Minor touch ups and a little engine prep

Removing the spark plugs to squirt a little penetrating oil down the cylinders to make sure everything is adequately lubricated.

This collection of parts will be my body mounting kit.  More to be explained later.

Another patch bondo-ed, primed, and painted.

A little touch up on the back of the hood.  The blue over-spray wasn't intentional, but once it was there, I wanted it to look consistent.  I also painted some black primer over the red oxide drips that were decorating some parts of the underhood area.

And the T-bolts.

Bits and pieces

After yesterday's patch job, I needed to reprime and paint the window frame pivot arm.

I also needed to repair the T-bolt that operates the inner window frame hinge.  I cut a piece of scrap and used some marine epoxy to hold it in place.

Two steps forward, one step back ... Assembly

I started today by pulling the skid plate and the gas tank.  Penetrating spray is your friend on bolts like these.

These tank straps don't do what I want them to do.  they suspend the tank off the skid plate, which is good, but they don't hold the tank DOWN, which is more important on a wheeler.  I'll be fixing that at some point.

And then I turned my attention to the front window frame and found more rot to patch.

Decided to reuse the mechanical fan that came in the project parts pile.  Had to clean it up a bit before it could see paint.

I wanted to do the same to the transmission tunnel cover.

Permatex Rust Treatment finger painting all over the skid plate.  I like how tough the final polymer coat is, so I won't do anything more to the skid plate after this.

This is a shot of the backside of the rear bumper.  Bent but not corroded/rotted.

The skid plate bolts to these two brackets, which are quite heavy duty and will work for the time being, especially since this thing isn't going to be rock bouncer.

When I pulled the corroded sending unit that was hanging out in the tank, one of the little bolts broke off, so I drilled it out and tapped the hole to match the others.  Worked surprisingly well.

 I chased the other threads as well.

Windshield refurbishment

In my quest to use as much of the original Willys parts as possible, I spent quite a bit of time refurbishing the main frame (as you've read), and now I get to start adding parts.

Other than the hardware itself, I also wanted to keep costs down by saving the class that came with the frame.

The rubber gasket/seal around the outer edge is designed to provide some cushion, but I've got a problem: either my glass is too wide/tall to fit the stock dimensions, or the tracks they sit in are gunked up to the point where they are too small to accommodate stock glass.  Whichever way it goes, they don't fit.

So much for this glass.  All in all, this was a hack job that went to hell.  I'm moving on from it for now.

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