Wonderful project. But alarm bells went off in my head when I saw the picture of the helper, wearing gloves, holding a part to be drilled while the author held the drill centimeters away from the helper's gloved hands. I hope that was just for illustration purposes.
It doesn't set off alarm bells in my head. That bearing material is very soft and easy to drill. clamping it is not simple as it's easy to deform. I would have done the same and went nice and slow starting with a center drill and moving to a standard jobbers afterward.
That's an insane amount of work. An amazing adventure and a saint of a wife!
I'm wondering if there'll be any follow up:
Thats a lot of metal in the engine oil. Whats the source? is there a fix? or is it just 'breaking in' a new motor?
Did he ever solve the overheating problems?
Did he ever finish the headlights and other small items?
and now what does he do with all the duplicate/spare parts?
I've done a couple extremely high stress road trips, so I fully empathize with him passing out every time he had to pull over. What a fun read; I love these ultra-long-form articles.
The important point is "from as much ebay parts as possible" because I suspect there are still "jeep in a crate" boxes where all you have to do is remove the Cosmolene (this is undoubtedly not all you have to do btw)
There's a long running treasure hunt for some still-crated Spitfires that were supposedly shipped to Burma at the exact end of the war and then buried when no longer required.
The amount of equipment left over from WW2 was staggering.
This is one of those perennial aviation legends[0] that are still alive, like Amelia Earhart's wreck. Always another rich guy funding a search with promising results.
The terms of the lend lease agreement meant that Britain only had to pay for the equipment it kept after the war. So in some cases they were pushing aircraft of the deck of carriers into the sea so they didn’t have to pay for them.
On a slightly newer time scale there are always firearm collectors searching for something impossible to acquire now, but which might have been acquired at some point in the past and squirreled away in its factory original box in the cosmoline. Like somebody who might have purchased an imported Egyptian Maadi AKM (locally made AK47 variant) in 1982, then never unpacked it for whatever reason.
People collect these things just because, almost like pokemon cards, another example would be the rarity of finding a specific year of East German Makarov in pristine/factory new condition.
You can build a Citroën 2CV from scratch with entirely new parts - almost - because someone somewhere makes what you need.
About the only mechanical component you can't buy is the gearbox "bucket", presumably because nobody ever breaks those. You can actually get various gearbox upgrades for them which is worth it if you daily one, because the mainshaft nut can slacken off and get you jammed in gear.
I wish he shared what it cost him overall. I can already see from some of the numbers and some guesswork that it must not be a flattering sum, but I still want to see it!
Howdy! This is Matt from The Autopian. I talked to David about this and we'll have it for you soon. We've been doing the math and it's kinda hilarious. Obviously, we were proving a point with this video but it's not... the most efficient way to do this.
Another big point of curiosity for me is registration--it clearly doesn't have a CA number plate, but there was a big red "3" on a laminated card in the spare.. what is that?
How do you go about titling and registering a brand new body + frame?
You end up with a special "Q" (as in James Bond?) number plate. There's a whole bunch of different processes depending on how Car of Theseus the vehicle is. Apparently this has recently been streamlined for rebuilds of classics from original parts (which is _not_ what the Jeep is). The system is still intended to prevent the re-use of crashed or otherwise written off frames, though.
California has a tradition of being car-friendly. Probably not the first time someone did something like this, and they might have some idea of how to handle it by now.
a decent long form article with pictures, a story, well written, and something of interest. I will read this fully later as it will require some time. Good work!
I can see the appeal, not having to deal with much rust or bolts breaking (the 2 things which cause the most trouble for me in working on vehicles). 800 miles across the desert is some way to run it in though!
Super article. Something to actually read, great photos. "How I Got Myself In This Predicament" is just the sort of subheading I like to read.
pic: https://images-stag.jazelc.com/uploads/theautopian-m2en/Scre...
Another example would be the dude who used a chainsaw on some lead acid batteries, for reasons.
https://www.theautopian.com/how-i-used-a-chainsaw-to-remove-...
That dude's also an owner of the company, so maybe giving himself lead poisoning for clicks is worth it?
I'm wondering if there'll be any follow up:
Thats a lot of metal in the engine oil. Whats the source? is there a fix? or is it just 'breaking in' a new motor?
Did he ever solve the overheating problems?
Did he ever finish the headlights and other small items?
and now what does he do with all the duplicate/spare parts?
I've done a couple extremely high stress road trips, so I fully empathize with him passing out every time he had to pull over. What a fun read; I love these ultra-long-form articles.
The amount of equipment left over from WW2 was staggering.
[0]https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-20957162
I remember him saying that the RAF buried Spitfire engines, so it's definitely a real practice.
People collect these things just because, almost like pokemon cards, another example would be the rarity of finding a specific year of East German Makarov in pristine/factory new condition.
About the only mechanical component you can't buy is the gearbox "bucket", presumably because nobody ever breaks those. You can actually get various gearbox upgrades for them which is worth it if you daily one, because the mainshaft nut can slacken off and get you jammed in gear.
Terrifying prospect. What are your options in that situation? Would turning off the ignition have any effect?
How do you go about titling and registering a brand new body + frame?
You end up with a special "Q" (as in James Bond?) number plate. There's a whole bunch of different processes depending on how Car of Theseus the vehicle is. Apparently this has recently been streamlined for rebuilds of classics from original parts (which is _not_ what the Jeep is). The system is still intended to prevent the re-use of crashed or otherwise written off frames, though.