Digger's '69 Build Thread

[Digger]

ETA: Thread re-named. No longer a "New Member"
ETA#2: Added Table to Contents. (This thread is getting long and I keep referencing it in other threads)

Page 1: Introduction, wiring, accessory control panel
Page 2: Wiring, accessory control panel, dash, front axle gearing
Page 3: Front suspension, rear suspension
Page 4: Rear suspension, CAD work
Page 5: CAD work, rear suspension
Page 6: Fuel system, brake lines, front suspension (shocks / air bumps), exhaust, driveshafts, first drive
Page 7: Hitch, mirrors, roll cage, rear bumper, rear storage, tires
Page 8: EFI components, swing out tire carrier
Page 9: Wiper upgrade, camshaft swap, hydro-boost, EFI
Page 10: Transmission teardown, clutch hydraulic adapter, sway bar, injector swap, roll cage padding, trailer brake controller, 36-1 crank trigger, steering wheel upgrade, R2.8 Cummins swap (intro)
Page 11: Pulling 351W V8, Cummins-ZF5 adapter design / manufacture
Page 12: Diesel gauges, Cummins-ZF5 adapter machining and install, engine mounts, engine fitup
Page 13: R2.8 SEMA pictures, fuel tank mods, intercooler selection and install, hood mods, radiator install, brake and fuel plumbing
Page 14: Brake and fuel plumbing (cont.), intercooler plumbing, coolant plumbing, air filter assembly, exhaust, remote oil filter, frame mods, engine bay paint,
Page 15: Steering column, steering gear repair, engine mods, air inlet plumbing, power steering plumbing, wiring
Page 16: LED headlights, more wiring, R2.8 first start,



Hey all, I discovered this forum after making my recent purchase. I wanted to introduce myself and get a build thread going. Here is what I'm starting with:

1969 Bronco

- 351W Crate engine, forged pistons/rods, roller cam/rockers, alum heads/intake, SS valves, 650 Holley, headers, MSD distro/ignition/coil
- NP435/Dana 20, 9 inch 31 spline Currie axle ARB - Dana44 w/ ARB, 35" BFG KM2s
- Aftermarket bucket seats, Autometer gauges, Rampage softtop

I already picked up a ZF-5 and 6:1 Atlas T-case to drop in. I also have a full width HP Dana44 lined up that needs gears and a full width BB 9inch to drop in the rear. Both with ARBs and 4.56 gears.





Looking forward to getting to know everyone!

[Eck]

Welcome. Where you located. I may be interested in both axles if you're looking to sell once your upgraded. I've got a 69 with stock axles that are in need of an upgrade.

[Gunnibronco]

Nice. I love my full width axles, great on the highway & off road. I've got my ZF, and am going to order an Atlas. I was going to try to do it this summer, but I think its going to be next year now. House remodel must get finished.

Keep posting up as you install all that cool stuff.

[Kinder]

Welcome, sounds like a rig that wants to be wheeled. Nice plan on the upgrades, it'll only make it better.

[Jesus_man]

Nice ride for sure! Welcome to the club!

Is the new D44 a High Pinion?

Looks like you need a nice exhaust ring and bring your exhaust out that hole.... :)

[Justin]

Sweet rig! Welcome!

[Digger]

Welcome. Where you located. I may be interested in both axles if you're looking to sell once your upgraded. I've got a 69 with stock axles that are in need of an upgrade.

I keep that mind. I promised a friend first dibs on the rear, but I don't think he's interested in the front.

[Digger]

Nice ride for sure! Welcome to the club!

Is the new D44 a High Pinion?

Looks like you need a nice exhaust ring and bring your exhaust out that hole.... :)

Yup, High Pinion. My buddy bought it for his bronco and only used the knuckles out, so I got the housing and shafts for free. I have a set of knuckles with Chevy brakes ready to bolt on.

Also forgot to mention that when I get the drivetrain upgraded, I'm going to try my hand at a MegaSquirt fuel injection system. I'm trying to make it a decent driver vehicle, and able to run at off angles and varying altitudes. I'll post pics as I go. Time is limited, but I'm motivate to get stuff done.

[Digger]

Well it's been a while, might be time for an update. I wish I had more to show for my efforts on the Bronco, but it has been lots of number-crunching, parts pulling, parts buying, and CAD work to get ready for what's to come.

This truck is as "clean-slate" as I can get, so I decided to master plan the whole project before picking up a wrench. The single biggest project is the suspension. Since I'll be touching everything underneath, I will be factoring in things like proper ride and roll rates, frequency split, proper overall understeer geometry and in general, giving this thing the full OEM suspension tune. I'm even going to leverage some resources to custom tune some Bilstein shocks to my exact application. (But more on that later)

First off, I laid out the master plan on my white board:





To get going on the suspension design, I first stopped in to Brucker Bros in Longmont to get the truck weighed and Aaron worked with me to pull off an inclined weigh, so I could get CG location in 3-dimensional space.



Then I drew out the stock geometry and overlaid a few ideas on where the links would package in and what kind of numbers I would get back. I decided to build a 3-link with torque arm in the rear, but it was a little tricky to stuff it all in there without getting stupid anti-squat numbers and bad roll axis geometry.




It's still not final yet, but I'm getting there. Since part of this truck's dual-sport nature will be to handle both crawling and high-speed, I'm adding compact jounce shocks on all four corners, which is adding to the packaging headaches.

[Digger]

Armed with current corner weights, I started adding up all the additional weight the truck will be taking on and then started calculating ride rates. Part of that process is tuning the rear to "catch up" to the front after hitting a bump at high speed to minimize pitching and passenger discomfort. This was a little new to me, so a worked up an Excel sheet to help visualize changes in front and rear spring rates.
The brown lines represent the bump in the road and blue lines are the relative displacement of the front and rear suspension. As you can see, the rear catches the front within 1 cycle, which is pretty good. After that, damping should equalize the front and rear.



After that, I decided to get out of the house and visit a friend who has been rebuilding his Bronco for a number of years now. What started out as fixing a rear axle bearing has turned into a frame off resto



But I came home with a new front axle and it cleaned up nice



While I was at it, I decided to clean the 80,000 miles of grime off my Atlas that I pulled from my Ranger

[Digger]

After an afternoon of scrubbing grime with a toothbrush, we made a Friday night Sonic run, which has been a family tradition since my wife and I were dating. But this time we got to take two cars!
014 by J W, on Flickr



With the Atlas cleaned up, I refit the input and rear output to work with the ZF-5 and the Bronco's CV1310 rear driveshaft
015 by J W, on Flickr
016 by J W, on Flickr

[Digger]

I pulled the axles from the Ranger before hauling it off, so I have a nice axle collection now.




With some patience, I scored a low $$, zero-mile rebuilt ZF-5 (S5-42) from a shop owner that retired and was selling everything.




With Bronco Graveyard having 10% off everything in December, I went on a bit of a buying spree. First thing on New Year's Day, I was installing power brakes



While I waited for my back-ordered gauges to arrive, I did some preliminary CAD and FEA work.




The cage will be frame-tied, but isolated by rubber bushings. This will allow it to tie to the body for additional support, while at the same time, stiffen the body. It's far from done, but it's getting there.

[Digger]

One known problem with the truck when I bought it was a weeping steering box. I figured out from the POs paperwork that it was a quick ratio aftermarket box, but info was lacking on how to get new seals. A few pics and some internet research revealed I had a Delphi 600-series steer box. (The Saginaw pump was an easy spot) A little more research nailed down the original rebuilder that sold the kit to James Duff, but it wasn't clear what the stock application was. After a phone call and some more research, it seems to be clear this box started out life on a Nissan Xterra, but has internals from a Jeep WJ.


I've pulled the WJ box from U-Pull-n-Pay and when I get my hands on the Xterra box, I will try to build a functional replica. Cross your fingers.



At the end of Feb, my gauges finally showed up. It ended up being cheaper to buy the Dakota Digital gauges than purchase the last two missing Autometers to match what the Bronco came with. I'm much more happy with the DD gauges. The look will be much cleaner and more true to the restomod theme.

[Digger]

Since I now have the last piece to redo the dash, I needed to get cracking on the switch panel to match the DD gauges. I went through about 14 CAD variations before I got fed up and put cutter to aluminum and came up with something I liked.




Then I spent an evening designing icons in MSpaint and printed off a few sets at the local Kinkos




After that, I was able to assemble a prototype with the buttons I picked out to match the knobs in the truck.




I went back to CAD and modeled a new panel based on the one I prototyped. It will include a cigarette lighter outlet and dual powerpole connectors.




Last Sunday I was able to machine out the new panel. I took a while on the manual mill and I almost wrecked the whole thing, but I got it done and threw the buttons and indicators in to see how it looked.





I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out, but it still needs paint and the back end electronics. The switch panel will have a microcontroller to read the states of the switches and it will send that information over just two wires to a relay board that will handle all the high-amp switching.



This will simplify the wiring and keep the underhood clean.


That is as far as I've gotten, but it's getting there. I'll post up more as I get stuff done.

[akaFrankCastle]

One question. Which engineering field is your degree in?

[Justin]

And will you rent out your brain?

[Jesus_man]

Yeah, this is an amazing feat! You got some SW skills! Can't wait to see you start assembly! You doing to make an exploded view?

[Digger]

One question. Which engineering field is your degree in?

It's that obvious?

I'm a degree'd Mechanical Engineer, and a self-taught EE, that dabbles with a little bit of programming on the side. I usually geek out on suspension stuff and electronics. I took some vehicle dynamics courses and worked on a late-model dirt track race team in college. Nowadays I'm engineering for a local suspension and alignment parts manufacturer. The other two engineers are former Jeep engs, so we spend most of free time dreaming up stuff for our rigs.

It probably won't happen before I'm done with the current project, but I want to CAD model the frame and body of the Bronco for future use. Right now I have the frame rails for the purpose of laying out a few things including the cage. Being an older vehicle and my new family wheeling rig, I want to improve on its collision and rollover safety. Right now the body and frame are a limp noodle compared to my other cars.

I'm bummed I can't make it to the March get-together. I'll be out of town with my co-worker running a trail marathon. But I'm still looking forward to putting a face to some of the names I see on the boards.

[Digger]

WELL IT'S OFFICIAL

I finally put the pencil down and started turning wrenches yesterday. With the kids out of town and two days off work I was able to get some serious work done.

First on the list was to pull the old transmission and t-case. They both work fine, but I want overdrive and I already had the Atlas from my Ranger.

A little side-by-side comparision



The long tube headers interfered with the trans coming out and made it a bit of a PITA. I'm still not sure if I will keep them or swap them for shorty's. The new package will be ~ 8" longer and will definitely require driveshaft and exhaust mods along with a new crossmember. Everything is on the floor for now while I figure out the clutch MC and that got pushed behind the rewire project.

To make room for the clutch MC I pulled the dash apart. I have been dreading this because I knew there was a rat's nest of wire hiding back there. The truck came with a Centech harness, but I feared what the PO had done during the install. It turned out to be much worse than I thought.

This was as far as I could get the dash pulled out.

I finally got it pulled out enough to see what was going on



My fear of taking this truck 4-wheeling without looking at the wiring was WELL FOUNDED! I found exposed wires where the wire nuts had fallen off, TONS of fuses and relays buried in the harness itself. If anything had gone wrong on the trail, it would have been hours disassembling and searching the harness for the problem.

This is the harness after 10 hours of cutting and disassembling. I have about 6 hours alone in carefully removing the 30 MILES of electrical tape wrapped around everything.



I removed all the cab switches for the ARB's, compressor, fuel pump, engine fan, backup lights (yes the backup lights were on a switch instead of wired to the trans) and some misc crappy radio wiring.

Back up light will be moved to the transmission, fuel pump and engine fan will move to a factory Ford power distribution block under the hood. ARBs compressor, light bar etc will also move under the hood via my homebrewed relay block. The end result will be about 1/2 the wiring removed from behind the dash, with short, tiddy runs under the hood, thanks to the switch panel and the Dakota Digital gauges.

While I was at, I got more done on the switch panel. Cig outlet and PowerPole plugs came in and were installed after paint. Back lights were installed along with back-end electronics. Code has been written and proved out.



Bracket for electronics with clearance cut for wires





Here is a pic of the setup with relay block sitting in their EMI and water proof aluminum housing.

[Kinder]

Love all your planned upgrades, you're going to love the 5 speed and I'm only a tiny bit jealous of the Atlas. Your switch panel is awesome, I know your going to get a bunch of local folks ing. If you need a hand with any of the big pieces just ask.

[Gunnibronco]

Awesome stuff. I'll be watching this.

The switch panel is super cool. What is the 4 wire outlet just below the cig lighter?

[Rox Crusher]

looks like you have some great plans

subscribed

[Digger]

Love all your planned upgrades, you're going to love the 5 speed and I'm only a tiny bit jealous of the Atlas. Your switch panel is awesome, I know your going to get a bunch of local folks ing. If you need a hand with any of the big pieces just ask.

I'm really looking forward to both! The Atlas was great in the Ranger, but the 6:1 gearing only made the truck good for crawling. With the built 357 and the wide gearing of the ZF, this truck should be good to go for dune running or crawling. I can't wait!

Thanks for the offer. I may take you up on it after the cage is built and I need to remove it for paint. If you're ever in the Thornton area, feel free to drop by.

[Digger]

Awesome stuff. I'll be watching this.

The switch panel is super cool. What is the 4 wire outlet just below the cig lighter?

Thanks!

The outlet is a pair of PowerPole connectors. Most people are familar with Anderson's SB175 series that are often used for winches, jumper cables, forklift power, etc.



PowerPoles are the smaller brother to the SB series and are very common in the HAM radio community. They handle 2x to 3x (30-45 amps) the amperage of a cigarette outlet, are unisex like the SB series, and are a smaller package. I have them wired to almost everything 12V I own. I use the larger SB's for winches, jumper cables, trail welder, power inverters.




For all their advantages, they are still a very cheap connector. You can spend $2-$10 for a cigarette lighter outlet, I buy PowerPoles in packs of 25 pairs for $0.80/pair
http://www.powerwerx.com/anderson-powerpoles/powerpole-sets/

[Gunnibronco]

Cool, I've only seen the big versions.

Thanks

[Kinder]

Those are cool, I was just thinking of picking up the big brother for my receiver winch setup I'm building for my trailer.

[landshark]

I would love to know more about the two wire relay switches. I want to put most of my switches up into the spreader bars between the seats in the cage. This would be perfect so I don't have to run 40 wires up there. You have any links to read about it?

[Digger]

I don't have any writeup yet. I'll do that when it's all finished.

Here is a quick flow chart of how it works


I used a pair of Atmel ATMega328 microcontrollers to run the show. They are very popular due to the widespread use of the Arduino IDE. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arduino) I've built a stand-alone board for the uC since it is a waste to use the Arduino development board in a permanent project.

The microcontroller on the switch side does a quick read of the state of all 8 switches to determine if they're ON or OFF. It then encodes this information as a single byte of data, which works out well since a byte is 8 bits. It then sends this byte out the serial port which is connected to the RS-485 IC. That chip translates the TTL signal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor%E2%80%93transistor_logic) to a differential signal to make it noise immune and able to travel long distances in electrically noisy environments like a car.

On the other end, the 2nd RS-485 chip translates the signal back to TTL logic. The 2nd microcontroller reads the single byte of data and decodes it, then turns ON or OFF the appropriate relays. All this happens 50 times/second. It could do it much faster, but they is not much need to do so. No human could toggle a switch that fast. When you flip a switch, the relay turns ON/OFF instantly. It's very seamless and the user could never tell the difference between this system and one that was hard-wired.

The only reason to go to this much effort is to simplify the wiring between the two ends. Theoretically there is no limit to the number of relays that can be controlled over 2 wires. The practical limitation is how many pins the microcontroller has available, but with some clever programming, even this is not much of an obstacle. The bottom line is, if you need to have 30-40 switches, you could do it.

The other advantage is that not all the relays have to be in the same spot. RS-485 is "mulit-drop" capable, so there could be 2 or more relay blocks in different areas of the truck and they can all talk through the same 2 wires. New cars used this same idea, but do it with a CAN-bus. It's similar to RS-485, but more complicated to handle all the things a new car must do. RS-485 is much easier and cheaper to implement.

Here is a commercial unit that functions in a similar way.
http://gallo-teck.ca/speedwire/

Mine is a little more simple. It doesn't require special cables and the wire run could be up to a 4000 ft long without signal desegregation. It is also much, much cheaper. The microcontrollers and RS-485 chips can be purchased for a few dollars a piece, the programming software is free, the relay block was $16 from Amazon and it is well built. Switches were the most expensive part at $5/each. I also had waaayyy too much time in the machined panel and indicators, but obviously those are not required.

The easy way to get this done would be for you to use an Arduino dev board, they come in different flavors, but the UNO is the most common and is not very big. This will save you some effort rigging up a 5V power supply for the uC. I already wrote the code, so we just have to burn it to the uC.

You will need some soldering skills to tie it together, but I'd be willing to help with the layout. What I really want to get done is design a small PCB with everything on it and send to out to one of the small run board manufacturers. That way I could just sell people the two modules they need for both ends, instead of piecing together all the parts themselves. Then they could pick their own switches and relays.

[Digger]

Those are cool, I was just thinking of picking up the big brother for my receiver winch setup I'm building for my trailer.

Powerwerx sells the SB's too and their prices are usually very good. Mcmaster Carr also sells a nice 200amp continuous-duty relay for $45. They are popular with the PowerStroke guys to replace the glow relay. I like to use them to switch power to the winches or as a dual-battery relay. It's a little peace of mine to de-power the SB connectors at the bumpers when you're not using them. If they ever shorted out, it would melt the truck down.

[aaah1]

I really like the switch panel looks sweet.

I have a arduino board they are very easy to set up and program. Would be cool to get the wireless add on to control everything with your phone too. Not sure what I am going to do with mine yet though.

Thanks for the weight chart to needed that.