Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Cabin Cruiser

Martin Deeg dragged this '63 Jeep CJ5 from the east coast. He had a handyman put a 3.0l Toyota diesel engine from Australia in it, but with the factory gear train, it had limited usefulness. We joined the diesel to a Ford New Process 4 speed tranny and installed a nifty overdrive unit onto the Spicer trans-axle. A few cosmetic upgrades like a new top and some comfort additions like a new heater, and this old workhorse is ready to go!

Low gear, low range is litterally a crawl with a diesel like this! You can have a nice picnic while your Jeep is climbing a cliff and you wont even have to walk fast to catch it again.
Top speed is around 80mph now, and it gets many miles to the gallon.
This project was a bit out of our normal, but we had a blast figuring out how to make everything work together. All in all, we're really proud of what a neat little backwoods rig this is now.

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