My J-4500

[Driftwood]

The finished bumper will be WAY to nice to install after its finished. I suggest you send it to me for safe keeping.

[Crankyolman]

The finished bumper will be WAY to nice to install after its finished. I suggest you send it to me for safe keeping.

The problem with that is I have already cut a hunk off the original bumper so too nice or not I have to install it


I figure every prissy restoration has to start somewhere so my bodywork starts at the back bumper, maybe next I will buy some sheet metal and see about tackling the tailgate.

[SOLSAKS]

nice work
I have a rear bumper that needs this attention too.

dave in NC

[Crankyolman]

I just finished removing the old bumper, that was a pain. I had to cut off the other end piece so I could get on the bolts good with a breaker bar but once that was done the bolts snapped much easier than I think they should have, but I was planning on buying new bolts anyway.



The old bumper only weighs about half of what the new one weighs and I thought I'd try to take a better picture of the rust to show you why.



Now that that's off I need to clean and treat the mount then clean and treat the bumper, paint the bumper and get it mounted.

[Crankyolman]

nice work
I have a rear bumper that needs this attention too.

dave in NC

I think most of the originals have been hacked up or beat up. I did consider buying one if the new ones or making my own. Given the amount of time I'm putting into this a new one may have been the smarter way to go but I'm a cheap bastard and get some free time at work while I'm waiting for things to break and my apple processing stuff is crazy fast now so I need little projects here and there to keep me busy between the chaos.

[Crankyolman]

I made some progress on the bumper today


As expected after sitting a couple days it was beginning to show signs of rust starting so I gave it another sanding and finally got around to treating it.


This first pic is just after putting the rust treatment on



And this next one is after it had sat for 7 hours



Basically it seems to be very much like gun bluing. The rust treatment stuff says to let it sit for 24hrs before priming and painting so tomorrow morning I will start that process. My plan is to prime it, then fit test and see if I need to make any adjustments, then do any filler needed, more primer, then paint and reinstall it.

[Crankyolman]

I haven't posted my progress lately because things haven't gone exactly stellar.


As you know, I treated my bumper the other day. Well the next day I went back with my self etching primer in hand, all ready to prime. I had some trouble getting the cap off and when it did come off it snapped the spray nozzle off





and started spraying primer everywhere but where I wanted it to go... the table... the floor...all over me and everywhere else. I did the best I could to direct it at the bumper but it didn't work out well. Now I had a problem because I had prepped the bumper for priming and didn't have any more primer.



Looking around I found a can labeled "Yellow Primer". I've used this stuff before and never liked it but it was all I had so decided to use it.


I primed the bumper, sanded it smooth and primed again. It actually looked pretty good.



The next day I checked the fit on the truck and was pretty happy with it.



So I took care of the little bit of filler that needed done and got it ready for another coat of primer before final painting. I had stopped at the store on my way home the day before and picked up a couple cans of gray sandable automotive primer for the final primer coats so I could make the bumper nice and smooth for paint, but as soon as I finished putting it on it was obvious there was a problem.


This morning my primer looked like this



The two primers did not play well together actually the yellow primer never set up properly and was still tacky if you scratched the surface.


So with the help of some Methyl Ethyl Ketone and a lot of work I spent most of my free time today stripping off all the work I had done to the bumper this week but I did manage to get it re-primed this afternoon




and it looks pretty good.


After that coat set up I redid the filler and left it to sit overnight. My plan for tomorrow is to lightly sand it and get it ready for the final painting. I'm going to paint it an antique white I found that is actually very close to the faded champagne the upper body is. My tailgate and wheels are actually painted with this same paint.


I still need to somehow take the bumper brackets off, sand blast them, treat them and paint them but hopefully that won't be too hard.

[Crankyolman]

Today I found the time to actually finish the bumper. I sanded down the spots I filled yesterday and did a few more coats of primer, then did the color coat. I had a few minor issues with that. I got in a hurry and got a couple runs and someone (not me) thought it would be a good idea to turn on a fan and blew some debris into the final coat Since it was my Friday and this thing has been in the shop for over 2 weeks, and people were tired of smelling paint, I figured I'd take it home and let it cure for a couple weeks before I wet sand it and fix those issues.


I figured the best way to transport it and let it cure was to actually reinstall it but now there is one other problem I hadn't considered





The bumper now looks so good it now makes the the rest of the truck look shabby

[SOLSAKS]

Dang-O-mighty !
that thing looks good !

excellent job.

dave in NC

[SJTD]

Where are you hosting your pichers?

I don't see anything. Not even a big "-". It's as blank as the banner ad across the top of this page.

We've got some kind of ad blocker my son installed on the firewall computer that must be catching some people's pics.

[Crankyolman]

Where are you hosting your pichers?

I don't see anything. Not even a big "-". It's as blank as the banner ad across the top of this page.

We've got some kind of ad blocker my son installed on the firewall computer that must be catching some people's pics.

I use a site called Cubeupload ( https://cubeupload.com/ ) It's the only thing I've found that works for most people but i think a few antiviruses may not like it and require an exemption. Hopefully if I ever get my website up and running I can do the hosting there.

[Crankyolman]

Dang-O-mighty !
that thing looks good !

excellent job.

dave in NC

Thank you, it was a lot more work than I had originally anticipated but I think it was totally worth it.

[Crankyolman]

I don't know if this really belongs in the Pris category or if I should post it in fuel injection but I like keeping things in one place so it's going here


I finally got enough money together and ordered all the stuff I think I need to put fuel injection on my truck. I ordered the Fitech 2 barrel injector, an in tank fuel pump and some other minor stuff I will need. I have a week long vacation starting APR 22 so I plan on doing the upgrade at that time. Everything should be here by the 19th.


Other stuff in my little world was a trip to the junk yard that produced a really nice condition 12 inch brake drum and a beat up but relatively rust free '73 tailgate. Not the tailgate I need but I think I may be able to modify it into a chain side and possibly straighten out the dents to a reasonable level. I have pictures of that stuff here http://www.ifsja.org/forums/vb/showthread.php?t=187039



One last thing I wanted to show you guys about was this



Someone I work with found and gave me this original 1972 jeep brochure.
It's got the entire jeep lineup and even has the win a Jeep of your choice entry card.

[Crankyolman]

I've been doing a little work on and a lot of thinking about the tailgate I bought the other day.


Yesterday I began work on straightening it up a bit and assessing it for overall condition and usefulness. In the past 2 days it went from this








To this









without too much effort. It's actually cleaning up pretty well. I'm still thinking a lot of possible directions for this one. Currently I'm favoring cutting a whole lot of spot welds, taking it apart, straightening everything up then putting it all back together as a Kaiser era tailgate rather than the AMC era it currently is. I may just do that with both my tailgates so I can use the best parts of the two to make one good one.


I have also had one possibly crazy thought inspired by the steering wheel on my wife's Mercedes and some videos I have seen on youtube. The thought is to get everything as close to straight as I can, bondo the crap out of everything to make it as smooth and look as good as I can get it, then make a mold and pour a new one out of aluminum.


This is probably why I shouldn't be left unsupervised for too long

[Crankyolman]

Work on the "New" tailgate is coming along. It's pretty ugly right now, I had to open up the top and bottom seams to take care of some rust and while I was in there I beat the dents out. I cleaned out the back of my truck so I can take off the "old" tailgate and start taking out the pieces I need to swap to the new one. Once I get those removed the next step is to cut the new tailgate down to the width of the old one, remove the parts from the old one that need to go in the new one and start welding everything back together.



I know it will never be perfect but it will certainly be a lot better than the one I have now and with what I'm learning about doing the Kaiser conversion if I ever do get an AMC tailgate in super good condition I will know how to convert it to a Kaiser gate.


Since I will be removing some key pieces of the old gate my plan is to make it into a coffee table or something like that for use in my eventual future shop.



While cleaning out the back of the truck the Fedex man showed up with my new Fitech fuel injection system I quickly opened the box to check things out and discovered that the gasket they sent with the 2 barrel EFI is for a 4 barrel Seem like a pretty dumb mistake but fortunately I had already purchased the correct gasket since they are cheap and I was concerned about the base Fitech used. The reason for this is because of the adapter on the early manifolds you can't use a 2150 carb with the gasket it comes with or you get vacuum leaks. The correct carb base gasket is thick and wider than the 2150 gasket and will cover the area that would otherwise cause the vacuum leak.



So now I need to start getting ready to do the conversion, which will happen next week.