Self Portrait . . . let the unbolting begin! Note what happens when I leave the jeep in my parents garage. It becomes a squash storage facility.

I’ve spent the last couple days moving and reorganizing parts and things so I could make enough room to start disassembly (see pic below). Today I finally got to begin the breakdown process.

As you can see, it was a bit of a mess.

One of my strategies during assembly was to make the body as easy to remove as possible. So, for example, nothing is wired or attached to the fenders. In addition, the wiring along the underside only attaches to the frame in one spot (a ground). It all worked well . . . great when a plan works!

I also removed the seats. Posts welded to the frame stick up through the body (holding the body in position). Seat plates are screwed onto the body. The seats are bolted to the plates.  Here the passenger seat plate has been removed and is sitting next to the post.

Next I removed the roll cage using the engine hoist. The cage is quite heavy and not very easy to move. However, I had a genius moment. I realized I could bolt some casters to the cage through the holes in the cage plate (I used three because that was all I could find…) The result made the cage very simple to roll outside.

The last step was to remove the body. To help make the body more mobile, I build a rolling cart for it. Now, I just had to get the body off the chassis.

Fortunately, Mitch Carter came over last night to show off his Perkins CJ-6. That jeep made a great sound as it chugged into the driveway. As I mentioned in this post, Mitch took it over the Naches Pass a few weekends ago. He said it was surprisingly torquey, even when powering a T-90 and 3:73 gearing. The one downside is the heavy diesel smell inside the cab that requires venting (I noticed he rolled into the driveway with the windows down). I’m sure he’ll come up with a fix for that.

With Mitch’s and mom’s help, we pulled the body off and set it on the roller. You can just see the lights from the CJ-6 as Mitch was pulling away. Tomorrow, I begin the figuring out how it will all go back together.