It prob broke from vibration, So I purchased a fitting kit for around £30 from UK Dallas Autos Jeep supplies and as usual it arrived quickly and unpacked I laid the items out on a clean sheet in front of the TV where I watched an assembly video several times from the excellent Team G503 series on Youtube...
Cue the video and you will see it all looks pretty straight forward....
And I ended up with the front and rear assembly looking like this...
The front exhaust U clamp and sheared bush was removed and the home made bracket was unbolted - this one I made to replace the previous flimsy bracket that had snapped last year...
The stock bolt was not long enough for the band that goes around the exhaust - the band also needed a bit reshaping gently with a rubber mallet. No remember your working on a 55+ year old vehicle with parts from who knows where and things like this have to be expected to be tinkered with...
It was not mentioned in the film but I soon worked out this bracket bolts the exhaust pipe to the Skid plate, which my Jeep does not have...
However... things often never go as easily together on an old Jeep and further those nuts were clearly a different thread to the bolts!, luckily I already have an assortment box of AF thread nuts and bolts. I will drop Dallas Autos an email to make them aware of this with the kit...
The front mount on the silencer as the rear has these universal rubber bushes threaded both ends - which had sheared/ perished in two so removing it I found a threaded mount above attached to the floor...
While the rear has the same similar set up but the mount attached to the floor on this one did not has a threaded bolt inside and removal would need to be with a hacksaw. For no I left that rubber bush in place and just removed the Exhaust pipe U clamp and home made bracket and replaced it with the proper band and one of y own nuts and bolts the of the same thread...
So I pulled the band tighter together using long 6mm diameter coach bolt which shaped the band better although the supplied bolt was still not long enough, the bent 6 mm coach bolt was bent doing this and discarded afterwards and I looked out a longer bolt for the band. A 8 mm metric bolt would have to suffice for now Balogh the threads were not long enough being a bit too long for the job but I used some spacers to use it until I buy a better more suited length bolt....
The silencer is now up closer to the floor now...
Metric bolt fitted on the inside and tightened after fitting the other lug that slips underneath the band...
The stock fitting was bending and you could actually pull the lug that slips under the band out so I got rid of this part and direct bolted it to the mount under the floor...
The rear was just a case of replacing the U bolt with the band but left the rubber bush for now...
So as you can see I only used half of the parts in the end and got the exhaust mounted ok, but this is a French Jeep with USA genuine and pattern parts and who knows what brakes have been added and removed over the years. The Hotchkiss Jeep is often called a `Hotchpotch` by some owners though many of the 28,000 or so manufactured in France with firstly genuine spare parts then later French manufactured replacement parts have more original parts than most WW2 vehicles still on the road...
A wily Jeep is a Willys jeep wether made during WW2 or after the war under licence by Willys in other countries, though while the Indian made Mahindra and a few other counties who manufactured their own Jeeps variety slightly in design, engine choice, and looks, the M201 Hotchkiss is a near replica to the Willys MBin arts and the Willys Go Devil 134 engine...
The Joys of Jeep ownership!, very rewarding and fun to own and drive, but don't buy a Jeep if you think everything will just swap out when needing parts replaced and sometimes like here they do require some tinkering!
More soon...
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