Landon Grove, the historian and curator for the Fort Ritchie Museum (Cascade, Maryland), reached out and asked about obtaining a WWII era jeep. The goal is to obtain a running, driving WWII jeep, but if necessary, he may consider a non-runner.

Landon wrote, “I have been Directed to see if we can locate a WWII era Jeep to display for our museum. I am hoping you can create a post for this purpose. We are a 501C3 non-profit and can offer someone a letter of appraisal for tax purposes. The Jeep does not have to be pristine, although the nicer the better. We would greatly appreciate any help your members can offer. As a 501c3, we can offer forms for tax incentives based on our valuation of a vehicle”

If you’d like to contact Landon, you can email him here: ritchiemuseum @ yahoo.com (remove the spaces around the @).

If you aren’t familiar with Fort Ritchie or the Ritchie boys, I would highly recommend watching this 60 minutes video (or click here if player below doesn’t work):

Here’s a pic of author J.D. Salinger, John Keenan, Jack Altaras, and Paul Fitzgerald (The Four Musketeers) in front of a jeep. All four survived the war and remained tight friends:

PHOTO CREDIT: https://owlcation.com/humanities/JD-Salinger-Eyewitness-to-History-D-Day-June-6-1944#gid=ci0283734ad0012568&pid=jd-salinger-eyewitness-to-history-d-day-june-6-1944-MTgwMDQ2MzczNjQxNzkwODA4

Blaine shared this classic photo of a Ford Vanette pulling a CJ-2A. The photo appeared at the end of this post with a series of photos:

https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/vintage-snapshots-and-photography/vintage-snapshots-me-and-my-car-part-3/

Biscuit on its way home

Lost biscuit finally arrived in Prosser, though The Jeep is a shadow of its former self. The original 3.8L V-6 was burning oil badly out of cylinder one, so while replacing the engine I also replaced the transmission, switching from an TH350 automatic to a T-18 with a low first. But, I could never find the time to complete that transition. Engine placement, driveline angle, and  header angles seemed to fight me the entire transition. However, now that Biscuit is here, I’ll eventually have some time to devote to it (first, the race jeep’s seat will get adjusted for my height, then I will deal with Patterson’s generator and with the brake-clutch pedals, then Lost Biscuit).

To get Biscuit home, first I had to install a winch onto the tilt bed. After thinking through various ideas, I came up with a trial system that secured a winch frame to the tilt deck, but used a vertical angle against the from of the tilt deck as added leverage for the winch.

Here are some of the pieces I started with:

This shows the underside of the tilt deck. The square tubing in the pic above this one was drilled and bolted to the deck, with the bolts going through the wood and into angled pieces on either side of the hydraulic arm. I figured that was the least invasive way of mounting a winch (for now).

This shows the completed platform bolted onto the deck. Note how the front angle piece on the left sits down in front of the tilt bed. This allows the tilt bed to open and shut:

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I dropped the ball on this one. Frank sent me this photo of the engine stand he constructed last month, but it got lost in all my busy-ness. Thankfully, he circled around and reminded me so we can all enjoy it. It looks great Frank!

Frank wrote, “I wanted to send a picture of my spare 226 and the test stand. I got the engine back from the machine shop 3 years ago and didn’t want to leave it without running any longer. I put together this stand so I could break in the engine,tune it and check for any leaks. I have pumped up the oil pressure with a remote pump and filled the crank case that way. Tried to use what I had around to build it and used some parts that I got from my Willys friend Ken. All I need now is a YF carter and put gas in the tank. Doubt it will ever see my wagon but it has been fun playing with it.”

I bought this Yipao-themed jeep off of eBay. It included $15 for shipping. Given it is ceramic and given the shipping cost, I assumed the seller would properly package it. I was wrong. It arrived broken, wrapped in some bubble wrap, inside a flimsy plastic USPS mailer. Worse, nothing indicated it was fragile … Ugggghhh …. Based on the postage stamp of $8.55, I can see the seller went cheap and didn’t spend all the postage money I’d provided. Had he used a “if it fits, it ships box”, it likely would have arrived safely.

I’ve asked for my money back and he’s agreed.

I am hoping to be able to glue it back together, but we’ll see.

…..

Here’s how it should have looked:

Rosemary, the queen of Halloween in her natural habitat (part of the garage converted to a dungeon the night of Halloween, 2015).

My mother-in-law passed away on Tuesday afternoon at the age of 76. She was a complicated woman. As I’ve alluded to in the past, her declining health was a factor in the summer-long hiatus of eWillys.

Between the pandemic, her cancer and her COPD, the last two years have been full of medical appointments, oxygen machines, 911 calls, drug management, and patient management. Two Christmas’s in a row have been interrupted with Emergency Room visits.

Much of the work (and frustrating grief) fell into the hands of my wife, Ann, who, through the deaths of her sister and father (both from Huntington’s disease years ago …. a terrible way to go), along with the deaths of several other relatives, has become someone of an expert in palliative (end of life) care, especially related to COPD and/or congestive heart failure. She was a huge asset to my father during his last years and I’ve learned a great deal from her about end of life issues.

My MIL was both grateful for our help and critical of our help during her ill years, because she could be critical of most anything. One of her favorite statements was, “whoever designed this [whatever it was] should be dragged out and shot.” We heard this more and more as she got more and more confused about technology and life; but she was certain she was right and the designer of said service/item was wrong. In fact, she was usually right about everything, whether she was actually right or not.

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