A common reaction to photos of the jeep is… WOW – that is clean!! – Truth is… it is very clean. The body is straight and was totally untouched and original. The motor fires on all cylinders and still has pretty good compression. It does leak in the typical spots that CJ’s are known too, but at 155k miles, I expected that. One of the bigger issues, is that the original ower stopped driving (due to old age) and while the Jeep came with 3 massive folders of all the care it had seen over the years… It had only been driven about 500o miles in the last 8 years. – sitting is never good!

One of the things that was most impressive is the lack of any heavy rust. The frame, floor pan, rocker etc are literally pristine – I mean not even any sign of surface rust. (Typical to many CA vehicles) However, there were 2 spots that not only had rust… but had totally rotted out – the windshield frame, and the driver side of the hood. In fact the interior carpet had been pulled since while sitting it had given way to leaking rain water sitting outside from the frame.

Passenger side windshield frame rust – You could poke a hole with yer finger!

Driver side hood rust – I did poke the hole with my finger!

I knew when I bought the jeep that I would need to swap out these 2 body parts. However, these are far and away the easiest pieces of the body to swap – they simply bolt on, so given the overall great shape of the vehicle… the these issues were quite tolerable! Though keep in mind… I am not a mechanic… nor have I ever been particularly good with cars. But hey – this is my project, which removes the urgency of any repair along with worry and fear of making mistakes.

Making Mistakes

One of my early mistakes was in getting parts. Since picking up the CJ, I check the auto parts web classifieds on a number of sites daily. I had ordered a new windshield frame from the folks at Quadratec, along with new cowl rubber (the seal and weather strip that separates the body part from the tub). However, I was hesitant to order a hood from them – since the hood was $260 and the shipping another $125.

So I found what I thought to be a great deal on a hood off of eBay…  Ironically, while I have made my living working with web technology for many years… I had never purchased anything off of eBay (something that my wife thought was pretty funny) Suffice to say… for $25 bucks… I could not go wrong. But then there is still the case of shipping, which given the large akward size… makes it expensive coming from Tennessee. Then a friend that had been modifying VW’s for years suggested that I have it put on a greyhound bus en route to California. To my pleasant surprise… this is pretty simple, and some quick arrangements later, my southern hood was taking a cross country drive via a Greyhound bus for the low price of $68. Not bad considering that both UPS and FedEx were upwards of$150.

Upon arrival… I found that my great find was actually from an older CJ5… and while in decent shape – this meant that it had a notch in the edge of the hood for some sort of vent – not what I wanted, and precisely where my rust was – so I would not even be able to cut out the section I needed to repair the rust on my existing hood. 1 step forward… 2 steps backwards.

Correcting Mistakes

Now, the beauty of the online classifieds, is that buyers can also be sellers! A quick free ad on Craigslist, and presto I have found a buyer who is looking for my exact hood and willing to pay $75 bones for it! That made the whole experience a $25 dollar lesson… However, I still need a hood. This took me back to eBay where I found Pershing Auto Body who sells the same brand new hoods identical to what Quadratec carry, but for $143 and only $95 shipping – a savings of nearly $150.

New hood as it arrived from Pershing Auto

Having gone through my first trial and error – I was nervous about my second attempt. However the folks at Pershing were great about answering all my questions, and shipped my purchase out quickly. The packaging kept the hood safe and secure in a LOT of bubble wrap that my 2 year old son continues to enjoy popping to this day! It is a steel hood, primered black with all the holes pre drilled for the mounting hinges as well as the windshield frame stops.

So apparently, all is well that ends well. I am stripping the jeep down to have it painted, so I will not mount until afterwards, as I intend to have the new parts painted off the jeep to shoot both the inside and outside.