My '82 Jeep DJ5 Postal Jeep

[PNWGERMAN]

For the last few months I've been working on wiring, and everything needed to get the engine running. I had three weekends of frustrations trying to get the LS fired up. All I could get it to do was burble and backfire. I checked the injectors, coils, crank sensor, even took the entire timing cover off the front of the engine to look at the timing set. And then it turned out to be a bad cam sensor. Felt good to hear it fire up.
The video doesn't do it justice as fare as sound goes. My phone picked up so much mechanical noise. It sounds perfect to me. Not to loud, but has a good low tone at idle, and sounds great when I rev it.

Its a video if you click on it. I tried to embed it but I cant get it to work.

Untitled by Jeremy Nugent, on Flickr

 

[ducktapeguy]

You pictures are almost motivating me to pull my jeep out of storage and work on it.

I've been mulling over some ideas for the past few years on what to do with it. Now with AI, I can actually convert those ideas into visual representations.

I've always wanted to shorten the top and create the worlds most useless pickup.

I also have a spare hardtop so I could also stretch the frame 24" and the top to create a troopy version

I have a 4.0 engine I was thinking of converting to a 4.6 stroker, even though a small block swap would probably be cheaper and give me more power.

 

[PNWGERMAN]

You pictures are almost motivating me to pull my jeep out of storage and work on it.

I've been mulling over some ideas for the past few years on what to do with it. Now with AI, I can actually convert those ideas into visual representations.

I've always wanted to shorten the top and create the worlds most useless pickup.
View attachment 4211625

I also have a spare hardtop so I could also stretch the frame 24" and the top to create a troopy version

View attachment 4211626

I have a 4.0 engine I was thinking of converting to a 4.6 stroker, even though a small block swap would probably be cheaper and give me more power.

I love the idea of the pick up version, but it would be super useless lol. Unless you stretched it and did the pickup conversion too.
If I could do this project again I'd stretch it with an extra piece of roof. Maybe not a full troopy, just another two feet or something. It would give you more useful space in back. Mine has almost no trunk space, there is a resin they used the passenger seat area as extra mail storage. And it would make it easier to keep the original sliding door but also put bigger tires on it.
The wider axles plus the bigger tires made it basically impossible for me to keep the sliding doors which was a bummer. I started trying to figure out a hinged door situation, but I gave up after two attempts to make it work. I may still attempt it again in the future. There just isn't a good spot to put a lock for a hinged door, and all the sheet metal is so thin its hard to find a good strong spot for hinges. On top of all that you really need to shrink the door frame both vertically and horizontally so that the inner part of the door fits into the door opening in the body. because the original doors are entirely exterior.

 

[ducktapeguy]

I love the idea of the pick up version, but it would be super useless lol. Unless you stretched it and did the pickup conversion too.

I have no practical intentions for this jeep, so making it into a tiny pickup would have no negative effect on it's functionality, it'd still be useless. I just thought it would look cool with a little tonneu cover on the back.

If I could do this project again I'd stretch it with an extra piece of roof. Maybe not a full troopy, just another two feet or something. It would give you more useful space in back. Mine has almost no trunk space, there is a resin they used the passenger seat area as extra mail storage. And it would make it easier to keep the original sliding door but also put bigger tires on it.
The wider axles plus the bigger tires made it basically impossible for me to keep the sliding doors which was a bummer. I started trying to figure out a hinged door situation, but I gave up after two attempts to make it work. I may still attempt it again in the future. There just isn't a good spot to put a lock for a hinged door, and all the sheet metal is so thin its hard to find a good strong spot for hinges. On top of all that you really need to shrink the door frame both vertically and horizontally so that the inner part of the door fits into the door opening in the body. because the original doors are entirely exterior.

I also considered a stretch and pickup version. A 24" stretch would match the wheelbase of a cj8, so in theory you could modify a scrambler hardtop to fit. The windshields and rooflines are different so it wouldn't be an exact match. You'd also have very little room behind the seats to recline.

The sliding doors are an issue when you start running wide tires. If you notice in the picture of my jeep that I posted earlier, the rear tires don't match the front, I couldn't run any wider and still operate the doors. That was the other issue with making it a pickup, you'd lose the sliding door and I really like them, it's kind of the essence of a postal jeep. But they're scary as hell if you're driving with the doors open and not fully latched, they'll take your arm off if you make a sudden stop.

I've seen different solutions to this problem. The rat rod guys convert their doors to suicide doors so it hinges on the back. You could also cut the doors about 8" from the bottom and only have the top part slide, the bottom would be fixed and would act like a really high sill. I looked into the minivan door tracks, if used in place of the plastic door guide the doors could start sliding open and then swing out on the bottom to clear the tires while still sliding back. Kind of like a partial gull wing minivan door.