1953 M38A1 Navy Jeep

A Frame Off Restoration

Read the small print!

Pintlehook purchased from Greece
eBay is a great place to find parts for military jeeps, but you have to be very careful and make sure you’re getting the right part for the right price. We were thrilled to find a Pintle hook for a “buy now” price of only $45. “Click” buy it! Wait, the shipping is $61.00? Oh my gosh, this is from Athens Greece! One month and $106 later a very nice Pintle hook arrived. Lesson learned!

What, no repro?

Photo of V=-Brace grinding
We decided to replace the rear crossmember. It had sustained a number of good collisions and showed the battle scars to prove it. After grinding down the rivets and cutting it off, section by section, the old one was removed. While we were at it we thought it would be a good idea to replace the v-brace as well. Ordering a reproduction of the crossmember assembly was easy. Then after an exhaustive search we found out that they do not make a repo of the v-brace for a M38A1! M38, no problem but they don’t fit, we would have to bubba up some shims to make it work. Now here is where some newbie dumb luck comes to play. Just as Ray was starting to remove the v-brace he noticed the time and realized he had to leave. Before he could get back to complete the job we discovered the problem of no easy replacement. With a little straightening and a few welds the original v-brace was back in service! Note: Now the v-brace is available online.
1953 M38A1 Navy Jeep

The Learning Curve

You cannot do a project of this size and not make some mistakes along the way. We hope this section will help future restorers forgive themselves for a few mishaps now and again.

We often learn more by our mistakes then by our successes. At any rate, we enjoy laughing at our blunders and hope you will too! This is not the total of our errors just the highlights. There were plenty of little foibles throughout the project.