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d_rock's backroad 78 Ranger XLT

47K views 286 replies 37 participants last post by  simrokkzz 
#1 · (Edited)
I found my Bronco in the summer of 2011 on a local classifieds website, and immediately reached out. At the time, I was driving an '82 Toyota pickup which I rebuilt during high school. It was a fun little machine, but I had always liked Ford trucks, and was itching to get a full size Ford like my dad. When I showed my dad the Bronco ad later that day he told me the owner was a co-worker of his! I drove my 78 Ranger XLT home the next day!

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I've picked up a lot of good info on this forum over the years, and I'm stoked to finally be sharing my build with you all. Early on, I didn't have a clear goal for the Bronco besides being a daily driver. Now, it will serve not only on my commute, but as an adventure rig for exploring the backroads and wilderness of the Canadian west coast. If I can afford the right parts over the next few years, I'd love to check out MOAB one day... but lets not rush things.

There's a lot to share before we get to my latest work, but here's a teaser (just got the truck back from paint!):

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#4 · (Edited)
Thanks guys

Original color was two tone brown and white; someone along the way put orange over the white metal, giving it the A&W look. I dug the retro look of the orange/brown combo, kinda fun compared to all the black/white/silver cars around these days. Some details on my Bronco at this point, nothing out of the ordinary:
  • 351M, 2 barrel carb
  • C6 automatic trans
  • NP205 t-case
  • D44 front / 9 inch rear, 3.50 gears

The Bronco came with a new 25.5 gallon fuel tank. I don't recall if the original 33 gallon was actually leaking, but it was definitely in bad shape. The skid plate was rusted in half, and the wrong size for the new tank, so I bent up some steel flat bar to use as lower straps. Some pieces of old heavy duty tie down webbing were used as cushions between the straps and tank. Found a new sending unit to match the tank through JBG.

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The previous owner bought it off a guy who brought it up from California. I'm not sure whether it was originally sold there by Ford, but it definitely spent most of its life in a drier climate, as there was virtually no rust. Just a little bit of scaling on the floor of the cab, and some bubbling in the bottom of the door skins. The wire wheel and some primer were used to keep this at bay for a while. There was also a lot of powdery sand up in the body... got some in the face when air hosing things down. Good thing for safety glasses. Here is the nice solid floor:

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A couple of other early additions:
  • 32in BFG All Terrain KO tires
  • Hella 500 halogens on the front bumper
  • Cab clearance markers

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#5 · (Edited)
This was enough to get me and some friends out of town for surfing and camping. Like a fool, I didn't take enough pictures. Can't find a single one showing 5 surf boards on the roof, resting on a simple gutter rack up front, and the shiny air deflector in the back. The extra load ended up breaking the air deflector brackets out of the topper, so I removed the deflector and filled the holes with bondo.

At this point I was into my second year of university. Every morning I would drive from my parent's place to the bus exchange, and take transit to school. This cost me approximately an hour each way by bus, and $60 per week in fuel. I figure I was getting 34 L/100km (~7 mpg), which really hurts on a student budget. I continued to suffer like this for while, then eventually parked my Bronco and relied on my student bus pass.

… Until I found this: 1994 F150 XL, 5.0L, M5OD 5spd, with a blown out slave cylinder.

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This truck was a heap, had high kms on it but the motor seemed to run strong, and the trans shifted well. I got if for $400, did the clutch for $300, and figured I would shake down the setup and maybe swap the whole running gear into the Bronco. It was a decent enough run-around truck, but left me stranded a few times (cracked ignition coil would intermittently cut out). I began to lose confidence in this pickup as a good donor, so I went back on the hunt. I found another 1994 F150 with a 4.9L in it, and one of these in the box:

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I got that truck, along with the ZF5 for $450! Needless to say my parents weren't thrilled with the fleet I was building. But now we have all the ingredients to build the Bronco that was growing in my mind.

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#6 ·
This was enough to get me and some friends out of town for surfing and camping. Like a fool, I didn't take enough pictures. Can't find a single one showing 5 surf boards on the roof, resting on a simple gutter rack up front, and the shiny air deflector in the back. The extra load ended up breaking the air deflector brackets out of the topper, so I removed the deflector and filled the holes with bondo.

At this point I was into my second year of university. Every morning I would drive from my parent's place to the bus exchange, and take transit to school. This cost me approximately an hour each way by bus, and $60 per week in fuel. I figure I was getting 34 L/100km (~7 mpg), which really hurts on a student budget. I continued to suffer like this for while, then eventually parked my Bronco and relied on my student bus pass.

… Until I found this: 1994 F150 XL, 5.0L, M5OD 5spd, with a blown out slave cylinder.



This truck was a heap, had high kms on it but the motor seemed to run strong, and the trans shifted well. I got if for $400, did the clutch for $300, and figured I would shake down the setup and maybe swap the whole running gear into the Bronco. It was a decent enough run-around truck, but left me stranded a few times (cracked ignition coil would intermittently cut out). I began to lose confidence in this pickup as a good donor, so I went back on the hunt. I found another 1994 F150 with a 4.9L in it, and one of these in the box:



I got that truck, along with the ZF5 for $450! Needless to say my parents weren't thrilled with the fleet I was building. But now we have all the ingredients to build the Bronco that was growing in my mind.

Hey, having a fleet of vehicles in various states of disrepair is half the fun! I'm trying to offload some of mine, so I can buy some more jalopies. :D
 
#10 · (Edited)
Thanks guys! Now lets dig into this engine swap...

I drove the 351M/C6 combo into my dad's shop for the last time, and started tearing things apart:

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My dad regularly referred to this motor as a boat anchor, but I hung onto it for a couple years as a backup plan. Eventually I sold the motor, before my dad could buy a boat and push it overboard. Here's the old V8 out of the way, and the gaping hole it left between the frame rails:

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Engine mounts for the 4.9L are easy enough to come by, and fasten to the block identically over the years. Since the carbureted 300ci motors were available in the 70's trucks, and the trucks and Broncos share frame geometry... I just need to find the right set of perches for the frame. Easier said than done. The EFI mounts drop straight down onto their perches, while the carbureted mounts use perches with diagonally positioned isolator blocks, similar to the old 351M above. Not sure who to credit with this image, but I managed to find the right part numbers for the perches I wanted: 6028 and 6029. My local Ford dealer had to look this up in their archives, but confirmed that with the 70's style mounts bolted to my engine, they would be a fit.

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I searched around, called places, but no luck. Very few trucks are left around here with the 240, 300, 352, or 360. Those that are around are cared after, thus not suitable for pillaging. So I decided to make my own "factory appearing" perches. First I had to test fit my 4.9L and ZF5 and take some measurements:

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Engine mounts bolted to the block, and using 2x4's off the frame to position the engine:

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With the ZF S5-42 resting on the stock transmission crossmember and the engine oil pan about an inch off the front crossmember. Its tight, but looks like everything should fit alright... except that the transfer case will hit the structural member under the floor. I was not interested in cutting the floor of such a clean body, so I opted for a body lift. For the sake of fitting parts, I used hockey pucks as spacers at the body mounts... ended up needing 3 inches to fit the BW1356 that come with my donor truck.

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#11 · (Edited)
I created CAD models for my custom engine perches, and had them waterjet cut from cold rolled steel sheet. My dad had this old makeshift brake kicking around, fabricated from chucky pieces of angle iron. I bolted it to the rear bumper of my beater/workbench pickup, and tried bending a piece of scrap of the right thickness. It took a lot of effort, and I thought for sure that the brake was going to snap... the brake flexed a lot so I had to clamp the part near the end. Not a bad finished bend considering the tool I used...

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Here is the passenger side perch mocked up on the frame:

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Both perches mocked up, and the frame partly cleaned:

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At this point my dad and I had an old Clarke 110e MIG welder in the garage. I had burnt up all the tips for it back in high school while building and "racing" demo cars, and parts for that welder were not readily available. Fortunately, I had access to a nice Lincoln TIG welder through the Formula SAE team at university. One of my teammates there was a certified weld inspector, and showed a few of us the ropes. I always liked the smoothness and control of TIG and quickly became more proficient at that than MIG. So I welded up my engine perches. Next I sandblasted them then coated them in POR15 Chassis Coat, along with the front part of the frame:

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Some close-ups of the finished perches, and the gussets underneath the bottom edge:

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#12 · (Edited)
Some goodies for the motor: I had the valve cover, lifter cover, and motor plate powder coated black, and I painted the oil pan. No budget for a rebuild at this point, but I did poke around inside... reasonably clean, no obvious damage. I did hear it run before I bought it, sounded like a typical 4.9L. Threw in some new seals to keep the oil in and the world out.

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Back under the Bronco, I got going on a custom crossmember for the transmission. Having replaced the clutch on my 94 F150, and given that I was planning to use a concentric slave cylinder, I designed this with maintenance in mind. Murphy's law, right? I cut the center section out of the original crossmember, leaving the ends tied into the radius arm brackets. Back to the waterjet for a set of 1/8 inch cold rolled plates and gussets to create a drop-out center section. The tubing is extra DOM that a friend had from back-halving his Toyota.

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Back in with the motor to check fit... the custom engine perches worked! Shifter position on the trans is going to work also. I thought I might have to make a custom shifter to get around the dash, but the one that came with the tranny ended up working, and was within comfortable reach.

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I used the transmission isolator that held the M5OD in my donor truck. Mounting hoop for the isolator is just held in place:

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This design allowed me to tilt the running gear back a bit more and gain some more clearance to the cab floor. Here is the clearance between the bellhousing and firewall... enough room to reach in and get those bolts:

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Got the rad support back in to check fan clearance: about 1/2 an inch. Its about the same on the back of the engine, between the firewall and the intake plenum (specifically the flange between the upper and lower intake). Also, forgot to mention in an earlier post, but I'm not running the original radiator. I removed a nasty old trans cooler that wasn't even hooked up, and found a massive rad leak. Picked up this rad from an old Camper Special, 76 I think. Takes forever and the neighbor's pool to fill this thing up.

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#13 · (Edited)
Here's the transmission crossmember all welded up. The vertical tubes are capped across the top and house the bolts for the isolator block. The bottom of the tubes will get trimmed down at a later date to avoid catching on anything. Overall, the radius arm brackets are still the lowest point under the truck.

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With the motor and trans in, there were a lot of other things to start working on... from the date data in my pictures, I bounced between tasks more than I recall. Here are the fuel line clips out of my donor truck:

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I recall having the finger type clips on the pressure and return lines for the fuel pump, and on both sides of the fuel filter; there may have been 2 different sizes. A few got mangled while tearing down the donor truck, since I didn't have the right tool and had to use a piece of sheet metal to release them, but I easily found replacements at the local parts store. I have the right tool now. The other clip pushes onto the outside of the fully connected fitting. Since my donor was a short-box single-cab truck, the wheelbase was quite similar to the Bronco... the fuel lines transferred over pretty easily. The only hassle was positioning them at the engine end to provide slack for strain relief.

Here we have evidence of that body lift... I have a proper 3 inch kit installed here. The bumper will get lifted up later to address that gap.

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At the front end, I've got the upper intake in place, and am starting to sort out the wiring. No pictures of it, but I ended up laying out the original wiring harness in the carport. Next, I removed all the wrap from the 94 harness and rearranged it as much as possible to match the layout of the original. Cool thing with the 90's harnesses is that they were meant to be somewhat modular for the sake of manufacturing. Separate harnesses were produced for the engine, chassis, and interior to suit the various options. I understand that some of the connector pinouts may not be directly compatible across the years, but re-pinning is do-able with the right references.

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In this picture you can see where I have drawn a place for the PCM to fasten on the firewall. I made a bulkhead for the connector sockets, which was riveted to the firewall; the PCM and connectors fasten from the outside, accessed under the fender. Right beside my PCM sketch you can see where my hydraulic clutch master cylinder is mounted, to the left of the brake assembly.

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#14 · (Edited)
Since I like the original 70's style instrument cluster, but wanted to use the "new" instruments from the donor, I started to plan a custom assembly and gauge faces. I will get to more on this later, but the important part now is that there was no space for a tach within the 70's cluster. Rather than use the plastic bracket that came with my column-mount tach, I machined a custom aluminum shroud for the upper part of the steering column, which included a mounting tab. These parts were clear anodized, and then bonded together.

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For now I have kept the stock steering box; it seems to be in decent shape still. For the power steering pump, I transferred the 94 pulley onto the 78 pump, which bolts directly onto the 4.9L bracket. The pressure hose barely reaches.

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What was left of the emissions gear on my 4.9L was in bad shape, so I got new parts directly from the manufacturer (PCI). They took a while to process my order, but everything showed up in good shape and as advertised.

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So the BW1356 came with 2 different tail housings… a slip yoke type for use on the trucks, and a flange (aka companion) yoke type on the Broncos. My donor had the slip yoke, which adds a great deal of length and would have resulted in a terrible drive angle. Also, these cases do not accommodate a gear driven speedometer, and I was not ready to put a tone ring in my 9 inch, or swap to the 8.8. There is a VSS relocation kit available (easy enough to make with machine access), but that only applies to the models with the flange yoke.

I found someone selling a BW1345 with an M5OD stuck to it. I only needed the t-case, so I traded the M5OD from my donor truck plus some cash for the setup. I got them apart and sold off the spare tranny, recovering my cost. This case has a 32 spline front output and a 31 spline rear output, and is a few inches shorter than the BW1356. There is a provision for a cable speedometer, and with the correct adapter, it will also output a signal for cruise control. I might be able to use this same piece to switch to the electronic speedometer later, and add the RABS parts from my donor... The BW1345 got some new bearings and seals before going into the Bronco.

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Driveshafts all cleaned up and painted. Front to back:78 Bronco rear shaft, 78 Bronco front shaft, 94 F150 front shaft.

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Spicer CV centering yoke with a new bearing installed:

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The original rear CV driveshaft became my new front driveshaft. For the rear, I used the front (non-CV) driveshaft from the F150 donor. Both shafts got shortened and balanced at a local shop. I did not rotate the rear axle downwards to correct the drive angle and reduce vibration, as I was still holding on hope that I would find a flange output for the rear of the case.

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And to finish off for today, a few more items showed up:
  • Coolant hose couplings (from JTR Stealth Conversions)
  • T-bolts for my custom fuel tank straps
  • Non-adhesive vinyl harness tape (like they use from the factory on wiring)
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#17 · (Edited)
Alright, here we have the BW1345 installed, along with both driveshafts. The front driveshaft and the exhaust both clear over the transmission crossmember nicely:

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I used as much as I could of the stock exhaust off my 94 donor truck. The tube got cut a few inches back of the air injection port, and I franken-pieced the rest of the exhaust system together. Muffler is a Cherry Bomb that came with the donor. I would love to weld up a full stainless system one day. Checking the exhaust routing around the frame and engine perch:

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Those coolant hose couplings were put to good use adapting my engine to the big 70's rad. I did look into fitting a 90's rad, but the width would have required substantial changes to my rad support. Only one connection seems to have ongoing drip, where the bottom hose connects to the engine... I may have overtightened that clamp.

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This is where my parents really got freaked out... seemed skeptical about it ever running again. I re-used most of the 78 switches, so that meant rearranging the harness a bit:
  • the 78 ignition switch has fewer "run" circuits, so I piggybacked off one to actuate a relay for another
  • the 78 heater circuit was retained
  • the 78 tailgate circuit was retained
  • the 94 multi-function switch was removed, and the 78 wiper circuit retained. The extra wires running through the firewall were coiled up for later... will likely use these as signals for light and winch relays
  • the 94 light switch uses the same body as the 78 light switch, so it was a direct bolt-in
I mounted the inertia switch high up on the passenger side footwell, beside the glovebox. There is plenty of room there for the RABS unit to be added in later.

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Can't find any pictures of it, so I'll talk about the fuel tank. The fuel lines are run back to the tank at this point, but need an in-tank pump to draw from. The tank out of the donor truck was too wide at the flange to slip up between the frame rails, BUT the Bronco frame rail geometry is pretty much unchanged in that area from 78-96, so I ordered a new 96 Bronco fuel tank and pump, and it slipped right in! The lower straps were re-made from steel flat bar, nothing too tricky there.

For the upper straps, I folded the end of a piece of flat bar over, bent into the right curved shape, and welded up those edges, plus drilled a hold and welded that up to really fuse the layers together. The folded region needs to be in a slight bend prior to welding, otherwise after welding this whole region will be too stiff to bend around the tank. Next I performed some angle grinder surgery to carve away the edges of the thickened region, leaving a t-hook with a tapered undercut. These edges then got welded up. At the other end, I created a slot, dropped in one of those t-bolts from Summit, folded the flat bar over the bolt, and welded it down along both edges and through a spot in the middle.
 
#20 · (Edited)
Finishing up the engine swap
  • hood is back on
  • power distribution box located to make space for the intake air filter in the front driver side
  • engine wiring is all loomed up and partially wrapped with that nice non-adhesive harness tape
  • coolant and heater plumbing completed
  • cleaned the fuel rail and put new seals on the injectors
  • new fuel regulator
  • new spark plugs, wires, ignition coil, and distributor cap+rotor
  • cleaned throttle body and IAC valve
  • MAP sensor mounted to firewall, connected to vacuum tree via semi-rigid plastic tubing (thick red tube in picture)
  • new EGR valve
  • AIR system restored (minus a smog pump intake muffler that was discussed in another thread... were these even used on Canadian trucks? neither of my pickups had it...)
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Here's proof that I got the cab wiring put back together. The 94 cluster is zip-tied in place for now, since the custom cluster is still being designed. The speedo has no sensor to pick up off yet though, so no out-pacing traffic. Also got the tach mounted up... kind of blocks the fuel gauge here, but I typically keep it above 1/4 tank anyway. The position is set to work with the 78 bezel, so this will be resolved when the new cluster goes in. No I don't ever expect to rev my 4.9L up to 5600 rpm like the redline in the picture.

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SO... DID IT START?!
  1. Battery hooked up, fuel in the tank, all fluids topped up.
  2. Ignition on, fuel is priming... primed.
  3. Crank it over, and over, and over, and over, and over.... its sputtering but not catching.
  4. Check all fuses, relays, wiring connections... all good.
  5. Check for spark... yes we have a spark on all cylinders.
  6. Check timing while cranking it over... looks about right. I never dicked around with the timing anyhow.
  7. Check TDC by pulling a spark plug... seems about right. I never dicked around with the timing anyhow.
  8. Scratch head and second guess everything.
  9. Repeat 1-8 until your head is sore from scratching.
  10. Check the distributor position and discover that its out by 180 degrees :banghead I guess I dicked around with the timing.
  11. Re-install the distributor and try to start it again...
YES!!!

She started right up. I will now understate the great deal of effort it takes to bleed the power steering system. Here it is parked in a rather generously sized spot at the liquor store... had to pick up some celebratory beer!

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Washing off all the dust from the past year in my dad's shop:

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#21 ·
By the time I got it back on the road, I had graduated from university, and moved to Vancouver for work. Here is the Bronco leaving Victoria on the ferry:



I guess I skipped over this bit, but for the pedal assembly I found a unit with a clutch pedal out of a 70's F250... not sure exactly which year. The clutch pedal pivoted about the same axis as the brake pedal did on the Bronco assembly, and the brake pedal pivot was mounted further up and away from the driver. I attempted to bolt the F250 assembly in and adapt to the brake linkage, but was plagued by binding issues. Due to the different pivot location, any attempt to maintain the stock pedal ratio caused too much vertical motion of the push rod, and I destroyed my push rod boot by over experimenting with this. In hindsight, I think this pedal assembly may have been paired with a non-linkage booster. I ended up trimming down the bushing length on my original Bronco brake pedal, and installed this in the same pivot axis as the clutch pedal, on the F250 assembly. I later discovered that this is more or less how the 78/79 Bronco clutch pedal assembly is supposed to be.

To get the hydraulic 94 clutch working, I cut the push rod pivot from the 94 pedal assembly and welded it onto the newly adapted F250 clutch pedal. The firewall flexed a bit under foot, so a scrap piece of aluminum angle was added for reinforcement. After a bit of time on the road, I learned to dislike the 94 pushrod... turns out the slightest bit of misalignment will cause it to pop off of the pivot pin. So I made a new one at work using a spherical bearing to compensate for my inadequate jigging while welding. Old one on the left, new one on the right with some adapter pieces:



Wasn't thrilled with some sponginess in my brakes, so I replaced this dirty old master with a new cast iron unit. Bench bled, installed, didn't take pictures. It helped, and was certainly driveable, but the brakes still needed improvement.



I plan to get a new 94 aluminum body master cylinder (donor one is in rough shape). The slight increase in bore from 1 inch to 1.0625 inch will decrease sensitivity (less pressure for the same pedal force). Between 78 and 94, the front calipers have the same bore, and the rear wheel cylinders have the same bore (looks like these might even be interchangeable). This plus adding the RABS unit and eliminating the old combination valve should yield a system that is easier to bleed, and perform like a (more) modern vehicle. Note that the donor master had a valve on the front brake line (brake pressure regulator), which is effectively a metering valve from what I understand. More on this later, as I need to finish up my research and get the tools for building the brake system, and get that speed sensor going.

Here is a cover plate I made for the trans tunnel cover, to hide the unfinished t-case shifter hole. Right now, shifting into 4x4 requires climbing under the truck. Will fix this, but its tough to fit any kind of mechanism around the big ZF tranny.

 
#22 ·
The beater truck was sold during summer for $700, so I broke even there after 1.5 years of abusing it. Had done oil changes, and replaced the oil pan gasket when I got tired of topping up all the time. Burnt out the fuel pump in the auxiliary tank, but cruise control and A/C still worked. Had meant to poach the cruise actuator, but it slipped my mind.

The donor truck has long since been picked down the frame, and sent off to scrap metal.

At this point in the Bronco build, we're into mid-late December of 2016. It had been back on the road now for about 2 months. Time for some maintenance, in the snow:



Didn't take pictures, I guess I wanted to get back inside, but here's what I did:
  • oil change w/ new filter
  • checked and topped up all other fluids
  • replaced wiring pigtail for the EGR valve
  • replaced the gasket on the top of the tranny, where the shifter goes in

Took a picture of the shifter pivot assembly. Its pretty burly, to be expected.



One of the things I gained from the wiring in my engine/trans swap is daytime running lights (DRL). This is why the headlight switch was slightly different for the 94 vs the 78, albeit the same switch body (had an extra pin). When the headlights are turned off, a module under the hood turns on the high beam filaments. Turning on the headlights causes the high beam filaments to turn off, and the headlight filaments to turn on. From what I understand, DRL was standard on Canadian F-Series trucks, but not in the states. In any case, I like having it.

Can't remember exactly when, but my headlights did cut out on me once after it got back on the road. I chased it down the switch connector. Turns out that one of the snap tabs that holds a terminal inside had broken, and the terminal had backed off of the pin on the switch. For the short term, I pushed the terminal back into the connector and onto the pin on the switch. Long term, I replaced the connector by buying a new headlight switch pigtail, removing the wires it came with, and re-pinning the old connector over to the new one.
 
#26 ·
Thanks a lot man! Too bad about your increased pedal effort, because your setup in the picture looks clean and sturdy.

My clutch master cylinder is mounted on the driver side of the pedal assembly. Really limited space, but I made sure to use a pedal ratio and angular position about the pivot axis that matched my donor truck. I also used the assist spring from the 70's pedal assembly. This resulted in great pedal feel, except the dead zone at the top of travel is too large, so the master returns the pedal almost to the point where the assist spring holds it up. I will resolve this by making a slightly longer rod for my custom push rod. One big thing missing is a hard stop for bottom of travel; until I fabricate something for this, someone could wreck the master by pushing too hard.

I'm trying to get my pictures posted chronologically, and at "this" point I don't have a better angle of the installed clutch pedal parts. Stay tuned, and I should get everything caught up to real-time within the next week or two.
 
#27 ·
So I got to have a bit of fun getting out to the local mountains that winter for snowboarding.

Then something terrible happened: black ice. My Bronco ended up sliding and spinning about with the driver side on the ground. Fortunately, my girlfriend and I were alright, though we spent the day in the clinic instead of on the slopes. Luckily we avoided colliding with any other vehicles.

Quite a few people stopped to help us. I don't have any pictures of the actual wipeout... we were a bit preoccupied. I made a point to check for any leaking fuel before getting checked out myself. The tow truck driver got the Bronco back on its tires while we were at the clinic. It was seriously cold, but we actually drove it home that evening. We had all our snow gear on, lots of hand warmers, and the heater cranked.

Damage done to the Bronco:
  • Driver side fender, door, and quarter stoved in
  • Driver side b-pillar and top of cab dented
  • Cab tweaked to the passenger side (discovered later when measuring diagonally across inside the cab).
  • Rear top completed obliterated
  • Windshield cracked
  • Driver side door window and quarter window shattered
  • Tailgate window shattered
  • Driver side of grille shell mashed



 
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#29 ·
Thanks, if anything it has made me redouble my efforts. Not that I think my rig was unsuited to the road conditions, but I am much more eager now to improve my road handling: things like suspension bushings, shocks, rear anti-sway bar (only has a front bar right now; both will need disconnects of coarse), and that RABS from the F150 donor.
 
#28 ·
I ended up taking my Bronco back to my parents place to fix it up, since I didn't have space to do any serious work on it in the city. I found myself another rear top and tailgate window, and some really nice fenders. Found an optional factory roll bar too.

Also picked up another donor truck, a 78 Bronco Custom:
  • Good doors, and a spare passenger side door in immaculate condition
  • Good fenders
  • Good condition grille shell
  • Cab roof with no sunroof cut into it :thumbup
  • Another rear top, with glass, and tailgate glass
  • Another factory roll bar
  • Complete set of keyed-alike locks (ignition, doors, glovebox, tailgate)
  • Proper pedal assembly for a manual transmission
  • Suspension lift, approx. 6 inches
  • No engine, NP435 trans, NP205 t-case
  • Lots of driveshaft parts, with bigger joints than mine
  • Truetrac front differential
  • Detroit softlocker rear end
  • Warn M8274 winch in good shape, but with a cooked motor
  • Lots of other odds and ends
  • Rotten cab, so I didn't feel bad about cutting it up...



Back at my parent's place, with the Broncos side-by-side:



A lot of the cab on this donor could be picked apart with bare hands. Also check out the blue astro turf floor... definitely not my thing. The seats look a lot nicer in the picture than they actually were. I learned a lot about the Bronco structure by dissecting this thing, which paid off while repairing mine. I like this picture looking through the skeleton of the rust bucket at my good Bronco.



Donor body completely taken apart, and the chassis stripped down for parts. I kept the frame rails to use later, for mocking up future suspension, skid plates, and such. I was really tempted to use the lift kit I had salvaged, but I moved into a condo where the parking garage has a 2.0 meter (79 inch) clearance. Current height with 32 inch tires, stock suspension, 3 inch body lift, cab lights: 2.03 meters. So I sold the lift components. The red door in the background is the spare that came with the donor Bronco, no dents or rust, still had factory paint. Based on the exterior trim, it came off a pickup.

 
#30 ·
Some other parts I salvaged from the donor Bronco: firewall and roof skin. To take some of the flex out of my firewall, I intended to stiffen it by adding a second layer. I quickly outgrew this idea in favor of a heavier duty ribbed plate, with a built in hard stop for my clutch pedal. Having an extra firewall and pedal assembly on hand made designing this plate much easier. The roof skin was carefully extracted at the factory seams, so that I could transplant it onto my Bronco, thus eliminating the sunroof hole and regaining the structural member that was cut by a previous owner. The roof skin was in pretty good shape. I hade to fabricate and weld in a patch, and hammer out a sizeable dent.



The bolt for the seat belt retractor was seized. I had to drill it out and weld a new nut in place, courtesy of the donor Bronco.



To deal with my garage clearance issue, I made some smaller body lift blocks. From what I can tell, the body lift kit used glass filled nylon. I made blocks from regular nylon, and increased the cross section appropriately to achieve a similar compressive load rating. This reduced my body lift to 2 inches, and was only possible because I had switched to the BW1345 transfer case.



A couple pictures with my donor body parts bolted on:

 
#33 ·
Now this is the kind of multi colored paint job I can get behind. Hits home for sure. lol


Here's mine shortly after I got it. Still has the same color scheme. The chick that took my payment at the muffler shop the other day asked if I was ever gonna paint it. I said no. lol







Sucks that yours got damaged like that, but I have to think back to that pic of you getting it back from paint and then I realize everything turned out alright in the end.
 
#31 ·
The above welding was done with a Lincoln TIG 200 Square Wave that I bought new that summer. I knew that I'd need a good machine with the upcoming body repairs, and like I mentioned earlier, I strongly prefer TIG. MIG would have been better suited to body repairs, but the TIG would lend itself much better to future fabrication projects. The seat belt retractor nut was the first real task that I put it to. Was still getting familiar with the features on that machine, and was about a year and half out of practice, but I'd say it went well.

Body repair: Hood

I considered using the hood off the white Bronco, which looked pretty good at first glance. I ran a magnet over to check for bondo'd dents... most of the white hood was a dent. Beyond that, the edges underneath where the bumpers sit was rotting/ripping. The corners were pretty solid though, so I cut those off in case I needed them to fix the orange hood.

To get access with the hammer and dolly on the orange hood, I cut away the inside of the front corners. Working sheet metal back into shape was new to me. I got the right shape, but overworked the metal in doing so, resulting in thin patches and some pinholes. Most of my welding experience at this point had been on fairly substantial parts and I didn't want to risk turning the whole corner into a puddle with my new welder. So I tapped the corners back in very slightly, cleaned the metal with solvent, and built the corners back up with metal reinforced body filler. I then sanded them roughly to shape and rattle can'd some primer on to protect it until bodywork time. Driver side was the main focus, but I worked out a small dent on the passenger side corner as well.



Body repair: Quarter panel

Didn't get picture proof, but my dad helped me correct the tweaked cab. This had to happen before tackling the quarter panel, as It would affect the tension down the pillar into the wheel arch. We had an old farm jack from the passenger side floor behind the seat towards the upper driver side, and a come-a-long across the other way. We had to deflect the cab quite a bit to defeat spring-back and get it to stay in the right place. A few seams between interior body panels opened up during this, but I cleaned and re-sealed them later as best as I could.

To pull the dents out of the quarter panel, I welded some steel tabs onto the body lines on either side of the "dentside" recess. Ratchet straps were hooked onto the tabs and around a big post in the carport. The ratchet straps were wound up enough to provide substantial, but not body altering, tension. With tension on the body lines, I searched for high spots on the quarter panel, particularly along the top edge, and worked them down with my bodywork hammers. I was very careful this time not the overwork the metal, and focused on pushing material down and restoring the slight outward bulge of the quarter, using my passenger side for reference. The ratchet straps had to be snugged up now and again to keep tension on the body lines. I was very happy with what I achieved, having never done something like this before. Its not perfect, but close enough to keep body filler quantity down. I took the whole panel down to bare metal and gave it a light coat of primer.





Body repair: Paint and filler stripping

At this point I committed to getting the bodywork and paint done professionally, and wanted to do everything I could to keep costs down. So I started by continuing the paint stripping mission around the Bronco, covering my tracks with the rattle can primer, which could be easily scuffed off later for proper metal prep. The "new" driver side door had a bit of rust near the front bottom, but was actually much cleaner overall than the door that got smashed up.



It seems that my Bronco had a spare tire carrier at some point. They did a nasty job of patching the top corner, and the bolts for the lower bracket were broken off in the body, and covered with body filler. The tailgate had the bracket mounted inside for the tire carrier latch, and the holes in the skin were covered with body filler also. Under the brown and on the inside its dark green, so it must have been swapped from another Bronco. My guess is that the original was destroyed during the same incident that damaged the corner. Someone must have backed into something pretty hard, or something like that.



I ordered some patch panels to address the issues I had found, including some rot in the passenger side door jamb.

 
#32 · (Edited)
Body repair: Lower rear quarter corners

I got patch panels for a truck box, since no one seems to make this for the Bronco. I marked out my cut plan on the passenger quarter panel and trimmed my patch to fit. I placed my weld line to hide it behind the trim. In hindsight, it would have been better to run the weld up higher, where it could be hidden with filler, without affecting the panel thickness for trim fasteners. Driver side needed some work here as well, but I focused on the passenger side first.



Junk metal removed, along with the remnant of the old tire carrier bracket.



Patch panel tacked and welded on. My first time butt welding thin steel. It was a bit shaky at first, but got much better once I dialed in my pulse control and turned up the gas flow to fight the wind. One thing I wish my welder had is post flow control. It sets this automatically (and too high) based on the peak current setting. One day I'll probably get a torch with a shut off valve right on it.



For the driver side, I picked up some panel flanging pliers, and lap welded the patch on. This was much easier and faster. I also welded up a crack in the bottom of the tailgate post while I had access, before I put the patch on.



Body repair: Passenger door jamb

Too much dirt inside here. Had to clean it out before continuing with the die grinder. Also, there was a lot of moisture, which I fully blame on the aftermarket sunroof. I got a bit overzealous with the spot weld cutter trying to separate things.



Removed a rotten piece of structure behind the panel and welded in a new piece that I fabricated.



Replacement panel installed and welded in. Not the prettiest work, and I warped the lower part of the quarter panel a bit with my hammering and welding, but she's sturdy.

 
#35 ·
Body repair: Driver side lower door skin
There was a little bit of rust in the front lower corner of my "new" driver side door. Based on the layers of paint, and the VIN plate still riveted on (originally from a light blue F100), I figure that this door is at least onto truck #3. Pretty good shape considering what I found it on. I cut out the bad spot and marked my patch panel:



Addressed a bit more rust on the inner door shell by bending up some little triangles and welding them in:



Exercising the new panel flanging pliers. They're the smaller of the two offered by Eastwood, does a 5/8" wide flange. Takes a bit of practice, I found it easiest to align the back edge of the jaws with the edge of the sheet to consistently control depth. I highly recommend these for smaller or occasional jobs. I had my eyes on a pneumatic flanger, but realistically for how much I needed to do, I'm glad I saved a few bucks and got these.



Patch welded in and ground down. The edge of the patch had to be folded around the inner shell and hammered flat.

 
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