1982 Jeep CJ8
After watching my CJ7 rust away over the
years it was obvious that I would have to do some preventive maintenance to the
body of my scrambler. I had to replace the hood, grill and passenger side
fender after the accident but with the new frame there are no problems with the
jeep as everything damaged has been replaced. I am now familiar with the
problem areas and wanted to take care of them to eliminate serious rust
problems in the future. I have used POR15
with success before and still had most of the gallon I purchased a year ago to
use on the problem rust areas of the scrambler.
First the fenders. I had installed TJ flares on my CJ7 for more tire
clearance and did the same to the scrambler. I was able to run 33s with just
1" body lift and the TJ flares when the scrambler was more of a
"stock" height. One of the problems with the TJ flares is that the
flares themselves are larger than the opening in the CJ fender. This meant you
had to do one of 2 things; cut the flares or cut the fender well from the
fender. I chose to do the later in the CJ7 and without the wheel well firmly
attached to the fender is was very weak. So when I installed the scrambler TJ
flares, I left a 2" "lip" on the fender and bent the sheet metal
over the wheel well. Then I riveted the lip to the wheel well as seen below:
And here is the fender coated with POR15
and painted gloss black.
Here is the drivers
side fender also cut for TJ flares.
The next pictures show the work done
underneath the tub. In the heavily rusted areas I sanded and coated with POR15,
primed and painted gloss black. In the not-so rusty areas I sanded, primed and
coated gloss black, like the rear wheel wells.
Here is the rear underneath bucket at the
gas tank filler.
The "shiny" spots are where the
POR15 was used and as you can see the underneath of the replaced bed remained in good shape.
