I was originally hoping that this would be the only post about this topic, but as you’ll see, I was wrong. Version 2.0 isn’t quite ready, but it’s coming!
Way back last fall I actually started THINKING about doing some work on the JeepMonster. I posted in October about finally finding a way to make the brakes work, and I had high hopes of making more progress in the cooler months (it’s never COLD in Tucson…). Alas, a spot of basal cell carcinoma on my nose disrupted that plan, as I had to keep my nose clean (literally!) for a month.
In January I finally started work on the tailgate. The body is about six inches taller than stock, meaning an aftermarket ‘gate wouldn’t be tall enough:
So I went to work. I bought a tailgate with the logo (above), and one without, and set about combining them into one tall ‘gate.
The next photo shows the relevant pieces placed together to see how they’d look. I used the top and bottom from the “logo tailgate” (cutting out about an inch or so in the middle) and the center of the “non-logo” tailgate to make an original-looking one.
Not trusting my sheet-metal welding skills, I also decided to add a backing plate to the assembly to hold everything together.
After tacking the three tailgate panels to the backing plate, I fitted it to the ‘Monster. Wonder of wonders, it was the perfect height!
Then I stitched the panels together. Alas, I wasn’t as aware as I should have been about the possibility of warping – I thought that if I only did an inch or so at a time, and spread out the welding spots, things would cool enough and I wouldn’t have to clamp it to the welding table. So I ended up with this.
It’s ugly, but with enough grinding wheels I could have cleaned it up. And some of the mess (such as the blobs to the lower left of the “Willys” logo, which are mesquite sap) is, shall we say, post-production. But it also looks bad edge-on, and that’s not fixable.
The straight object on the right is the back of the ‘Monster; you can see how badly warped the tailgate is. I tried (and totally failed) to straighten it. Thus the upcoming Version 2.0.
*sigh* Some lessons just have to be learned the hard way.
Oh, and the title? Well, “E pluribus unum” means “Out of many, one,” and that’s how I built the tailgate – out of many pieces of metal, one tailgate.
From The Ground Up 