I received a report from Tim on his search for Willys during a trip with his wife in Puerto Rico. Coincidently, on the same day, I received an email from Angel in Puerto Rico who was searching for some fenders for a truck restoration (I was able to locate fiberglass and metal ones for him).

Tim writes, “We got away from the cold and spent a few days in Puerto Rico.  As mentioned before we try to rent a Jeep when we travel. But the Jeep fun factor was way too much this trip.  We settled for a little red car for $9 /day verses the $90/day for Jeep Wrangler.  We kept our eyes open but did not see any Willys this trip.  

We did find several new 2016 Jeeps at Fort Buchanan post exchange as part of the Military Overseas Car Program.  Service members can order new cars through this program and  have them shipped to their home state side. Program offers military discounts and special orders. Here is Cathy with a 2017 Jeep Wrangler 75th Anniversary editon.  Later that day we saw an interesting display at a local Jeep dealer, the sign Gran Venta  means   Big Sale. They had 3 new Jeeps  suspended from a crane.”

Tyler Powers needs some high resolution (300 dpi) interior and chassis photos of an FC for a 3D model. Contact him at powersty123@yahoo.com if you can help.

He writes, “I have recently bought a professionally made 3d model of a FC-150. I am going to take it and put it into a video game I play called spintires. The trouble is being that the model designed to be used for renders and has no interior and no frame or drivetrain. I am going to have to model these myself. This is difficult with the limited quality and number of pictures of FC’s on the internet.

What I could use help with is if you could make a post asking for any high resolution pictures people have from their FC’s specifically of the interior and frame. Restoration pictures of rolling chassis would be really useful.”

Here are some examples of the photo angles he’s hoping to get:

Gary shared this interesting post about early car racing in Woodstock, New York. Some of these custom race cars were equipped with pre-war Willys engines. So, while not much of a “jeep” story, there is a tenuous link to this interesting bit of regional history.

Nick’s got this CJ-5 for sale that includes an unusual 3 Point Lift. Anyone seen one like this. It appears built for installation under the bed so the bed remains free for hauling. You can see more pics of the jeep here: View all the information on eBay

Continue reading →

UPDATE: For some reason the comments were turned off on the original post, so I made this new one.

Today begins the 10th year of eWillys. What began as a handful of posts and a couple of readers has mushroomed into over 40,000 pages that reach people around the world. Along the way I picked up a new wife, journeyed all over the US, and made lots of great friends. It’s been an wonderful experience and the longest “job” I’ve ever had. The reality is, it’s far more than a job. It’s become a part of me.

The other day I asked Ann if I should call it quits at the end of year 10. I explained that I’m seeing more and more activity on Facebook groups and on Twitter streams and I’m sure there’s much more happening on Youtube channels, Instagram, and other newer media that I don’t (yet capture). I told her that a website seems so old school at this point (perhaps olde skool is more accurate). But then, the newer types of media are more like streams of consciousness than reservoirs of knowledge like websites can be. So, I asked Ann what should the role of eWillys within the changing media landscape be and what will that landscape look like in another five years?

She just stared at me as I explained all this and asked, “What would you do if you didn’t do eWillys every evening?” She’s right. I have no idea.

So, eWillys will be marching onward for the foreseeable future. I do have some ideas for some changes to improve the timelines of the site. We’ll see how it all goes…

Have a Happy New Year!

Steve shared this photo of a jeep bar. It’s been making the rounds of Facebook recently.

A buddy of Scott’s wanted to reuse this unrepairable tailgate for something, so Scott created this cool bench.

Thanks to Sarah Staples for giving eWillys jeep experts a nod in her newest article. We helped her identify this wagon as a 1961 Traveller. She told me that the rarity of the vehicle helped her sell the travel piece to her editor. She wrote it for “Postmedia Driving, the driving section of newspapers across Canada.”