Bronco number 2 - Yet another iron in the fire

[casadejohnson]

Well, because I can't seem to leave anything alone, I'm working on another Bronco project. My 66 Bronco was feeling left out of the modification / upgrade party so I have a plan for "Stubby". I will fill you in on the details once we get a little closer but for now I need to get my plan and parts together. This little project is going to require some fabrication work and one skill I do not possess is Tig Welding more specifically, Aluminum Tig welding. Who do we have that might be able to help me out with that? We are talking about welding some brackets up and that sort of thing. It will be a while before we get to the welding stage but I figured I would find out who might be able to help with this. Don't worry, my plan does not involve any fender cutting or anything like that!

[Jesus_man]

tease!

[Justin]

Does it have to be tig? With a spool gun it could be migged.

[casadejohnson]

Does it have to be tig? With a spool gun it could be migged.

Maybe, I'll speak with my co conspirator and see if Tig is a must. Got a spool gun?

[D&D72]

you can buy aluminum wire and run straight argon in a mig. unless your looking for an excuse to buy a tig.

[Jesus_man]

If it doesn't need to hold pressure, I'd also say MIG it! Unless you have to have those pretty welds.

[aaah1]

Once you go tig you never go back to mig. It does take a while to learn though especially to do aluminum right. Plus the price of a good tig I would stick with mig.

I can teach you if you are set on it, and show you some good videos.

[Justin]

Does it have to be tig? With a spool gun it could be migged.

Maybe, I'll speak with my co conspirator and see if Tig is a must. Got a spool gun?

No, but they're less expensive than a TIG and I'm always looking for excuses to buy tools. My TIG is DC only, so it won't do aluminum. I do have a bottle of 100% argon on a separate flowmeter, so we're good there.

[casadejohnson]

Obviously, brackets won't need to hold pressure but there will likely be more than just brackets to be made. I wish I had the funds to buy a Tig but that's not in the cards right now. The contents of my garage started spilling over into my back yard a long time ago so I wouldn't even have a place to put another welder at this point.

[kbank6]

I know, I know but won't tell......

[Jesus_man]

Obviously

To who? Kbank? Need to know basis. I see how you are!

[casadejohnson]

Obviously

To who? Kbank? Need to know basis. I see how you are!

All in due time. I need a few more of the crucial pieces to the puzzle then I'll let you know.

[casadejohnson]

IMG_0188.jpg

OK, we have gathered some more parts for this project. Here is what we have.

This is a Ranger TFI dizzy that I modified to fit in the 200. It took lots of trial and error to make this. I had to shorten it, change the gear to a the stock 200 gear and convert it from a 4 cylinder to a 6 cylinder dizzy using taurus parts.

I have a more stuff as well that I will reveal shortly, I just need to go out and get photos.

[casadejohnson]

Here we have a mess of wire. This is a harness from a 91 F150. The harness is currently in the hands of EFI guy who is going to modify it for me . It will be converted to Mass air and have all of the unneeded stuff removed. It should be substantially smaller when it returns.

[casadejohnson]

Now this is the good part. EFI will make it a more reliable daily driver but this is going to make it a lot more fun! Here we have the hardest part to find, located yesterday by EFI guy ( Garry ). What we have here is an Eaton M90 supercharger looted from a 200 Pontiac Bonneville. We have lots of mock up to do still and a bit of fab work for the air to liquid cooler but we have a game plan in place. I have the original engine from this Bronco on an engine stand so that will help make the mock up easier. The aluminum tig welding will be for the mounting bracket, the cooler and the tubing from the air filter to the air meter to the intake. Garry is going to make me a custom ECU from an A9L or A9P. We don't have that yet so if your selling one or see a deal on one please let me know. My current investment is just under $100.

i still need to figure out the pulleys to convert the Bronco over to a serpentine drive system but other than that I think we have most of it figured out.

[casadejohnson]

Here is another unrelated item I picked up for the 66. Long before I got it the original grill was replaced. I found this "eyebrow" grill recently. It looks really good on one side but the other is smashed up pretty good. The plan for this is to graft it together with a another grill I have that is damaged on the other side. Its going to take a lot of work and time but I only paid $35 for it.

[Kinder]

Supercharged straight 6 = awesome!

[Colorado75bronc]

Wicked awesome dude! I'm really looking forward to seeing this!

[Justin]

That will be both unique and awesome.

[Jesus_man]

Very cool! Had a friend in TX who did a forced air inline 6 as well. We called him the buzzin' half dozen. That bronco would RUN! But I don't recall if it was turbo or super charged.

[Rox Crusher]

I really admire the creativity and inguinuity of the recent conversions.

This one will be really exciting !

[ZOSO]

I have a factory 03/04 cobra heat exchanger that i'll give ya if you want.

[Viperwolf1]

This is going to be interesting.

[casadejohnson]

I have a factory 03/04 cobra heat exchanger that i'll give ya if you want.

I'll take you up on that for sure! We were talking about using a donor heat exchanger if we could find one or just using a heater core. About how big is the cobra heat exchanger?

[ZOSO]

26.5 w x 6" tall x 1.5" thick.

[ZOSO]

I'll be heading to severance on sunday for some duck and goose huntin so I'll throw it in the truck if you want.

[casadejohnson]

I'll be heading to severance on sunday for some duck and goose huntin so I'll throw it in the truck if you want.

That would be great! I'll PM you my number so we can meet up. I used to Goose hunt out there every year before they started building houses everywhere. We used to meet up at Bruce's bar and eat breakfast. Bruce Ruth who used to own the bar was the guy who rented out the blinds back then. He was also my Mom's cousin so I got the " Family Rate".

[casadejohnson]

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First, Thanks to Rob for donating a Cobra Heat Exchanger to the cause.

Over the weekend, I was able molest an 82 Mustang straight six and snagged the Power Steering Pump brackets. My current Power steering pump bracketry impedes the path where the supercharger snout needs to be. The Mustang brackets move the pump down much lower and out closer to the inner fender. It will be very close to the steering box but it looks like it will work. I just need to make some changes so that it will accept my saginaw PS pump. Here are a couple photos showing the new position vs the current PS pump location.

[casadejohnson]

The Bronco #2 Project has been on hold temporarily due to some possible issues wedging the supercharger in there and some potential problems that we are seeing with drilling the intake for fuel injectors. I believe the supercharger problem is solvable if I can track down the Ford T bird version of the eaton M 90 supercharger. That version of the M90 has a shorter snout than the GM version that I currently have and it also has a throttle body mounting position that looks like it will be more user friendly. So far I have not located one but given enough time, the junkyard will provide. The fuel injector problem looks like it can be tackled as well. The issue is that the six cylinder head has an integrated "Log " manifold. The log manifold has a couple issues, First its very restrictive to air flow but the big issue is that it does not appear that the casting is thick enough to accommodate the injectors. Its taken a little looking, but I think I found a machine shop that is willing to tackle the issue. The tentative plan is to cut off the current log intake and build a custom intake manifold that will accommodate the injectors and flow better than the original log intake. So far, I have only spoken with the shop about the project. I still need to find the time to get the head down to him so he can give me an idea of what kind of $ we are looking at. Hopefully, it won't be overly cost prohibitive.

[casadejohnson]

So it’s been a few years since we started exploring options to a supercharger on the 66. The idea was to fuel inject it and follow that with a supercharger. Well, life got in the way and “stubby” has served as my Daily driver with a 200 and C4 ever since.

Jump ahead to the present and it was needing some attention. Although it was running OK, it developed a noise it the bottom end that required Phil and I to pull the motor for some exploratory surgery. It looked lIke it would be an easy fix so we took the opportunity to upgrade the cam and valve springs. About the same time I finally got the opportunity to order the aftermarket aluminum head from vintage inlines. I had been on the waiting list for a couple years. As it would take months to get the new head, we put the motor back together and got it on the road again. Problems came up like a crappy idle followed by overheating issues. The heat issue was the biggest head scratcher so we opted for more radiator and a better fan. No improvement. We tried a few things without much luck keeping it cool. With the radiator swap, I finally added a coolant overflow bottle. It didn’t take long to notice that the coolant in the overflow was milky looking. This lead to the realization that oil was getting in the coolant. Thinking the new head gasket may have crapped out, we tore off the head and replaced the gasket and even swapped to another know good head we had laying around. Still no improvement in cooling left only one other place where the oil could be getting in there...the block has a crack. Having determined that, we set out to find a replacement. 200’s are easy to come by in the junkyard but that would have been the easy way out wouldn’t it?

The L6 family of in-line six cylinders had several engines. The 144 was followed by the 170 which was later replaced with the 200. After that, came the 250. So that’s the plan. This motor is taller, wider and creates a host of other issues to wedge it in a Bronco.

It’s going to a challenge but hopefully we can get it done by the time the snow comes...stay tuned for the details.





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