After posting in the
Show and Tell section, I've finally gotten around to starting a build thread. Not to mention dedicating sometime to getting started on the actual build. Anyway, I've got a 63 Wagoneer that I rescued from the elements. The plan is to bring it back to life as my daily driver. It's not going to be stock, but it will keep the Jeep spirit.
Here she is on the day back in February that I brought her home.
She's pretty rough. Plenty of rust to remove and patching to be done. As a brief history, I appear to be owner #5. The original owner bought her in Santa Barbara, CA kept her until 87, when she went to Oxnard, CA. Then in 87, she went to Camarillo, CA. In 2013, she ended up in Acton, CA. She's now finally home for good as I plan to keep her. Somewhere along the line, one of the owners tried to do some fixes and upgrades that just ended up being a butcher job. They installed a crappy SBC, tried to repair rust with Bondo, welded window frames to the doors, and use all kinds of scrap metal to MacGyver their "upgrades" in place. I'm sorry, but some people should just not be allowed to own classic vehicles.
I've now stripper her down, pulled the motor/trans/transfer case. The motor turned out to be out of a 57 Chevy sedan, so I sold it to a guy restoring a 57 and gave the T90 to another guy redoing an old flat fender Willys.
I'm be putting in a freshly rebuilt SBC, fuel injected, and keeping the Dana 20 and adding a twin-stick. I'm not sure about the Tranny yet. It will either be a 700R4 or an NV4500. I also picked up a Dana 44 from an Isuzu Rodeo during half-off day at Ecology a few months back.
Now that it's stripped, it's time for rust repair. Debating on taking it to be blasted, or buy a unit from HF and making a mess myself.