Jeepster Commando Build - A Different Sort of Jeep Thing - Stoffregen Motorsports

SkiWill

Well-known member
Luckily, I know how to cut through metal without disturbing the paint.
How? While I'm sure the answer is longer than can be posted on a forum, any tips you can list for ham fisted folks like myself would be appreciated. I always appreciate learning something new.

Beautiful work as always, and I love the attention to detail to make things removable and serviceable. I'm constantly thinking of future servicing needs on industrial projects that I am involved with.
 
Thank you for waiting. Posting on social media takes valuable time out of the day, and I tend to bank it so I can catch up all at once. I know. Not the right way, but it's all I got...

More pics. Here is the passenger side defroster duct. The original duct hit the A/C unit, so I made a new one out of aluminum.







Once the A/C was done, I kept going under the dash. The sound system we chose is a vintage looking unit from Retro Sound, with a Rockford amp and speakers from Focal. There isn't a lot of room for any of this stuff in a Jeep, but I did my best to hide everything. The amp will be mounted under the driver seat, which is pretty normal, but the speakers which are mounted int he side panels will be hidden by the upholstery. The front speakers were $500 each, so those definitely need to be protected.











I then made a panel to hide the wiring under the head unit and to mount the crossovers to.





 
Remember the center dash portion that I cut out and modified? It needed a filler trim panel, and again, I was waiting for some great idea to hit me. And it did. I have been holding onto a sheet of finely corrugated steel for many years, hoping to find the perfect use for it, and the perfect use presented itself here. Deciding between vertical and horizontal orientation was made easy by the fact that Jeep uses vertical grille bars, so that' s what I did. It's simple, but elegant.







 
How? While I'm sure the answer is longer than can be posted on a forum, any tips you can list for ham fisted folks like myself would be appreciated. I always appreciate learning something new.

Beautiful work as always, and I love the attention to detail to make things removable and serviceable. I'm constantly thinking of future servicing needs on industrial projects that I am involved with.
Patience and low heat. I try to use hole punches when possible.

Packaging is key to many systems, and with wiring, it's doubly tricky with circuits running all over the place.

Thank you!
 
Next up - exhaust system.

I was dead set on having a side exit exhaust. It just felt right. But packaging it was posing some pretty large problems. A - I didn't want this Jeep to be too loud, and B - the chosen muffler was so long that I was going to have to pull out my can of woop-ass to get the tip out the side, in front of the tire. In the end, it wasn't a difficult exhaust system to build, but planning took a bit of time.

Hangers are important to long life in an exhaust system, but they ca also cut down on drone and noise. There are only two hangers in this system, but they were strategically placed to cut down on the noise and to hold up the exhaust without letting it rock around.















 
Finding a fuel tank that fits a Jeepster is not easy. As far as I know, there is only one aftermarket, non-original design for this frame. I did some research and talked to Genright about their YJ and CJ tanks, but none of them would fit without mods. Parts Dude sells a fabricated steel oversized tank for the Jeepster, so that's what I got. Could I have built a tank? Sure, but this one was priced right.

It did require some mods though. First was the fuel pump. I had to fit the EFI pump in the tank. Second, was the filler neck. I did not want to use the Jeepster filler neck so I had to shrink the filler neck connection on the tank to be able to use a CJ filler neck and hoses. Why not use the Jeepster filler neck? Because of crappy modern rubber parts. The filler that came on the Jeepster when we bought it was only a year old, and it was cracked to hell. Why can't aftermarket parts suppliers demand better wuality rubber? That's a soap box gripe for another day.

Here are some pics of the tank mods.




And the filler neck. This part is actually a fitting that mounts in the floor, with hoses that connect to the top and the bottom.




Finished filler neck. I wish I could have gotten the hoses to lay out a bit nicer, but whatever.. Oh, forgot to mention, the hoses, filler neck flange at the body and fuel cap are all CJ parts.




 

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