On some level an automatic in a CJ sounds wrong.
I might have seen one set up with an automatic transmission. All manuals for me.
However these days with parts being the way they are, I would entertain a modern automatic with a floor shifter.
I have a rescued 304 but I found a cracked bell housing.
“On some level an automatic in a CJ sounds wrong.
I might have seen one set up with an automatic transmission. All manuals for me.”
Having offroaded all my life I have found this depends on the terrain. For rock crawling I would rather have the standard so I can just crawl along solid. For soft sand I would rather have an automatic. A good compromise is having a low RPM lockup convertor in an automatic with a good shift kit.
Standards can be a pain when trying to shift up in soft sand. It is near impossible to shift fast enough to keep it from coming to a stop before you can get into the next gear. So you end up just going along in one gear without being able to upshift until you hit hard stuff again. But with an auto it will shift fast enough to actually get away with upshifting in the soft stuff.
It worked great for applying power but I had to get out to lock in the hubs of course.
Floor pan severely rusted on passenger side but some Bondo and mesh fixed all that
And then some double sided application of rustproofing.