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About a year after I bought my 1984
CJ-7(purchased used in '93), rust started showing up in random places. Combine
the constant salt water from living on the coastline in Juneau, Alaska with the
fact that CJ-7's have ungalvanized body tubs and you have the perfect recipe for
rust. The hood and driver
 side fender
had some bad surface rust on the outside where the paint had been baked away by an engine
fire that occurred before I owned the Jeep. Thanks to some unlicensed, uninsured idiot in
a 70’s Ford pickup, I got those replaced. Eventually my driver side floorboard became
a window with a great view of the ground. After a little while longer, my
rear fenders started to develop rust holes from tire spray. Over the years, the holes grew
bigger and bigger and my Bondo patches just weren’t holding up. It finally got to the
point that I felt the vehicle would be dangerous in the event of a roll over because the
rollbar would easily punch right through the rust weakened tub.
I explored many different options to take care of the rust problem. I considered
cutting out the diseased sections and welding in new sheet metal, purchasing a new CJ-7
tub,  finding a used CJ-7 tub in good condition, getting a fiberglass tub, and finally I
considered swapping on a YJ tub. I chose not to repair the original tub because I figured
it would be a losing battle. I then tried to find a used CJ-7 tub in decent condition, but
repeatedly got laughed at, so I bagged that idea. Then I looked at the price of new CJ-7
tubs and quickly abandoned that option. Then there’s fiberglass, but I just
didn’t feel comfortable riding around in something that wasn’t good old dentable
steel. The only option left, besides buying a new Jeep (no way!) was to swap on a YJ tub.
Being a die hard square headlight hating CJ fan (no offense to YJ owners), I had a hard
time convincing myself that this would be ok. Finally I realized that no one would be able
to tell the difference after I put my CJ dash and tailgate on the YJ tub.
Now that I decided what I was going to do, it was time to do a little research. I was
directed to a couple of websites of Jeepers who had already done this swap or were in the
middle of it. Jeepskate’s site (http://jeepskate.4x4.org/)
was a valuable resource full of information along with Canadian Four Wheel Drive (http://www.can4x4.com/) and Jim O'Brien's page (http://www.tidesys.com/yjtub_main.htm).
Reading these web pages and articles convinced me that this would be a project
that I could successfully complete.
Next came the process of locating a YJ tub in decent condition. That proved to be very
difficult, at least in my location, and almost caused me to abandon the project before it
ever started. I checked all of the wrecking yards and body shops around Boise and came up
with nothing except a dented tub that had a whole section cut out of it to patch another
tub. Then I expended my search area to the whole United States. I located a lot of tubs in the northern California area, but they wanted $1000
or more for the tubs. I finally became really desperate and called Gary’s Auto Wrecking in
Maple Grove, British Columbia (that's Canada for those of you that failed
geography). I got their name from Canadian Four Wheel Drive’s tub
swap article. I called them and was informed that they had a YJ tub in good condition for $700. I
thought it sounded better than $1000, but still too much, especially when
figuring the cost to drive up and get it. Then I realized "hello,
you’re calling CANADA!" After the exchange rate, that would work out to about
US$475…now that sounds like a deal. So what if it would be a 1200 mile round trip, I
needed a vacation anyway. I called them back and gave them my credit card number and they
agreed to hold the tub for me for a month until I could come pick it up.
Now that I had a YJ tub purchased, I considered the project officially started and got
to work tearing the CJ apart.  That proved to be quite a
challenge since I have a limited amount of tools and no air power. I quickly began to hate
Torx bolts and actually cut/ground many of them off after breaking a many torx bits.
Stripping to  old CJ tub down probably could have been done in a day or so with air tools,
but without, I often spent hours on just one rusty bolt trying to convince them to come
off. I think the most difficult/time consuming part of the whole
stripping process was removing the mess of wires that comes with all the gauges on the
dash. I had an Alpine alarm system wired into the CJ and it had wires going all over.
I’ll be lucky if I can figure out how to wire it back up. The roll bar made me want
to throw things as it was attached to the tub by about 12 rusty torx head bolts.
On a few of the bolts, I ended up using an angle grinder to grind two sides of
the bolt head flat so I could get a wrench or pliers on them. I ground the heads
of the remaining bolts and left the rest in the tub since it was being replaced
anyway. What a lousy design, when the roll bar goes back in, there will be no torx
bolts! Then came the body mount bolts. These too were rusted and stubborn. With a lot of
elbow grease, cut up knuckles, a little bit of yelling and some liquid wrench, all of the
body mount bolts either broke off or came out. An air compressor and impact wrench would
have made this sooooo much easier. Finally the tub was ready to come off.
Somewhere in the middle of all of this stripping the CJ tub, I hooked up my 5x8 ft
flat bed trailer to my Grand Cherokee  and headed up to Canada to get my tub. When I got to
Gary’s Auto Wrecking, I started to become a little skeptical. All I saw was a little
quonset hut looking building. That all changed as soon as I walked inside. I was
greeted by two very friendly employees, both of whom I had talked to on the phone when
making purchasing arrangements for the tub. They directed me to their yard where my Jeep tub was
waiting and suddenly I was in heaven. It was full of wrecked Jeeps,
mostly YJ’s but still, Jeeps. There were so many parts. After wiping the drool off my
face I located my tub and was very pleased with the condition of it. It still had the
roll bar, rear fender flares and other small misc parts attached to it. We loaded the tub
onto my trailer and after purchasing a new CJ-7 windshield frame, I was on my way.
Now that the YJ tub was at home, I began to work on it too. I wanted to make sure that
it would last a long time, so I used POR-15 on what little surface rust there was (mostly
on the firewall where battery acid and brake fluid had eaten some paint). Then after
carefully prepping the inside of the tub, I coated it with Herculiner. If you plan to use
the CJ gas tank in  it’s stock location, then you have to cut a hole in the rear
passenger side for the gas filler hose. I did
this by tracing the original CJ gas filler hole onto a piece of paper, then cut out the
inside of it, then drew the outline of it onto the tub with a grease pencil. The
picture to the left shows the paper template atached to the tub for marking the
gas filler hole to be cut in the stock CJ location. Then I used a
medium size drill bit to drill a hole in each corner of the desired area to be cut out.
Then I used a jigsaw with a fresh metal cutting blade to connect the drilled holes. The
saw cut through the sheet metal like butter and left a smooth stock looking hole for the
filler tube. Try test fitting the plastic piece that the filler tube attaches to, and if
necessary use a file to enlarge the hole so it will fit.
Back to the CJ-7...The tub was lifted off with four people and it actually was a lot lighter than we all
expected. It wasn’t even a problem to lift it high over the stubborn transfer case shifter that I failed to remove. A couple of
things to keep in mind before lifting the tub off: Brake lines are attached  to the tub in a couple of places. On the firewall on the very
bottom below the brake booster, and underneath the tub about in the middle of the
"bed" area. Also the wiring for your taillights is attached to the tub by a few
plastic clips. These clips cannot be reached without lifting the tub, so it’s handy
to have someone around to remove them when you lift the back of the tub. Some
transmission or axle breather lines may also be attached to the tub. Remove the tub
slowly, and it would be handy to have a spotter to make sure your not removing any extra
parts that you forgot to unbolt.
While the tub is off, I decided to take the opportunity to
clean things up and paint the frame. This would also be a great 
time to do any suspension
or drive train modifications since everything is so exposed and easy to work on
with the tub removed. As part of the cleaning and painting process, I decided to
remove the gas tank and tank skid plate. I was happy to find that I had a
plastic gas tank.  At least there won’t be
any rust problems there. It was quite a challenge to remove the tank from the skid
plate/tank cover since it was tightly packed with dirt that
had become cement-like. Once
the gas tank has been removed, you can inspect the backside of the rear
crossmember.
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