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I Built the Only 2026 WWII Jeep
- jaffa2 3mo agoa decent long form article with pictures, a story, well written, and something of interest. I will read this fully later as it will require some time. Good work!
- baerbelblue 3mo ago[flagged]
- ggm 3mo agoThe important point is "from as much ebay parts as possible" because I suspect there are still "jeep in a crate" boxes where all you have to do is remove the Cosmolene (this is undoubtedly not all you have to do btw)
- ErroneousBosh 3mo agoYou can build a Citroën 2CV from scratch with entirely new parts - almost - because someone somewhere makes what you need. About the only mechanical component you can't buy is the gearbox "bucket", presumably because nobody ever breaks those. You can actually get various gearbox upgrades for them which is worth it if you daily one, because the mainshaft nut can slacken off and get you jammed in gear.
- normie3000 3mo ago> get you jammed in gear Terrifying prospect. What are your options in that situation? Would turning off the ignition have any effect?
- 27183 3mo agoJust stomp the clutch and shut it off
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- ErroneousBosh 3mo agoPress the clutch, brake to a stop. Unscrew the bolts holding the top of the gearbox where the selector mechanism goes, lever the main gear back into place with a long screwdriver, and then use the screwdriver to tap the mainshaft nut around until it's reasonably tight again. Then drive it home where you can fix it properly. At least, that's what I did.
- normie3000 3mo agoAh not so bad then. I thought "stuck in gear" meant the clutch wouldn't allow degearing.
- ErroneousBosh 3mo agoNo, that would happen if the clutch cable snapped though. I've had this happen on a Vauxhall Astra and a VW Polo (that was actually a hydraulic pipe failing). No biggie. Just knock it into neutral, brake to a stop, and figure out what to do after that. Both times once I got it stopped, determined that nothing really bad was happening, and that it was safe-ish to proceed, I just put it in 1st, started it up, and went up through the gears carefully without using the now no longer disengageable clutch until I got home and could look at it properly.
- normie3000 3mo agoNow I'm lost again - how do you "knock it into neutral" if the clutch isn't disengageable?
- ErroneousBosh 3mo agoEven when the vehicle is moving and in gear, there's very little actually holding it in gear. Inside the gearbox you've got two shafts, one driven by the engine with geared teeth on it, which meshes with gears that spin freely on bearings on the output shaft. The gears work in pairs, with a brass collar that slides backwards and forwards to lock the spinning gear to the output shaft. When you put it in first, the brass collar locks the biggest output gear to the shaft, which is driven by the smallest input gear, so you've got a big reduction, and so on - look at the derailleur on your bike, it's the same idea. There's a semicircular fork that slides on a rod and that rod has notches cut in it, that a ball bearing on a spring clicks into. When you put the gearbox into gear, the click you feel is it jumping into that notch. But that notch and that pea-sized ball bearing is all that holds it in place! So you can lift off the throttle a little so the gearbox isn't under tension, push gently on the shaft, and it'll pop into neutral. If you start it in first gear, you can get some speed up, pop it into neutral, and then if you carefully get the right amount of revs, you can just pop it into second. I don't recommend trying this in a car you plan to keep for a long time, it wears the gearbox quite heavily, but you will be able to do this - with some horrible noises the first few times until you get used to it - and keep your starting and stopping and changing gear to a minimum all the way home, or to a garage. So now if your clutch cable breaks, you know you can actually get out of the snowstorm and home, or at least somewhere safer.
- pineapplepizza6 3mo agoA manual car is normally in gear while you're driving it. Being jammed in a gear, while catastrophic for your goal of getting to your destination, wouldn't be terrifying like an uncommanded acceleration. If you were stuck in a certain gear you couldn't shift down to go much slower without stalling (but you can let it stall, if you were trying to stop anyway. You wouldn't be the first car to break down on the highway) and you couldn't shift up to go much faster (but in an emergency you could still floor the accelerator, wasting gas and wearing out your engine much faster).
- pjc50 3mo agoThere's a long running treasure hunt for some still-crated Spitfires that were supposedly shipped to Burma at the exact end of the war and then buried when no longer required. The amount of equipment left over from WW2 was staggering.
- hydrogen7800 3mo agoThis is one of those perennial aviation legends[0] that are still alive, like Amelia Earhart's wreck. Always another rich guy funding a search with promising results. [0]https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-20957162 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-20957162
- echelon_musk 3mo agoMy late great uncle was in the RAF during WW2 and was at the liberation of Belson. I remember him saying that the RAF buried Spitfire engines, so it's definitely a real practice.
- AsmaraHolding 3mo agoThe terms of the lend lease agreement meant that Britain only had to pay for the equipment it kept after the war. So in some cases they were pushing aircraft of the deck of carriers into the sea so they didn’t have to pay for them.
- hydrogen7800 3mo agoSpitfires were British planes, so not part of the American lend lease program. Maybe if they were build with American loans, though?
- AsmaraHolding 3mo agoSorry, I wasn’t meaning to say that they were spitfires in particular that they pushed into the sea. I believe they were actually F4U Corsairs in that case.
- walrus01 3mo agoOn a slightly newer time scale there are always firearm collectors searching for something impossible to acquire now, but which might have been acquired at some point in the past and squirreled away in its factory original box in the cosmoline. Like somebody who might have purchased an imported Egyptian Maadi AKM (locally made AK47 variant) in 1982, then never unpacked it for whatever reason. People collect these things just because, almost like pokemon cards, another example would be the rarity of finding a specific year of East German Makarov in pristine/factory new condition.
- bombcar 3mo agoAnd these things do exist - I know, because I have some (nascent, perhaps) - new in box LEGO sets wrapped and deep in a storage unit, spare parts still in box in the garage, etc.
- toast0 3mo agoSeveral years ago, I bought a new in box 1981 road bike. Story from the seller was an old chicago bike shop went out of business and there were some old bikes and parts in the back. The frame is big, I'm 6 foot and I barely fit. Probably they sold the bikes with regular size frames and put this in the back, and then styles changed and they forgot about it. The brake pads wore out super quick, but everything else worked fine. I went through the tubes too, but that happens. No big collectors, so the price was reasonable as a bike to use... more than a similar used bike, but much less than a similarly nice new bike.
- alex0015 3mo ago15 years or so ago when I was more into guns I spent a _lot_ of time on historical firearm sites looking for Martini-Henry rifles. There were still a trickle of them turning up straight from caches in Afghanistan (maybe other countries too). I never bought any because I was just a teenager, and now prices have more than doubled, of course.
- m463 3mo agoReminds me of stories where someone parks a pristine <some-car> and goes away for some reason, never to return. Then decades go by before the "barn find" is rediscovered.
- babakzy 3mo agoCool, maybe worth it!
- dominicrose 3mo agoThere's a Wheeler Dealers episode where Edd China takes care of a WWII Jeep.
- Cthulhu_ 3mo agoI love that show
- thomasjb 3mo agoI can see the appeal, not having to deal with much rust or bolts breaking (the 2 things which cause the most trouble for me in working on vehicles). 800 miles across the desert is some way to run it in though!
- RugnirViking 3mo agoI wish he shared what it cost him overall. I can already see from some of the numbers and some guesswork that it must not be a flattering sum, but I still want to see it!
- hardibro 3mo agoHowdy! This is Matt from The Autopian. I talked to David about this and we'll have it for you soon. We've been doing the math and it's kinda hilarious. Obviously, we were proving a point with this video but it's not... the most efficient way to do this.
- 27183 3mo agoAnother big point of curiosity for me is registration--it clearly doesn't have a CA number plate, but there was a big red "3" on a laminated card in the spare.. what is that? How do you go about titling and registering a brand new body + frame?
- hardibro 3mo agoThat was also a fun story! I had to do the insurance for it and CA is actually surprisingly a great state for this kind of stuff.
- AnimalMuppet 3mo agoCalifornia has a tradition of being car-friendly. Probably not the first time someone did something like this, and they might have some idea of how to handle it by now.
- hardibro 3mo agoWe'll try to get the price up today or tomorrow and the registration story up next week.
- 3mo ago
- usrusr 3mo agoIs it truly a 2026 car though, if it does not come with an ungodly amount of attention beep nagware that cannot be permanently disabled?
- theandrewbailey 3mo agoIs it really a 2026 car if it was made in 2026? (New cars in 2026 are manufactured and sold as 2027)
- dofm 3mo ago"o my god I lob a yeep" Super article. Something to actually read, great photos. "How I Got Myself In This Predicament" is just the sort of subheading I like to read.
- fusslo 3mo agoThat's an insane amount of work. An amazing adventure and a saint of a wife! I'm wondering if there'll be any follow up: Thats a lot of metal in the engine oil. Whats the source? is there a fix? or is it just 'breaking in' a new motor? Did he ever solve the overheating problems? Did he ever finish the headlights and other small items? and now what does he do with all the duplicate/spare parts? I've done a couple extremely high stress road trips, so I fully empathize with him passing out every time he had to pull over. What a fun read; I love these ultra-long-form articles.
- robbak 3mo agoFrom what I've seen of break-in oil, this books typical. Especially as what he did on that trip is everything you should not do to a freshly built engine.
- bushwart 3mo agoWonderful project. But alarm bells went off in my head when I saw the picture of the helper, wearing gloves, holding a part to be drilled while the author held the drill centimeters away from the helper's gloved hands. I hope that was just for illustration purposes. pic: https://images-stag.jazelc.com/uploads/theautopian-m2en/Screenshot-2026-01-14-at-6.28.37%E2%80%AFAM.png https://images-stag.jazelc.com/uploads/theautopian-m2en/Scre...
- cduzz 3mo agoThose kids (the autopian team) specialize in generating engagement doing things that are pretty unsafe... Another example would be the dude who used a chainsaw on some lead acid batteries, for reasons. https://www.theautopian.com/how-i-used-a-chainsaw-to-remove-batteries-from-the-cheapest-ev-in-the-world/ https://www.theautopian.com/how-i-used-a-chainsaw-to-remove-... That dude's also an owner of the company, so maybe giving himself lead poisoning for clicks is worth it?
- MisterTea 3mo agoIt doesn't set off alarm bells in my head. That bearing material is very soft and easy to drill. clamping it is not simple as it's easy to deform. I would have done the same and went nice and slow starting with a center drill and moving to a standard jobbers afterward.
- cduzz 3mo agoAnd I would have put the bearing shell over a pvc pipe and used a hand drill or just spun the drill bit between my fingers, assuming it is just bearing material.
- 27183 3mo agoThe things about that picture giving me hives are 1. drill not perpendicular to the work 2. bearing cups are unsupported so the downpressure is spreading them 3. when the bit punches through it's going to mar the table. They noted glittery bits on the first oil change, might be prudent to run an oil analysis and see what's up.
- Shalomboy 3mo agoI love the Autopian, glad they're on the HN front page. David Tracy's Jeep antics have kept me up at night worrying for at least 10 years now.
- brendoelfrendo 3mo agoEmbarassed to say I didn't realize that Tracy had a new gig over at Autopian. Really pleased this article made it here because now I can see what he's been up to! This is a great place to start.
- thisisauserid 3mo agoJust like they eventually added to WWII Jeeps, it needs a huge anti-decapitation pole on the front (maybe a really cool (and huge) hood ornament?).
- bombcar 3mo agoThis kind of story makes you realize what a true marvel the modern production line is - so many moving parts that have to line up just right each time to be able to produce vehicles as fast as we do.
- jbailes 3mo agoWow. This is super neat. After having gotten my hands dirty on a 30+ year old car, I can definitely see why it would be desirable to have a relatively new frame to start from vs. a WWII Jeep.
- steve-atx-7600 3mo agoGood skills to have for mad-maxing it thru the desert after the ai apocalypse :)
- hvs 3mo agoOne of my great regrets in life is not knowing anything about how to rebuild an engine (and various other car parts). It's not exactly a cheap hobby, so it's probably for the best, but I have the feeling I would love working on cars (my wife probably not so much).
- andrewblossom 3mo agoIt doesn't have to be a super expensive hobby. Plenty of old cars need some love, and you can buy them (and their replacement parts) quite inexpensively. In my experience, if you're willing to learn, break a few tools and old parts, get dirty, and persevere, you'll more than likely succeed, and your bank account won't be too broken at the end of it. (Owner of two old german cars, one which has seen a partial engine rebuild, the other significant chassis welding. No formal training doing either.)
- qup 3mo agoI started last year. I had most of the tools already. I picked 90s ford trucks as my platform: cheap, plentiful, variety of models, known to be reliable, easy enough to work on with simple tools, parts still readily available, lots of YouTube material for any job I need to do. I bought a couple and I've already had to do a lot of work. It turns out, it's not that difficult. The systems are simple, each on their own, with few exceptions. When you isolate systems, you can just learn one at a time without pressure to be a whole mechanic. I still reserve the right to send it to the shop if needed. I haven't had to rebuild an engine yet, but I've been all around the wheels, tires, axels, AC, fuel system, timing, vacuum lines, trailer wiring, brakes, coolant system, and of course I service all my own fluids. I put it off way too long. My advice is to start now, if you think you'll like it. And you can start with mowers...a whole lot of the tools and concepts transfer.
- toast0 3mo agoSee if you can find a copy of 'How to keep your Volkswagen Alive' by John Muir and have a read through. Find an older VW (or similar) and that's the basics and a bit more. Definitely replace the fuel lines on an old VW, but otherwise drive it and let it tell you what needs doing. IMHO, fuel injection is nicer than carburetion, but you some early injection systems have a bad reputation; Bosch L-jetronic seems pretty reasonable. Some people really like carbs though, so up to you. Lots and lots of forums, some of them helpful even. When it's an extra car that you have for fun, you don't have as much of the 'needs to work asap' stress and you can also get one that's more questionable cosmetically to save some money.
- stronglikedan 3mo ago"the only" is hardly ever correct. you built the only one that you know of
- MontagFTB 3mo agoThis article was tremendous. My dad and I rebuilt an old GPW as my car in high school. His brother bought it as his car for high school a generation earlier. This article and the video are a love letter to that old car- a quirky, heavy, underpowered, beautiful legend.
- elzbardico 3mo agoIncredible project. And how much I love that this is an article instead of an youtube video.