New 79 J20 Build

[Fibonachu]

I brought home my first Jeep a couple weeks ago. I accidentally bought a Prius, realized about 90 minutes later that I hated it, then traded it to another guy for this.

It is a 79 with the 360, quadratrac, and bucket seats. I got it running by unhooking the fuel lines from the pump and running them to a small gas can under the hood. With that setup I was able to drive it up onto the trailer and then around my property.

I got it home, my 6 year old daughter looked at it and named it Herman. Seems appropriate, so that is his name now.

The fuel feed line is plugged, but the return is not. My plan is to drop the tank and clean it before I put new lines on.

The tailgate handle/plate is missing. I got the handle bucket (probably the wrong word) from a LH pacer handle that had a broken lever. I also found a RH Rebel handle with a broken bucket. Through the magic of roll pins and redrilling the lever to match the length of the broken pacer one, I now have an appropriate handle.

The big question that I have if anyone knows is what dimensions the mounting plate should be. I can't find any good pictures of the shape/size of that plate. I have the threaded inserts on my tailgate to trace the bolt pattern and I can use the length of the connecting rod to determine where the handle should mount.

I assume that there should be some kind of radius on the corners, but I don't know what it should be.

[Fibonachu]

It was bought new by an airline pilot who retired from that and started teaching high school gym. It died in the late 90s and sat until he ended up selling it to one of his students who hauled it home and never got around to messing with it.

He sold it to me and I am planning to fix it up as a learning project with my kids.

My short term plan is to drop the tank and clean it, make a mounting plate for the tailgate handle, try to pop a couple little dents out, and start driving.

In the medium term I want to redo the wiring because it has a bit of sketchiness to it.

Long term I am debating putting some kind of fuel injection on it. Either something like a Holley Sniper TBI unit or build my own system based on the 80s-90s GM TBI units. I would also consider doing an engine swap to something modern, but it is nice enough and all original now, so I am hesitant to so that.

If I did put a fuel injection unit on, all of the stock parts would go into a box so it could be returned to stock later if desired.