The interior of SSDutch came treated with Herculiner or Durabak which I found to be an awful Jeep interior treatment—it’s like plastering the inside of your Jeep with small gravel. Expect lots of skinned knuckles and elbows and to never be able to drive or ride barefoot in it again. It holds all manner of dirt and dust which becomes about impossible to clean out short of a vacuum cleaner, and needs to be treated with ArmourAll or something to look as good as the day you finish putting it in. For us building a Jeep that will usually have kids in it, and usually be used for beach runs it was unlivable.
Before
So what started as a project to install a heater turned into a complete interior strip, dash redesign, and complete rewire. Talk about your scope creep!
After experimenting with some ways to chemically remove Herculiner I ended up just spending lots of time with wirewheels attached to my drill and angle grinder.
During Herculiner Removal
One of the surprises I found lurking under the Herculiner - in addtion to rust, drilled holes and holes from welds - was a bullet hole:
The previous owner saw the picture and left this comment:
I was there! I was taking a bunch of boys .22 shooting, . One gun/ one shooter in the front is the rule. We had gotten back in the jeep and I asked the shooter (my nephew) to open the bolt so I could see the .22 was empty. He told me it was. I asked him to open the bolt several more times with him telling me it was empty. Finally he was going to show me and clicked the trigger. Bang! right beside the trans hump if I remember.We checked that it had missed the trans, tires, radiatior, etc. The point on an open bolt was made….
Other Tub Fixes
I also worked on the drivers side rear wheelhousing - the rear floor was fixed by welding in some new metal, but the old floor was left in. This section bugged me - a long split along the bottom edge of the wheelhousing, with a piece of rebar and a chunk of wood stuffed in there. It just looked like a place that would capture and hold mud, etc.
So the fix was a piece of 2” angle iron, notched out around the original hat channels - which still look to be in good shape.
I also worked on the area under the driver’s seat. Right where the front floor meets the riser plate there was one decent size rust hole and a number of pinholes. Another chunk of angle iron is now welded into that spot, and at some point I’ll seal up the body from the bottom.
This is a bit more butch than I would have liked, but it was one of those “use what you have on hand” moments and I didn’t have the right size piece of sheetmetal. Once I realized it would all be covered up once the water tank was installed and the seats were in, it didn’t bug me so much.
Time for Primer
Starting with White
And them time for color. I’d waffled on color choice in the past - choosing at some time or another bright red, pure white, or gold. The gold won out, but since I’d already purchased some of each I decided to start with white, for a few reasons:
- This is the first time I’ve used a “real” paint gun, in this case a new HVLP version. I wanted to start out by learning on some areas that won’t be that visible once the Jeep is back together
- I had the paint - this quart is supposed to match the current white, I bought it when I thought I would paint the Jeep piecemeal to match, then down the road change the color
- In places like under the dash and under the floor I thought the white would make things easier to see
As it turned it out it was a good decision - I had runs all over the place. The settings on the gun change quite drastically from spraying primer to spraying paint. I was still a bit nervous about shooting the stuff that will get seen….
Then Champagne Gold Round 1
Champagne Gold Round 2
I messed up, however. I shot just one coat of color assuming I could just get back to the next coat the following day. This was not the case with this particular paint, however—it needed a second coat applied while the first was still tacky. We scuffed up the interior with Scotch-brite pads and went at it again:
And then every Jeep needs a matching guitar, right?
Refreshing the Rollcage
When I had my rollcage built the fabricator—that I had issues with offered to paint it at no extra cost. What I found is that his paint job was a quick rattle-can affair with no primer. It easily scratched and, after my additional interior efforts, needed to be refreshed. However, the fabricator also didn’t build it to be removable. The feet of the middle bar are approximately 1.5” wider than the top lip of the Jeep tub. There was no way to tilt or angle it such that I could remove it. My choices were to cut one foot off or find a way to work around it. I choose the latter.
So at the beginning of this project I decided to lift it as far out of the Jeep as possible. The first snag was this - the lower rollcage bar got caught up on the inlet for the gas fill:
Since I no longer use the underseat gas tank I (reluctantly) choose to cut some sheet metal out of the filler neck to make it more shallow:
This allowed me to build some “rollcage stilts” that put as much room under it as possible. Once the interior paint had fully cured I put plastic between the rollcage and Jeep and went after stripping the rollcage:
Then primered it:
Then painted it:
Both primer and paint were applied using a 3” roller brush. This worked well - saving the mess of a spray job while giving it a slight texture. I did have to get a few hard to reach spots with a rattle can.
The Results
From there it was re-assembly time, doing the dash and wiring, then putting the floor and seats back in:
And you can’t put all the seats back in without climbing in to remember how it feels…
I didn’t want to use the Jeep without something on the floor, however. I’m worried that the paint isn’t applied quite right and will scuff or scratch easily. I decided that the traditional carpet and floormat approach would work to keep us off the paint and make the Jeep comfortable to use barefoot on beach runs. I’ve detailed the carpet installation in a seperate article.
All in all this project along with the dash, heater and wiring took about 1.5 years to do—in between running a business, starting a second business, starting a part-time job, and dealing with house issues and just life in general. I’m really pleased with how it came out and think it looks and works worlds better than the Herculined approach the Jeep came with. If you’re considering a Herculined Jeep interior I’d advise you to think very hard about it, since the removal is painful and it might cause issues selling the Jeep in the future. I know I’d rather not do this type of project again…
Before:
After:
Back to Article