the finished front end. i have since swapped in correct length bolts and tightened the pitman arm nut. now if only the rest of the jeep was painted...

Definitely looking good.

Skip wrote on 04/04/16 at 03:45:03:


no the remaining gap from passenger frame rail to steering box is 20", the Warn M8000 i have is 21". i will be doing this modification today, it is fairly easy to narrow the drum on these winches so i plan to take 4" out of it and then it will be 17" and fit just fine. the drum originally is 9" and is rated to hold 100' of wire rope and i have synthetic rope for mine so i should still fit about 60' of 3/8" rope on the drum and i carry a 50' extension so that should be plenty of length... not to mention they look cool when they are narrowed

and in other news, i ran the engine a bit yesterday and checked things over. the 'new to me' power steering pump has a slight leak. seams to be from the actual body and not a hose connection...bummer. will do more looking into that. the coolant filter i put into the top rad hose is definitely doing its job and needs to be cleaned out before much more running as its completely full, i put it in to prevent rust/scale of sitting for 35 years from getting into my very costly re-cored rad and I'm very happy it appears to be doing its job. and finally someone asked about oil pressure and so i monitored that from cold start up until warm. 40psi at cold start up, drops down to 25psi at idle when warm and can get as high as 60psi when revved up. i hope that sounds alright.

busy again today. finished hood, narrowed winch, started body work on cowel that turns out to be full of bondo

heres the winch prior to cutting. you can see the 4 pieces that had to be shortened. the side plate on the drum had to be moved so it was carefully cut off and welded back on after shortening.



finished product. just needs clean up and paint. 4" narrower.

And more sanding/painting. I'd rather do anything else... Just have the front fenders left to do and assembly. I got my tires arriving tomorrow too. Should be on the trail in a few days😁

ok, today was a long day. had some family obligations but i also had Jeep progress to make. so in the morning i sanded, welded, repaired and painted the remaining front fenders. came back in the late afternoon and mounted fenders, mounted hood, windshield frame, installed many of the accessory parts and pieces, made some dash progress, swapped out the tires...etc. so here she sits! i tried the power steering with weight sitting on the wheels and it works great. engine is running good. theres a few small things to tidy up but she should be street and trail ready tomorrow.

still need to sandblast and paint the winch body, going to swap the tires from the rims they are on (chevy tracker 7") to the original Willys 5", finish VHF instal...and i'm sure I will come up with many other things to do.



the tires were sold to me as 30" but at 16 psi measure out closer to 28". very interesting and fortunate that the tracker wheels bolt up.