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Many of you may have seen this site already, but if you haven't it's a treat. The author nicely details the experience of rebuilding his titled 1953 CJ-3A (which he discovers to actually be a CJ-2A). One of the more interesting details, to me anyway, was his write-up of the swing pedals. This is the first time I have seen these type of pedals (in my 1st jeep I used a swing pedal set from a Vega — with significant mods — and in my current jeep I've modified a set of pedal set from a jeep cherokee.
1964 FJ3A Willys Fleetvan, Riverside CA **SOLD**
“1964 Jeep Fleetvan Fj-3A,Great on Gas original 4 cyl. 3 speed trans. runs and drives good! miles unknown due to speedo cable was broke when i recieved it, 7 years ago. have recently installed disk brakes on rear, very rare, dont see these evey day driving down the street.”
Rebuild in Ohio — from offroaders.com
Here is a rebuild from Ohio as seen on offroaders.com. It’s a very nice, clean rebuild that resulted in a playful looking flatfender. The before picture is on the left and after on the right.
Mike writes, “The Jeep had a rough life for some 8 years wheeling the local 4×4 haunts of southern Ohio and it was looking pretty rough and was needed some serious TLC. In early 2005. I stripped it down to the frame and this is the end product after nearly 2 years work.“
Desert Dog Tires
**OLD POST PRESERVED FOR COMMENTS**
UPDATE: This thread is being kept for discussion and information purposes. See the updated post here.
Oldies but goodies…
“Hey you jeep racers I have 6 dogs 4 with tubes in great shape, and 2 in fair condition, 6 lug chrome spokes, mounted ready to go! only used on the weekends! with only 4 weeks till racing starts you need tires! or if your a jeeper who needs a good set of old school tires please write!”
Formula Desert Dog History
Anyone know the history of Desert Dog tires? Apparently, according to the CJ3B Page Website (See comment at the bottom of CJ3B Page), “Louie says his Desert Dogs were the first out of the mold, given to him for testing and photographed for advertising in the 1970’s.”. “Louie” is Louie Larson, aka Gopher 4×4.
CJ-3B Fiberglass Bodies
UPDATE: Since I wrote this back in April of 2008, I have learned that someone in the Seattle Area purchased the Parkette molds, but I still haven’t learned who.
In April of 2008 there was an ad from a buyer looking for a CJ-3B Fiberglass body. Frankly, he was the only person I have come across on Craigslist looking for a fiberglass jeep body other than I. The CJ-3B bodies are very rare.
I did search and found a guy named Rick in the Northwest who says he has a CJ-3B mold (looks like a parkette mold with the side stripe). Here’s a website that show’s a variety of pics of him building his CJ-3B. (see more of his pics below)
According to the CJ-3B Page, there are no sellers of CJ-3B fiberglass bodies.
T
o the right is a fiberglass CJ-3B body I found for sale back in 2008.
“This is a Willy’s Jeep that i got off a friend in a trade. it was sitting in his field for years. it used to be covered but the tarp blew off a couple of years ago. someone put it together in the 80’s with a fiberglass body tub and fenders. they didn’t do such a good job, the wiring is atrocious and it needs alot of other work, but they did put lockouts and disc brakes up front, thats a plus. it needs to be completely stripped down and re-done.”
Here’s more pics of Rick’s Fiberglass CJ-3B with a Parkette (?) Fiberglass Body. You can read more about it here:
March 2008 Attaching the Grille
Another item I felt comfortable installing with the engine in place is the grille. I was already pretty confident where it would go, but I wanted to be sure. As a reminder, because I'm using the post '72 Cj-5 frame, I have to extend the fenders and hood approximately 3" as you can see here in this test setup below. So, there was no default location for the grille anymore.
March 2008 Fixing the Transmission Shifter
After installing the engine, tranny and tc, I thought I'd better test to make sure the body fit over all three. The good news was that it did. The bad news was that the shifter was hitting the dashboard when I shifted into park.
So, I took the bracket and extended it with a piece of halved 2×2 square tubing. Then, I used a convenient hole bracket in the tranny (I have no idea what it is for) to add a back mount to the bracket. The results are below:
March 2008 Putting a few things together
I put the body on and placed the seats on their mounts. The body slopes backward a bit, but that will be fixed when I put the correct suspension brackets on the back.
March 2008 Engine Mounts
The CJ-5 I bought last year had been modified to accept a GM 350. I really liked the way they put together the engine mounts, so I chose to reuse the mounts and then modified my frame to accept the mounts.
To make the mounts, I took the standard buick v6 mounts and removed the rubber blocks, leaving only the steel. Then, I cut and welded some 3×3 square tubing to the mounts.
To make the holders that are welded to the frame, I used some recycled angle iron and added side braces to create the triangular look. I look this setup much better than what I did in my first jeep.
March 2008 aligning the Engine, tranny and TC
The tricky part of putting the engine, transmission and TC into position was making sure the TC was in the right location. If I got it back into the right place, I would not have to change the lengths of the drivelines. Fortunately, I had plenty of room for the engine, so I had lots of flexibility upfront.
Once Transfercase was in place, then I could position and weld the engine mounts.





