Project More Metal

[dbasile]

Hi, I'm Dave. I have a 72 Bronco. Like most of you hear, I can't or won't leave well enough alone.

And so it begins. A little back story about my Bronco, I have only had it for a little more than 7 years. Surprisingly it has spent most of the time I owned it on the road. Prior to the Bronco, I had a 81 Toyota pickup that was lifted and locked with a rebuilt engine and a custom flat bed (how I learned to weld).

When I purchased the Bronco the previous owner had already up graded a few things. It had a small 2 inch lift, 4.56 gears in the axles with a Detroit in the rear and a lockright up front. He installed a NP435 into the rig and split the tcase. With tires that looked more like racing slicks than tires used for off road.

Like all owner of our beloved rigs, I looked it over top to bottom and devised a plan of what I needed and wanted. It needed a wiring harness.....it was bad, there were several connections made using wire nuts. There was several feet of of unused wire behind the dash. I felt it was a fire waiting to happen. And a few rusted body panels, which was not important to me.

I found a nicely priced set of 35 inch BFG KOs near buy. Then stuffed them under the rig.

I replaced the wiring harness with a generic hot rod harness that was cheap but fairly nice. At the same time I installed EFI using a 92 mustang upper. This time I began to rework the Mustang harness, but shortly after stripping it I decided not to be so cheap and bought a Ford Racing stand a lone harness. Great buy with great customer support.

I wheeled the old girl pretty regularly, considering the wife and I both have full time jobs and juggle our schedules to accommodate, now a second child. I felt stopping the beast should move up in priority. I did a knuckle out swap using parts from a 79 big bronco, and added a hydro boost set up out of a 79 Grand Marquis wagon. The first test drive I almost put my self through the windshield. Hands down the best upgrade ever!

This brings us to today, or well yesterday. The way my current schedule is I can squeezes a couple hours of work in on the old girl almost everyday. The plan this fall/winter was to replace the body mounts and fab a roll cage that ties into the body. This would require installing some new floor pans. The previous own just riveted some metal over holes.

To make my life easier, I began spraying down lots of bolts about 2 weeks ago with some PB blaster. I found the crack in the rear shackle hanger. So I guess some suspension work needs to underway. This was kind of planned, sorta for later, I still was gathering parts.

The plan is full widths, deeper gears, selectable lockers, 203/205 doubler and either a C6 of ZF. All mounted to a soft supple suspension. Being a prior Toyota guy I saw great advantages to longer leaf springs. I am surprised it isn't a common thing with the Broncos. Their rear leafs are short! With some interweb searching on the googler, Classic Broncos and here, I found the idea of tahoe/yukon/escalade springs. They are longer, have the same payload capacity and will move the rear end back 3-4 inches.

Up front I plan to push the axle forward and add some long arms with some long coils. In the end, I would like only 3-4 inches of lift and run 37s.

I hope to accomplish the main work to be wheel able again by spring. IE Bronco safari in Moab, hopefully before that. The wife sister and family go to J@#$ safari about Easter. We usually go there then too, to see family and wheel. I hope this isn't a pipe dream, I guess we will see.....

And disassembly begins.

[Jesus_man]

Hey Dave and welcome! It's great to see folks build their broncos up and document it here!

The plan is full widths, deeper gears, selectable lockers, 203/205 doubler and either a C6 of ZF. All mounted to a soft supple suspension. Being a prior Toyota guy I saw great advantages to longer leaf springs. I am surprised it isn't a common thing with the Broncos. Their rear leafs are short! With some interweb searching on the googler, Classic Broncos and here, I found the idea of tahoe/yukon/escalade springs. They are longer, have the same payload capacity and will move the rear end back 3-4 inches.

If I were you, I would decide what transmission I was going to run before I decided to do any axle gearing. With a doubler, you can target your axle gearing for street use, and allow the doubler to get you the deep gearing you need crawling. Plus that keeps the pinion gear stronger.

I'd love to know what you turn up with for leaf springs. Any idea how much lift they afford, assuming you will be using stock springs?

Pipe dream? Well, it all depends on how much time you really spend getting things done. There are guys here who seem to be able to get some amazing amount of work in a short period of time. I am not one of those guys. And it does seem like it takes me a while to get going where 2hrs of time would probably end up being only an hour of productive time. Motivation is another key and having a clear goal in mind does help you with that.

[Strike2]

Welcome Dave,
Looking forward to the build thread!

[dbasile]

The rear lift will be more accomplished by a shackle flip than the GM springs.

[dbasile]

Additionally I am leaning towards the C6, I got one fairly cheap. But I have still been looking for a ZF in close to or a better price range.

[dbasile]

Had some time to work a little today, an I got to find a surprise!

[dbasile]

Can someone tell me what I am doing wrong with the pics?

[Jesus_man]

Can someone tell me what I am doing wrong with the pics?

Are you taking them with an iphone?

[dbasile]

samsung galaxy

[mickphatmac]

I have to crop my pics just a smidge after I take them, and then post otherwise it shows up-side-down

[Jesus_man]

samsung galaxy

I got nuthin' then...

I don't use tapatalk either.

[Gunnibronco]

The rear lift will be more accomplished by a shackle flip than the GM springs.

I did what you are talking about with a set of used 99 Tahoe springs. Check out my thread there should be pics of my homemade shackle flip. If you need more pics let me know. You can play with the shackle length too, to get it where you need it. Somewhere between Colorado and Nevada I seem to have lost a little lift height, maybe it settled while on the trailer for 1100 miles. I lost about 1/2", so I bought a set of 1" lift blocks, since I'm jumping to 37s, instead of running the last of my 33s off. Since my leafsprings were used, there is no telling how much they have sagged from new. I figure if I don't like what I end up with I'll buy a set of custom springs. Wish I could tell you more about the results, but it won't be on the road for at least a few months.

Sent from my SM-J320V using Tapatalk

[dbasile]

Gunni,
I already read your thread.....a couple times. I liked the look and stoutness of the ruffstuff shackle flip kit. They are more beefy in person than what the looked like on the web site. Just trying to save a little time here or there.

I am sure as this progresses I will reach out to you for assistance. I do plan on borrowing your idea on the wheel tubs too

[dbasile]

I know nothing when body work is involved. But I am not afraid, I think. I wonder how many other people have dove into a project and asked themselves, what the F#$% was I thinking.

That's where I was shortly after removing most of the passenger side floor. Just glad this is a trail truck / rock rig and doesn't need to be pretty jsut needs to work.

[Gunnibronco]

Gunni,
I already read your thread.....a couple times. I liked the look and stoutness of the ruffstuff shackle flip kit. They are more beefy in person than what the looked like on the web site. Just trying to save a little time here or there.

I am sure as this progresses I will reach out to you for assistance. I do plan on borrowing your idea on the wheel tubs too

The Ruffstuff shackle flip is nice. You'll have to tuck them up pretty high to keep your lift in the 3"-4" range. A body lift would probably help make that easier.

FWIW, you should consider buying a new rear wheel tub to extend them. I think Justin did that and it looked a lot easier than sectioning and grafting in 5". He cut off the back of the existing wheel well and added 1/2 of a new wheel well to get the extra length. I was being cheap and cost myself extra work.

[Justin]

Gunni is correct-I bought a wheel tub, cut it in half, and extended the tubs that way. Worked great and was something like $65. Money well spent.

[dbasile]

I have been working on the project, just haven't uploaded any pics. I removed all of the passenger side floor boards and some kick panel. I bent a new inner rocker, and cut some to replace the rusted kick panel. I also banged a couple of pieces to fix the lowed portion of the a pillar.

I have been kicking around the idea of buying a wheel tub, but there is a certain feeling you get when you are cheap and it works out even if you need to put in a little extra elbow grease.......or you run a cutting disk across you finger, which I did today and you are still happy with you progress. Plus I bought a whole sheet of 18 gauge for patches.

But better than progress, a great score. I just bought a set of 5 KMC beadlocks use for $500. Now I have to find a deal on some rubber.

[dbasile]

Here's some shots of the latest work.

[dbasile]

So another bad spot.

I need to build a patch for right near the fresh air intake. Does anyone have a picture of the inner fender near the fresh air intake?

[Strike2]

Hey dbasile,
Nice score on the rims those a sweet!
I hear what your saying about the sheet metal I bought a sheet of steel and made the exact same pieces you are, I did purchase the floor panels and felt that was good money spent as mine is not a show rig. Keep up the progress.
Here's the best pic I have of the driver side before I cut it all out.

[Jesus_man]

Great score on the wheels! At first, I thought the offset was too much, but I see you are running full width. 15"?

[dbasile]

I picked up some floor pans to from Bronco Hut along with some outer rockers and a b pillar for the passenger side. Great prices. The only body metal I was planning on fabbing myself were small patch panels where replacing the whole body panel would have been excessive, I think...maybe (who am I kidding, I don't know what the hell I am doing, I am just going to fake it till I make it). This sheet metal thing is all new to me.

So does the little rectangle up and to the right of the opening into the cab end at the lip where the box sit? There was nothing there to begin with on mine?

The wheels are 17". And I agree if it weren't for the full width the the backspacing would have been too much. I am pretty happy that there is that much back spacing because I thought the extra 10"of width might have been too much to, so now I am looking at an extra 6" +/- a little.

[dbasile]

Not much forward progress this week. I have an over sized one car garage to work out of, so the bronco for the time being is out side. I keep it this way till snow is closer or I cut into the suspension. I got the opportunity this week to straighten out the garage. More like the need to. I had an 8 quart oil catch pan sitting on some tubing. Something fell an knocked it from its perch. Several hours later when I returned home I saw this, on the up side I got to rearrange the garage in prep for snow.

[dbasile]

I did get a small piece made and installed I made a new piece for the front seat mount the part that was in the floor support was all rusted out. I made a new one, prepped everything with some weld through primmer and welded it in. The passenger side b pillar was a mockery of a mess. The previous owner had riveted some thin sheet metal to cover the rust and spread some bondo over it. It was the biggest PITA to remove. And I found some more hidden rust.

[Jesus_man]

Sometimes it's better when our hand is forces to "clean up"!

[dbasile]

I guess your right. I did gain some floor space......but lost some time, and kitty litter. The picture really didn't catch the magnitude of the mess. It was a large catch, I think 15 qts that was almost that was almost full, that became almost empty. Behind the steel under a tarp there was 2 motorcycles and a job box. The oil made it all the way to the wall.

But on the positive note, the garage is clean now and I have less clutter.

[dbasile]

Not much progress lately. Weather, life and works have gotten in the way. I have more progress than pictures, cause of the weather. I have the floor pans fit into place along with the kick panel and a pillar patches. I plan on only tack welding the kick panel, a pillar and b pillar (once fitted) in place. I think I will use sheet metal screws to hold the floor pans and inner rocker in place for know. I think it may be easier to access the suspension with out a floor in the way.

I have a little more done than the picture I have taken. The weather has been nasty.

[dbasile]

Another side bar, I built a welding cart and a couple of tall jack stands.

[dbasile]

This past month has been slow going. The weather turned to winter and the garage wasn't ready to push the bronco inside. It was hunting season, parents came out to visit and I got a chunk of metal in my eye.

But now I am going again. I had to stack everything up in the garage to fit the bronco inside. I see some garages here and am jealous. My garage is an oversized 1 car garage that is full prior to attempting to put a vehicle in it. I guess I should be happy I have a garage at least.

I have almost all of the passenger side fitted and waiting to be welded. I have torn apart the driver side and started to fit things.

[Strike2]

[quote="dbasile"]This past month has been slow going. The weather turned to winter and the garage wasn't ready to push the bronco inside. It was hunting season, parents came out to visit and I got a chunk of metal in my eye.

Slow going is better than a complete halt, glad to hear you got the bronco inside before snowfall.
Sorry to hear about you getting metal in your eye, earlier this year during my build I also got metal in my eye and the wife wasn't thrilled about that happing again!! Hope it was minor?