removed to be fixed, and the bumper is a CJ-5 Placeholder.


Tailgate removed and polished, so we can get paint made for the upcoming repairs. this is a 70's GM color, and we'll keep it that way for now


We actually got surprised by the originality of the 3B, for example, the original O.L. Anderson Co. (OLACO) fuel tank.

And today, while removing the trailer socket in the rear, i laid down under the Jeep, and noticed the bolts for the half top footman loop, and had a "hold on" moment. "didn't this have a replacement rear floor?"
Well, Bubba does weird things... like, for example, welding a new floor over a perfectly good one... It's better than the one in my '52 3A...



Lastly for now, we hoisted it up to clean years of grime from the underside.

[Rus Curtis]

Nice addition to y'alls collection!!  I do think it looks better without the stickers!

First time for me to see that rear floor add-on.  Looks stout but just weird.

I notice a side-to-side fuel tank hold down.  What year is your 3B?

[BrJeeper]

Nice addition to y'alls collection!!  I do think it looks better without the stickers!

First time for me to see that rear floor add-on.  Looks stout but just weird.

I notice a side-to-side fuel tank hold down.  What year is your 3B?

Thanks! The Jeep is a '53, it's missing the rear hold down tab on the tank, but you're right about the side to side strap.

The floor was really weird, I'm baffled someone would do it without the floor being rotten...

On a small update, dad is painting the wheels. Originally he wanted to go with a contrasting beige, but i convinced him to go body color.

[BrJeeper]

Some further updates. We've (mostly I) been working in between the soybean harvest on the Jeep, so it's actually changed a lot very quickly.
Uncovered rear floor after a wash.

New front bumper, this was before we drilled the holes.

Made a new speedometer from 2 spares a good friend gifted us a while back. We still need to source the other gauges, as the jeep came with an entire set of modern ones.

Dad couldn't stand the 90's yellow axles, so in what is totally not a work safety violation, we lifted it up and gave it a quick and dirty paint job. Later when we come back to properly go over the drivetrain, we will disassembly and paint things properly.

After that, the painted wheels. We decided to go with 6.50x16 tires, as we both think they fit the 3B better than the stock 6.00s.

Yesterday, i used some elbow grease on the hood, and i gotta say, it's not bad at all for a neglected 30+ yo paint job.


That's all for now.

[BrJeeper]

Some more progress:
First, a little break in the process, for the soybean harvest. We actually used the jeep for measuring the harvested area and to carry tools to the field.

New license plate bracket; I had these laser cut locally from dimensions i got in the CJ-2A Page forums. It is my understanding that 53's like ours had the bracket, like the earlier flatfenders, before moving to slots in the bumper like the later CJs


The spare carrier was an odyssey on itself... both the hat channel and the inside brace (the one with the big round hole) were gone, so we had to source them. The hat channel i salvaged from the original floor of our '42 MB, and it took some work to get into shape. The brace, we sourced from a junked CJ-5 body a friend had

The placement was another issue, due to previous bodywork. We ended up having to open 3 sets of holes until we finally matched the correct position, since the dimensions we had didn't match with the actual body.

After that was done, it was time for some maintenance.
Oil change and filter.

Decided to change the air cleaner oil, and.... "wait, why is the bottom squishy?"

Luckily, we had a spare.

Yesterday, when we finally finished up on the spare tire and rolled it outside

[Rus Curtis]

Nice progress!  It looks right at home out in the field!

[SteveKfl]

Yes, it is really taking good shape and good use too.  Congrats!  Thanks for sharing the progress.

[derekredmond]

Great work, Fernando!  For locating the spare tire mount, did you use the measurements at https://cj3b.info/Tech/Spare.html?  Are there corrections that need to be made there?  Thanks.

Derek

[BrJeeper]

Thanks guys! It sure fits very well at the farm.

Great work, Fernando!  For locating the spare tire mount, did you use the measurements at https://cj3b.info/Tech/Spare.html?  Are there corrections that need to be made there?  Thanks.

Derek

Derek, i started off with those measurements, but i had a hard time referencing the corners of the body.
The whole body is covered in body filler of different thicknesses, and that specific rear corner is not the straightest

[BrJeeper]

It's been a while, hasn't it? For the last months the project had been on hold, so we could work on other stuff, mostly on Dad's 1980 U-50 Jeep (Thread for that build over on EarlyCJ5.com)http://www.earlycj5.com/index.php?threads/161319/

Anyway, into the 3B!
Before we stopped, i did a test, painting the Willys script on the hood.

Set out to repaint the dashboard. Dad stripped out the old textured paint, and I welded some extra holes, primed and painted it. unfortunately, there was an issue with our paint gun at the time i did it, and we'll have to redo it.




Now, for the more recent progress.
Sanded dash again, and removed the steering box and column. This Jeep had a Gemmer unit from a Brazilian CJ-5, that had been cut short for some reason. My knees touched the wheel.

Rebuilt Ross steering ready to go in.

Last week, we decided that the best course of action would be to take the body off, since we had to repaint the engine, replace the gearbox with a T-90, and repair the rotten floorboards.
Since we already had removed some stuff, this was a pretty straight forward process, took us around 2 hours to do so.



After doing so, dad decided to also take out the 11" drums out of the back, to be replaced with the correct 9" drums, and... well, all i gotta say, is that i cringe every time someone praises "old school" mechanics and belittles new ones... what i'm about to show you is the work of some professional, with a shop, that worked in this jeep in the past.

Removed rear hubs, note anything wrong?

Yeah, both sides installed with the keys in the wrong orientation...


Not pictured, is the fact that the rear backing plate/bearing retainer assembly, had been done in the wrong order.... they put the backing plate first, then the bearing retainer, and the shims last... both rear bearing are trashed, and the shafts had around 1/4" of end play each...

That's all for now, hope to keep you guys updated more often from now on.

Nando.

[BrJeeper]

Continuing from were i left off last time...

Dirt and grime on the drivetrain, we washed the whole frame with some heavy duty cleaners.


I ended up not taking many pictures of the rear axle rebuild, but it was a mess... like i mentioned on the last post, the hub keys were assembled backwards, but the insides were not much better. There was play in the side gear splines, between the side and spider gears, and between the ring and pinion (improperly set up). We took a lot of parts from the yellow axle that came as an extra with the Jeep.
We also made a case spreader to help in the process.


That's me in the background, cleaning up the backing plates. The rear brakes were a take off from one of our other Jeeps, so everything was new, just needing some new paint.


New brake hard lines.


As the rear end got done, we moved on to the rear suspension and frame.
I had new spring hangers laser cut to replace the old ones, that had the holes wallowed,thick washers welded on to "fix" the holes, and heavy wear on the inside, we also replaced the common bolts with greasable bolts. (we still need to weld the brackets to the frame, like the originals)


The rear was pretty much the same, but the shackle brackets are actually from a donor frame section we had.
We could have used the correctly C shackles, but we only have one set, we're saving for dad's 2A, and no budget for another set.


The rear crossmember had some ugly rotten sections with angle iron welded to the inside and even some filler over it. we fixed it properly.


The battery bracket was pretty much gone, save for the "feet". i took a pattern from my 3A and we made a replacement from scratch.


Today, with the Jeep finally back on it's feet (for now) we removed the drivetrain. The next steps will be the transmission/t-case rebuild, the T-case needs new bearings and gaskets, and the 4 speed will get replaced by a T-90 like i mentioned before.


On another matter, with the engine out, i got a good look at the casting marks on the left side of the engine.

The casting date reads 4-18-C. knowing the engine is a '54 replacement, would this be March (C-3rd letter) 18th 1954?


The front casting reads 3 and chill... any known meaning behind this??


That's all for now folks.

Nando.

[Rus Curtis]

The fabrication and speed is fun to watch!  Thanks for the pics!

CHILL casting on the block:  Is that real or AI generated?

[BrJeeper]

The fabrication and speed is fun to watch!  Thanks for the pics!

CHILL casting on the block:  Is that real or AI generated?

It's totally real Rus! But i haven't been able to find anything about it yet...

[BrJeeper]

Managed to get a bit more work done these last couple of days (been busy harvesting Corn and Soybean lately)

Flipped the frame around and quickly removed the front axle and suspension, here, we're doing basically the same work as in the rear, but this time, we don't have to swap the shackle brackets


I mentioned the poor repair works done, back when we first started tearing into the rear axle, but for God's sake... welding the main spring? come on...


Since the frame is boxed around the front spring hangers, we had to use a more destructive method of removing the rivets, since we aren't reusing the brackets anyway, we cut one side to get clearance and cut the rivet heads


While cleaning up the areas where we removed the brackets from, i noticed the frame boxing looked a bit "crispy" and took the flap disc to it


Things went downhill fast...




Well, now the next step is frame repair, instead of new brackets... I'll keep you guys updated.

Nando.

[BrJeeper]

Managed to get some work done this last week. The frame is pretty much done, and we started on the front axle.

Outside holes in the frame patched, new driver's side main spring, and a used replacement second spring.


Other side, first picture taken before we finished patching the inner side of the frame.



We placed and bolted down the axle to the springs, to align everything and weld the new spring hangers in place.

We then started on the front axle. We knew there was some play on the hubs/drive flanges, but surprisingly, the wear was on the axle splines rather than the hubs.




I completely disassembled both ends down to the spindle in one side, and got to the knuckle in the other. Removed the old grease and cleaned everything for reassembly.
(Don't ask me why I started taking pictures of things on the floor)



On the driver's side, we found a badly worn Rzeppa joint, but luckily, our local junkyard had 2 good outer shafts we used to piece together a good one. On the passenger's, there was a Tracta joint in good enough shape, that we're using as is (Or, I forgot to check the junkyard for a tracta outer... We'll go back next monday and see if we can find one with less worn splines)


So far, the front axle is way better than the disaster at the rear, there is no excessive wear or play, so on the diff itself, we'll just change the oil and seals. On the hubs, we'll have to replace the seals, and both bearings on the driver's side, along with the spindle bushings. On the passenger side, the bushing was missing and the spindle worn out, but we had a spare at home to replace it.

I still have to finish disassembling and cleaning the other knuckle, but things are going smoothly so far.

Nando