I would like share the following message from Dave’s family, we will continue to keep Dave his family and friends in our prayers. If there is anything we can to to help please let me know.- Tim

Dear eWilly’s readers:

My name is Karson Eilers, and I am David’s eldest son. I regretfully share the news that my dad passed away yesterday. My dad started eWillys because he had a difficult time finding information about vintage jeeps. What he found, and I think what really motivated him to keep building the site, was the community he found on here. He loved engaging with readers, answering questions, and identifying obscure jeep parts. When my dad’s final message was posted our whole family was moved by the outpouring of gratitude and support. We are so grateful to Tim for taking over the site and preserving this piece of his legacy. Thank you, all, for being a part of the eWillys journey!

Sincerely,

Karson Eilers

Just wanted to wish everyone a great 4th of July weekend.

We were able to catch some Fireworks here local last night at our building and you would think they set them off just for us it was a great time and I was really surprised how great they looked from the building. Lots of work goes into these Events each year and it was great to see a huge turnout.

Have a safe and Happy 4th, and hope everyone has a great time.

Thanks, Tim

Not from 4th of July, but here are some cool Willys I have run across at our Memorial Day Show here in NJ over the years. They fit the theme of the day!

Dave Eilers the founder of eWillys shared some health news with me today via email. Please continue to keep Dave and his family in your Prayers.

Hi Tim,

I am sorry to report the following. In September of 2025, I was diagnosed with Stage 4 high volume metastatic prostate cancer. I immediately began hormone therapy. The first five months showed significant success in treating that cancer. What we didn’t know was that prostate cancer sometimes transforms/evolves into a cancer that you can’t fight with hormone therapy; in fact, there aren’t any good defenses against it at all. This new strain attacked more aggressively, especially focused on my right thigh. Effectively, I now no longer have a right thigh. It was on June 8^th that we understood the full picture. Even if I could fight the cancer, I still have a hip seems irreparable. With no good options, on Tuesday the 16^th I will officially begin hospice. I may have one to three weeks of life after that. The hip pain will be the determining factor (and there is lots of pain there).

I have lived sixty good years. I have found love and peace in a beautiful setting. This is an imperfect ending to my life; I sadly got the short end of the stick. Such is life sometimes.

Thanks so much for taking over eWillys. I hope it’s legacy proves valuable to folks.

Feel free to post the information above on the site if you want. If any readers want to reach out, they can email me at d@deilers.com.

Sorry for the dour news. I hope you continue to see success in your grand project!

Best wishes,

– Dave

There is a known issue with the photos in older posts not loading.

Short answer just click the old link and the photo will load.

Basically when the site was migrated over last year we enabled the HTTPS more secure page, from just the HTTP.

When I did the WebP uptick a few weeks back I noticed there were some older posts that would not load the photo in the post view, but when clicked it loaded just fine. In general there were other issues to deal with and went back and forth on the WebP and some other issues, figure would get back to it eventually.

I can see the issue and will work to fix it, basically the old post is call it, hard coded to the HTTP image link and the WebP stuff does not load those, so will work on a fix to change over the HTTP:// stuff to HTTPS:// stuff, I did a fix for something like this early on, Dave helped me get the photos loading on relaunch and I feel its a similar fix, that was change upload2 to just upload on like 60k posts and it was super fast to do that and also super fast to break it, but need to do some work on getting back to that.

Sunday>>>

Ran out of room, 20GB was floating around and I filled up the storage actually was 115% above the limit, so cleared that all out, who knew you have to keep track of GB and GB of data and it’s not just infinite. Easy fix, but when I tried to upload the photos for posts today there was no room to do that, so here we are! I kind of knew something was up the uploads were a little slower, but that plugin said they would be impacted on new uploads, but it just all came to a stop last night on the media stuff.

Seems all good, will monitor for now and see how it goes.

We will get there one step at a time.. learning as we go. The nice thing is I was able to log right in and get it cleaned up quickly, I can remember when you would crash your computer and it was not even able to delete files.  The host has allowed the overage which is nice, but me not looking did not help matters to keep it in the bounds of the allotment.

Saturday >>>

11:30 EST Update

Got some stuff posted up with the new format, it worked out well, need to get some reps in on this new to me format, but it worked well, may have broken some pictures for past posts, will figure that out as I go I feel I know what that issue is.

Let me know if there are any issues, not required I usually do my own thing, but it may help you out and working at this.

Original Post

Still working on the new post format deal, that whole table deal turned into a rabbit hole, but I got it sorted just takes more time, everything takes longer then expected. 

The table format was such a time saver for me, I had it in a vertical set up, but did not realize that issue with the tables in general that did not fit the windows. Thanks to John for pointing that out, it was the same on any phone it turned out just never realized it.

So after 4 full months of doing it that way, used some AI help to build out a new template, which happened to be a great tool in the tool box, and sorting that all out. It’s really amazing how helpful and easy it is to use for stuff I would never (or it would take a ling time) to be able to build a template like that. You can build an entire post generator of sorts, not there yet and that would not take a ton of time but not today.

There was a period of slowness on the site yesterday AM which I don’t know what was up there, but it cleared up and I wound up disabling the WebP plugin, just in case, but it did not seem related to that, so that is back on. I had an email scheduled to the helpdesk but it cleared up so I cancelled the email for that will see if it comes back and will let them know.

Unfortunately all of this eats into the time I have to do posts, so just bear with us, these are just like our Willys at times they run great for months and months and then the don’t and you go down multiple rabbit holes.

Getting there and not getting there all at the same time.

Here is a snapshot of the file:

When I double click that COPY cell, that CELL turns Green, it then says POSTED and the date next to that row it then is just pasted into the WP post. It’s all formatted, the Info to seller is buried into the format with a hidden column, the “Link to Ad” is also created.

This is what it looks like with a single paste into the Text editor. No more tables, but it still uses the table. There are billion of ways to do this, so will keep marching on.

WILLYS PTO

Andy’s Picks

Link To Ad

INFORMATION FROM SELLER:

New Old stock original Williys power take off. Koenig Iron Works Model 41 single lever. Fits various WILLYS from ’41 to ’71 with Dana 18 transfer case. I can arrange shipping.

Thanks, Tim

4-22-2026 UPDATE

Got some new stuff up on the site, was a great weekend volunteering its an awesome project and I really love that its a giant team effort to get the projects completed. As a group over 1300 hours was spent building relationships within our local communities, it’s really great.

Today will be the first big lift with the new WebP photo format, so please let me know if you are seeing any issues, or even say No Issues or difference found.

The site should still serve the JPEG if WebP is not available, I won’t know unless folks say something is off or just not working, I test it various ways, but I don’t have an iPhone for example so not perfect.

At some point we might need to update the WP version, I really would need sometime to do that and understand if it will take the site down for any long period of time, I don’t think so, but NetFire will be helping if I break something. There are a few projects I need to get around too like the comments, I need to refresh that plugin, but it opens up the floodgates, I know personally I’m not able to post comments when not logged in, so I’m sure many others have that same issue, will work on it.

So keep me posted, I can see on the metrics when visits are not as high, they were steady and I appreciate folks checking back in. I ran ahead as much as 8 days in March and early April but just ran out of runway there in the middle of the month and that happens, I did 5 posts a day this way if you missed a day you would have a new 10 posts to look over with no page change.

Lots going on all good things. Have a lot of invitations to shows which is really appreciated, not sure how many I can get too this year, but will be out and about for sure with the Willys.

ORIGINAL 4-18-2026 POST

Well I got behind this week with real work this week and ran out of backlog of posts.

Andy sent me some stuff have not gotten to it yet.

Overall March and early April were really great for the site and I appreciate all the support.

Going to be slow this weekend with posts, I help on a Critical Home Repair program here in NJ for our local Habitat for Humanity, its a great program this is my 12th or 13th year so will be out and about on that this weekend.

Hope things are well with everyone.

Also this week I worked on added the functionality of being able to upload and post WebP format images, some of the stuff you dont see on the front end, thats a really great thing for the site performance and overall bandwidth for the site and devices that support that.

So there could be some issues with certain photos but overall should be limited in nature and you should not notice any changes, but will decrease load time for certain folks.

Does not result in more posts but it eats up the time I have for creating content.

Hang in there things are going good, support your favorite event and Willys Vendors this spring!

Lots more to come.

Thanks, Tim

Here are a few shots of my week on my side.

Worked on the Wagon’s fuel pump issues, getting there for sure, need to change over the filters this next week.

Visited my Buddy and his wild.Wagon.

March 2026 Update

Welcome to early March, lots going on this Winter but then nothing at all at the same time.

It has been a Winter that’s for sure, from all the way back to Thanksgiving till just a few weeks ago it’s been a challenge. But working it’s way through. Here in NJ always time for some really big snow, that typically does not last long, so not over till its over.

Almost no Willys work this winter was completed, we have been hitting the building hard and we are very far into the construction phase, it’s really getting there.

Moved over the engine collection to the building, and renovation is almost caught up with what we will call Phase 1 of who knows how many. But we got some of the really basic systems reworked and functional, so the space is really coming along look forward to sharing more on that in a few weeks. It’s becoming a great space.

Been tough to stay away from the Cold bug’s this season as well, so that never helps, there were just long stretches where there was no way I was going to fire up the laptop and look for stuff. Post counts are on average doing well. I can tell by the metrics when we have more visitors and I really appreciate the support.

I hope folks were able to make more progress than I on their Willys projects this Winter. Better luck next year for me. I do have 2 running rigs, so once the Salt is mostly gone will be hitting the back roads for some long overdue rides.

We also acquired a really neat project that is not a physical Willys, but it’s a major addition to the Willys collection and preservation of Willys History, looking forward to getting that over to the building, just too much construction at this time. But we are really close on that as well!

Please get out and support your favorite Willys Vendors so that you are ready to hit the trails (or in my case the pavement)

Have an event or need something posted please send me an email at post@ewillys.com

Thanks, Tim

Just to refresh this to the top of the page, if you have something you would like us to post you can email us at post@ewillys.com

I recently got a post request caught up in-between a few of my other emails and dropped the ball on that posting. But will get it sorted.

But typically happy to share your Willys related items.

My suggestion on selling is cross posting is a must, it’s a great way to get exposure to your rig there are some fantastic platforms which you can cross post on for free.

Hope everyone is doing well and is having a great holiday season!

Thanks,

Tim