Patrick Tipton

That is a daunting project.....great save! Looking forward to seeing a build thread! Do you remember how much time you had in those repairs? Patrick

A lot of that looks familiar! Great job and thank you for sharing the story! Super helpful. Patrick

Thanks @Jesse Browning - great pictures and very helpful. Regards, Patrick

Thanks John @OZM29C . I can see how skinning would be a tempting and practical (temporary...ish) solution. As for the hull side straightness - the passenger side is getting pretty flat and probably flatter than your average M29.... Besides the ongoing cleanup of the new seam, my two remaining issues are: dents in the bulkhead pulled the sides in a little and figuring out how much distortion there "should be" around the vertical hat channels). There is some (what I think is) factory distortion from the spot welding process in each of these areas so I don't think I want them perfectly flat....? Is wavy panel distortion around the bulkhead a "feature" of the T24? I kinda doubt it - the Studebaker engineers should have been able to get the right width and then the only distortion would be local to the spot welding of the bulkhead to the sides? Thoughts? I started working on the bulkhead yesterday as part of flattening the sides and took out the worst of the dents - hard to say if it had much impact, but I think a little. I think you have to sneak up on flat and this made a little difference in the bays on either side of the bulkhead. It is really hard to take a picture of raw steel that gives a correct image of the defects, but this was yesterday afternoon at the end of the day. I have a little more distortion to remove where the vertical hat channels block access to the back of the new metal seam....a bit of a challenge. Once that is done, I need to do a pass down the entire side to remove the minor dents that are left and decide when to stop. Input and thoughts appreciated.

Thanks @Jim Gilmore and @Jesse Browning. I made a rotisserie for my MB tub that could be easily adapted to work on the Weasel. This has been fine so far because it allows me nice access to both sides of the hull. It will be nice to turn the hull on its side to finish weld the seam on the lower hull and for doing the lower hull repairs for sure. I still have a bit more to go but will pick up some steel this week and get to fabricating.....

I put in 3 more hours on Saturday and the right side of the hull is getting close. I have 70 hours into the hull at this point. I have another cycle of shrinking, occlusion welding, hammer & dolly etc. as well as welding up the back 8 inches. The seam is mostly invisible along its length - the only problem areas are the 3 vertical hat channels where you don't have access to the back side. The seam in these areas are pretty close but not quite what I want. I have a couple of options to get these areas flat - will report back in the next post. I have a big block of time today and will try to get this wrapped up and start working on the inner tunnel seam. I am thinking I will tilt the hull on its side for better access.

Congrats! - looks like he did amazing work.

Managed to get out to the shop for another 2 hours last evening. The front half hull side is nearly complete....intending to finish the back half today and get working on the inner tunnel seam. I will still need to go over the side to straighten a few more dents before I spot weld the 45 degree gusset, but I am happy with the progress.

I managed to get out to the shop yesterday late afternoon into the evening and log about 5 hours of metal bumping and welding. I finished welding the right side seam a few days ago. Not surprisingly, the back is better than the front where I started. I really focused on getting the front side from the bow to the bulkhead straight, flat and seamless. If you want to do this type of work, you need to remember that everything has to be in place before the seam disappears and you can't force one part into place and then the next because everything is moving together. So you have to "sneak up" on flat. I started here You can still see lots of evidence of the welded seam and there are several dents on the panel so this area is not flat at all. There is also manufacturing distortion from the longitudinal hat channel that I will not mess with but the rest is use/abuse that I am trying to erase to get this back to factory. This is about an hour of hammer/dolly and shrinking. I have done a tiny amount of grinding, but mostly with a course 3M pad on the angle grinder - it polishes more than removes metal because I don't need to get in a rush, thin an area out and then make a bunch of work for myself. I am shrinking with both an oxy/acetylene torch and a shrinking disc. The shrinking disc is amazing but slow...when you need things to move and you can clearly see what is going on, the torch makes things happen - good and bad. I use a straightedge/ruler a lot. This is close and the panel is very nearly flat. It will still take some hammering to get it into the correct "arrangement" and some final shrinking to get it taut. Pay attention to the feel of the sheet metal/panel. When things are new or "right", panels are rigid but not hard. Between what folks call "oil canning" where the panel will pop or bulge in and out and really hard is the right state. Often, you have to use a hammer/slapper/dolly, even on a flat panel, to "relieve" the tension created when you used a shrinker to get the metal back into correct shape. These are soft blows but you can both feel and see it as you work the panel. I stopped at this point because I still have the hole in the bow. The hole was just kind of a goof - I patched the bow section to give me a good reference point for the floor and then decided to leave a little extra metal and wrap it to avoid welding a seam on the corner and having to make the radius match. That plan worked out pretty well but I was left with old side, new bottom corner and new side and a weird hole. I cleaned up the welds and made a patch and tacked it into place. I am still learning about this TIG process. Filling gaps is very different than with a MIG - I would say MIG likes a little gap - TIG not so much. Even the kerf width of a cutting disc on an angle grinder is a challenge to fill for this newbie. I ended up laying a flller rod in the gap and fusing into place (Thanks Jodie at WeldingTipsandTricks). This works pretty well. I was a little loose with my cleaning on the back side of the panel and paid for it.....clean that metal boys or blow through. If you aren't a welder, you hear about uphill and downhill passes. Welding uphill is more challenging because as you weld the "new" welding area gets progressively hotter until you blow through if you aren't careful. That big weld "nugget" on the right side of the picture is my blow through. Live and learn. After a little hammer and dolly and grinding, I did a second pass and welded the remaining seam. Looks a bit better. I was getting tired an it was late so I cleaned this up a little more and took a money shot. The seams are still somewhat visible so I will work on this a little more (weld/grind/flatten) before it is ready for paint but overall it is very close. The remaining welds to the bulkhead are better and the panel has less abuse so this will go faster. I did a much better job welding the seam from the bulkhead back so that part should go more quickly......

Greetings Aron: Since my Weasel is still a project, I have yet to run anything on it. 😄 On my '43 MB, I am running Ford Tractor Transmission Fluid (GL1) in the T84, transfer case and differentials. I am running a 10-30 regular oil in the motor but will probably switch over to synthetic. In my experience the synthetics don't sludge up the way traditional motor oils do...not sure I will ever run my jeep enough to sludge it up -- but..... I used to go to www.bobistheoilguy.com and read the forums - seemed to be a great source of oil information. The site is down this morning - EDIT - now back up. Patrick

TM 9-1828A Repair of Fuel Pumps: https://www.portrayalpress.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=TM 9-1828A

@OZM29C and @M29 you gents are above my pay grade here. I was thinking about seam sealer of some type - maybe the weldable type. I am definitely going to prime the insides of the hat channels and tape off/prime where they are going to be installed. I will look into both of these products. TY!

I have no knowledge of the Weasel paint specs but just got through doing this with my 1943 Willys MB. I am going to paint my T24 white/camo and will have to do this work to figure out what is correct. I spent a fair amount of time testing all of the various paints out there while doing my MB. I ended up using a PPG product and having the color matched off of a NOS seat. It came out great to my eyes. Correct? More in a second. The Gillespie is a nice product although I don't think the color or level of "lusterless" is correct for a WW2 jeep/vehicle. It is too light/tan and a little shiny for my eyes. The TM9 products (now sold by Midwest) are pretty good. I know Paul Viens - who developed the product and then sold the company to Midwest - and he did a lot of work to try and match color and degree of luster while making a durable product. For an off the shelf product, I would probably go with TM9. Paulo Batisti also makes paint that is sold by Peter Debella here in the states. It looks good but I have not really played with it. Jim Gilmore has original paint chips and paper from WW2. He also has some NOS WW2 paint. He opened a paint can with 319 and made up some test strips. The NOS paint matched the WW2 paint chips. The TM9 was the closest color match of the commercially available options. I took a bumperette and we compared against Jim's originals and TM9. You can see below. The left paint is the original WW2 319. The right is TM9. My bumperette is visible through the "windows". It is close but would need a little more brown in it to match the WW2 319. The last consideration is wear. My jeep was finished in September and is quickly getting lots of patina. The paint is very flat and shows every mark. My jeep is already starting to look like a "vet". The paint is not super durable - which is why I think most of the vendors end up more down the semi-gloss road. I did use hardener in my paint and it sprays beautifully. My local PPG pro auto shop mixed it up - and they have the formula so I am happy to pass it on. It is much more expensive than the TM9 - probably $200 a gallon with reducer and hardener, but that is typical/inexpensive for "pro" paints these days. I am planning to have the Weasel epoxy primed rather than using a traditional red oxide primer. I want the best underlying protection given that I might swim this thing at some point. We shall see. Final product:

I managed to get the side seam all welded up. I still have to weld the tunnel seam, finish weld a couple of side joints, fill some occlusions, hammer, dolly, shrink, repeat.... T24Smallside.mov

Detonator cover anyone? Spotlight handle bracket? .....just to name a few..

Welcome aboard and congrats on your purchase! A runner sounds good to me at this point 😂 Off to the shop to weld because I have a lot of it to do! Patrick

Right now members can edit their posts for 60 minutes after initially posting. After reading a little in the support area, it seems that this simple idea creates more problems than what I would have imagined. Let me get smart on it and see if we can make this work right.

You should be able to....let me check the settings....standby

Thanks Paul and welcome to the forum!

Welcome aboard Tom. We like jeeps too!

I spent a few hours welding on Wednesday. I am really enjoying the control of TIG. I am sure I will continue to find reasons to use my MIG welder, but this work is so much easier with TIG once you get the hang of it. For derusting, I like to dip a shop towel in Evaporust and then "stick" it to a surface - works great on vertical surfaces too. You spray or splay a little more Evaporust every couple of hours to keep the towel moist. The product does a nice job stopping rust and cleaning the metal to bright and takes almost no effort. The only downside is that Evaporust works much better at temps over 70 degrees....but it does work at lower temps, only slower. I love that the freshly cleaned metal shows all of those spotwelds so clearly. Super cool.

@Rob W may have them? If not, maybe @Jesse Browning?

I spent more time over the weekend working on the new floors. Saturday was about improving the fit and I started welding on Sunday. I am a huge fan of TIG welding, even though I have a lot to learn. Here is the side/floor tacked into place. Here are my first "official" TIG welds on the hull. They are far from perfect and I made just about every mistake in the book. The first 12 inches or so took me about 3 hours, including mistakes and also removing some dents from the area that were making it even harder to get everything flat. I need to work on the inside of the hull and then come back and finish this area. The wonderful thing about TIG is that you can reasonably fix all of the visible imperfections with very little fear of making the problem worse. I have vastly more experience with the MIG and always wonder, when I go to fix a little spot like you seen in this picture, whether it will be better or worse after I pull that MIG trigger. I feel a lot more in control with the TIG even at this inexperienced stage. This is round two.....getting better. The next two plus feet went pretty well. I still need to cycle through grinding, hammer/dolly and more TIG to get the joint to disappear, but I am optimistic that I can get the results I am looking for here. For those of you contemplating or working on similar projects, here are my TIG observations so far. I am no expert having received about 1 hour of training on this machine - the rest is books and videos and now about 8 hours of experience. 1. You want to move fast to keep the heat effected zone small. The last welds are better, but still have a larger heat effected zone than I think is necessary. From studying lots of videos and reading a bunch, you want to start your arc, almost immediately establish the puddle (ie push down the accelerator and move. Do about one to two inches and then stop and work on another area while the welds and metal cool. Jump around, repeat. The hard part of TIG is you have to think about many things at once....torch angle, arc length, feed rate of filler, foot control, etc. I am going to have some time this afternoon and plan on doing some speed practice runs on scrap to see how small I can get the heat effected zone and still have excellent penetration. This is a time at task game so more welding is more better. 2. Use a backer of aluminum or copper. I did not because I was too lazy to engineer a holder, but if you place a backer on the joint, you will end up with much less work to clean up the back side of your weld. A backer does several things including helping dissipate the heat as well as trapping the shielding gas and keeping the back side from oxidizing and looking ugly. I will make something to hold the backer strip for the rest of this joint and the lower joint. Here is back side FYI with just a quick cleanup and then fill on the outside of the seam that penetrated through... All for now.

You should be able to edit any of your posts. There should be an "edit" link at the bottom of your post. Kindly let me know if there is not one.....I may have it set up wrong.... As for deleting a post....may be admin only....will do. Patrick

Thank you Rob. Appreciate it and glad to see you here! Patrick