1. The tinned areas on a jeep are usually long gone when you purchase a project and many restorers send their pieces out to be sanblasted which take the evidence right off. This article shows the areas that should be tinned and HOW TO TIN for the late model WWII jeep.

Note: in this article there are some *assumptions* where documentation could not be found. For example, if you ground one location for a bond strap, you would ground all bond straps.

2. Sources for this article are found in the TM 803, Ord 9 SNL and Paulo Babtisa document on type I and II suppression.

Here you see the body components on a Late Model (Oct 44 to end of production) that are needed. In addition to these, you need to tin the Bond Straps around the engine and frame.

3. For this article, we went and sand blasted our grill, battery tray,Fenders, hood so that we would start with a clean surface and a nice repaint afterwards. Be sure to knock out any dings in your grill, as well as, look for any broken welds and repair.

4. The items that you will need for this is a nice, clean tip, soldering iron, soldering flux, solder (thick), sticks, wet sponge, or wet rag, optional pen torch.

5. The first section we are going to tackle is the top of the grill. There are two areas that have the bond straps (hood ground), and two areas where the Headlight ground wire connects(assumption). It is CRITICAL that the surface be completely clean, in this example, the items were first sandblasted. We apply some flux paste on our surface. We want to tin a square area around the hole where the bond strap will be attached.

6. You see in the picture that we have applied the area in a square shape around the hole. From this grill, it appeared to have a square section around this hole prior to sandblasting.

7. Next, it is VERY important that you tin with a CLEAN soldering tip. The tip should be a wide surface areal, not a point. Plug the soldering iron in, and let it get hot.

8. Next, you can hold your solder from the spool, or you can cut up three small 1/2 inch sections of some thick solder, and put it on the area around the flux. Here I started applying the heat, so the solder started flatting out. *optional* if you want to soften the solder with a pen tourch you can. To start, take your tip and apply it to the top of the solder and press it into the flux. The flux should start bubbling.

9. The bottom metal must get hot for the flux and solder to mix and stick to the metal, so when your solder melts as you are applying the iron, keep it pressed to the metal until you see the solder starting to pool up.

10. As the solder is pooling up... start to move the solder around the flux until it flattens out well. Keep moving the solder around in a nice even flow. When your done, wipe your soldering iron tip off with a wet sponge or wet towel. If the soldering iron tip is dirty (most likely from the flux), the unplug the iron and let it cool. Then clean the tip with some steel wool or sand paper.

11. WHEN SOLDER DOESN'T STICK... it looks like this. The area was not clean, or you don't have enough flux, or you didn't leave your solder pressed against the metal long enough the solder will BEAD and not stick. This is very frustrating. Rather than make it work, stop, wipe it all off, CLEAN surface throughly, and start over. Also, make sure your iron tip is CLEAN.

12. Continue with the other bondstrap areas and the two head light ground spots as shown here. You should have 4 spots total on the top of the grill.

13. Now, turn the grill over, and do the black out marker bottoms. The blackout markers have one wire coming in, so this ground is pretty important.
Apply the flux in a square pattern as before.

14. As before, cut some small sections of solder, and mix it up with the flux and prepare to apply the hot, clean iron to the pieces, and move around until it pools up.

15. After applying the iron to the top of the solder and holding it down to the metal, the solder mixes with the flux and adhears to the metal. Start moving the iron around until you get a good coverage.

16. Wipe the soldered area with a wet towel and it cleans up nicely. Unplug the iron and clean the tip

17. Repeat the steps for the other side of the blackout marker. Here you see we applied it almost exactly the same as the other side.

18. Wipe the soldered area with a wet towel and it cleans up nicely.

19. Now place some painters tape over the tinned areas of the grill and primer and paint OD.

20. Here you see the grill starting to get re-assembled with grill felt, and the tape from the tinned areas is removed. Continue with re-installing grill welt and electrical.

21. Here you see the black out marker light installed with a star washer to get a nice grounded connection.

22. Here we install the bond strap with the grill welting. You can see the tinned area under the bond strap makes a nice connection.

23. Here both bond straps are installed with the welting on the grill. Looking good.

24. Here you see the welting around the headlight area. Again, this particular spot is optional and makes sense... but no documentation is found that this spot was tinned.

25. After the headlight bucket is installed and ground wire is installed you can see this will have a good ground connection.

26. Wiriing the headlight light from the passenger side, and at the bottom of the grill the blackout light ...

27. Finishing the wiring around the driver side headlight and installing the clips to hold all the wires.

28. The grill is now done and ready to install.

29. Battery Tray: In mid Oct 1944 Ford moved the position of the negative batter cable from the frame crossmember to the battery tray. Here we will show the battery tray tinning.

30. Here we sandblast our battery tray and you see the impression of where the tinning originally was located.

31. Like we did with the grill, we apply the flux generously around the area we want to tin.

32. I found it better to cut small pieces and heat them evenly first with a small pen tourch, then apply the hot soldering iron to shape the solder.

33. After smoothing it around with the soldering iron, the area is now covered. I cleaned up the flux residue and prepared to repaint.

34. After cleaning the flux off, I cover the area with tape and prep for primer and paint for installing.

35. After primer and painting OD, we uncover our tinned area and install the battery tray.

36. Here we show where the Negative battery cable is connected to the battery tray. You should clean your battery cable before installing.

37. Hood: The hood has a couple of tinned areas as well. Startng with the hood top. These two spots will match up with your Grill Bond Straps. They should be up against the lop of the hood as shown, and an estimated 3 inches by 2.5 inches. Here you see we mark the area we need to clean the paint off of first.

38. Next clean the paint and primer off the area you need cleaned. I used a wire wheel on a grinder to remove the paint. Then cleanded the surface with some solvent.

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