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Ken's 1985 CJ7 refurbishment thread

999K views 3K replies 267 participants last post by  John Strenk 
#1 · (Edited)


My intent is not to rebuild this CJ. I don't have the time, money, or patience for that. I want to drive my CJ.

But, like most CJs, this one needs work. While it generally looks OK and has a generally solid frame, it has some common problems.

Here's the thread I posted when I first found this Jeep. It has lots of photos and details:

http://www.jeepforum.com/forum/f8/your-opinions-1985-cj-7-a-1036735/

Here's the thread I posted after buying her:

http://www.jeepforum.com/forum/f8/just-drove-her-home-1985-cj-7-a-1039261/

So, this thread will catalog the work I on this CJ. I will attempt to post photos to keep it interesting.

This will not be a frame off restore. My intent is to fix and refurbish things as I go along, slowly improving the looks, performance, and reliability. I hope for this CJ to be a 50% daily diriver.

EDIT 4/19/2011: I have included an index to the major work I've done on this Jeep. Here's the page with the index:

http://www.jeepforum.com/forum/f8/k...ment-thread-1040550/index45.html#post11394398
Ken B.

:cheers2:
 
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#233 ·
Gripe

I got a package from quadratec today. Contents:

(2) bellcrank bushings
(2) bellcrank bushing clips
(1) small spring of unknown use

No Bellcrank, and no indication it shipped in a separate package.

I called them and of course their customer service department is only open during regular hours.

The real test of a company like this is how they handle mistakes. We'll see...
 
#237 ·
Hey Ken 4444

I just started working on an older CJ7 too.

Really enjoy reading and seeing your tips and great ideas..

Have only been able to read 6 pages so far.

Keep enjoying the work on your restoration and sharing pics with us all.

Thanks kindly.
 
#238 ·
Really enjoy reading and seeing your tips and great ideas...
You bet. I have a lot of work in front of me but it's been fun and rewarding so far.

JF has come though again: I got three messages from folks who have factory bumpers for sale, so I'm trying to get that worked out.

I'm also working a deal to get a new heater core (he has an extra one) in exchange for cleaning up the owner's heater box. I don't mind exchanging a bit of time for a free part, so it could work out.

Tonight I did almost nothing on the Jeep. I took 5 minutes to apply more rust converter to some of the metal heater box parts, and then later I took 10 minutes to mask off and spray paint those parts. At least I know they'll be cured by tomorrow night.

I called Quadratec today and in less than 2 minutes they said they'd be shipping the missing bellcrank. So that should be here by the weekend. So far they have done well in correcting the error. Perhaps I can get the clutch linkage all done this weekend.

Looking forward, I think I'm ready to tackle the dead fuel gauge. I will probably start by dropping the tank and replacing the sender and probably other associated hardware.
 
#242 ·
Hey Ken,

I am wanting to tow my CJ7 and am looking at different tow bars.

How did your set up work and did you use it for towing your jeep if I may ask.

I have the stock style bumpers and have been shopping around. Anyone have any suggestions?

Someone in the Houston area can get a good deal on these you have for sale.
 
#243 ·
Hey Ken,

I am wanting to tow my CJ7 and am looking at different tow bars.

How did your set up work and did you use it for towing your jeep if I may ask.

I have the stock style bumpers and have been shopping around. Anyone have any suggestions?

Someone in the Houston area can get a good deal on these you have for sale.
This bumper and tow bar were installed by the previous owner and I never used them. Based on a few conversations with the previous owner, he would tow the Jeep back home with his F250 if the Jeep broke down. I think he was probably towing it short distances.
 
#245 ·
Thanks! I have been getting a lot done lately including rebuilding a heater box for a JF member who offered me a new heater core as payment. My workbench is full of heater box parts. I will post picture-full update when I have more time.

In the interim, I have been reading up on wire-feed MIG welders and safety equipment in preparation for buying a welder.
 
#246 ·
Decal install: From Joop to Jeep

I finally got around to installing some "Jeep" decals. Here's a before photo of the infamous "Joop" one one side:



Upon closer inspection, you can see the problems with the paint on the letters:



Clearly the surface needed help before applying the stickers.

Since my worn-out paint job is covered with Meguiar's wax, I figured it would not be smart to apply the new stickers directly over that. I was about to break out the rubbing compound, but I figured that 600 grit sandpaper would be faster and easier to control.

Here's the surface after sanding. You can start to see the original lettering show through the poor quality previous owner paint job:



Here's the other side after sanding:



The decals are tricky to work with. If you have installed a "www.jeepforum.com" decal, they're just like that: They're stuck to a backing paper, but also have paper stuck to the top.

Here's the front and back:



The first trick is to cut away the paper close to the edges of the letters. This helps you see the position of the letters in relation to the position of where they need to be on the Jeep:



After sanding and cleaning the surface of dust, I was ready to go. Here we see the backing peeled away from the first letter. I applied one letter at a time because the letters were spaced just slightly too close together.



Here is the letter applied to the surface. After it sticks on, but before removing the paper, rub it with a clean rag to press it on firmly:



After pressing it on, then slowly peel the paper off, pulling it at a sharp angle (ie: directly down), so that the paper peels off but leaves the sticker behind:



Here are both sides completed:





Another small project has been completed. These decals may not have a long-term life if the CJ gets repainted in the future, but I thought it was a cheap and important improvement that breaths a bit of life back into the CJ.
 
#248 ·
Heater box rebuild, continued

JF member Ned shipped me his heater box for a rebuild. Houston is a huge city so shipping it via UPS was actually the easiest route. It arrived in one day.

So I worked on both boxes at the same time. Here's Ned's after unpacking. He included 2 heater cores (one for me, one for him), a new Chevy Blazer blower motor, and a bag of parts:









Here's a new heater core:



Heater core with new foam. Here we see weather stripping. I had to trim about 1/8" off one side so the core would sit at the correct level inside the box.



Screws (for the back side of the box) ready for aluminum paint:



Ned's heater box was pretty clean inside compared to mine, but the outside of his was pretty worn out. I decided that painting it was the only way to get it looking good.

After washing and cleaning, I painted with Krylon semi-gloss rattle can paint:



Here's the 'welding helmet' as my son calls it. Now I call this part that too:



Here is my heater box, partially assembled. I wanted to test fit everything before sealing it up:



We can't forget the mods needed to make the larger blower motor fit though the firewall. I went back and fourth on how to make the hole larger. A 3.5" hole saw was going to set me back $20, but that would have made the cleanest hole. In the end I borrowed a Dremel fiberglass cutoff wheel from a guy at work. It took some time, but did cut the steel just fine. The drawback is that this cutting disk isn't designed to cut a round line. So I cut an octagon. It took probably 30 minutes to complete all 8 cuts. The trick is to let the tool do the work and not try to rush it. I burned through one cutoff wheel (it ground down to the size of about a penny), and slightly wore a second wheel.

Here we see a partial cut and the pencil lines of the octagon:



Here is the removed material plus the Dremel product I used:



I had to re-cut 4 of the sides to enlarge the hole a bit more.

At this time I have two 99% completed heater boxes sitting in the garage. I used RTV to seal the back metal panels to the plastic boxes and it needs to cure before fully tightening the screws. I will photograph the completed units tomorrow before shipping Ned's back to him.
 
#255 ·
Thanks. Yes I did. I put some time into trying to find the right fan, because it seems there was a big issue with some of the fans having a shaft that was too long. The Napa website didn't give me the warm fuzzies about the part being correct, so I went to O'Reilly and bought part PM102. It fits perfectly.
 
#256 ·
Thanks! I'm having fun with the Jeep and with the community here. It takes a lot of effort to continually haul the camera in and out of the house, keep the batteries charged, make sure I have it when I need it, make sure there is a memory card in it, etc. But it's all worth if people are interested.

I read something here in a post that clued me in to the availability of the small crankcase breather filter that fits inside the stock air filter housing. The filter gets clean air from the air intake system and that air feeds through a short tube to the top of the valve cover, at the rear, near the firewall end.

Originally I had just cleaned mine but for about $3 I figured I would replace it. Amazingly, Napa had this part in stock. I don't have a photo of the installed pirce, but here's the new piece compared with the old one. The filter includes the plastic housing that the filter sits in.



When I pulled the part out of the box at the store to check it, the clerk was surprised. The box is the size of an oil filter box, but as you can see the part itself is just a couple of inches across. I don't think the new part is going to give me any real benefit other than piece of mind. $3 for increased sanity is pretty cheap.
 
#257 ·
Hey Ken,

My friend noticed a small hole in my CJ7 heater box. It is about the size of a silver dollar and round. Any suggestions on a repair?

Thanks kindly.
 
#258 ·
Hey Ken,

My friend noticed a small hole in my CJ7 heater box. It is about the size of a silver dollar and round. Any suggestions on a repair?

Thanks kindly.
Is the hole on the rear metal back panel or the plastic box part?

The thing to keep in mind about the heater box is that it's a very, very low-tech piece of equipment.

Regardless of the location of the hole (metal back or plastic box), you could probably cut out a like piece of material and use that to fill in the hole. First clean the hole and cut out the rough edges. If it's metal, then paint it to prevent corrosion. Then place your new material over the hole and glue it on with epoxy. If the new material is metal, then paint it too.
 
#259 ·
Heater box rebuild and new bumper

Here's the Blazer blower motor box. The instruction sheet inside does mention Seimens but that's not listed on the box.

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The top box is mine. I used gloss paint on the metal and you can see the finger prints. The bottom one has semi-gloss.

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Again, the top box is mine. I used Armor All on the plastic, but it still has some slight white paint overspray in some areas.

The bottom box I repainted. Earlier I said I used Rustolieum but I went back and checked andit's Krylon.. formulated for plastic. This heater box was pretty banged up and looked much better with the paint.

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I picked up a factory bumper from a local JF member last week:

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She's still bare on the rear end, but I should have some bumperettes in a couple of weeks thanks to another JF member.

I suppose I will paint the rear of the frame. I should be able to mask it off well enough to pull off a good looking paint job without getting any overspray anywhere.

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At some point I need to drop the gas tank so I can get the gas guage working. That will of course mean repainting the gas tank skid.
 
#260 ·
Ken:

Thanks for the reply. It is the plastic section facing the passengers left foot.

I can make a plug out of two round pieces of sheet metal and then use a screw in the center to pull them together. May add a little sealant to the cut out.

Hey you did such a nice job on yours you got me to looking at my heater box and thinking it may get cold some day in the future. Right now in my garage is about a 100, just like Houston.

Have been working on parts refinishing with wire wheel, primer and black paint. Everything I refinish seems to look much better but it makes the other parts look worse.

What do you think about bedliner?
 
#261 ·
Ken:

Thanks for the reply. It is the plastic section facing the passengers left foot.

I can make a plug out of two round pieces of sheet metal and then use a screw in the center to pull them together. May add a little sealant to the cut out.

Hey you did such a nice job on yours you got me to looking at my heater box and thinking it may get cold some day in the future. Right now in my garage is about a 100, just like Houston.

Have been working on parts refinishing with wire wheel, primer and black paint. Everything I refinish seems to look much better but it makes the other parts look worse.

What do you think about bedliner?
That CJ is coming out AWESOME looking, excellent work :2thumbsup:

Thomask, where are you in Fl?
 
#263 ·
If you're not seeing most of the images in this thread, don't worry. My web and email server dropped off the radar on Friday night. I hope to have it back up this morning, however if it's a total loss then I will have to actually pay for hosting and set up a hosting account somewhere. Yes there are several free image hosting solutions, but I need other services than just that.
 
#264 ·
Clutch bellcrank replacement

(for the images in this post, I'm uploading directly to JF)

THe clutch bellcrank came in from Quadratec several days ago. They had failed to include it in my original order but when I called them about it, they were eager to fix the problem. The part showed up 4 or 5 days later. I'm glad they corrected the error but I'm also glad that I wasn't in a hurry to get the part.

I installed the part yesterday and it went smoothly. Here we see the original parts as installed.
 

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#265 ·
Clutch bellcrank replacement - part 2

The mounting brackets were a greasy mess. I spent some time cleaning them which revealed a noticeable wear mark on the driver's side unit, on the stud that goes into the bellcrank tube. I'm not sure what caused this but something must have been misalligned.

I put some rust converter on the brackets but did not paint them, primarily because I wanted to take the Jeep out to pick up some groceries and couldn't drive it without a working clutch.

I pumped the new part full grease and assembled it. There's not a photo of it, but I installed new plastic bearing caps and clips. I probably could have reused the old clips though. Luckily the boots were in good shape because I did not buy new ones because they were like $5 each.

I got the thing partially bolted back up only to realize that I installed the clutch fork release rod on the wrong side. So I pulled everythingn put it back on the bench, and fixed that.

Reinstalling the unit worked well and I spent some time adjusting it.

Also, as Murphy would have it, I have been sing a CFL (compact flourscent light bulb) in my drop light because they are resistant to being moved around. We inherited a lamp from a neighbor and it came with a CFL.

I really, really dislike CFLs for a number of reasons, the first of which is they give a really, really ugly color of greenish-yellowish light. Plus they're full of mercury, and they're expensive. I'll just stick with reliable, clean, and cheap standard bulbs, thank you, until the government ban starts. Anyhow, that's why some of my photos have an off greenish coloring to them.

Anyhow, I finally broke the CFL by tripping on the drop light cord while I was cleaning up. I knew this would happen at some point. I evacuated the garage for an hour and then swept up the pieces.

I picked up a new Craftsman LED 120v drop light because I had a Sears gift card.
 

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#266 ·
Heat shield update

My homemade heat shield yielded about a 10 degree (Fahrenheit) reduction in the temperature of the driver's side floor at the transmission hump. I was hoping for much more than that.

My first thought was that I didn't put the shield in the right place, but after going around and around it looks like it is well positioned compared to where I'm getting the most heat.

A co-worked clued me in to the exhaust wrap at Jegs. They sell probably 30 different variations of size/color/brand. So I am tempted to pickup a roll of that and see how it does. The claim on this stuff is that it does not 100% block heat; some vague claim is made about how it is designed to let some heat pass in order to avoid damage to the pipe. So we'll see. I should really spend that money on a new gas tank sender.

Here's the heat shield and some chicken grilling over charcoal and mesquite:
 

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#267 ·
Broken bolt

I rebuilt the front shackles this weekend. The goal was to knock out any rust lurking in the area and maybe get a slightly better ride by ensuring the newly-greased shackles moved freely.

The work included removing the hangars, refinishing them and the shackle plates, greasing things, and resembling it all with new grade 8 bolts using anti-seize on the bolts that enter the frame. I re-used the long bolts that go through the shackles primarily because Lowe's didn't have any that length in grade 8, and the existing grade 3 (or 5?) bolts seemed to be in fine shape. I did put new nuts on them though.

One problem: I was using my 20" socket wrench on the bolt that near the driver's side shackle hanger that holds on the steering box. It was slowly turning and I was applying a lot of pressure to it when POP! The head snapped right off. Immediately I thought about all of the JF posts I've read about this problem. I couldn't even find the broken off head until I was cleaning up the next day.

I found some good posts here about how to proceed. The obvious problem is that it is difficult to get at the broken bolt because the leaf spring is directly under it. So if I'm going to drill it then I'll either have to get a right-angle adapter, or remove the leaf spring.

Can anyone explain how an 'Easy Out' works?

In the following photo to see the shackle hanger bolts and the head of the broken bolt:
 

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#268 ·
An easy out is basically a left hand screw, when you screw it into the hole that you drill in the bolt it bites into the bolt and backs it out.

I would not even bother with an easy out, it will probably break anyway.

You can knock the leftover bolt and nut out with a sledge hammer and punch and then drop a bolt in place through the frame. I would suggest a captured nut to keep it from spinning 360. I will try to find the correct name and a picture.

Basically the captured nut is a nut welded to a piece of plate, about 1/8"x3/4"x2".
 
#269 ·
An easy out is like a reverse drill bit kinda,but it has wide spaced shallow flutes to grab the material in the hole. Choose the largest size easy u can use to prevent snapping it off,YOU DO NOT WANT IT TO SNAP!.You just want to be comfortable your not going to drill into your threads. You drill a hole,size matched to the specific easy out your going to use,if you use the wrong size,the easy won't bite into the bolt shank.Drill the hole into the broken piece nice and deep,then heat the piece to make as little resistance as possible,YOU DO NOT WANT IT TO SNAP! insert the easy and back it out. Push in hard on the easy to get a bite as you start turning it,and be patient and gentle,they can break off in the hole because they are so hard,YOU DO NOT WANT IT TO SNAP!!,because you haven't had any fun until you have had to drill out an easy out.:thumbdown::thumbdown:

Awesome build,keep on rolling!
 
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