67 Cj5 Build Thread

Looking forward to getting more involved here! I bought this keep when I was 17 (back in 1997) and I’ve had it for 25 years. I’m going to start documenting what has been done to the jeep over the years and new projects that continue.

When I first bought this jeep it was under a wood pile and you could just see a bit of the top sticking out. Just enough to know that it was a Jeep.
I ended up paying $800 for it and had a friend come help us tow it home.

My Dad originally wasn’t really on board that I was buying this and I was way too naive to know how much work this was going to take. Luckily he was 1) retired and 2) he actually really liked working on this thing.

Once we dragged it home and started to triage the situation it was pretty clear that at some point it looks like it either hit something or something hit the Jeep on the driver side right about the front of the door. The frame had a pretty horrible patch on it and was bent pretty bad.

We ended up lucking into another frame as a good friend acquired a postal Jeep that he was going to turn into a trail trailer. In exchange for helping him tear down the DJ he gave me the DJ frame and the wheels. The bonus about the DJ frame vs the original CJ frame was that the DJ frame was boxed 3/4 of the length.

The motor in the Jeep when we bought it was traced down via serial number to be a 283 small block Chevy. Coming full circle (spoiler alert) when I went to sell the 283 the guy that bought it knew a lot about the old SBCs and it had some fancy vintage heads and looks like it had been bored out to a 327.

We also decided pretty early on we weren’t going to stick with the front axle. The plan was to make it a bit stouter. We had a Scout Dana 44 narrowed and a guy nearby was parting out an ‘83 CJ5. I pulled all of the outboard parts of his Dana 30 for our front end. This also got us disc brakes on the front. The frame and axle picture looks like it has the original CJ hubs but we swapped those for Warn locking hubs.

On the back end we stuck with the stock Dana 44 (more on the 44 upgrades later) for the most part. We did start with a brake upgrade and went to later model 11” drum brakes. Back in the late 90’s / early 2000’s R&P had a lot of the upgrade parts for Jeeps in the Portland area. Not sure exactly when they closed down but we leveraged them for a lot of parts and knowledge. Edit: Rich is still open!

More soon!

 

Welcome. so many of these stories have similar introductions. It is always interesting to see how a particular Jeep relationship metamorphosed over the years

 

R&P is still open in a slightly different form. Richard is the only one running the show now. He’s clearing out most of his used stock but is still building axles and selling disc brake kits, master cylinder conversion, etc. Phone number is 503-557-8911 same as it has always been. I had lunch with him Wednesday and dropped some stuff off at his shop.
Looks like a cool story and cool build.

 

That is great to hear!

 

Yep, I got some stuff from Rich a couple months ago.

 

I take it by your signature you are going to run a 4.3 Vortec?

 

Spolier alert! Yes, I moved to a 4.3 Vortec a few years back. I'll put info on that swap up here soon.

 

I expected to add more updates faster. Better late than never I suppose.

4.3 Vortec Details!

When I first dug my Jeep out of a wood pile it had a 283 small block chevy in it. We kept that engine when we originally rebuilt the Jeep but I was never really able to get the cooling under control and the Rochester carb was never really tuned that well. It always took forever to get started too.

When I moved to Texas around 2005 it was pretty much undriveable at nearly any time during the year. If it wasn’t moving down the road it was starting to overheat. In my mind there were two routes I could head down to solve the problem. There wasn’t really enough room for a much bigger radiator. An electric fan would have probably helped too. I opted for a smaller V6, keep the radiator, and adding an electric fan.

I sourced my 4.3 Vortec V6 out of a 1998 Chevy Blazer with 76000 miles at a local junkyard and was able to purchase the motor with all of the wiring and accessories. I was able to do this whole project fairly inexpensively by keeping my centerforce clutch from the SBC and tracking down a new pressure plate and bellhousing. I debated whether I should do my own wiring modifications or send it out and I opted to send the harness to Novak to make the updates for the 4.3, add an electric fan circuit, and modify the PCM for my setup. I am SO happy I paid Novak to do this! It would have been a nightmare and total time suck to do it on my own.

The bellhousing is a PN 3899621 that I purchased from 4 Speed Conversions.

I built my own motor mounts, brackets for the PCM and engine fuse block, and a support for the K&N air filter. I also cut apart the radiator hose inlet and rotated it to align with the upper radiator hose and reweld it back together. I also made a block off plate for the EGR valve.

I used an electric fan from a V6 Pontiac Firebird. I cutoff a couple mounting brackets and it fit surprisingly well. I mounted that directly to the radiator with a couple aluminum angles on each side.

I deleted the remote oil filter setup and mounted the filter directly to the block. That required a GM fitting to make that happen.

The stock driver side exhaust manifold dropped right onto the steering. I found a 91 Astro van at the junkyard that had a mid instead of rear collector drop. I also ended up milling the mounting face off a few degrees to tuck it even closer to the block. I used some spherical washers to install it.

For the fuel pump I went the E2000 route (86Ford F150). I left the original fuel house as the return line and plumber braided line to the fuel pump. It required a number of fittings to get from the fuel pump to the AN fittings on the braided line.

I used AC Delco oxygen sensors for the 98 blazer. I originally had one of the cheaper brands but a forum post with those going bad to jump over to the AC Delco. They have been good for ~6 years now with no trouble.

To tie into the novak wiring setup/PCM I bought a Dakota Digital VSS Pulse Generator that mounted directly to the transfer case. The stock speedo cable mounted to the VSS unit.

I bought a new Stewart Warner temp gauge and temp sender to use with the new setup.

Swapping the 4.3 has been one of the best things I’ve done to this Jeep by far. It’s never overheated, even sitting in traffic in 100+ degree weather Texas! It has plenty of power (that’s subjective of course!) and it starts up immediately every time.

I have a fairly complete BOM with all (most) of the parts I used that I’ll post up on my website soon.

 

Wiring upgrades!

I’ve wanted to clean up the wiring on my Jeep for a number of years now. It’s a bit of a mess under the dash and it has fuse blocks in three places with a mix of fusible links throughout the jeep. I don’t work on the wiring enough to remember exactly what wires are going where and it’s just different enough from the actual Jeep wiring schematic that I tend to spend a lot of time tracing wires to do simple projects.

I bought a Painless Wiring fuse block back when I did my 4.3 Vortec swap. With a baby on the way I decided not to do any wiring modifications and just finish the 4.3 swap so the fuse block has just been sitting on a shelf. I flat tow my Jeep to go wheeling and when I went to hook up my tow lights one of the lights wasn’t working. The socket was totally rusted and the bulb had permanently fused itself into the socket. I had wanted to get rid of those tow lights for awhile as well and had purchased a diode kit to tie the tail lights into the tow wiring that hooks up to my truck. So, this snowballed into a pretty decent sized project.

I’m currently about half way through right now but here’s a few things that I’ve done along the way.

Before I got started I realized the scribbles on the wiring diagram from when my Dad originally wired the jeep wasn’t very accurate. With the addition of the 4.3 Vortec, headlight relays, and a few other electrical things I was spending more time tracking and finding wires than actually working on the Jeep. My time to work on the Jeep is limited so I created my own custom wiring diagram. Now that I have an accurate wiring diagram it makes it much easier to jump in to fix things and troubleshoot issues.

I used Solidworks to CAD up a bracket to mount the fuse block on the inside of the left side of the cowl. The bracket is laser cut 3/16” aluminum. I also 3D printed up a bracket to hold the diodes that tie into the Jeep’s tail light wiring.

Once I mounted the bracket and fuse block I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to either see or get a screwdriver on the terminals on the right side of the fuse block.

I decided to pull the wires off the terminal, label all of them, then bend the sheet metal on the painless bracket so the screws would face forward. I drilled and tapped a couple 6-32 holes and re-mounted the terminal strip on the front side of the bracket.

So far I’ve moved over all of my ignition wires, removed two of the fuse blocks and 4 or 5 fusible links. I have a couple wires to still pull off of the headlight switch as well as wire in the diodes. I expect in a week or so the wiring will be all complete. I've been able to go from 3 fusible links at the battery to 1 larger 10 gauge fusible link at the battery now.

I'll have some more details and pics of the final setup soon.

 

Nice work man the extent that you went it's no wonder you don't have any time to work on it I envy your ambition

 

Haha! Thanks. Honestly the wiring diagram was as much an exercise in understanding and writing everything down so I'd know what was there than anything else.