Willys M38 Build

The chassis was sand blasted, shortened and boxed when I bought it as a friend of mine had started another build that had lost momentum.  Don and I stripped the diffs and checked and replaced bearings, then reshimmed as required.  We also fitted a disc brake kit to the front that he happened to have in stock.  We fitted front spindles to the rear to make it full floating and will have custom axles splined up closer to launch date. Everything went on hold until August after this as we were gearing up for the Taupo 1000 offroad race which kind of absorbed alot of time!

The plan of the blog is to cover the overall build of my Willys M38.  For the purists, it's not a genuine M38.  The body is I think an early repop as it has the M38 style removable dash, military light switch hole and left hand mounted handbrake.  It doesn't have a cowl mounted battery box for the second battery and for ease of use it'll be wired 12 volt. The body I bought from photos on the web and luckily it was pretty much what it claimed to be - green and with lots of rust in the passenger side floor, under the tool box. The frame is a shortened and boxed Mahindra chassis running Dana 44's front and rear.  It'll run the Mahindra F-134 with a holley carb (to squeeze under the early height hood) and we'll hang a Fairey overdrive off the back of the transfer case. I'm learning as I go on this build under the watchful eye of  Don the Willys fanatic who seems to have every part in stock that you though you had or were about to order and wait for.