I’m building a World War II Jeep from scratch thanks to support from eBay, and that means I’ll be buying as many parts from eBay as I can. Well, the Mail-Order Jeep has started trickling in piecemeal; here’s what I got in my first shipment of “normal” (i.e. not an entire body or frame) parts from eBay.
With the new body and frame (more on the frame soon) in my driveway, and a rough plan on how to go about completing this build, I began making some parts purchases.
I have to start by creating a rolling chassis, which requires me to get the frame “dressed.” To do so, I first need to acquire some axles, wheels, suspension parts, brake parts, and steering parts. From there, I need to get some drivetrain and powertrain components, and from there… well, let’s just take it one step at a time. Right now, I need suspension and brake bits.
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I don’t have axles, and those cannot be purchased new, as they were never reproduced, so my plan is to purchase a parts Jeep, not only to pilfer axles, but to have something to look at as I try to piece together a vehicle made up of probably close to 1,000 parts. The parts vehicle is my top priority, but it’s proving to be rather challenging; in the meantime, I’ve made a few purchases. Here’s what I have:
First off, I snagged some leaf springs, a front set from one seller (WunderCarParts out of Plymouth, Michigan) and a rear set from another (Parts Via AKA DriverFX COM INC out of Exeter, PA):
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Both sets of springs arrived packaged quickly and exactly the same way, telling me both sellers drop-shipped these directly from Crown, a well-known purveyor of Jeep parts.
As for what came in the boxes, I’ll start with this, a book called Building A WWII Jeep by Sean Dunnage. I bought the book from a Gettysburg, Pennsylvania-based bookstore called For The Historian — which specializes in military books.
I’d be a fool to just start building this Jeep blindly and without good references, and while there are some amazing government-issue service manuals that I’ll be acquiring, for now this book gives me some great visuals and a good starting point for understanding what all I need to do. I’ll bang out a chapter a night and hopefully have a better understanding of the best way to optimize this project.
To go with the springs, I bought a bunch of leaf spring eye bolts from a seller in Idaho, and I’ll need to get some shackles and shocks next so I can complete my suspension once I have a set of axles.
What you see above is the entire brake-hydraulic system of a World War II Jeep, from the master cylinder to the brake lines to the brake hoses ultimately to the wheel cylinder. The brake hardlines came from Bob’s Speed Shop out of Theordore, Alabama, while the rest came from a company called “Quarter Ton & Military” out of Chickamauga, Georgia. Quarter Ton & Military seems to have some great parts, so I’m bookmarking them for sure. Look at how legit they clearly are:
I also snagged some absolutely beautiful brake shoes from a seller named 56Surplus out of Riverhead, New York — a seller I was pleased to find out is actually the legendary Peter DeBella.
Peter DeBella is known for having some of the best NOS flatfender Jeep parts in all the land; based on my limited interactions with him, he can be a bit cranky, but his parts are amazing, and I’m thrilled he’s active on eBay. His store is just a treasure trove of NOS gold:
Anyway, that’s just a quick look at my first normal shipment of parts — some springs, some brake parts, and a reference book. It’s nothing crazy, but just the beginning of what will seem like an endless river of car parts showing up at my front door.
Axles? Surely you can find a similar set of axles that almost match the Jeep on Ebay. Then you can spend the next 6 months figuring out how to make parts fit when everything is a fraction of an inch too short or long.
Are the rules limiting you to just WW2 era parts? or can you upgrade as long as the parts are found on EBAY? https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_ssn=crushtheogre&store_name=crushtheogresusedjeepparts&_oac=1&_trksid=p4429486.m3561.l161211
I think a narrow track D30 would be adequate for that little feller. and the one here has disc brakes as well.
Edit: Deleting to hide David’s secret.
>Both sets of springs arrived packaged quickly and exactly the same way, telling me both sellers drop-shipped these directly from Crown, a well-known purveyor of Jeep parts.
This reminds me of my purchasing tribulations. For many reasons I am trying to not buy things on Amazon. eBay is one place I started ordering from as an alternative. TWICE items I ordered on eBay were bought to my house by yet another confused Amazon contractor driver that I’ve never seen before. They have an infinite supply of them. The eBay sellers of two different everyday items were just middlemen drop shipping from Amazon. I’m trying to get out and the sellers pull me back in.
Went to buy a pair of shoes, not from Amazon. Zappos.com, I’ve heard of them, if they’re still around they must be ok, good prices. I ordered and received a notice that Amazon was going to be delivering the shoes. WTH? Turns out Amazon bought Zappos some years ago.
Can’t win, Amazon and Google and Facebook own everything.
I’ve had the same experience and the only way I’ve found to at least pretend they aren’t supplying my e-waste is by getting it locally, which is lucky but still probably from amazon.
MBI is a Painting company in Minnesota that seems to specialize in tailgates for some reason. I found at least three EBAY sellers including MBI selling the same part for varying prices. MBI was cheaper as it was not the middle man at that point, but I feel like this is more and more the case on things that are oldish and somewhat specialized.
You’re lucky this batch of parts are all from US sellers. Because of tariffs the overseas purchases are all pretty iffy at this point.
Does David even know how to build a non-rusted jeep? What will he do with the extra time not having to fight bolts? What about all that immunity he has built up over the years from the rust particles? There is a story within a story.
The Jeep will start to disintegrate as soon as he starts working on it. The question is whether he or the rust will finish the job first.
He will finish it and then make the mistake of driving on a beach in the LA area and then the rust as result will finish the jeep off.
Oh, so now you’re letting that stop you?
It’s different when you’re starting from scratch!
Surprised an enterprising Autopian hasn’t bought a good condition Jeep of the same vintage that David is building, disassembled it, then listed all the parts on eBay. Drop a tip to David that he can buy ALL the parts on eBay like he and his sponsor want him to.
DON’T YOU MAKE THIS DIRTY, FRAMED, DONT DO IT
here, fishy fishy!
Cool to see some parts rolling in, but I got to say getting a parts Jeep to use as a reference is cheating. I’m betting you could find a set of used axles w/o a Jeep attached.
Of course that wouldn’t mean fighting with rusted fasteners a bodged previous repairs. It will also likely be cheaper once you add up all those little things you find you need along the way and maybe there will be something left that you can sell to lower your total cost.
Again please do a spread sheet with the running costs and share it along the way.
There’s a WWII jeep at the Peterson, I think. Just visit there daily. The point is to buy everything from ebay. But if you can’t, there’s places that make custom axels. You might not need a parts car. Plus, someone in the area might let you borrow the axels to copy
Or do what the Filipinos do and use Toyota Hilux axles (or by now probably Chinese copies of them).
The real question is: Can you get at least one part from every state? It seems like you’ve made some good progress towards that already!
This project is probably already going to be hard enough without adding more conditions to it.
“I don’t have axles, and those cannot be purchased new, as they were never reproduced”
Pretty astonishing that they didn’t ever reproduce such axles given the popularity of those Jeeps. Wonder why. Might make for an interesting article to delve into why some parts simply never seem to have been reproduced, namely and specifically those axles; I, for one, would most certainly read such an article.
Around 2006 BMW was so proud of how many parts they still had available new through their official storefront for the 2002 that they built an almost entirely brand new 2002 from scratch but they still had to source ten percent that wasn’t new though 90% brand new is still pretty damn impressive:
https://classicmotorsports.com/articles/2002-redo-building-new-bmw-2002/
Some parts don’t get reproduced in their entirety as you simply don’t need to. Axles for instance are easy to rebuild the bearings, differential, etc. and reuse the housings. Not to mention many jeeps rusted long before their drivetrains did so there are used parts floating around.
Another reason may have been that surplus axle assembles were probably very common post WW2 and once they finally ran out there was not enough demand to reproduce them.
The scale of WW2 era surplus is truly staggering. We finally ran out of WW2 surplus hardware at the airport in 2016. My boss’ dad bought pallets and pallets of aircraft hardware, sparkplugs, AN fittings in the late 40s-60s. Took 60 years of full-time aircraft maintenance to go through it all.
Same story with my garage at home. I have so many nuts and bolts “in case I need them” stocked up that it will take the next three homeowners to use these up.
When we moved into our current house the three-car garage/barn was completely packed full floor to ceiling. 1.5 bays full of wood scraps/ offcuts (guy was a carpenter) The other 1.5 bays were packed full of hardware – usually nails and wood screws, washers etc. I’m talking in any container possible, wooden crates, 3 old refrigerators, boxes, bags, piles, etc. Took us 2 full dumpsters to get rid of it all. Most of it was rusted/unusable but I still have 5 wooden crates of misc nails lol.
Honestly David, this whole project shouldn’t take you more than 4 minutes.
I always think of this video whenever I read about this Jeep project. Left satisfied.
I spied this appropriately rusted parts jeep this past weekend in central PA:
https://imgur.com/Gpnd8IU
I didn’t know that jeeps used 2 sticks for the transfer case, one for 2wd/4wd and a second stick for hi/low range.
That junker jeep has had locking front hubs… not sure if that was stock or aftermarket.
Yup In-Out and Hi-Lo. There are kits for some single stick transfer cases to convert them to twin stick boxes so you can run in 2wd Lo.
Mine has a third stick, for the overdrive unit. So 4 sticks total including the transmission. Like it’s a backhoe or something
Not enough, you need to add a PTO so you have 5 sticks 🙂 .
Nothing like the smell of 80 year old brown paper and cosmoline in the afternoon.
This is like the world’s worst Tamiya kit.
Or…the world’s *best* Tamiya kit.
(In David’s eyes but do bear in mind we’re talking about someone who ate spaghetti in the shower)
He’s going to be eating spaghetti in a half-assembled Jeep if he’s not careful.
I assume the most important thing you need from a parts Jeep is the VIN (or whatever VIN-equivalent an ancient Jeep had. Or does CA have a means to register a completely homemade car?
Cool project – I look forward to all the inevitable shenanigans.
Also – assuming I haven’t missed it, there is a good story brewing for Mercedes around missing and/or improperly affixed VINs on mega dollar RVs – which is why I have VINs on the brain at the moment. With one poor Canadian couple in big trouble with the US Feds through no fault of their own.
Ok, hear me out here. Sure, it will be epic to drive this Jeep (NIRN) to Moab for some off-roading. However, what it really needs is a cross-country journey.
…but not a typical cross country journey. Nope. That would be too easy.
Build it. Drive it. Off-road it.
Then disassemble it. Ship it piece by piece to Jason so he can re-assemble it. What a great way to share the fun and pain. You can thank me later.
If all goes well, this could be the first Jeep shipped around the world.
Even better, don’t tell Jason it’s coming. The giant piles of Jeep parts will be a fun surprise.
These are both excellent ideas!
I would worry that this could end up like the Redford-Newman Porsche. Melted down and turned into sculpture.
Ooh I’m here for the Project Radar articles!!!
This comment, and the name Project Radar, are both severely underrated. I regret that I have but one like to give.
I’m just wondering if David will get the reference. Actually, no, I’m not wondering at all because I’m pretty sure he won’t.
There’s so many shots of Jeeps in that show. How could it not have come up for him? He has to know the reference
If nothing else, it’s been brought up at least a dozen times on the very website he founded.
As a bonus, occasionally send Jason extra parts that don’t belong in the Jeep to drive him crazy.
Plus 1 for the call out to Bob’s Speed Shop in Theodore, AL.
Been doing business with those boys for 50 years now.
Excellent people, honest, and fair, and willing to help if you need some part, or part machined-rebuilt that they don’t do in house.
They have machined many parts for me over the years. There are numerous times we dropped off a bad head, warped, cracked or both. Only to get a call the next day that our head was repaired and rebuilt and ready to be picked up..
Fantastic customer service.
They are my go to shop for any serious auto parts.
Good choice DT.
Do you plan on soaking then in water to make them rusty so you know what to do?
I’m imagining the tv/movie trope where the protagonist has to get drunk/high/concussed again to remember how to do something.
David is completely lost/stuck but after a couple days of rain on the uncovered chassis and parts tarnishes everything, he has a eureka moment and it all starts coming together.
Do you planning on storing all these parts in your house (aka kitchen)?
Keep the Jeep posts coming!
E.N.H.R.N. must be a saint. My wife would go ballistic if I brought yucky auto parts into the kitchen!
Am I correct in seeing that these parts are being unboxed in the kitchen?
Welcome back, pre-California David.
How else is he supposed use the dishwasher to wash off all the cosmoline?
ENHRN: “David, I don’t understand why you were single for so long”
David: “Is that the UPS driver? I’ll show you”
Not sure if they are still around but https://www.kaiserwillys.com/products/categories/front-axle/?shop-by-vehicle=41-45-mb this may help
I thought that you’d already snagged a parts Jeep before going to Germany?
Me too. Wasn’t it the one with mismatched wheels?
Maybe the article releases got jumbled?
Don’t give it away, members! ( /s)
I hope you will be leaving a card for the FedEx/UPS/USPS drivers this holiday season!
(My mom always left Mike the Mailman a bunch of homemade fudge)
Do you or have any siblings that have a striking resemblance to the mail man? I kid I kid haha
I’ve heard of people who get lots of deliveries leaving out a snack bowl for delivery drivers, which is just a purely kind gesture!
My wife leaves a cooler out in the summer with water/gatorade/soda on hot days for them.
Not quite the same situation, but our workplace always gives the regular delivery drivers (UPS, Fed Ex (Express and Ground), DHL, USPS) some generous gift cards in mid-December as a thank you. We usually get very good service from our regular drivers too. Though Fed Ex Ground is a hot mess right now.
If you’re getting a ton of deliveries, especially of large and/or awkward boxes, be a nice idea to show the delivery drivers a little extra appreciation in some fashion.
My dad retired from UPS after 20 years. Much of it was delivering to high rise office buildings in a city center, but the first couple of years he was delivering to some of the worst parts of Detroit (in the late ’80s). No matter where he was delivering, inner-city run-down houses or upscale office high rises, his regular customers always took care of him when the holidays came around.