January 15, 2015 - Jeep Willys World

UPDATED January 18, 2016

Here is a doc file of this post so anyone will be able to open/change/save it.

Hubcaps! They are likely to be lost!

So you are trying to find a hubcaps for your old jeep?
Hopefully you still have three for references.
No?!?
You didn’t has one on your jeep before…

Well, You are in the same situation as me.

So, In this post, I will try to identify which hubcaps belong to which jeep model.

I surfed on internet and found a lot of information about it. I crabbed pictures from all over it. (If you are an owner of a pictures then let me know and I will give you the credits.)
I also copied and pasted information found on many discussion forum.

You are welcome to comment and help me to be more accurate and help me to correct my errors.

First, what is a hubcap?

From Wikipedia : “A hubcap, wheel cover or wheel trim is a decorative disk on an automobile wheel that covers at least a central portion of the wheel, called the hub. An automobile hubcap is used to cover the wheel hub and the wheel fasteners to reduce the accumulation of dirt and moisture. It also has the function of decorating the car.[1]A “hubcap” is technically the small cover over the center of the wheel, while a “wheel cover” is a usually a decorative metal or plastic disk that snaps or bolts onto and covers the entire face of the wheel.[2] Cars with stamped steel wheels often use a full wheel cover that conceals the entire wheel. Cars with alloy wheels or styled steel wheels generally use smaller hubcaps, sometimes called center caps. Alternatively, wheel cover refers to an accessory covering an external rear-mounted spare tire (also known as a spare tire cover) found on some off-road vehicles.”

Well, I will say that there are at least three kinds of hubcaps for Jeep; the center cap, the dog dish (or moon style) and the turbine.

Also, I will cover grossly three era; the Willys 1944-1953, the Kaiser 1953-1970 and the AMC 1970-1987. (Reference Wikipedia)

When AMC took over in 1971, the Kaiser red and gold (RG) color was replaced with red, white and blue (RWB) color.

Center Caps

Here are few examples of center caps;

Those caps belong to GPW, MB, CJ2A, CJ3A and CJ3B from 1941 up to 1969 Willys and Kaiser eras.

You can find them easily. They have been reproduced and their cost is around 6-7$ each.

They are used on all 4WD models front (without lock out hubs) and the rear axle. Also used on 2WD models on the rear model 44 1954-63.

Those below seem to be for Jeepster Commando 1967-1971 Kaiser eras.

And finally those ones are for Wagoneer J10 1971-1979 AMC eras.

There was also trim rim (stainless steel ring) available for CJ2A, DJ3A, CJ3A and might be also for 3B.

Note that the red rims above does have nubs for the dog dish hubcaps. There was difference size and I think those was the smaller.

Dog Dish (moon style)

Dog Dish was available through the dealerships for the 15″ rims starting around 1963 with the advent of the J-series. You could get them for CJs also but you need the proper rims. The 62-73 parts book shows them along with the full hub caps. The 62-73 books shows both the RWB and the RG logos available for both the f4 and V6, but it was generally known that the RG went with the V6 and the RWB on the f4, neither of which were offered after 1971. They were usually found on the Tuxedo. If you wanted full hub caps, you could order the spoke beauty rings to go with the dog dish which was troublesome as the beauty rings required 5 mounting clips each. All of the above required a cap without the center trademark for the front if you had manual hubs. WARNING to those shopping these: there were 2 sizes of them in both color options. The smaller, which is only about an 1/8″ difference (10 1/8” or 10 1/4”), will not snap onto the rim requiring the larger one. As both offered front with lockout holes, the difference cannot be attributed to the smaller being dedicated to DJs with 4-lub wheels. More likely, it is agreed that this was due to different vendors of wheels for particular production runs or year models. Also, the gold/red ones were introduced in 1963 for the J-Series and are pictured with and without beauty rings in the Willys Motors introduction for dealers book dated 9/62.

Here are few examples of dog dish caps (moon style);

Those one belong to Jeepster 1948-1950

Those below belong to the Willys eras. They were on Willys Wagon from 1946(maybe later)-1965.

Here is an example of Willys Wagon 1960 with Dog dish AND trim rims.

The nubs on the rims below was larger than the previous one shown (red rims picture in the center cap section).

I don’t know yet on which model does one goes;

Those belong to DJ3A from 1955-1964 and the color was matching the color body.

Those are from the Kaiser era RG. I don’t know if they were on CJ’s and I don’t believe so. But I think they were maybe on CJ5A Tuxedo Mark IV 1965 model and on Jeepster commando 1965-1971.