Grand Willys Project

[Gojeep]

Originally Posted by Turismo07

I love seeing your American Akita photo bomb your photos!

We have an American Akita too but she mostly just chills off in the distance, it's our Shiba Inu that likes to come and check out what I am doing and quite often he'll choose to lay right where I am working.

Awesome. We are thinking of getting a Shiba Inu next actually. I take it they are very similar in behaviour?
That or a Chow Chow.

[Turismo07]

Originally Posted by Gojeep

Awesome. We are thinking of getting a Shiba Inu next actually. I take it they are very similar in behaviour?
That or a Chow Chow.

According to the research we did before getting any dog, all suggested that Shiba Inu's and Japanese/American Akita's were quite similar (especially the Japanese Akita). And we liked what read about them and their temperaments and therefore have stuck to this family of breed. Our next dog will be a Japanese Akita, but that'll be a few years away.

BUT our 2 dogs could not be any more different in personality lol.

Ryu our Shiba Inu is 5 years old, male. Very relaxed dog 90% of the time, the other 10% is when he wants to play, quiet, doesn't bark much, likes to be aware of what you are doing but doesn't need your attention, extremely fastidious (hates rain and wet grass), keeps his living quarters clean and neat (still has the same bed and blanket since 8 weeks old), fairly territorial and protective, will conduct perimeter checks of our yard every hour or so, will bark and alert us if there is possible danger, if things are serious (in his mind) his bark is more of a callout to me if I'm home and when I arrive on the scene and give him the go ahead then he becomes very authoritative with me by his side, but if I'm not home and it's just my wife and son, he just goes straight to the authoritative bark, kill count so far (x2 cats, x1 frog, x1 baby dugite, x1 bobtail lizard, x1 rat, x10's of cockroaches, and x100s of flies) - all animals entered into our property and he saw them as a threat, both cats I had found dead later after I had come home. He started life as being very stand-off-ish, would not let anyone pat him on the head even (would just duck out from your hand), but at about the 2 year old mark he started to soften and would allow you to give him cuddles, now at 5 years old he will come to us at least once a day to ask for a good back and chest rub lol. He was tough to train, we were first time dog owners as well though, but looking back it wasn't that bad, toilet trained within a few days, and house trained within a month or so, the hardest part was training him to stay inside our property when the door or garage was open, which we have successfully done. He is also really good with our 5 month old son, he just loved him from the get go which we were surprised about given his mostly stand-off-ish nature towards new people. Is quite smart, but we suspect that he is much smarter than he gives off and uses most of his intelligence to try and outsmart us and figure out what he may or may not want to do (stubbornness). Overall Ryu loves his pack, that is very evident, is very low maintenance, and gives us plenty of laughs with his quirkiness.

Miya our American Akita is 18 months old, she's a longcoat. Has a very soft nature, her goal in life is to get as many belly rubs as possible from people, she is not as fastidious as our research suggested (unfortunately, being a longcoat lol), she loves water and rain and rolling in the grass after it has rained etc, she is quite a relaxed dog but is also very alert, will bark at people walking past our house etc, it sounds very aggressive, but if they walked up to her she'd try to get them to give her cuddles, she's very intelligent, learns things very quickly, is always happy and smiling at us, always wants to please us, very easy to train (prob also because we had Ryu well trained and she just followed), although she loves human contact and cuddles etc she is not a lap dog and will happily just spend most of her time in her own little world, in contrast to Ryu she was not happy when we brought our new born son home, we think it was all his crying that created tension and anxiety in the house that she didn't like, but after we went on our first family walk together it brought the pack closer and she was fine from that point on. Despite her soft nature, we have unfortunately seen a dangerous streak in her as once when we left her at my mum's house and she got into a fight with my mum's female Husky, we came home to find my mum's Husky in a bad way with about 7 wounds all over her body (no broken bones but lots of stitches, and limping around for about 2 weeks), Miya was fine, this was sad and surprising to us as Miya had basically grown up with my mum's Husky but something changed that day and Miya did what we thought was never in her nature , we've put it down to animal kingdom stuff, 2 females together, and that possibly the younger growing female wants to challenge the older 'top female' so to speak, but unfortunately after a few attempts since they are not happy around each other. Overall Miya is very smart, very intuitive, very obedient and wants to please us, has a nice strong loud bark which we find is good for security, and its just a big sweetheart.

So to answer your question, I think there will always be commonalities within the same family of breeds, but you can't rely on that being the case as every dog will be different and deviate away from its typical breed characteristics.

I don't know much about Chow Chow's apart from that I like when they look like a soft toy teddy bear haha. The breeder that we got Ryu from breeds Shiba's and Chow Chow's (Sharae Petlink here in Perth) and I just remember the Chow Chow puppies being huge and crazy, they'd just run at you and not have the coordination yet to pull up in time and kind of slam into you and tumble away, and always jumping up at me, etc haha. Whereas the Shiba's were mostly a lot calmer.

Sorry for the long 'un-jeep' related post in your build thread, but I hope my experience helps you with your dog hunting (not literally ).

[Gojeep]

Many thanks for the insight. Very helpful and will take that into consideration for sure. We had a Japanese Akita before this one and a Malamute before that, so like the breed line for sure.

[Gojeep]

I wanted the window to stop when the top edge was flush with the window sill. The one at the bottom of the track/rail was too low.


Before removing it I marked where I wanted it to stop plus a few millimetres for the rubber stop compression. I prefer this way than the common bolt as wont damage the nylon guide and is not harsh when it reaches it.


Next up is the window felt that goes on the window sill for the outside of the glass. Most I see just run it straight into the corners, but thought I would try and bend it to suit the radius instead.


Just using things I had in the washer draw, I made up this little jig. The felt is the same as used in the window channel and is attached to cloth that is clamped into a steel backing with wire rod inside the edges.


Just drew the window sill outline onto the cardboard template I had used for the window.


Was a bit fiddly passing it through back and forth and also had to keep straightening the rest of it. Make sure the wire can come out the end as it needs to go somewhere as you shrink the inside radius.


I got most the the second bend done as well before cutting it with a little extra spare.


Just about there now and will cut it with tin snips after marking it on the angle it needs.


Can see how it follows the radius around.


If I had just gone straight ahead you would see it disappear leaving a gap looking from the outside.


I used 1/8" rivets to hold it in place. I want all the holes in place before it gets painted so why I have already installed it, even though it has to be removed again.


A pillar corner from the outside.


Same material for the guide the whole way around now. I found it also supported and guided the glass better on the front edge as it was going up than before.

[CJ6np435]

very nice work Gojeep, waiting for the video of the window going up and down 😉

[Gojeep]

Now remember that I want the whole of the interior to look like it was from the donor Grand Cherokee year of 2008. I don't want bits and pieces from different eras if possible, but to be a cohesive design. Unfortunately there is no way the donor door cards are going to work so will do my best to use parts from it


Want to start with the interior door handles. They are plastic welded in with 8 melted over studs. The door card even has a relay and ECU box for the mirror, central locking and window controls. On the other drivers side card also for seat position memory! I'll be fitting all that as well later on.


Got the drivers side handle free using a spot weld cutter type grind drill bit in a thread tap wrench handle. My idea is to mount this to face of the inside steel panel of the door rather than the card itself.


So to mount this I will remove all the ridges on the back. They are not needed anyway as the steel door panel is stronger than the plastic door card it was on.


To clear the window I need to shorten the link arm. Works out well as this setup gave to much travel to match the bearclaw release lever.


Lever shortened and redrilled for the link. I did have to swap the lock link piece to the other side though so it could pivot more.


I had hoped to mount the handle behind the window guide track so the link rod didn't have to pass by it. The height gave a straighter pull to the release lever too, but unfortunately the clamps that hold the window to the lifting carriage got in the way.


Twisting around with the handle nearer the lock was awkward so moved it closer to the hinge. I didn't what to cut through the pressed ribbing as it is important to keep the area near the hinges stiff.


This was the only place it could go in the end and still be comfortable to use.


The handle fits right in without interfering with the window


The rod is pretty long so I use thicker gauge and then just ground the ends down to fit into the link locks. I had to step it inwards from the handle arm so it could go between the window guide track and the inner panel. Did have to remove one of the old armrest mounts so it could pass by. I tried a big step up vertically as well in the rod first, but there was too much flex with the extra bends.


Fitted into the lock release lever. Same one that the outside handle button connects too.


Can see the step to make it go close to the inner panel to get past the track.


Another bit done that took longer than it should, but that often happens.


I felt it still needed a little more refinement. It worked fine but you barely operated the handle and it would release the door. So rather than move the link even closer to the pivot point of the handle, I thought it would be best if I increased the length of the release lever at the lock end. Tried a couple of different lengths and found 40mm-1.5" longer worked the best. Now it has normal range of movement at the handle plus it reduced the angle of the link between the two ends. If you extend the release lever at the lock to too long, it increases the effort on the door button to release from the outside.

[Gojeep]

Well something is missing!


What is it doing out there?


I had put the cab over to one side with the camper behind it and suddenly it looked like I'd done a mock up!


If you squint it looks like an good expedition vehicle.



This is what took the cabs place. This is Christos's Ratrod project that he has built from a 1948 Willys Truck cab with a 1950-53 front clip. 2wd with a Holden independent front end. The easy fun part of a 4" roof chop has been half done by a panel shop. Mainly just bady tacked together at this stage!


Very nice blown mouse motor.

I won't be working on my project until I finish fixing and then finishing this, so no more updates here for a while. I start a seperate thread on this elsewhere and link to it later here.