[jscherb]

Originally Posted by randyandy

Man, that is very exciting!! I love those build ups!
Do you need a co-worker or employee? I would come right up to you to the U.S.
I think, there's a market for those projects in a world where every cars looks the same. I love those"retro-look" Jeeps!

I subscribe!!

Danke! I sure hope there is a market for this project because it will definitely be for sale when I'm done with the fabrication...

[jscherb]

I hope the rust repair isn't boring you guys, but I'm doing that first so when I start really cutting on the tub to convert it to a pickup I'll have a perfect tub to work with.

The only other rust spot was the bottom of the passenger a-pillar, right near the floor. The a-pillar sheet metal was pretty rusty for the bottom two inches, but there was no other sign of rust - the outside of the tub looked great. I didn't like the looks of the a-pillar, and using the rule "there's always more rust than meets the eye", I decided that there must be hidden rust behind the bottom of the a-pillar. Rust just in front of and below the door openings is one of the most common places for a CJ/YJ tub to rust, and I believe it usually starts on the inside, between the back of the a-pillar and the inside of the body sheet metal, so I had a bad feeling about this.

So even though the tub appeared rust-free and perfect on the outside, I decided to cut out the bottom of the a-pillar, on suspicion of hidden rust behind it eating away at the inside of the body sheet metal. Turns out that was a really good call... yes, there was rust eating away at the inside of the body panel, and under a vigorous wire brushing to clean up the sheet metal, several 1/4"-sized thin spots broke through the outer body.

This was good news, not bad news, since I had cut out the a-pillar it was easy to remove the rust. I fixed the exterior sheet metal by welding up the holes. I didn't take a photo of the holes I made when wire-brushing, but there were several 1/4" ones and a number of pinholes. I fabricated a new bottom for the a-pillar out of 16-gauge galvanized sheet to match the shape of the original, and secured it with structural panel adhesive on the floor and the inside of the tub, and welded it to the a-pillar where I cut the bottom off. The adhesive is plenty strong enough for this application, and the best thing about using it here is that it permanently seals the surfaces from rust-causing moisture.

Strangely, even though the driver's side floor pan was rusty enough to warrant replacement, the bottom of the driver's side a-pillar looks like new. The passenger floor pan was fine but the passenger a-pillar had a problem. Go figure.

Everything is fixed now, and I'm confident there's no more lurking rust, and once painted, this tub will last a very long time without recurrence of rust. I'm really glad I did this a-pillar repair, because this hidden rust would have broken through the outer body sometime in the next few years. Now it won't.

You'll notice I left the rivnuts in place that used to hold the YJ's flare extension. I'll probably have to remove them and weld up the holes, but I'll get to that when I get serious about the final details of the tub.

Next up, the challenge of sectioning a fender down from its huge Chevy size to the necessary Gaucho size, probably the most challenging metalwork in the Gaucho project... should have some pics posted tonight...

[corndogduff]

im posting so i can follow.

crawled and subscribed.

[Brizio]

Amazing job!!!

[SeaWulf]

brilliant work dude,

subscribed

[CrazyRobCustoms]

Amazing Work. Keep it up. Man you have some skills..

[Brizio]

Do you know ho many Gauchos was made?

[jscherb]

Originally Posted by Brizio

Do you know ho many Gauchos was made?

I have copies of four magazine articles on the Gaucho, three from the 70's and one from the 90's. The 70's articles say you could have your CJ-7 converted to a Gaucho for around $1800-$2000, but they don't give a clue of how many might have been done back then.

The 90's article in JP magazine says "records no longer exist" at the dealership as to the number converted.

All four articles show photos of the same Gaucho (same license plate number, anyway), so the only evidence I have is that only one was made. Seems like more would have been done, but I haven't found any evidence of any others.

I just don't know. Maybe someone else reading this knows more than I do.

[jscherb]

OK, now time to begin some serious sheet metal work... I am going to make Gaucho-sized rear fenders out of humongous 73-87 Chevy stepside fenders.

As I wrote before, the Chevy fenders are way too big for the Gaucho. They're 60" long, 25" high and 15" deep, with a 36" wheel opening. The Gaucho bed is only 64" long and about 23" high on the outside, so they'd be as long as the bed and taller - totally out of proportion to the Gaucho.

To be the right size for the much-smaller Gaucho, the fenders need to be about 46" long, 20" high and 11" deep, which means I've got to take about 14" out of the length, 5" from the height, and 4" from the depth. I'll also take 5" out of the length of the wheel arch, reducing the opening from 36" to 31".

The top photo below shows an original Chevy fender.

The middle photo shows the sections I'll remove, marked with tape. I'll also remove a 3" section from the depth of the fender, but you can't see the sides in this photo. The nice thing about the shape and body lines of these fenders is that I can actually remove all of the taped parts and still maintain the body lines - in other words, all body lines will still line up correctly. Also, it's a nice coincidence that the sectioning process will remove the marker light hole and the fuel filler hole so they won't have to be filled. And best of all, the resulting fender will be a fairly close replica of the original Gaucho fender from California Stepside.

The bottom photo is a digital "cut and paste" version of the sectioned fender. If I do my work well, the end result will be pretty much like this digital simulation.

So that's the plan - stay tuned over the next few days as I start cutting, rewelding and fabricating a few additional necessary bits to bring the new fender together.

[xjandyj]

brilliant.............

[CopperCJ7]

All I can say is, "WOW"

[Brizio]

Thank you for the info!

I like this Gaucho, and I have half Idea to put a bed like this in a CJ-7 project I have, so keep going, and let us/me know when its done!
Good Job!!!

[jscherb]

Originally Posted by Brizio

Thank you for the info!

I like this Gaucho, and I have half Idea to put a bed like this in a CJ-7 project I have, so keep going, and let us/me know when its done!
Good Job!!!

I think the minimum wheelbase for this type of conversion would be a Scrambler - 103.5". Check the drawings below - I don't know how you'd make this type of bed work on the 93.5" CJ-7 wheelbase...

[Brizio]

The CJ-7 frame I have its pretty rusty, so I will not use it, but I have other two CJ-7 frame, those in good condition. I have also a SJ frame that should be cut for it... Will see...

[jscherb]

I'll post a lot of detail for the first cut in sectioning the fender, maybe the detail will be helpful to someone else doing sheet metal work.

In the photos below, top left, the first thing I did was cut out the wheel arch. That will also be cut down, but I'll do that a bit later.

Top right, I made a "double marker" out of a piece of wood with two holes drilled to hold Sharpie markers. Using this I can ensure I get two exactly parallel lines for the cut. Even if the lines are wavy, they'll both be identical and the sides will match up.

Next row, once the cut was made and I cleaned the paint off both sides of the sheet metal, I clamped it together with butt clamps. On the inside, I used magnets to hold a piece of copper sheet behind each weld point so the welding didn't blow through the sheet metal.

I put a short weld spot between each pair of clamps, then removed the clamps and continued with little spots, jumping all around the joint being careful not to overheat any part of the sheet metal - it's really easy to warp the metal by getting it too hot.

Once the weld was complete I ground it flush, I use two tools for this - I do the rough grinding with a 4 1/2" angle grinder with a grinding disk, that gets the weld bead down close to the base sheet metal. Then I use a 60-grit sanding disk in my angle die grinder to finish off the weld flush with the base sheet metal. Using the small die grinder gives me lots of control I don't have with the bigger grinder and I can get a perfect surface, often one that won't need any body filler to finish off. The small sanding disk also doesn't generate much heat so it won't warp the metal.

The bottom photo is the fender up to this point. It's been shortened in length about 14". Lots more cutting to do to get this fender down to size. Stay tuned. Next I've got to cut the "legs" of the fender shorter.

And now a question for you guys - do you like this level of detail? Or should I just post finished photos without the "how to" detail? Please let me know...