Making Of The Willy Mammoth

[Willy Mammoth]

Hello all,

This is the official thread for the Making Of The Willy Mammoth. It all started back in September 2004 when I found this 1948 Willys Jeep on Ebay, Yess I said Jeep.   
After Winning the bidding I was well on my way to the poor house. Got it running mostly stock and took it to WV for the ATV trail fest and had more fun with the Jeep than the four wheelers. Now that we are back home it was time to get started with the project. Thought long and hard about what axels to use and decided on Toyota because I knew they are strong and they are like a small 9". We are building high pinion 5.29 gears with air lockers and using 38" Super Swampers. Toyota springs and stearing, A Nissan SD22 Deisel engine connected to a toyota 5 spd trans and transfer. 8" slip yolks on the drive shafts. So far I have managed to get it tore down to the frame and found the body is in very poor shape, in fact it sucks.     I ordered a new tub and it showed up today.   





I want to thank the Guys at Marlin Crawler for their quality service getting me the parts I need for this project. There will be more Toyota here then Jeep so I will continue dealing with Marlin and the gang for as long as they have the stuff I need.


         



Thanks for watching

[Fireimp141]

Haha, funny little things arent they? until u build em... then its rape!     get to it!

[Willy Mammoth]

Ok Here is the latest pictures.

[Lady Di]

After Winning the bidding I was well on my way to the poor house. Got it running mostly stock and took it to WV for the ATV trail fest and had more fun with the Jeep than the four wheelers.


http://www.mhdfl.com/Pages/Willy%20Project.htm

I might add,  we won the bid on the Willys the week before Hurricane Frances strolled on through. The first pics on this page are from where we picked the jeep up, it was a trailer park in Lakeland, FL. Having won it on eBay no matter what happened to it at that trailer park, it was still ours so we ran out there that Thur. before the hurricane was due to hit and got it back home. The storm took it's dear sweet time getting through the state, we lost power for about 4-5 days (but have a generator to run most of the power) so with nothing better to do and plenty of time on our hands Mark got to work on the Jeep and had it up and running that Monday.

I'm very excited about this project, guess I'll be getting started on the   grunt work while Mark does the important stuff  , we've got a goal to get it going by the end of the year! 

[Willy Mammoth]

New progress on the project this weekend. The new body showed up last week along with the 38" Super Swampers.
We decided to stretch the body and frame to accommodate the large tires, also to allow for more leg room in front and better drive shaft angles.



The new engine came in last week as well and has been test run.

http://www.mhdfl.com/Videos/SD22_Running.WMV


More to come this next week.

Mark

[Mike D]

wow thats lookin real nice my uncle just got a 1950 cj2a

[toyman2]

looks like you doin a real nice job

[BigMike]

Look'n really good guys!

BTW, you are more than welcomed to link or attach pictures directly here

[Willy Mammoth]

  Thanks guys, I appericate the comments.

Here is the next big task at hand. I bought a Nissan SD22 diesel engine and traded an ice machine for a Toyota trans and transfer.  Here is where it gets interesting, Toyota and Nissan don't mix in anyones garage except for mine. The bell housing on the Toy has the starter on the right hand side and the Nissan has the starter on the left side. Only two bolt holes almost line up, So out comes the sawsall and I cut the starter cone out of the bell housing and move it to the other side.  Next I will need to weld up all the bolt holes and redrill them in the correct place. That should keep me busy for a while  

[Mike D]

that sounds like a party 

[Willy Mammoth]

Here is a picture of the bell housing after I started welding on it .

[Willy Mammoth]

OK here it is?

[Mike D]

isn't welding aluminum a biatch!!

[Willy Mammoth]

  Not when you have one of these. I have no problem welding the dirtiest aluminum. I have even been known to weld pot metal.

[Shamb]

i had a 44' FORD,not willys, with a inline 4 cylinder. old war jeep that we restored, i loved it, fun project. I'll try and find some pictures and post them up. Ended up painting it Drab green, same color as a older US mail box, difficult to get government color's but i finally found it...

look'n good though, keep it up

[Willy Mammoth]

Well, we put the third members together today and assembled the front axle. I can see at this point that this going to be one tall Jeep. I won't know how tall until the 3" front springs come in next week. On Sunday We plan to assemble the rear axle and get ready to locate the spring mounts.

[Willy Mammoth]

We finished assembling the axles and positioned them for fitting. Installed the fenders hood and grill. Installed the windshield frame and started installing the switches and gauges in the dash. I spun the diameter of the rear axles down a bit so the front rotors will fit over the wheel flange. I will make brackets later to mount front calipers. I will have to make some sort of drive line brake to use for a parking brake.

[BigMike]

Hey, where did the Willy go?


Look`n real good mang. So when you say "we" as in "We finished assembling the axles and positioned them for fitting" then where are the pics of MrsWillyMammoth gett`n it awn with the grinder!!!

[Willy Mammoth]

Here she is pretending to be driving and cleaning the engine, you know the realy hard stuff.

[Lady Di]

Here she is cleaning the engine, you know the realy hard stuff.

Yeah, in other words, doing all the grunt work

WillyMammoth missed the photo op as I was stripping all the paint off the hood and fenders, there's plenty more still to do but it sure is coming along. Can't wait till I'm REALLY driving it!!    It's going to be so cool. 

[BigMike]

Man that is so cool to have a husband/wife tag team on a project truck

[Lady Di]

Needless to say,(why do people always say that but continue anyway?) working alongside "Will" is an amazing thing. You never know what he will come up with next!!  I would love to be able to do this full time. (again)

[Willy Mammoth]

Back to the bell housing project. I had cut the starter cone out of the bell housing and moved it to the other side and now welding up all the bolt holes so they can be drilled to fit the Nissan diesel engine. Next is to weld extra bosses to support the new holes and relocate some of the webbing.

I also test fit the engine to see what clearance problems there is going to be. So far no major hang ups.

[Willy Mammoth]

Rest of the pics.

[mudguts]

mudguts--->     to  <---- mr and mrs mammoth

Nice work 

[BigMike]

So what exactly did that Nissan come out of?

[Willy Mammoth]

So what exactly did that Nissan come out of?

The SD22 engine came from a 1982 Nissan 720 two wheel drive pickup. They were only used from 1981 to 1983 in the US. The rest of the world is still using them as SD25. This is the same engine family as the SD33 which is used in the IH Scout around 1980.

I can't wait to try bio deisel! (used fry oil). Can you smell the french fries yet?

[Willy Mammoth]

  Ok boys and girls hold on to your seats, the bell housing is done 

After welding on it for about 12 hrs I then had to machine all the surfaces and drill new holes. Even I am amazed as to how well this turned out. The alignment pins fit snug and all the bolts line up.

Next will be shortening the trans extension housing to fit the shorter tail shaft.

[Willy Mammoth]

More pics

[Willy Mammoth]

Trans Tail shaft swap. I took the tail shaft from a L52 and installed it in the G52. This left me with a shorter G52, 5" shorter to be exact. Now back to cutting and welding.