1943 Ford GPW Jeep Restore

STAGE 1 Get JEEP .

Well It's time to start the 1943 Ford GPW Jeep Restore and give it a new home, here are a few pic's from the day we picked the JEEP.

The JEEP has been sitting at the back of my friends house for around 20 Years, It was parked due to a lack of brakes and forgotten.

David

David - Wow, that is one, mint, as-found, Ford Jeep. How did it manage to survive this far, so complete and undamaged??
I know of one other in pretty good condition. It resides on a farm, and it's rarely seen. Plenty have tried to buy it, but it's not for sale, and probably won't be until the owner dies.
He's around 60 and still healthy, so the buyers will be waiting for a while ..

Your Jeep will be a simple restoration job .. no need to chase up parts for years, like everyone else seems to do.
There's been a restored one for sale here in the West for quite a while.
An excellent resto, with lots of $$$'s spent on repro parts .. but the initial asking price was $30,000, which I think was pretty unrealistic.

Cheers - Ron.

David, that's one very original Jeep, not to go against Ron or yourself, but because it's so original, pity it's not still LHD, why not get it running and roadworthy and leave it exactly as it is, (vintage), it's 68 years old and shouldn't look like it just rolled out of the factory, it should be showing it's age, (like me), if it were rusted, battered and parts were missing it would be a different story. Paint all the US numbers, stars, etc, on it but try and age them so they don't look new, there are lots of restored ones out there so your's would stand out as being as it should, just plain "worn" looking, like it had just come back from a war.
Purely my thoughts but it's up to you, I've seen too many restored ones and don't even look at them anymore but your's looks great as it is.

Good luck with it whatever you do, Tony

Geez, I never even twigged to the RHD conversion. I thought some MB & GPW Jeeps had been produced in RHD. I'd forgotten about the big barney around 1947 that saw LHD banned in many states.

I did some research and found that some actually had been produced in RHD for the US Postal Service, but obviously they were very low in numbers, and were probably only a conversion, anyway.

It's interesting to find that Willys never even drew up blueprints for RHD until 1957, and apparently parts manuals don't even recognise RHD components before 1962.

Apparently a lot of the RHD conversions were pretty rough, and only a few could be described as "professional".

Interesting RHD Jeep discussion here .. www.g503.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=131519&start=0

Im with you Tony leave it as is, its lasted this long and giving it a full resto would lose its history. The old Mr Houghton of Houghton Ford of Vic park had a nice old jeep that was very original. Not sure what happened to it guess it was sold up after he passed away or when his son run the whole dealership into the ground and it went under.

Onetrack
The right hand drive US postal jeep i think you will find was only 2wheel drive

David
Nice looking old jeep.From what i can see in the pic's it appears to be a genuine Ford. Has it got all the "F" insignia on the bolts and fittings? Are you going to convert it back to left hand drive? I have owned a couple of the Fords, the present one own with my youngest son,he's caught the bug. Personally i would just put some combat rims on it maybe convert back to LHD.
Cheers
Doug

Hi .

The Idea is to to keep it as it is for a while and only do the mechanical stuff so it's safe and drivable , no thought has been made about the convert back to left hand drive. I want a driver not a concourse car.

It has been sitting for around 20years we put some petrol down the carby , jumper leads and a coil and it started 2nd kick , didn't run well but it did run

As for info I have found this site. www.1943gpw.com
good starting place. as for parts I believe that there is a place in Tamworth NSW. that has lots of Jeep Parts.

Hey, David - it won't take you long to get it operational again! You can totally strip and rebuild a Jeep in less than 5 minutes with a few mates, you know! ..

Hey, David - it won't take you long to get it operational again! You can totally strip and rebuild a Jeep in less than 5 minutes with a few mates, you know! ..

: I'd like to see those blokes do that to Davids in that time , it's a set up, they dont put water in the radiator, hook up lights etc. but enjoyable to watch.