Jeep makes the cover of a magazine and F Bolts!

GPW #208102 might be just about finished for now, but there are always little details and changes I can do! But the big news this week is that the Jeep is getting a little famous…

For those who subscribe to Military Vehicles Magazine, you might see a very familiar Jeep on the cover of the current December issue… GPW #208102! Yes, I was asked by the Editor to take a photo for the cover of the issue of my Jeep. Very exciting to see the Jeep on the cover! But that’s not all…

Along with the cover photo, I wrote a four-page article on my Jeep’s restoration and the challenges for someone who is not a mechanic. It was a lot of fun to write the article, and look for future issues to have ‘tech articles’ I’ll be writing with tips and processes restoring Jeeps! A lot of it will be from my blog online. It’s very exciting to be able to give back to the military community in this way!

And here’s the image that made the cover of the issue! All decked out for Christmastime (ironically, this was shot on a hot day in August)

Moving on! Mail call (been a while since I’ve had one!) from Ron Fitzpatrick Jeep Parts with some F marked parts!

First up were a set of pintle hook bolts with nice large F stamps on them.

Also two sets of fender brace bolts (2 on each side).

Naturally, first step is always primer! Dusted off the trusty bolt painting box.

Here’s a look at the bolts I had on the fender braces. They are modern bolts that I used a belt sander to grind the markings flat, then used the JB Weld Steel custom F Bolt making process I have (which I’ve detailed in the past) to put fake F stamps on them. They turned out okay, but if I ever needed to sandblast the bolts, the F would go away.

They weren’t the best casts of F stamps I’ve done on bolts either, so I was happy to replace them. Left is my custom F stamped bolt, and right is the new repro F stamped bolt.

Both bolts were installed. I had to sand the brace as the paint was getting messed up around the bolts. Once sanded, I primed it all.

Sorry for the wrong focus (focused on the bottom), but here are the new bolts all painted.

And on the other side, the new bolts were installed. I need to give it another layer of paint. the wooden insert in the brace is long gone. One of these days I’ll take the fender off, expand the brace out, and put a new piece of wood in there. For now, this does the trick even if it’s collapsed the brace a little bit.

On the rear pintle hook, the top bolts I have been using were ones from the M38 post-war pintle hook that my Jeep came with when I got it. When I put a GPW pintle hook on there instead, I noticed these top bolts had FP written on it. No clue what that meant or if they were special, but I used them again. Well, I can’t find anything on these bolts, so I figured they are not original WW2.

As you can see here, the bolts are just the top ones. The bottom has two large eye bolts. The eye bolts are also post-war, eventually I’ll get GPW marked ones for that as well.

Here’s a look at the whole pintle hook with the top FP bolts.

After removing the larger FB bolts (one at a time), I put the new F marked bolts in and sanded the area around them.

And the other side.

After touching up the primer then hitting them with the 33070 (OD Green in spray form from Ron Fitzpatrick Jeep Parts), they look great!

I’m really liking the larger F stamps on these bolts. They look different than all the other F stamps.

And one more look at the other side.

The last item I got is a new axe holder bracket. The one I have now came with the Jeep, but it seems repro. GPW ones have a F stamped into them, so I felt it was time to replace this one with a correct F one.

Here’s the one I got from Ron Fitzpatrick Jeep Parts with the correct ‘plain’ F. This is the same type of F that is stamped on the rear seat back rest hold bracket.

Like before, I roughed up the surface with a scotch pad and then hit it with Red Oxide Barrier III primer.

And then painted 33070 OD Green! I wasn’t able to get to putting this on my Jeep this week, but I’ll do that this weekend and include the rest of it in the next update.

So that’s it for this short update, but I’m so excited to be able to share the news about the December Military Vehicles Magazine! If you end up reading the article, let me know what you think!

Till the next update…