20 Days Wrenching With My Australian Friend Convinced Me Not To Give Up On My Impossible eBay Jeep Project

Back when The Autopian started, a reader named Laurence bought a Chrysler Valiant Ute on my behalf. I then flew all the way to Dubbo, New South Wales, and he and his girlfriend kindly put me up in his home for a month while we tried turning a complete basket-case into something that could get through inspection and tackle an epic road trip. Against all odds, we pulled it off, which is why, when crunch time for my eBay WWII project came, I was glad I had a secret weapon.

Whereas Laurence was the leader of that Chrysler Valiant project — since he has an unbelievable amount of knowledge when it comes to that platform — on this project (which involved trying to assemble an entire brand new World War II Jeep from scratch using primarily parts from eBay), I ran the show. Laurence doesn’t have experience working on Jeeps, but he’s a mechanical wizard, and if there’s anything I’ve learned working on cars over the years, it’s that having a competent friend help you with a project doesn’t make you twice as efficient: It makes you probably 4-5 times as efficient. It’s truly remarkable how much having another set of hands can accelerate a car project.

Our talented Video Manger, Griffin, just finished a video of Laurence’s final days in California as we tried to get as much done as possible while The Australian-Wrench was in town.

[Note: You’ll have to forgive the three-week gap in content, as the project’s crunch-time and a mountain of other obligations, plus some illness, has set me back. But I’m feeling better, and things have calmed down, so consider this blog the beginning of a wave of WWII Jeep content. I can’t wait to show you what happened/is still happening! -DT]

In the last update, I wrote about how we built an entire WWII Jeep steering system using entirely parts I bought from eBay. Before that update, I wrote about what happened when Laurence and I tried starting the brand new, France-built Willys Go-Devil engine for the first time.

In the video above, you get a good idea of just how much work got done in those 20 days that Laurence was in town. Seriously, this is what things looked like when he showed up:

There was just a frame with a suspension hooked up. Plus, in just a weekend, my friend Brandon (shown below) and I had rebuilt the Jeep’s T-84 manual transmission, installed the leaf springs on the axles, gotten started on the engine (we finished the bottom end) using an old Jeep engine as reference, and lapped the valves:

Laurence was here in February, and I was set to start a 900 mile road trip to the Easter Jeep Safari in late March. I had to build basically a whole car from scratch in a suburban LA backyard in less than two months, and I had Laurence for only 20 days. So I knew we had to maximize that time. And boy did we.

Here’s a little photo gallery of some of the Wrenching Laurence and I did in those 20 days. This article, the final “Laurence chapter,” of this build series, is meant to not only show how helpful he was, but to thank him for being an incredible wrenching partner.

Here we are at the Petersen Automotive Museum, where we took a bunch of photos of this restored WWII Jeep. These photos were very useful reference points:

Here he is cooking some “snags” after we’d successfully rebuilt the transfer case:

Here are some photos of a swap meet we attended in Long Beach:

Here he is trying to loosen some tie rod ends, only to realize they were stuck and we had bigger fish to fry.

I later took those tie rod ends and a bent driveshaft to an amazing driveshaft shop (which took payment in beer) in Monrovia, CA:

Here’s poor Laurence after having to clean up my mess. I had accidentally purchased and installed (with a lot of RTV) the wrong timing chain cover onto the new engine. When I realized the cover was wrong, it was Laurence who had to take it off, scrape off the RTV, find the right timing cover on my parts engine, and install that:

Here he is buttoning up the new engine, installing a thermostat on that gorgeous new cylinder head:

Here’s Laurence fastening the brand new eBay-sourced carburetor to the intake manifold:

Here’s the Australian wrenching legend loosely bolting the brand new, entirely eBay-sourced steering column to the brand new frame; as you can see, he and I had spent a few hours erecting the humongous tent we had to buy since we couldn’t allow a rainstorm to cost us a week of his time:

Laurence is off to the right in this image helping me crane the fresh engine onto the engine mounts on the frame.

Behold Laurence hooking up the exhaust after he and I lifted the transmission/transfer case up onto the frame crossmember and bolted the bell housing onto the back of the engine:

Laurence is shown here filling up the radiator prior to our first-start attempt:

I have no clue what Laurence is doing here, but it appears he’s doing the “safety squints” trying to shorten a bolt with an angle grinder:

Here’s some more grinding, this time it appears a nut is being rounded:

We visited Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles, and it was actually worth the hype:

Anyway, you’ve already seen the engine build content, and you’ve already heard the motor run:

 

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But I wanted to finish up this “Laurence Chapter” of the build by showing what things looked like by the time he left back for Australia, because the next chapter in which I am all by myself facing an unbelievably daunting deadline is without a doubt the most intense wrenching I’ve ever done.

Laurence and I — having bolted up the rebuilt transmission/transfer case to the engine, having hooked up a cooling system, and having fired up the motor — figured we’d give the Philippines-sourced body-tub a test-fit before Laurence left. This moment was an important one because one of my biggest fears was whether or not I would have to make major modifications to the body or frame to get it all to fit. And if I did have to make these modifications, I’d at least like Laurence there to brainstorm with so I could have a gameplan as I stared down the final 40 days of solitary wrenching against a crazy deadline.

Griffin (our ridiculously strong Video Manager), Laurence (a ridiculously strong Australian) and I (a blogger) took hold of the tub, with Griffin lifting the back and Laurence and I up front near the cowl:

The whole tub probably weighs about 400 pounds, so each of us could carry the Jeep fairly easily, though maneuvering the front over the steering column wasn’t easy on my shoulders, and when Griffin had to shoulder-shrug the back end to get it at the right angle, he was definitely straining a bit.

But we got the tub on there. And, at least from a distance, things looked…close.

I grabbed a fender and loosely bolted it into place on the frame and then against the body tub. Laurence and I then installed the bottom of the grille to the frame the sides of the grille to the fenders:

The hood we loosely placed atop the grille and fenders.

And voila!

It looked pretty decent! As I would later find, getting all the body mounts to line up with the frame mounts would end up being a nightmare. Also surprisingly hard would be talking the brakes and steering, dealing with the driveshafts and differentials, rigging up an electrical system, installing seats and windshield glass, trying to getting the engine to run properly, and on and on.

But at least at the moment above, I was feeling more optimistic than I thought I would be 37 days out from The Big Day. The purpose of bringing my friend Laurence out to LA had been to get a ridiculous amount of wrenching done in a short amount of time, and to ultimately decide whether to pull the cord and let everyone involved know that this project wouldn’t be done in time for Moab or to trudge on.

With an engine that at least ran (but didn’t idle) and a body that seemed to fit reasonably OK, there weren’t any major red flags yet that were telling me not to keep going for it. And so, with less than a Lenten season to go, I felt motivated to give this project everything I had in the tank. Every tiny bit of talent and skill and Jeep knowledge and hope.

I was going for it, and it was thanks in large part to Laurence.

[Ed note: David mentioned the idea of building a brand new WWII Jeep to the team at eBay, and they loved the idea so much they said, “How can we help?” Their financial support and David’s Jeep-obsession are the fuel behind this crazy build. – MH]