I just spent last night working on my 1954 Willys CJ-3B, a vehicle that has “been settin'” (as rural wrenchers like to say) for probably close to six years. As I’ve resurrected many, many cars that sat for decades, I knew exactly what to look for. Here’s generally what I see wrong on a car that has sat for a long time.
My CJ-3B was a steal; at $5,900, it cost about half of what it’d be worth if it actually ran and drove. And while that sounds like a big if, the truth is that reviving an old flatfender Jeep is fairly trivial, if time-consuming, stuff.
Last night was almost like a Greatest Hits album from The Broken Cars band that has been my life, in that I was dealing with a lot of the same stuff that I’ve dealt with on my previous projects. I figured I’d go through them with you, just for fun.
The general theme is: If a car sits, then new fluids and rubber it gets.
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The Fuel System
Arguably job #1 for a car that has been sitting is the fuel system, and it’s something I have had issues with on 100% of cars that have sat for more than five years. If a vehicle has sat for under 10 years, and the fuel tank isn’t full, I have historically had some good luck diluting the bad gas (gas’ shelf life is generally considered about 6 months, though with STA-BIL fuel stabilizer it goes up to about two years) with five gallons of fresh fuel, and just running that. But your mileage may vary, and the safe bet is to just drain the tank.
That’s what I did last night.
If your tank is metal, there’s a decent chance the fuel tank is now rusted out, especially if the tank wasn’t full of gas, and instead had lots of moisture-filled air inside. That was the case with my CJ-3B; its fuel tank is junk.
And it’s not just the fuel tank. The whole fuel system, from tank to carburetor, is compromised. I’m going to have to replace the fuel lines, the fuel pump (which is filled with rust, see below – it’s a bit hard to see, but there are a bunch of rust flakes at the base), and I’ll definitely have to rebuild that Carter YF carburetor.
The Oily Bits
Beyond just the fuel system, there’s a nonzero chance that a car that has sat for years has lost a bit of oil. Rubber seals can dry out and crack when they aren’t lubricated by actively sloshing oil, allowing oil to drip to the ground. My Willys’ transfer case is completely covered in gear oil, telling me two things: The bad news is that it has a leak. The good news is that at least I know there’s some fluid in it.
Needless to say, I need to make sure my transmission, transfer case, PTO, and axles are all filled with clean, uncontaminated (moisture can often get into gearboxes that have sat around) oil so that when I drive the Jeep I’m not frying the bearings and gears.
The Brake System
Another fluid you really, really should worry about is the brake fluid. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten to a long-neglected car, stepped on the brake pedal, and the pedal either 1. dropped to the floor or 2. was as hard as a rock, as is the case with my Willys.
The former means that the brake fluid has drained out somewhere, likely through a bad wheel cylinder, perhaps the master cylinder itself (shown above with the hex-lid) leaked, or maybe one of your brake lines rusted through. The latter, as in my case, means my master cylinder is actually seized — again, likely due to rust.
In any case, the entire brake system is going to need to be “gone through,” as we wrenchers like to say.
Coolant
I’ve actually had decent luck with cooling systems holding for years and years. Maybe it’s the fact that the cooling system is sealed or the fact that coolant is specially designed to mitigate rust. In any case, if the previous owner used decent-quality 50/50 ethylene-glycol coolant, and the rubber radiator hoses haven’t been chewed through by varmints, maybe the cooling system isn’t completely toast.
But it probably is, so check on it, especially those hoses. Speaking of…
The Rubber (And Plastic)
Rubber, especially when exposed to sunlight, breaks down, and this can be a huge problem in a car. It means your seals can fail (see oil spillage reference above), it probably means your tires are toast, it may mean your rubber coolant and vacuum hoses underhood are toast, and on and on.
As for plastics, there’s a good chance your wiring insulation has been compromised and your interior plastics have cracked.
What About Electrical Bits? Rust?
Fluids and rubbers are the big-ticket items to deal with when a car has sat, though depending upon where the car is, rust could be your bigger issue. If moisture gets trapped under the car, there’s a chance the frame or floorboards are done for, and if water somehow got into the car? That’s another issue — you’ll likely have to deal with not just rusty floors, but also mold and possibly animal droppings.
As for electrical bits, the battery is almost certainly toast, though as long as the wiring is in decent shape, you might be OK with the rest of it. You may have to sand the points, along with a few other contacts that might have glazed over time, but my experience is that electrical systems are — unless disturbed by a rodent — fairly robust.
My CJ-3B’s electrical system seems mostly fine. I have some lights that aren’t functioning but my ignition switch works, and the engine cranks over just fine. It actually seems to make decent compression, and the insides of the cylinders look great; I’m fairly hopeful that this thing will run and drive beautifully.
Well, once I’ve swapped the whole fuel system, restored the brake system, filled all the gearboxes, replaced the tires, and thoroughly gone over the cooling system and electrical bits, then it should run and drive beautifully. All this just because the car sat.
[Note: It’s worth mentioning that I did pour automatic transmission fluid into the cylinders to free up the piston rings. When an engine sits, and lubrication on the cylinder walls dries up, having some light oil in there to keep those rings from “biting” is important. -DT]
It is a jeep. There is a non zero chance it has lost a bit of oil if it has sat for more than a few minutes.
There’s a non zero chance it’s losing oil when it’s not even sitting. Jeeps are just designed to help self seal against rust by applying oil.
I assume they’re like Land Rovers, in that if you can’t see oil on the ground, then it means it’s run dry.
Let an old car sit with E10 in the tank and it will be ruined in a matter of months.
“My Willys’ transfer case is completely covered in gear oil…”
“…as hard as a rock, as is the case with my Willys.”
We are still taking about Jeeps…..right?
Good God I hope so…
There’s a channel on youtube called haters garage (guy is actually semi normal despite how boy racer that name is) who does a lot of fun restoration videos and it was genuinely like the exact same process and order on an old YJ he got for $500
I don’t mean to be crass, but these things were never meant to last this long. They were cannon fodder. I doubt that after they served in the arena of combat, the military had any intention of even repatriating them. Yeah, yeah, I know it’s a ‘CJ’, but the design and production process were essentially the same.
It kind of makes what you are doing the vehicular version of the VA. Keeping some 80+ year old survivor alive.
Reader suggestion: I think this might have been covered on the old picnic site, but I think it would be very interesting if you as a Jeep geek spent some time in the Philippines covering the Jeepney scene.
It’s a 1954. LIterally no vehicle was designed to last 70 years.
“If a car
sitssets, then new fluids and rubber it gets” – the rhyme was right there!Awesome post. I’ve never dealt with this, but I’ve seen enough sitting cars to wonder what’s needed to bring them back.
Highly recommend Vice Grip Garage, that’s basically his gig. Buy vehicle sight unseen, that has been sitting for XX years, XXX miles from home, get it running, and drive it back to home base in TN. Side benefit, he has an affinity for weird and gets scared of being too close to anything with perfect paint. His last video is a 33 year parked DeTomaso Pantera, probably the rustiest one outside of a junkyard, in Canada, 1000 miles from home.
Gotta be honest. When I read the title, I thought it was going to be how to correctly free up an engine that is “frozen” from sitting for years. You know, get the crankshaft and pistons turning without damaging the rings.
That being said, I appreciate the steps on what to do if it’s already free.
I added a note about how I dealt with this. Pour ATF or Marvel Mystery Oil into the cylinders.
“How does it work? It’s a mystery” – VGG
A relevant question: Where does one (responsibly) dispose of old gas in the US? I have 6 gallons of old gas from a car that sat that I can’t get rid of. I’ve tried the city hazmat collection day, etc. and no-one seems to want to take it. Am considering just adding a half gallon per fill-up to my (near the end of its life with me) daily driver 2006 Honda to gradually burn it off (or will that just spray it out the tailpipe?).
I have the same question. It seems that nowhere around me will accept it. I have disposed of it by burning it.
I used to burn it off a bit at a time in my riding mower. I no longer have that, so I now mix it into my used motor oil when I take that in to Advanced Auto.
That is a terrible way to dispose of it as it can make the entire batch of oil unrecoverable. From autozone’s website
I appreciate the reply. 20-odd years ago I made my own diesel fuel & could use bad gas to thin the used veggie oil I made it from. After I could no longer get decent WVO, I talked to the guy who did recycling pickup at Advance, and he told me much of it already had a lot of gas in it, so a quart per gallon of oil was no big deal.
Sounds like I need to do further research
Gas mixed into used motor oil is high grade ore compared to the crude oil both came from. All you need is a distillation column. Which is hopefully how used motor oil is refined before finding its way into heavy duty diesel engines.
if you have a yard, use it to burn fire ant hills.
A former coworker would burn his lawn every winter. The ash makes a nitrogen rich fertilizer for the grass to grow greener in the spring. At least that was his claim.
In both cases, make sure you have waterhose or fire extinguisher in your hand.
That’s going to contaminate the soil. I’d pass on any fruits or vegetables that person may offer you out of their yard.
Mulching is a MUCH better way to convert the grass as nitrogen fertilizer. As a bonus it also disposes of the clippings so there’s nothing to throw away.
Put an ad in your local Craigslist’s free section. Make it clear its for lawn equipment only. Surely there’s a gardener who could use some free gas.
If it can be burned in lawn equipment then it’s not really bad gas, is it?
What do you suggest for 10 year old gas that is dark orange in color and extra pungent?
Liquor. Its the perfect barrel aged toast for DT and his bride to be.
it will evaporate if left open on a warm day. not super eco friendly but it will go away. also it will clean parts but also not great
I brought the ~5 gallons of gross fuel I had to my county’s hazardous waste disposal. YMMV whether yours has one.
It’s really, really hard to find a place.
Where I live the city haz-mat site will take it, in limited amounts. Sounds like it’s truly a your-mileage-may-vary situation depending on where you live.
Got a raccoon latrine to eliminate? https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/09/human-cases-of-raccoon-parasite-may-be-your-best-excuse-to-buy-a-flamethrower/
Raccoon latrine elimination is clearly the best answer! I really appreciate all the answers–I didn’t really get a really clearly helpful one, but that in itself is helpful as there doesn’t seem to be an ideal obvious solution I wasn’t thinking of (other than raccoon latrine).
If you want it to run, you’ve got to run it. Works for cars and boats, probably airplanes too, but I can’t afford that.
On my revived(after 10 years in a field) f150, I got it running and drove it around the block a couple times before the clutch started slipping. Turns out there had been a large mouse nest in the bellhousing when I was running it, which didn’t hurt anything until I stepped on the clutch, separating the clutch plates and letting mouse poo fall between them.
If you didn’t know, mouse feces will glaze the hell out of a clutch disc!
On that six month fuel thing- yeah, I’m sure that it’s not optimally fresh after six months, but I have had gas(plain ol 87 octane ethanol fuel) sit for like two years in a tank and run with no issues whatsoever.
What’s the secret? I live in a desert, and the average humidity is very low. The primary means by which has goes bad is absorbing moisture from the air. Less humidity, gas takes longer to go bad.
Also, if you’re worried about it, non ethanol fuel lasts MUCH longer, because ethanol is quite hygroscopic while gasoline is not: basically, the ethanol content is what makes it go bad.
I let my RV sit for 2 years at one point with a half full tank of gas, and it started right up and ran fine. I wouldn’t recommend it, but it worked out alright that time.
A 1954 Willys CJ-3B, when fully functional, will not “drive beautifully.” It’ll drive like a rather crude military implement engineered more than 70 years ago.
Right. So it’ll drive beautifully.
The beauty of being able to drive an implement of history
As long as the wheels and tires are round, it will roll down the road as well as any other vehicle.
Any other vehicle of similar age and type. For any normal human who’s driven a vehicle manufactured within the past 40 years, that’s not well.
I have a mid 50s CJ-5 that was given to me a dozen years ago and I parked it in the barn. Was partially restored by the neighbor before they gave up. Same F-head engine and bits underneath except with a CJ-5 body. One cool thing is it has an overdrive unit on the transmission! I do prefer the looks of the 3B. A friend used to refer to them as a pregnant Willys.
I’ll be going though all the same stuff as David when I finally get to that project.
C’mon, man – that clearly should be sets!
Or “gits”.
If the only goal was a rhyme, sure. But the vernacular “sets” was already established, so David’s use of “sits” makes zero sense there.
Yeah, I blew it.
David – this is why you need a smaller fleet – cars NEED to be driven, and if you have too many, you don’t drive them often enough and shit like this happens. When friends are out of town for long periods of time, for instance they got called up by the National Guard, we try to start up and drive their cars once a week, with a minimum of once a month – this really helps. Finally you didn’t discuss the engine itself, but most people I know will pull the plugs and inject in some Marvel Mystery Oil and let it sit over night before turning the engine over by hand – electronic borescope are now so cheap I assume most people also take a look at what you can see in each cylinder. Finally with respect to anti-freeze, as others have noted it isn’t the main ingredients, but the minor additives that help prevent the rust.
If you know you are going to drive your car infrequently, I also recommend using the best, most expensive gas you can find when you park the car – I have not investigated this, but my infrequently used (once a year in recent years) snowblower and leaf blower never have any problems and they get the Shell Nitro+ which claims to have better additives (and maybe this is true?). I never drain my tanks, and in-fact try to keep them more than half-full so that there is a large reservoir of additives in the gas tank.
Ethanol-free is a more useful metric for longer-term stability, even if it may coincide with the expense.
Ethanol free gas along with the marine version of Sta-Bil have kept my small engines going strong.
My local source for ethanol free is VP Racing fuels and some of their stuff is $8.00 a gallon. My lawn mower and motorcycle seem fine with Chevron from the pump
And this is a great explanation of why a Craigslist ad that says “ran when parked” is complete bullshit.
Its not bullshit if it actually ran when parked.
The follow-up questions (if it’s not clear in the ad) are simply:
“How long ago was that?”
and
“Where has it been sitting since?”
“Ran when Parked” is extremely valuable information.
Because Ran when Parked means you have to do all of this work to it, rather that the alternative; Didn’t Run when Parked means you have to do all this work to it AND rebuild the whole drivetrain.
Soliciting opinions please, Sta-Bil or Sea Foam? Thanks.
Sta-bil for things you know are clean, and want to keep them that way. SeaFoam for things that might need to be cleaned out, but aren’t so bad it’s sending chunks thru the system already.
Yes.
Sta-bil mainly protects against fuel absorbing water, particularly preventing fuel containing ethanol from forming nasty deposits where it evaporates.
Sea Foam is great for cleaning out crud that you can’t get to by just replacing rubber and gaskets and filters in the fuel system. Add a little to every fresh tank of fuel for the first month or so of operation. Or every time if it’s a vehicle prone to sitting.
Thanks!
For storage, marine Sta-Bil. Moisture is the enemy.
Seafoam is useful for older engines or anything carbureted. Fuel injection engines get anything with PEA in it.
Thank you!
I use Marine Sta-bil, and do my best to keep the tank full for anything that sits (less room for moisture-laden air).
Check on Bob Is The Oil Guy if you’re curious about Seafoam. When it was $4 I used it occasionally. Now I used Chevron Techron Complete Fuel System Cleaner because it has the most PEA for the price.
If you’re running older, carbureted stuff, ashless synthetic 2-cycle oil (~2oz per 5 gallons gas) is a cheap everyday additive that noticeably calmed upper-end noise in several vehicles for me. Is a top-end lubricant and provides some detergents as well
Will do, thanks!
Old Jeeps left out in a field give me the Willys.
Whenever I’m shopping for conversion vans one of my top 3 least favorite things to read is “been sitting two [or more] years”. Hell, how long before just tire replacement alone is a necessity?
But yeah, certainly don’t want to have to do a full fuel system replacement. Pain in the ass and I wish people would sell them if they’re not using them, especially since conversion vans are the opposite of museum pieces.
Did you siphon the old fuel out or was there a drain plug (or similar) you could use?
Some people swear by the oil-extraction pumps for oil changes, and it seems like one could use such a pump on old fuel tanks as well.
Beyond that, you’ll want to check on the charging whirler and the sparkalators. 😉
The gas will eat the seals out of one of those extractors. At least my old MityVac said that gas would do that. Maybe someone came out with a dual purpose one.
And hope the fuel-make-it-happener is working.
“I’ve actually had decent look with cooling systems holding for years and years. Maybe it’s the fact that coolant isn’t hygroscopic like brake fluid”
Pedantic chemist here. Pure ethylene glycol (aka coolant) is strongly hygroscopic. Its just that in a cooling system its already mixed with water because the combination has both a higher billing point and lower freezing point than either fluid alone.
Fo sho. It’s a double whammy.
Let me pile on with the pedantry, and suggest that “specially designed” is just designed. “Specially” is a filler word that adds nothing.
Counterpoint: There’s degrees to design from “boilerplate” to “bespoke”. “Specially designed” implies the latter.
This use case strikes me as lazy writing. If there’s anything truly special about the design, say so! Otherwise, this is simply padding the word count. (Modifiers applied to unique are similarly pointless.)
Why is it so different from “custom” or “bespoke”? If someone wanted to pad the word count with useless filler words stupid luxotechy sounding bullshit like “pneumatic tire technology”, “advanced four stroke combustion engine”, “precision multi millisecond ignition timing”, “space age polymer components” and “soft Corinthian leather” do that much better.
Keep in mind we’re discussing coolant. Nothing available at every auto parts store in the country can be considered custom, let alone bespoke.
“Keep in mind we’re discussing coolant”
We were but are we still?
That doesn’t mean “specially designed” doesn’t apply to other things.
And yes, you can “specially design” coolant according to Mazda. My Mazda’s service manual is very adamant to use FL22 and ONLY FL22 as other blends will do very bad things.
I don’t want to be pedantic, but being German my genes compel me to note that it’s hyGroscopic, not hyDroscopic
The best kind of correct.
It’s gonna be interesting a decade from now trying to revive the extensive electronics in modern cars. Years of loneliness will make the computers crazy indeed.
The newest/techiest car I’ve resurrected was an ’07 IS350, which is peanuts next to what we deal with now. At least the lights and ignition still had physical relays that could could see drawing battery voltage, even if it didn’t, ya know, actually start right away.
Legit Street Cars had an Alpina BMW with water damaged electronics. Some very interesting fixes to revive the old modules that could be saved. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCPhBTbpYs4L_mhrz2Af8D7v17Y7pd89x
Entropy. Cars without movement, care, and energy will revert to a chaotic dispersed pile of earth from which it came.
People, too 😉
Where it sat makes a huge difference. In a barn or garage is infinitely than out in a field.
In a climate controlled storage unit is better 😛
In a plastic bubble of positive pressure dry nitrogen or CO2 for the ultimate time capsule.