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Coiz 1979 CJ7 Frame Off Resto; picture crazy

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#1 · (Edited)
Coiz 1979 CJ7 Frame Off Restoration - picture crazy

I started working on my Jeep in 2/08 and wanted to document my progress in a thread so I could share with all of you and have an easy reference for my friends and family. So first I will give a brief history. Sorry for the book as the first post.

I've owned this Jeep since my 3rd year of college in 1995 in Colorado. We had a lot of four wheeling around the college and used to take a lot of trips to Medano Pass as well as a couple Easter Jeep Safari Moab trips. The 258 had a bunch of Clifford performance parts and ran like a champ but I could never get the carburetor working correctly on the trails. You could walk up to my Jeep grab the roll bar and shake to get it to stall. So when I got out of college and moved to Detroit for work I opted to install a fuel injected 5.0L out of a 1992 Mustang GT, last year for the forged pistons. :thumbsup: I put some GT40 heads on it with some Cobra roller rockers, SVO block hugger headers and a K&N air filter. During the engine conversion I swapped to a NP435 and kept the D300 transfer case. I also full floated the rear Dana 44 and installed a Detroit locker at the same time with 3.73's. The D30 front currently has a Detroit EZ-Locker. I removed a 4" ProComp kidney buster to install a 4" Skyjacker Softride suspension and a 20 gallon gas tank around the same time. I also had a friend who had a Corvette that switched from brown to black interior so I picked up the seats from him for the Jeep.

The PO installed the 6 point roll cage, custom front bumper and welded in the Scrambler bulkhead behind the seats. It appears that he also did some bodywork.

I drove the Jeep for about a year with all the upgrades before I moved to Memphis with a job that supplied a new company car every 4-6 months. Needless to say the Jeep stayed parked most of the time. I got out of four wheeling and into motorcycle road racing so it ended up sitting for 6 years in a friend's climate controlled warehouse. I moved to northern IL where it sat in the corner of my garage for 3 more years. I finally came to the crossroads where I needed to either sell it or fix it up.

Realizing that I couldn't get half of what I had in it and the fact that I just love the Jeep, I decided I would just replace the rusted fenders, some quick bodywork and fresh paint to make it road worthy. Yeah right.... It wasn't long after I realized I was at the beginning of a frame off restoration.

I am fairly well along in the project but still have a lot left, a lot. So I am going to post up some pictures and comments of the progress I have made along the way and continue to post as I go. With any luck it will be on the road by next fall but don't quote me on that. Questions and comments welcome.

Here are some pictures before the tear down:

Look at how clean the garage is. Hasn't looked like that in almost a year. :crying:

Worst of the rust:


Dash:


Interior:


5.0L HO with about 29,000 actual miles:


Minor dents:


Rust on the cowl/windshield area:


The only bad spot on the frame, driver's side inner rail:

The passenger's side ended up about the same. Anyone who owns a CJ knows what looks like hairline cracks are not. More details on that later.

Next up will be pictures of the tear down.
 
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#585 ·
You have pioneered more stuff... at least since I became a member! I really, really like the instrumentation. I didn't think I would until I saw it installed. Great insight, Mike. I wish I had some...
 
#586 ·
I love the dash... although it reminds me I need to do mine... PO shredded it!!!
 
#589 ·
Coiz and Besrk

Hi,
Just wanted to add my appreciation and encouragement to the list :cheers2:

I've been following this thread religiously for a few months and get excited whenever there are new posts. I really appreciate Coiz's writing and photography skills, and his commitment to this thread. Surely his thread-time is not an insignificant portion of this whole process...Thanks! :2thumbsup:

Having also read Besrk's bumper thread, I thought it was pretty awesome that a Ground Pounder bumper is going on this CJ. It just seems perfectly appropriate given the quality of workmanship performed by these two men.

Like Skerr, I was a little skeptical about the white face gauges. I really like the vintage ones, and I personally will not be trading mine out for a set of Auto-meters. However, the finished product here looks great!:highfive:It's a nice twist that keeps the vintage look, while perfectly matching the rest of the CJ...nice work!

I would suggest that Coiz should do this professionally, but as was discussed about his paint work, none of us could afford to pay him what it would be worth for the level of detail and quality workmanship, keep on keeping on!

Thanks again,
Steve in Maine
 
#590 ·
Mike,

Over the few years I have been on JeepForum, there have been a handful of build threads that are gospel. Yours is at the top of that list. What we should all do is to print out this thread in its entirety, along with others that have interest to us and bind them into a nice hardbound book that can sit in the garage and be used as reference over and over and over again. I could easily have:

Coiz (Mike), 243 (Dave), Skerr, Jeff Scherb, JeepHammer, HackFabrication & Fatman threads just to name a few...It must take forever to not only do the build but also document the process. :cheers2:

Thank you very much...

Mike
 
#591 ·
Thanks for the comments guys. :wave:

I had always wanted white faced gauges but wasn't very keen on the idea they would be mismatched in brand or style. By doing it this way I was able to keep the vintage CJ gauges but add to the retro look and style to match my build idea.

You're right that documenting and posting does take a significant amount of time but reading all of your responses and feedback makes it all worth it. The Word document I type my main posts into before posting them here is now on page 115 and I'm up to around 7,000 photos which comes to around 5.7GB of space on the hard drive. The sad thing is no matter how many photos you take, there is always something you miss. Little details here and there that cause me to search other builds to find answers or ideas.

I am hoping to post a few updates over the next couple of days. Stay tuned.
 
#592 ·
You're right that documenting and posting does take a significant amount of time but reading all of your responses and feedback makes it all worth it. The Word document I type my main posts into before posting them here is now on page 115 and I'm up to around 7,000 photos which comes to around 5.7GB of space on the hard drive. The sad thing is no matter how many photos you take, there is always something you miss. Little details here and there that cause me to search other builds to find answers or ideas.
I love photos... I have a ton, but I wish I would have thought to make a word document too... Oh well I guess I could start now...

Can't wait for more pics!!!!
 
#593 ·
There will be no end to the praise this build deserves.
 
#596 ·
Hey Coiz, how did you remove the bezel from your battery, oil pressure and tachometer gauges?

I've been trying to pry off my OEM bezel of the tach but cannot due to fear of breaking the glass as I want to clean behind it and touch up the faded fluorescent orange. Any tricks would be appreciated.
 
#597 ·
Thanks for the comments guys and that CJ of the year sounds nice. :D

Do they take all of the CJ of the month winners and have a CJ of the year vote in January?

Kieth,
I just used a small screw driver from the back side of the bezel and slowly worked my way around prying outward until there was enough play to pop them off. There is no risk of breaking the glass that way or at least I never felt it was a risk. It doesn't look pretty and putting them back on was a bit of work. Once I got everything back together I placed the entire gauge face down on the carpet, pressed down pretty hard on the gauge to compress the rubber seal in there, then went around the bezel edge with a flat blade screw driver and pressed it back down little by little working around the edge. It's obviously not as nice as the factory crimp but once installed back into the dash, you can't even see that part anyway.

I can tell you that once you do get the bezel and glass off, you need to be really careful of the gauge needle. Especially if you are working on the original gauges. Maybe not so much on the tach but on the volt and oil pressure gauges that 30 year old plastic needle is extremely brittle. The one on my oil pressure gauge snapped off like a balsa toothpick when I touched it with a detailing paint brush. I actually fixed it with toothpicks and super glue but then decided to just buy two new gauges. The replacement gauges were just a little bit different than the factory style and none of the parts were interchangeable. I had to email Pedal-2D-Metal two years after I purchased the overlay set to see if I could get replacement stickers for the oil and volt gauges. They were nice enough to ship me the replacement stickers for free. That's top notch customer service in my book. :2thumbsup:
 
#598 ·
Yeah, I've been doing it the same way with a small screwdriver and been working on the factory tach for the past week or so, but it sure doesn't want to come off to easy. I even made a cylinder that fits over the tach body so when it comes time to put it back together, it will just fit to press the bezel edge back down. I guess I'll just keep working at it then.
 
#599 ·
I even made a cylinder that fits over the tach body so when it comes time to put it back together, it will just fit to press the bezel edge back down.
I was trying to figure out a good way to do that but never really came up with anything I liked or that seemed to work very well so I ended up using a screw driver. My tach was a RR replacement so it may be put together a little different. That one was difficult to get off but the easiest to put back together, go figure.
 
#600 ·
I dont mean to jack the thread, but where did you find the RPM Gauge?

Everything looks beautiful
 
#604 · (Edited)
Grill Assembly

I got most of the grill assembled. Here are all the parts laid out in the living room.


Got my 3 core radiator installed. I didn't realize there was that much surface rust on the fins until I saw the pictures with the flash. I should have washed it better and maybe added a coat of paint but I'm not really worried about it.


Same thing with my Contour cooling fans. I thought I had cleaned them better than that but I guess not. The flash really brings out the dirt. I'll get it cleaned up and touch up the rusty metal spots around the motors with some paint at some point in the near future.


Front side of grill with radiator installed. I was thinking of adding a screen to the front of the radiator to help with protection from rocks. I still might do that at some point but that can be a separate write up later.


Got all the headlight parts and bezels installed. I love the black headlight bezels. I'll have to admit that for some reason I thought the bezel covered up more of the opening when I was painting the parts. Seeing how much of the recessed opening is visible I would have taken more time to make sure my stripe lines in that area were cleaner and straighter. It's not too bad but I would have done better knowing what I know now. Too late to do anything about it now, live and learn.


The front marker lights were the last to go on. I made some modifications to those which I will detail in the next post. I'll have to pull the headlights back off when it comes time to wire them.
 
#605 ·
Front Marker Lights

As you know, well at least if you don't you should, the front marker lights ground through their own case. This is normally done via the two mounting screws to the metal of the grill. Since mine has so many nice layers of paint I wasn't confident the two screws were going to get enough contact for a good ground and I wasn't keen on the idea of grinding off any of my shiny paint. So I decided to add a dedicated ground wire to both of the light housings. I took an old one and started making some practice welds to get the welder dialed in and to make sure the terminal end wasn't going to just melt off. So I welded on an old piece of scrap wire and terminal to make sure it was going to work alright.


The welding appeared to work well so I started with a small holed terminal and soldered it on to the wire.


Here I have one welded on and the other resting in place.


Here they are both welded on and I just need to add a piece of heat shrink to the one on the right.


Here is a picture of the front sides so you can see the penetration of the welds.


Here I've got my Fluke meters checking the resistance or Ohms between the wire and the light's case. The lower the better and theoretically 0 is perfect. I think this is close enough.


I touched up my reflective tape that got burned up by the welder.


Since the welder burned off the light zinc coating on the marker light housing I figured I needed to get some paint on them otherwise the welds would want to rust quicker.


I just used the first can of black Rustoleum I found on the shelf to add color and help keep the rust away. The ground wires will be tied into the headlight grounds.
 
#606 ·
Looks good, Mike. I'm looking forward to the point where I can sit down and work on my Jeep. You sure have earned it!! You welded, or soldered, the ground to the housing??
 
#608 ·
Humm, kind of an odd response considering I did the frame work well over two years ago. I'm not sure how building my own frame would have been faster than fixing the one I had. The rest of the frame was in solid shape and the repairs I made with the MORE frame reinforcements are considerably more robust than the stock setup. The body is the part that really consumed most of my time.
 
#609 ·
That's dedication. Not one, but two Multimeters in use at the same time.:D

Hope nothing happens to your photobucket account for a few years until I get my jeep built. I'd sure be disappointed if one day the dreaded "picture deleted" box shows up. You have a lot of great ideas I plan to use.:thumbsup::thumbsup:
 
#610 ·
That's dedication. Not one, but two Multimeters in use at the same time.:D

Hope nothing happens to your photobucket account for a few years until I get my jeep built. I'd sure be disappointed if one day the dreaded "picture deleted" box shows up. You have a lot of great ideas I plan to use.:thumbsup::thumbsup:
not just to multimeters but two FLUKE'S :2thumbsup:
 
#612 ·
Coiz your time is well spent on the things you do. You do a high quality job on every thing that you work on as the jeep, garden,beer and those are just your hobbies. So those that think trying to safe that peace of junk metal does not know you..
 
#615 ·
95% of the wiring is done. I just need to work out a frame ground and wire the switch to my cooling fans. I might be able to start the engine today. Headed to the parts store to find some radiator hoses, coolant and 5 gallons of gasoline. Once I make sure everything is fine I will tape up the harnesses and add the convoluted tubing. I might have to pull out the video camera for this. :2thumbsup:
 
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