[JACSEng]

Hello all!
I have a 1987 FSB custom 4.9 4 SPD man that I inherited when my father passed earlier this year. I learned to drive in this 23 years ago and now it's mine. It hasn't run in 10 years but I am hoping to have it fired up Monday or Tuesday after a month of on and off electrical troubleshooting when I have time and draining the varnish out of the tank.

What brings me to the forum is I am trying to gauge some interest in aerospace grade electronics for the these awesome vehicles. I am a software and electrical engineer and I believe we can do a lot better than factory wiring and connectors/fusible links. It is 2020 after all! I work in the defense industry and I have 15 years experience doing this kind of work so it's not all that difficult for me but I want to bring the highest of quality to vehicles that deserve it! Is there a market for this type of upgrade? I know mine sure needs it.

Glad to be here! Caleb

 

[White Dragon]

Welcome to the club @JACSEng
Good Luck on bringing your Fathers bronco up to snuff.

You are in the right place for all things FSB,
And your thoughts on the Electronics will take you Far in here.

Again, Welcome.
Dragon

 

[nra1ifer]

Hi, Caleb. Welcome to the forum.

I like your idea, but.......

Please consider people like me that like reliable, no-tech stuff. Don't complicate your ideas so much that it adds to crap that can go wrong and disable a perfectly-running vehicle.

 

[JACSEng]

Thanks for the warm welcome. I am really looking forward to building a bronco I can really proud of.

Hi, Caleb. Welcome to the forum.

I like your idea, but.......

Please consider people like me that like reliable, no-tech stuff. Don't complicate your ideas so much that it adds to crap that can go wrong and disable a perfectly-running vehicle.

Thanks for the warm welcome. I agree 100%. I have made a career out of trying to reach ultimate reliability and ease of use for our men and women in uniform (still working to achieve the best of both worlds). I like simple but extremely reliable things myself so I may post what I build as I go to see if anyone would want to take a swat at trying it out.

 

[JACSEng]

Welcome to the club @JACSEng
Good Luck on bringing your Fathers bronco up to snuff.

You are in the right place for all things FSB,
And your thoughts on the Electronics will take you Far in here.

Again, Welcome.
Dragon

Thanks so much!

 

[nra1ifer]

I think it is great that you have your dad's Bronco to enjoy. How I wish I had my dad's 1979 F250 (460 w/automatic) to hook up to my 1987 Avion travel trailer! It was a peach when he sold it in 2001 or so.... only had 70,000 miles on it and still looked brand new,,,, black/blue 2-tone.....

I have a 1981 Bronco Custom, 302, carb, C6 auto if you're looking for test ground! Off hand, my main wish list is to re-wire the 12V supply to a more modern way of providing power to stuff. And, I still have the stock alternator..... would love to change that to a higher-output version, driven by a v-belt. Or, how about a better plug-n-play method of providing power to the rear window?

 

[JACSEng]

I think it is great that you have your dad's Bronco to enjoy. How I wish I had my dad's 1979 F250 (460 w/automatic) to hook up to my 1987 Avion travel trailer! It was a peach when he sold it in 2001 or so.... only had 70,000 miles on it and still looked brand new,,,, black/blue 2-tone.....

I have a 1981 Bronco Custom, 302, carb, C6 auto if you're looking for test ground! Off hand, my main wish list is to re-wire the 12V supply to a more modern way of providing power to stuff. And, I still have the stock alternator..... would love to change that to a higher-output version, driven by a v-belt. Or, how about a better plug-n-play method of providing power to the rear window?

That sounds like an awesome truck, I hate seeing older trucks go mostly because most people see vehicles as disposable and just replace them at the first sign of an issue. I truly believe the classics can be built so much better than factory ever built them and make them substantially more reliable in the process. Your Bronco sounds like a great candidate for a nervous system upgrade. I am starting on mine in the next couple of months. I have to purchase a significant amount of tooling to pull this off but what you are asking for I fully plan on building and integrating. I am working on solid state power controllers to handle switching and safety (circuit breaker protection) all controllable from a custom interface that makes adding new circuit controls as easy as using a smart phone. That's the dream anyway. Hopefully I can make a post retirement business building these kinds of things.

 

[jfourdyce]

Seemingly popular idea is one touch window controls for all windows, that wouldn't require ignition on conditions to complete. Might give that one a go.

 

[miesk5]

Yo Caleb,
Welcome to our site!
My condolences on the loss of your dad. He would be proud of you in getting the 87 on the road adain.

Here's the 1987 Ford Bronco Catalog, "Great Go-Togethers, Eddie Bauer and Ford Bronco" - The Henry Ford

1987 Owner's Manual, partial (Towing it & 4 speed manual transmission shift patterns & operation) by Ford via Mikey350 @ 1996 Ford Bronco 87 Bronco Owners Manual pictures, videos, and sounds | SuperMotors.net

Register with VIN to see most Ford dealer maintenance/repairs done @ any dealership nation-wide @ Welcome to Ford Owner | Official Ford Owner Site

For any questions or to chat about it's planned modifications, it's better to post each seperately in Noobie Bronco Tech Questions. Flame free zone. This will get more attention and you can build up your post count to get into other sections such as Bronco and Ford Parts/Accessories (75 posts required to participate due to scammers who preyed on our members).
○
To save you time and for better responses, please fill out your Bronco info with location, year, engine size, transmission type, transfer case type (manual or electric shift), locking hub type (automatic or manual) info & major mods such as a Lift, etc. .
Bronco info is now able to be put under your user name.
Click your profile button in the top right and go to account settings.

On that first page, named Account Details, scroll down to "Vehicle Info" and type in up to 100 characters.

Now you can simply enter your information in the text editor and click save.

Our site's FAQs includes for example, How To Upload Images To Posts & How to Use Search
See more tips!

➡ Baba Looey's Favorite FSB Links (lots and lots of tech links)
⊙

➡Please try to take time to Participate and Vote in our current Full-Size of the Quarter Contest & later in the year,, Full-Size of the Year Contest @ Voting
You will get ideas by those competing. Also see the prizes! They are awesome as compared to other sites' "contests"!

Al

 

[JACSEng]

Yo Caleb,
Welcome to our site!
My condolences on the loss of your dad. He would be proud of you in getting the 87 on the road adain.

Here's the 1987 Ford Bronco Catalog, "Great Go-Togethers, Eddie Bauer and Ford Bronco" - The Henry Ford

1987 Owner's Manual, partial (Towing it & 4 speed manual transmission shift patterns & operation) by Ford via Mikey350 @ 1996 Ford Bronco 87 Bronco Owners Manual pictures, videos, and sounds | SuperMotors.net

Register with VIN to see most Ford dealer maintenance/repairs done @ any dealership nation-wide @ Welcome to Ford Owner | Official Ford Owner Site

For any questions or to chat about it's planned modifications, it's better to post each seperately in Noobie Bronco Tech Questions. Flame free zone. This will get more attention and you can build up your post count to get into other sections such as Bronco and Ford Parts/Accessories (75 posts required to participate due to scammers who preyed on our members).
○
To save you time and for better responses, please fill out your Bronco info with location, year, engine size, transmission type, transfer case type (manual or electric shift), locking hub type (automatic or manual) info & major mods such as a Lift, etc. .
Bronco info is now able to be put under your user name.
Click your profile button in the top right and go to account settings.

On that first page, named Account Details, scroll down to "Vehicle Info" and type in up to 100 characters.

Now you can simply enter your information in the text editor and click save.

Our site's FAQs includes for example, How To Upload Images To Posts & How to Use Search
See more tips!

➡ Baba Looey's Favorite FSB Links (lots and lots of tech links)
⊙

➡Please try to take time to Participate and Vote in our current Full-Size of the Quarter Contest & later in the year,, Full-Size of the Year Contest @ Voting
You will get ideas by those competing. Also see the prizes! They are awesome as compared to other sites' "contests"!

Al

Thanks for all those instructions and info. I will get on it today. Thanks for the warm welcome. I am already impressed with the membership of this forum!

 

[JACSEng]

Seemingly popular idea is one touch window controls for all windows, that wouldn't require ignition on conditions to complete. Might give that one a go.

That's a great idea! Seems like a fun jumping off point in addition to the diagnostics I am planning on putting into mine.

 

[Idahorocks]

Hi Caleb. Awesome what you are doing with a Bronco so close to your heart. Really dig the idea of retrofitting the best of reliable robust and useful modern tech in older vehicles. One of my Bronco curiosities is to figure out (if possible) how to tie into the OBD-1 system with a Raspberry Pi for live data streaming.

 

[BigAggie]

Hi Caleb,
This is a fellow New Mexican Bronco owner. Doing a full resto-mod on my 79 and am always interested in upgrading some of the outdated controls. The rear window slider switch is a popular one. 78Broncoloco did a nice one.

 

[JACSEng]

Hi Caleb,
This is a fellow New Mexican Bronco owner. Doing a full resto-mod on my 79 and am always interested in upgrading some of the outdated controls. The rear window slider switch is a popular one. 78Broncoloco did a nice one.

Window controls seem to be a popular improvement. I am thinking I may do wireless window control modules to make things easier for folks to install. Thoughts?

 

[JACSEng]

Hi Caleb. Awesome what you are doing with a Bronco so close to your heart. Really dig the idea of retrofitting the best of reliable robust and useful modern tech in older vehicles. One of my Bronco curiosities is to figure out (if possible) how to tie into the OBD-1 system with a Raspberry Pi for live data streaming.

That's exactly something I wanted to integrate. I will probably be using an FPGA module for this to speed up boot times and reliability but it should work the same nonetheless.

 

[jsb767]

Welcome. Just curious, what part of NM are you in?. I come out from Tennessee at least once a year to Navajo Dam Village to fish the San Juan river for trout. Its a beautiful place. I tell people it’s where all the fish are.

 

[Idahorocks]

That's exactly something I wanted to integrate. I will probably be using an FPGA module for this to speed up boot times and reliability but it should work the same nonetheless.

Cool! Definitely will follow your progress on this. I've got most of the hardware, just need to figure out how to visualize and interface the data stream on a 3X5 LED screen. I'm going to spend some time looking at ways to interface the FPGA module with a simple GUI.

 

[JACSEng]

Welcome. Just curious, what part of NM are you in?. I come out from Tennessee at least once a year to Navajo Dam Village to fish the San Juan river for trout. Its a beautiful place. I tell people it’s where all the fish are.

I am in Las Cruces located in the southern part of the state. That's a very beautiful part of New Mexico.

 

[JACSEng]

Cool! Definitely will follow your progress on this. I've got most of the hardware, just need to figure out how to visualize and interface the data stream on a 3X5 LED screen. I'm going to spend some time looking at ways to interface the FPGA module with a simple GUI.

That should be a fun project, I love doing work like this...but right now I am stuck in fuel pump h**l. I've got the classic no fuel pump operation with everything checking out ok. Troubleshooting awesomeness.