Posted: Sun Jul 26, 2015 8:52 pm Post subject: 1955 M38A1D Project
This is my 1955 M38A1D. My family has owned it since my mothers uncle bought it after he retired from the service about 40 years ago (chaplain in the army). It was handed down to my mother about 15 years ago, and after a few years in her garage, was "stored" at a local photography studio and used as a prop. This first picture is when I showed up to tow it away to a friends so i could commence working on it.
The next picture is about what the motor looked like when i got it. I had taken the carb off to rebuild it, and run a plug wire to see if i could get a spark.
This next picture is the passengers side before cleaning, it is worth noting that this jeep was painted brown about 40 years ago, as you can see, the overspray got on to the tires, which means the tires are about 40 years old as well. They are tubed tires, had been sitting flat for about 10 years. I aired them up, pulled it across town, and the tires held air! In fact, they have been holding air now for the past 5 months without any problems.
The next picture is the interior shot. Looks pretty rough.
More to come. Want or need specific shots? Message me or reply to this thread. I know there arent many of these models left and will help where i can. I also have an original manual, but the cover is gone and so I cannot tell you which manual it is. _________________ 1955 M38A1D - work in progress
And the front before cleaning. That is mold/moss growing on the front fenders, it was also on the hood, cowl, and other parts of the body.
This is the engine bay after I pressure washed quite a few years worth of cobwebs and dirt off.
Dash data plates.
And the gauges.
Rebuilding the carbutator.
Both differentials have been drained and refilled, with new gaskets and rtv for both. The front diff had a grayish sludge in it which I drained out, scraped out, and rinsed with carb cleaner, then refilled. Both differentials look almost pristine, which leads me to believe the 8500-some-odd miles that the odometer shows may be correct.
_________________ 1955 M38A1D - work in progress
Matthew,
You have a very rare jeep there. Hope you are restoring her as a M38A1D.
It's a shame that the prior owners switched out the stock F134 engine and installed that L134 engine. It looks like that L134 came from a powerplant or welder set-up since it has that thermostat on top of the thermostat housing.
I took the liberty of reducing the photo sizes in your post so they don't take up so much discussion board band width. They get difficult for many folks to view the post that have slow internet connections as well. Everyone can view the full size version of these photos in Matthew's Mjeeps album at: http://www.willysmjeeps.com/v2/modules.php?set_albumName=album335&op=modload&name=gallery&file=index&include=view_album.php _________________ Wes K
45 MB, 51 M38, 54 M37, 66 M101A1, 60 CJ5, 76 DJ5D, 47Bantam T3-C & 5? M100
About a week later I was doing some work on it and oversprayed carb cleaner onto some of the brown paint. I discovered (by accident) that carb cleaner takes paint off just a layer at a time, it doesnt strip it off all at once like so many of the paint strippers you can buy at the hardware store. I bought several brands of carb cleaner before I came to the realization that B12 Chemtool is what I needed to use. I dont know what they put in it but wow, B12 is some powerful stuff! I decided that instead of doing a full sandblast and repaint to the whole thing, that instead I would take it down to the original paint and see what was there.
--I should pause this story to explain that this is not the first time I have worked on this jeep. My mother inherited it when I was 14, and from when we got it, I wanted to see what the paint looked like underneath. It was my on and off project for a couple of years, but I was younger, inexperienced with vehicles, the internet was a new thing and I didnt have access to all the information I do now. My dad loaned me a sander and I bought a chiltons manual and some fine grit sandpaper.The exposed hood numbers and star are a result from that bit of work I did when I was 14-15. That was also the last time it ran. I rode in it twice before it was parked in the garage at my parents house, then moved to a photography studio where it sat for a number of years.--
Fast forward 15 years, and after two months of work and roughly $300 worth of B12 Chemtool, this is what it looks like.
The jeep has at least 3 layers of military paint. Here you can see I have partially recovered three different stars on the rear quarter panel on the drivers side.
View of the drivers side after taking most of the brown paint off. The paint removal around some of the lettering is not the best, but after you get so far through the brown, the white of the lettering wants to come with it, so care has to be taken.
This part of the grille took about three hours to complete, I thought this was a nice comparison shot of what it looked like, and what it looks like now.
Completed grille. It was really hard to get the B12 evenly distributed on the bars of the grille. I would get spots where the brown would come off relatively easily, and then spots where it wouldnt. I had to be very careful with the overspray in order to not take off the green paint adjacent to the brown i was trying to remove.
The blackout light, and other small, removable pieces had to be taken off and done separately. Just like the slats on the grille, the blackout light with all its many different surfaces and planes was very hard to evenly coat with B12. One of the problems I ran into was that some of the brown paint just doesnt want to come off no matter how long i let the B12 sit, or how hard I scrub. I learned this the hard way on parts of the back, I ended up taking too many layers of green paint off while trying to get the brown off. Some of these places have a very camouflage look about them, due to the different shades of green that were painted on it over the years. You sill see these spots randomly in the pictures. After much deliberation I have decided to leave these brown spots, as it adds to the rustic, used look of the jeep, and I never expect it to look show quality. It was used by my mothers uncle as a hunting rig on some family property, and I have no problem with it not being perfect.
The partially cleaned backside. This is where I started with the paint removal process. This was very much a learn-as-you-go type of process, thats why the back looks the worst of any surface I removed paint on. The back was my trial run.
And the passengers side.
This is after I put the carb back on. I was changing the plugs and wires that night. I went with some MSD 8.5MM wires that a friend had leftover when we put new wires on his truck. These were the extra lengths with extra MSD boots that we had.
I have reached my 20 picture limit, is there any way I can get a photo album extension or anything? Id be willing to pay $5-10 to upload more pictures so I can continue the thread. _________________ 1955 M38A1D - work in progress
Last edited by Wade on Tue Jul 28, 2015 12:53 pm; edited 1 time in total
Terribly sorry about that, I didnt see your post until I had sent another page with the biggest pictures I could post! -edited, resized the pictures- The rest of the pictures I link will be smaller copies, I promise. I did know that it was an L134 instead of the F134, I did not know that this one was from a welder or power unit. Thanks for the info! _________________ 1955 M38A1D - work in progress
Joined: May 30, 2014 Posts: 3447 Location: Texas Hill Country
Posted: Tue Jul 28, 2015 2:44 pm Post subject:
Wade,
Be very careful with that B12. It will easily destroy a nice paint
job on the daily driver. I would also neutralize where you've put it
on your jeep so it won't continue to eat away the paint.
Granted, once exposed to air B12 dries pretty quick but I'd
take the extra precaution.
By the way, it works very well as a wasp killer too!
You have a lot of history there, the jeep itself as well as
family ties. That's great.
Your are very fortunate to have your M38A1D pedigree!! So many times, all the numbers and lettering has been sanded away and once gone, it is gone forever. Take plenty of pictures and back up pictures as this is the proof of your M38A1 pedigree.
Looking at your engine, your carburetor gave it away as coming from a power plant. If you look at a carburetor from a MB-GPW, CJ2A or 3A you would notice the bore for the carburetor is much larger than yours. It will run just find, but will be lacking in power.
Assuming the speedometer hasn't been change, the 8,000 miles is possible. I wouldn't think the Army would be driving around in a nuclear jeep!! Even with out the missile, it wouldn't have all that much use. True radio jeeps and vehicles generally have low miles on them also.
Excellent M38A1D---do keep us posted on your re-refurbishment / rebuild efforts!!! _________________ Harold W.
MVPA #6833
1945 GPW
1950 CJV-35/U
1951 M38 1952 M38
1962 USMC Contract M38A1
1953 Strick M100 1967 Johnson M416
1968 CJ5 4-Speed 1969 CJ5 V6
Wade,
Be very careful with that B12. It will easily destroy a nice paint
job on the daily driver. I would also neutralize where you've put it
on your jeep so it won't continue to eat away the paint.
I have been washing the parts of the jeep I am done with with soap and water right after I do the last application of B12, Is that what you mean by neutralizing? _________________ 1955 M38A1D - work in progress
Joined: Mar 23, 2010 Posts: 18 Location: Newport, N.C.
Posted: Sun Jan 17, 2016 8:21 pm Post subject:
I wish I had seen this sooner. I did the veterans day parade with my M38A1C jeep, and I had a veteran walk up to me and ask if I knew what a M38A1D jeep was? I told him, I did, and told him what the jeep was. He said I was the first person he had ever met that knew what the jeep was. He was assigned one while stationed in Germany.
Here is where I fell on my sword. My M37 broke down coming to the parade, and the Marine driving it was calling me for help, so I had to cut the guy short, and I did not get his information.
The veterans parade I was in is one of the biggest in North Carolina, I hope next year he will come up to me again, this time I will get his name and information.
One of the few, Frank USMC RET
It got warm a few days ago, and I have been busy working on this old jeep.
I got the solid state distributor innards (the Swiss kit) in the mail a couple of weeks ago and installed that three days ago on Thursday. The plugs now have a really nice spark, I had only gotten the points to get a spark once and was tired of fooling with it. After installation it would backfire through the carb, but not much else.
I decided that a static timing was in order, but unfortunately there are no timing marks on the crank pulley. The bolt-on finger is there with marks for TDC and 5° btdc, but I've been all around the pulled looking for a line or a hole, and there are none. There is also no viewing port under the starter.
A little more information on the engine. The casting number for the block is a late number. 804380-W-13-D-P5 CU-CR. Engine serial is RMC106087. From what I can tell, it is from a late run of l134s made around may 1952. Most if not all of the 804380 blocks were branded rmc, for replacement engines. Please correct me if I'm wrong and add information I may have left out.
I gave up on the timing marks and attempted to find TDC with a bent piece of wire in the #1 cylinder after the intake valve closed. I thought this was going to be easy until I found that I couldn't turn the engine by hand clockwise by myself while fishing with my bent wire down the spark plug hole. I found that i could, however, turn it the other way. I "timed" the thing in the opposite rotation (as I remember it is TDC after the exhaust valve closes (before it opens in regular rotation)) and got pretty dern close. I didn't think about accounting for the play in cam gears, oil pump, and distributor from turning the other way. It still won't fire, but instead of popping out the carb, the engine now cranks faster as if one or two cylinders are trying to fire. Been advancing and retarding the distributor a few degrees to see if that helps, but no-go.
What do I do? Take the head off and find TDC that way, average the two marks on the pulley I make for the time the piston is at TDC but there are still a few degrees of crank rotation? Am I missing something?
Went out and bought some brass fittings to button up the fuel system today (all but the tank) and have one end of the fuel line run into a plastic can right now for testing purposes. Accelerator pump plunger needs to be finely sanded because it doesn't like being pushed down into the cylinder, and the throttle body shaft has a lot of play like it needs to be rebuilt or rebushed.
How time consuming is it to remove the head? Renting a cylinder compression tester tomorrow to see what my cranking pressures are like. If the valves need to be lapped, what kind of time are we talking about from start to finish if I do them myself. Is all I would need to buy a headgasket and lapping compound? Valves probably need to be checked to make sure everything is in tolerance anyway.
What about taking the intake manifold off? It sat for years with the carb air horn off and thought about removing it to make sure it's not plugged up in any way. Is that an all day job or is it as easy as it looks? Is a gasket all I need to put it back on?
Wes K, I believe I've read everything you've written on the ignition systems and distributors of these old jeeps. When you help others, you help everyone who reads those threads. Thanks man. _________________ 1955 M38A1D - work in progress
Post a photo of the right side of your engine showing the entire side and then a photo taken from this angle near the starter.
I would like to compare the rear of your block with the starting mounting plate and timing window. _________________ Wes K
45 MB, 51 M38, 54 M37, 66 M101A1, 60 CJ5, 76 DJ5D, 47Bantam T3-C & 5? M100
Right side of block from under showing full casting number
Right side of block from top
Right side of block zoomed
Wes, heres the angle that you wanted, i know its dirty and hard to see, I will try to clean it up soon. I included a head-on shot of the block under the starter.
Not a whole lot of room to put a camera in there. It was 5 mins worth of scrubbing and carb cleaner to even get the casting number visible, I almost have to scrape the grease/mud/matted animal fur off the sides with a putty knife. _________________ 1955 M38A1D - work in progress
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