74 Tailgate

Here's a question: if you had the original tailgate, but it needed a couple of hundred worth of labor
to make it right, would you do it or get a repro?

 

Lots of good tailgates out there. Nothing rare or special about an original block letter Jeep tailgate.

 

Maybe not so many in the north-east. Rust never sleeps, and it loves tailgates.

 

I bought a repop and other than my old one being rusty I could not tell one thing different in between the two.

 

I sold my reproduction willys tailgate to a friend. He ended up giving me the tailgate he gave up on - which happened to be from an intermediate - of which I have not seen too many. I am not sure they make a reproduction tailgate with the intermediate script. The reproduction tailgate I had was by far the best part of the body kit I had purchased. That being said - if you know someone who would do a nice job restoring your original tailgate it might be nice to see the money spent going there rather than to the offshore reproduction parts companies.