Sometime back, Dan’s grandfather had replaced the stock CJ-5 steering with a Hudson steering mechanism. However, the bell crank has seen better days, so Dan decided to upgrade to a manual saginaw. Upgrading to the manual saginaw is rare these days (see various steering upgrade options here), so it’s a nice treat to have Dan document his work for us. Thanks Dan!
Dan writes:
Here is the Jeep soon after I picked it up from my grandfathers old ranch. I had already started to disassemble it. It’s a 1955 CJ5 which he purchased in 1959. About ten years ago he told me that his best guess was that it had about 500,000 miles on it. It has seen a lot of abuse and he made many modifications to it. That’s a Hudson steering wheel and column.
As you can see in this close up, the frame is broken clean in half just in front of the divers side front wheel.
The bellcrank where he relocated it. It was just about ready to literally fall off. All the welds were broken and only one bent bolt was holding it on.