83 CJ7 Finally out of storage

Big news, I got the call that my replacement tub had come in and is ready. So I rent a trailer, hitch it to the wife's Subaru, and head the 70 miles to get it. I don't make it far before I notice the truck behind me flashing his lights as I'm heading down the ramp to the e-way. A peak in the side mirror and reason is clear… smoke billowing from the wheel well on the trailer. Michigan potholes had taken its tole and the spring was broken. After a call to the rental company from the side of the road, I dropped the trailer and went back for another. The rest of the trip was uneventful. By the way, a CJ tub fits perfectly in. 5x10 trailer, not sure why I bothered to tie it down.


Because I have heard nothing but horror stories about the quality of these tubs, I planned to put it all together to make sure everything fits correctly, then take it back apart, media blast it, and then paint.

I'm here to tell you, the stories are all true, these things only look like Jeep tubs. I wish they would invest in a good spot welder instead of MIGing everything. More than once I told myself it would have been less work if they had just shipped a crate of pieces for me to weld together!

Now remember, this is the first time I have ever done any work like this, so I am quite sure my order wasn't correct and some of my work got done more than once. One of the first fixes I did were the reinforcements for the windshield hinges in front of the door openings. They clearly don't have or use clamps as they were welded in not in contact with the panel they are supposedly reinforcing.

Yep, moved that one 3/8"

Here I have fit the door hinges and have been adding weld nuts to make my original that I kept for reference.


You can absolutely lift a tub and place it on the frame by yourself with 4 lifting eyes, 2 ratchet straps, and an engine hoist


Body mount locations weren't good despite this tub having been "fixed". When I aligned the rear to the cross member and centered on the frame, 1 bolt won't go in, I can get the rust in, but only 3 will be centered in the bushing. I'm thinking I should have saved those $ . So I marked where the body mounts should be and soldier on.

I set the roll bar in and discover that the vertical riser isn't vertical. Now fortunately, they only weld the back edge of the flange, so cutting it loose is easy. I go ahead an drill for the mounting bolts so the I can use the bolts to pull/clamp the riser vertical before welding it back in. Since they didn't spot weld these panels together like AMC had done, the gap on inside is large. But with some body hammer work, the gap closed up and I welded most of the seam on the inside. It isn't original, but it looks better than it did prior.

I put the base in for the passenger seat in and everything lined up. But then on the driver's side only 3 of the nuts lined up. The 4th wasn't even close. While I'm staring at this trying to figure out how I'm going to fix this one I start to get the impression the seat isn't in the right place. It looks like it is too far toward the center of the vehicle. So after some tape measure work, I determine that the center on the seat frame is 3/4" inboard of the center of the steering column. Now I'm not sure if this is correct, and hopefully one or more of you experienced folks will be able tell us if this is correct. Anyway, I went ahead and put the old seat in on the frame to get my posterior's opinion on the matter. Recognizing that it has been >25 years since I have refreshed my failing memory, but I even felt like I was sitting in the center of the Jeep and my left knee was expressing concern about space encroachment. So I am pretty much convinced that I should do something about this but 3 of the 4 nuts are inside floor reinforcements so moving them involves removing and relocation of all the reinforcements on the drivers side. This is one of those points in time where I wash wishing I had purchased a pile of pieces. I also have limits to what I am willing to do, so I resolve myself to figuring out how to make the move on the seat frame and move on to the next. I also take a few moments to sit in my old girl and pretend to drive .

Moving on to install the grill and front fenders that I screwed up painting it is looking pretty good. Then I drop the hood on and realize my biggest fear with this tub. The cowl radius on the passenger side doesn't even come close to matching the hood.

The drivers side isn't perfect, but I can work with it.

I'm going to go have a and think about this.

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The lightbulb came on and I had a theory about what was really wrong with this cowl. But I want proof, so I mad a template from some plywood that fit the old cowl perfectly and I made it end at the body seam. The I could put it on this new cowl and confirm my theory that the hinge surface was too high on the passenger side which then stretched out the radius on that side. That template fit like a glove from the drivers side over to the hinge on the passenger side but then every thing fell away and the template was 3/4" above the body seam! Now, how the heck a. I going to fix this? I thought about cutting all the welds holding the cowl in and moving it down, but it looked like I would have to do tremendous damage along the firewall to get it loose. So I started looking at my old cowl and figured that if I cut it loose through the firewall, it would hold the original shape. The spot welds to the windshield cut out easy enough and a cutoff wheel made short work of the firewall so that I could graft the old into the new.



With it tacked in, I could install the hood and check and tweak the height of the cowl at the hinge

Before welding it completely in.

And now the cowl matches the hood pretty durn well.

I still have to deal with the body mounts, so I flipped it over and got to work. I marked the center lines of the 7 mounts that needed to be moved before cutting the coupons out from the previous "fix". To move the mounts in the cargo area, I decided it would be easy/better to just drill out the spot welds. Boy was I surprised after removing the crossmember I blew the chips off and most of the spot welds blew off too! Fortunate that I moved these crossmembers because they sure weren't attached well.



With the tub about as good as I'm going to get it, it is off to media blast and I guess I'm going to have to repaint those fenders.

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What’s wrong with the tub in this picture?

It looks like it has fresh paint that matches the steel door in the same picture, along with the rest of the parts that you just painted.

I’m guessing the work is complete and you are now posting the thread info after the work was actually completed.

That’s a lot of work you have done on that Repli-Tub.

The day I picked the tub up from media blast it has already rained, is threatening more rain, and the forecast is for high humidity for days; not exactly ideal conditions for bare steel. I need to do some filler on the cowl over the weld and to sharpen up the curve on the drivers side, but I'm worried about the rest of the tub rusting. So I decide to delay the filler, mask the cowl off! and forge ahead with the rest. I set the tub up on a work platform laying on its side so that I can easily do the inside and bottom in a single shot. Etch primers goes everywhere I can get to followed by the 2k urethane primer.



I applied brush-able seam sealer to both side of all the exterior seams before masking off the exterior. In an attempt to make the driving experience more pleasant for the boss, I applied 2 coats each of Lizzard Skin SC and CI. I don't know how well the thermal is going to work, but I sure deadens the resonance when rapping on the panels. This stuff is water based, so you have to wait at least 24 hours between products.
While waiting for stuff to dry, I decided to put the gauges back in the dash and get ready to go back in. Very exciting to finally put something together for real. Frustrating that I can't find the blower knob, probably more pieces that I won't be able to find right away.


These products leave an extremely rough surface, so I decided to put a couple of coats of the 2k urethane primers to seal and smooth the surface. I then top coated the bottom and firewall with Raptor Liner that I had tinted to match.


Now back to that filler on the cowl that I delayed.

And primer

And more seam sealer


Now I am at a quandary. I had always struggled with how I was going to get the interior and exterior painted without rubbing up against fresh paint and had resolved myself that I would just have to mask and paint them separately. But then I had this brain fart that I could build a rotisserie out of a pair of HF engine stands. So I start sketching up some brackets that I can bolt to the body mounts and figure out how much steel I'm going to need. Holy c***, the material for the brackets are going to cost more than the engine stands. Not going to happen.
Back to masking and painting separately.



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@Rkuehljr

I see you removed the welds between the cowl and the side panels. Are there some additional welds that keep the flanges together after the removal?

I didn't take care of these three welds during my restoration but they are so ugly that think i have to tackle this. I just need to know how things are attached to each other

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I had dropped the ole wagon wheels off at the media blaster to remove the paint and rust and then powder coat black. While they looked good in gloss black, I wanted to respect the original black pin stripe. So I took them to a local artist that pin stripes and she added a color matched yellow pint stripe.


With the tub painted, it was time to finally start putting it back together for real. Using my engine hoist and nylon straps I was able to gently and accurately place the tub on by myself. The addition of a couple straps to prevent the tub from turning worked awesome and provided the additional benefit of causing the tub to tilt the higher I lifted making it easier to get over the shifters.

All the body mounts lined up perfectly which made all that work relocating them seam worth it. With all the body mounts torqued up, the fenders went on, but now that I had the tub bolted to the frame there was a gap opening up between the fenders and the tub toward the bottom. So it was late enough in the day I decided I needed a and to think on it.
Next morning I had come to the conclusion the firewall wasn't perpendicular so I unbolted the tub except the rear mounts and added big ole fender washers to the top of the urethane pucks. 3 on the front, 2 on the next one, and a single on the 3rd mount back. When I climbed out from under the body the gaps between the fenders and tub had closed. So back underneath to retorque all the mounting bolts. After adding the radiator supports (why do I always seem to have to do this multiple times before I get it right) the hood went on and nearly aligned itself. A bit of fiddling with the fenders and things are looking pretty good.

Unfortunately I can't hang the doors or tailgate because I can't count and didn't order enough Torx flat heads. To top it off, Amazon has lost the order during delivery twice so 11 days later…
In the mean time, there is plenty of stuff that needs to be installed. All pretty uneventful, I just seem to be jumping around all over. Once the screws finally show up, I hung and aligned the doors and tailgate. The tailgate fit is very even, gaps are larger than current cars, but it is a CJ! Door fits are just ok, I can't get body lines to align and gaps even. It just isn't going to happen but I am ok with it, and I don't see the doors being on it most of the time anyway. With all the hinges on and aligned I spend 5 hours masking the Jeep off so I can spend 45 minutes painting the hinges and another hour pulling all the masking off. Good feeling to reach this milestone of having it all painted. The paint isn't perfect and I am too anxious to drive it before it gets cold, so wet sanding and polishing will wait. It sounds like a good way to spend some Saturdays this winter.

Several more days of reinstalling pieces and parts, it is starting look more complete. I spent a few hours last night putting the vent box and heater box back in. I wish I had remembered that the heater box goes in first and the to have put the foam seal around the drain. I also dry fit the vowel seal that I got from Metro Molded Products, it fits really well and looks to be very good quality. I think installing it with adhesive ants screws is on the agenda tonight




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Got around to hooking up the brake lines to the Master cylinder. The pre-bent lines I bought look and fit terrible. I'm anxious to drive this thing before winter, so they will work for now and I can bend my own over the winter. The bleed screws on the front calipers have become one with them, so rebuilt calipers from NAPA solves that. Bonus points for them being painted black. So after bleeding, I have working brakes.

With Axhammer and Keith460's help, I identified where the extra brace went that I had left. Turned out that the bolt welded in to the tub needed to go inboard an inch and down 1/2". I also found out I am missing a brace from the passenger side. I just don't know if I lost it, or the body shop did in 88' after I got that 10 point buck with the Jeep one night.

Now I have to turn my focus to wiring. I've been dreading this because I don't do it enough to be comfortable that I'm doing it correctly or optimally.

This Jeep rolled off the line with an AM radio that I still have. It didn't cut the mustard in 85' when it became mine. Unfortunately that Alpine cassette deck with 6" speakers stuffed between the roll bar and fenders that I put into it then isn't going to cut the mustard either. So I now have a Retro-Radio with Bluetooth and usb inputs, an amp, and a pair of 5-1/4" speakers for the dash. The Retro-Radio fits the opening and looks right, but it doesn't mount like radios did in the 80's. So I decided to fabricate a bracket that would bolt to the dash and support the radio with the amp directly underneath it. The amp actually will hang about an inch below the bottom of the dash, but I don't think you will see it unless you get your head down there. There are also some adjustments on the end of the amp, so I didn't want to put it too far back up under there.


I was also concerned about flush mounting the speakers that there might not be room for the cone to move freely. So I used the daughter's 3D printer to make these spacer/standoffs.


The speakers have separate tweeters, so that also means cross-overs have to find a home. These are pretty light, so I used adhesive foam tape to stick them to the back side if the dash before wiring the speakers to the amp.



I'm not sure how I feel about the tweeters over the speaker grills but I didn't want to poke any extra holes in the dash. I really thought I wanted to mount them somewhere around the windshield frame, but I just couldn't figure out where. There isn't any reason why I can't move them in the future if I find a better spot.


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Rkuehljr said:

I'm not sure how I feel about the tweeters over the speaker grills but I didn't want to poke any extra holes in the dash. I really thought I wanted to mount them somewhere around the windshield frame, but I just couldn't figure out where. There isn't any reason why I can't move them in the future if I find a better spot.

Click to expand...

I think I would wait until the dash was mounted up and then mount the tweeters on the bottom of the dash so you won't notice them. And pieces of black screening material will hide the front of the speakers that can be sandwiched between the speaker and grill.

So I am stumped. I need to add a fair bit of wiring to support upgrades planned such as electric fuel pump for Sniper FI, heated seats, power outlet for fridge, lighting, compressor, etc. I think I would like to route them through the factory terminal block rather than creating another hole in the firewall to maintain a vintage look. I have counted the open spaces and it seem like there is enough room. What is stumping me is that I have not been able to figure out what type of terminals I need that will lock into the block. Has anyone done this or am I crazy for trying to modernize using 40 year old technology.




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