Hugh wrote me a couple days ago. He was excited to share his barn find jeep, a 1943 MB that had sat for forty years.  Nick Oxender actually found the jeep and told Hugh about it. I wanted to share the jeep with everyone as evidence that barn finds still exist, even in the midwest!

Hugh wrote, The jeep is rust free and original and not too bubba-ed up. It has all three seat frames and four combat rims with almost new tires.  The switches and controls on the dash are present and it is only missing the parking brake handle.  

It runs and drives well, but has a post war engine. The original insulation is on the firewall and the filterette and it came with the original radiator with the horsehair insulation. The original crossover tube, air cleaner and fuel strainer are still there. It also has the original oilfilter and bracket. Someone just switched out the engine and left the T-84 trans and WW2 components alone.

I will be watching for an mb engine but it drives just fine right now.  i don’t plan on an extensive restoration, just paint markings, a canvas top and an engine swap. I plan to preserve it. There is a patch right over the transfer case that i believe covered a hole where it had a PTO operated generator.  Judging by the extra holes, ground straps and suppression devices, I believe it was a radio jeep. i am very pleased with this piece of history.  Oh yeah, it needs a front bumper and that crazy hitch on the back removed as well, but its a very original rust free example of a ww2 jeep.

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Lee’s shared some updated photos on his M-38. His goal has been to restore it back to stock. Though he’s got a great deal of stock jeep to use, as he disassembled it he discovered a few more problems than he’d planned. Despite some unexpected issues, he’s been working all summer since Ann and I visited he and his family last April in San Saba, Texas. He doesn’t have a great deal of time, between his job, farm, kids and wife, but he’s been making the most of it. He tells me he is almost done.

Here’s the jeep before disassembly:

The body:

Some body work completed.

The Frame:

Plenty of scrubbing needed.

First coat of paint.

Partial assembly

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You may remember Robert’s 1942 GPW from this post last year. Since then his father and he have repowered their modified GPW.

Robert writes, It has been about 18 months since I wrote you about the GPW project that my father and I found on your website in 2010. You were kind enough to feature the build of our Willys last time. Since then we have made some drastic changes that I think you may enjoy.

Things got out of hand last November when a simple craigslist browse lead to the purchase of a B&M 144 Supercharger from Ohio. Initially, we were not sure if the blower would find its way into the GPW, and decided to bore out a 350 that we had lying around. The plan was to build a supercharged 383 stroker for fun, and then decided what vehicle to install it in. As you may imagine the longer we had the blower in the garage the more inclined we were to see it tentatively installed in something, and the GPW was the easiest option. We pulled the 400 SBC and installed the 350 with no internals, but the blower on top to see how it looked. The result was amazing, and we decided that the Willys was going to get a new motor!

Installing a small block chev​y with a blower in a Willys that came with a 4 cylinder comes with numerous obvious and unforeseen hurdles. For instance the blower is a bit taller than a traditional intake manifold, and consequently the hood would not close. Therefore, we moved the motor mounts down which actually helped the center of gravity! This alone did not clearance the blower, carburetor, and air cleaner though. However, we were undaunted, and decided that the only remaining option was to cut a hole in the hood and stuck the air cleaner out!

After we figured out how to fit the motor in up and down we decided to address the issue of front to back. The position of the motor already had the HEI distributor close to the firewall so there was no room to move the engine backwards, and the snout on the blower was too long for us to fit the single core radiator before the grill. Therefore, we completely removed the radiator from the engine compartment, and installed a new 3 core aluminum radiator on the roll bar behind the seats! We had to customize all of the plumbing for the cooling system, and my uncle assisted us with a very special bender borrowed from a former custom off-road shop. In addition to the bent aluminum portion we ran the same flexible lines along the frame rails that you can find on monster trucks. Continue reading →