My Bronco's other half.

Forgot to mention I stopped by the machine shop again. I've been trying to catch the owner as he's in and out often and he's often the only one who knows anything about what's going on in the shop. I got some great news though, the manufacturer that makes the stroker kit he ordered for me sent him an email saying that that particular stroker kit is no longer being produced. Nice!

It's a good thing I stop by on occasion, because communication at this shop is very poor. They do good work, but they won't tell you about it. Anyway, he did say that he started piecing together a stroker kit himself, so maybe he would have told me at the point he had sourced everything and it was in house, I don't know. He said they had some 30 over pistons on the shelf already from a previous build that ended up not using them and that he was able to order a Scat crank and some rods that were in stock.

I have a balancer already, as I was originally going to do just a 302 and was gathering parts, so I may be able to use that now. Before that I was just going to have mine sitting on the shelf as the stroker kit comes balanced with its own balancer. So, I'd need a flexplate on top of that and then they could balance the whole assembly.

He said "second week of April" when I asked him when I could bring in my parts as I'm trying to clear things out and they're taking up a lot of space. He wants everything to be in house at the same time so he can slap it all together at once. Not sure if it'll really happen that way, but we'll see. I still need to take him my balancer so he can check it out and be sure it'll work with the crank he ordered.

And then lastly, I spent a large chunk of Monday before work putting together all my welding stuff in order to weld on the tray for my camper's propane tanks. It took a lot longer than expected as I wasn't satisfied with the way the cheap HF welding cart was supposed to be bolted together using no washers and the holes in everything are nearly the same size as the bolts' heads. I know it's cheap, but come on. So, a trip to the hardware store.

I set the welder on the cart, went through the literature, and made sure I put everything where it's supposed to go. Again, I'm new to welding, who would've known that you set it up where the ground cable plugs into the positive side (flux core wire). I would've screwed that up. Thanks, instructions. The welder comes setup out of the box for .030 wire. The wire I grabbed way back when I bought everything is .035. So, a trip to HF to get either .030 wire or to get .035 tips. They had absolutely no (flux core) .030 wire, so I just got the .035 tips and then went home and finished setting things up. At this point, hopefully it's just plug it in and make some arcs. Tomorrow!

Got my welding done today, weather was gooood.

This is my first welding machine (HF Titanium MIG 140) and my only other welding that I've done was about 18 years ago essentially doing tack welds to stitch a few pieces of sheet metal together on a couple of cars. So, I'm trying to figure this stuff out still.

My setup. lol. I can only imagine the amount of voltage drop I got running it like this. I used a 100 ft 12 gauge extension cord in order to get power out to my welder in a parking lot. Not ideal, but apparently it worked for the type of welding I did. Didn't even trip the breaker. I'm not using gas, so this is FCAW.







I put more welds and longer welds on the new tray than the old tray had. They aren't pretty, but I yanked on the tray enough to lift the tongue a little and I pushed the rod for the propane tanks back and forth and everything felt pretty sturdy. I did blow through the tray in a couple spots and that's due to me trying to weld the 1/16"-ish tray to the 1/8" frame and trying to have enough heat to make sure I penetrated the frame sufficiently. I tried focusing most of the puddle on the frame and kinda kissed the tray with it.







I purchased $3 worth of rusty angle iron from the recyclers to make a "tray" for the battery box. I forgot to measure the thickness, but I think it was around the same as the frame at 1/8".

Cutting to length.




Cleaning where I'm gonna weld.




Bzzzzzzzt.




Some of the "better" welds on the angle iron. 😬






I had a hard time telling where I was at during some of the welds, which is why they all look like they were done at different speeds. Probably because they were, right? Sometimes I would get sunlight shining in from the back of my helmet and it'd wash out the lens, so I couldn't see well when that happened either.

Oh well, at least everything is secured and I can keep practicing on the newly minted scrap pieces I created from the angle iron. I just need to clean things up and paint everything. Then I'll put the new battery in and get a second tank.

However, I may take a couple 1" pieces of the leftover angle and tack them to the frame on the sides of the battery box for insurance on it sliding off, though I don't think that'll happen. 🤷‍♂️ The box will strap to the two pieces of angle that are currently welded to the frame and it fits in between them very snugly.






Oh yeah, also need to unscrew my regulator, feed the hose through the middle, and then screw it back together. I apparently left the gap between the tray and the angle iron about 1/8" too narrow for the regulator to slide between them.

I'm finished messing with the camper for now. I'll for sure have to check on the wheel bearings and tires before I consider myself done with it and feel comfortable taking it anywhere.

I added small pieces of angle for the sides of the battery box and the box is in there very solidly, very toight. Battery is hooked up, two tanks installed, and I checked all the gas connections with some soapy water.

I hooked up the camper to the Bronco, for... reasons, and that was a challenge. I slid the step bumper from my truck under the trailer jack along with the wood block and a piece of concrete on top of it and then jacked it all the way up in order to get it high enough to clear the ball. Definitely need a receiver on the Bronco so I can put a drop hitch on it if I plan to tow it around with the Bronco.

Not sure a drop hitch would be enough though, look how close the jack is to my spare. It looks close in the pic, because it is. lol. I had to point the handle at something like a 45 in order to clear the tire when I was spinning it. I don't know how far the tongue would have to point down in order for the jack to clear the tire. This wasn't something I thought about when I got the camper, but that's mostly because I had planned on just towing it with my truck.





I also popped the camper up and verified the heater works. The fan inside it was very squealy when it first ran, but it cleared up after a couple of starts and stops and running it for a nice long while. All of the lighting works. I didn't check the fridge, the sink, or the stove as I don't plan on using them, but I'll verify they work, eventually.

My wiring adapters showed up. So, I have one that T's into the factory wiring of the truck and gives me a 4 pin connecter and then I have a second one that the 4 pin will plug into and that'll give me a 4 pin and a 7 pin. I'll have to run the extra wiring to the 7 pin if I want the added features of the 7 pin (reverse lights, trailer brakes, aux power).





The ordered receiver hitch's current whereabouts are unknown. The tracking hasn't updated since the 6th and it's coming from Florida. It's supposed to be here on Wednesday per the tracking, so we'll see. That would really put a hitch in my plans if it didn't show.

Doosenberry said:

I'd be concerned that if I put this jack, or a different one made to mount on the side, on the outside of the frame that it would get in the way of the metal rods for the bed.

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I recently replaced the old jack on my trash trailer. I found a Curt brand that clamped on with U-bolts, had the crank on the side, & a pin to rotate it 1/4 turn when not in use. It's pretty low profile above the tongue. I wonder if the lower side crank style might clear your metal rods or spare tire. Washed out pic from a dying phone.

El Kabong said:

I recently replaced the old jack on my trash trailer. I found a Curt brand that clamped on with U-bolts, had the crank on the side, & a pin to rotate it 1/4 turn when not in use. It's pretty low profile above the tongue. I wonder if the lower side crank style might clear your metal rods or spare tire. Washed out pic from a dying phone.
View attachment 211559

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I think I'll have to pop it up again and see if something like that would work as far as clearing everything once the camper is set up. I glanced at it again today while I was taking my dogs out to do their business and I think it might clear under the spare if I can get the tongue to drop enough to have the camper level with the ground. Right now it points up a lot. I'm actually curious how tight of a turn I'd have to make in order for them to touch.

Also, I'm not sure how much room I have along the frame to mount one like you have now that I added a second tank and put the battery in front of the tanks. The gaps along the frame aren't very big. It's not a huge issue right now since I'm not planning on any immediate trips with the Bronco and the camper together, but something I'll definitely try to figure out.

My receiver made an early arrival today, which was nice. Only issue is that it's missing parts. I opted for one that bolts together rather than one that's welded as a single piece. I figured that'd be easier to modify later and I could get custom side brackets to position it differently and the crossbar with the actual receiver for the stinger could just stay unmodified. Anyway, I'm going to make a call tomorrow during business hours eastern time, the perils of nightshift , and see if I can get my missing parts sent out.

I took the truck on the freeway and I still have something goin' on. It shakes significantly at freeway speed. You feel it mostly through the steering wheel and I noticed that if I paid attention to everything else and let go of the wheel, the truck felt pretty smooth. It didn't feel like tires bouncing or anything like that. It just felt like the steering wheel was shaking really good and it felt like it went in all directions, not an up and down or side to side.

All of the typical sources have been taken care of. New driveshaft. Rotated and rebalanced tires. New belts for the accessories. All of those helped a little in their own right as my initial shake/vibration was crazy bad and at basically all speeds, especially where I cruised the most, around 35 mph. So, I decided to start over.




I went back through the belts and tightened them up as they seemed a bit sloppy. Some of the bolts were loose. After doing that, I noticed the crank pulley/harmonic balancer has a pretty good wobble to it. I'll have to take a video of it. You can feel a good shake in the engine if you have it running while in park and rev it up and down.

I don't know if that is the source of my shake at highway/freeway speeds, but I'm going to replace the balancer and see what happens. I would very much regret noticing this wobble now and decide to deal with it later, or just wait until my new engine is ready to go in, and have it fly off and take out a bunch of crap under the hood as they are known to do.

Speaking of new engine, I got this text as I was getting ready for work today.





So, that's exciting. I asked him if he was ready for me to bring in all of my accumulated parts that I've been holding onto (that I'd love to get out of storage), so he can see what, if anything, he needs to order to complete assembly. He said to wait another 2-3 weeks, so he can get a few more engines out and make space. I absolutely saw that coming.

The balancer is supposed to be here on Monday via Summit per the tracking. It'd probably be here tomorrow if it wasn't the weekend. They have a Nevada warehouse that I try to get parts from if I can (select in-store pickup for that warehouse and it'll show if its in stock there, neat trick) and that's where it's coming from.

The deal with my receiver hitch is that the bag of small parts (hardware/spacers) that comes with it is non-existent. Long story short, I opted to keep the hitch and was given a partial refund (~$50). The manufacturer no longer carries replacement hardware for my particular hitch, of course, but I think I found it on Ebay and have it coming for about $15 shipped.

Meanwhile, my old step bumper is my backup plan if my timeframe gets tight. I can put it back on and just install my wiring adapters and bolt the 7 pin onto the bottom of the bumper until I get the receiver sorted out. Speaking of that, I'm going to hook up the adapters and then plug in the camper to verify everything is working properly. I can do that without a hitch, it just won't be permanently installing it until I do.

Long story short, I got everything off the engine that needed to come off to get to the balancer and then I grabbed the balancer and it just slid off with hardly any effort. Pretty odd, no? The I put the new one on and it went on just as easy as the old one came off.

The engine is slightly less vibratey, but I think the snout of this crank is fubar as the pulley still wobbles. Good thing is, I'm having a new engine built! Bad news is, I won't have it for a while more, of course.

The longer version of this story is that I spoke with my mechanic to see if he could do a few things for me as it snowed sideways on the day I was originally going to do the harmonic balancer and between the crap weather and sleeping during the good weather, I figured he could do a few things for me in a day that would take me much longer.

He was able to do what I wanted, but wouldn't be able to until after I'd need it done, because it's just him and his son working at this shop and his son has decided to move out of state, so he's short handed with a short as it is crew of two men. He did offer to let me work on my truck at his shop (at it, not in it, lol) and use his tools if I so desired, so today before work I took him up on that.

I really didn't end up needing much in the way of tools, but his Snap-on cordless impact, torque wrench, lok tight, and wall full of bins with bolts in them came in handy. He was grabbing a harmonic balancer puller for me, but I had the balancer in my hand before he could even get it out as it slipped off the crank with I pulled on it.

Apparently this 302 has what is essentially a factory flex fan. The blades are very bendy. I knew it wasn't a clutch fan, but I thought it had regular ol' stiff fan blades as I've never really looked at the fan before.









Hard to see in this pic, but there's a Ford number on this spacer. C8AE-E. The whole setup is factory, all the parts are from Ford. I've seen aftermarket setups like this, which is why I mention it.





Then I got to use this hulking cordless impact. It took off the crank pulley bolts and the large crank bolt. I barely had to pull the trigger for maybe half a second, it makes so much torque. That's a 9/16" on it in the pic. The crank bolt was a 15/16".













So, the balancer, like I said earlier, just slid off the crank snout with little effort. It has what looks like a badly worn speedi sleeve on it as well. After showing this stuff to my mechanic he said maybe someone honed the crank snout to make it fit easier or something like that and then commented about how a lot of guys out there do some really hokey stuff.




The old balancer looks like the outer portion of it is cockeyed a little. If you put a straight edge on it, you can see a gap on one side where it's non-existent on the other side. Doesn't look like much, but I don't know how much you'd need for the balancer to cause a vibration. A small strip of the rubber was missing as well.







And then this monstrosity is what I got to replace it via Summit. It's like a one size fits all for a SBF. It comes with spacers and whatnot for the various pulley setups that various years had. Mine, of course, needed to use every spacer that came with the balancer due to how far the crank pulley needs to stick out to align to the rest of them. I got this one, because it was the least expensive by a huge margin.












I did this to make it easier to install once I saw that the new balancer would just slide right on like the old one. I know it's not good, but for now it is what it is.







Still wobbles, but won't fall down.

This is the bag I waited a week for before I found out the side brackets for my hitch didn't line up where they needed to on the frame. The spacers basically act as rectangular washers for the bolts going into the frame as the holes in the hitch brackets for the frame are slotted and larger than the bolt shanks. The larger bolts are 5/8" and look pretty hefty. If I hadn't been able to find this bad of hardware, I was going to look through bolts I have leftover from when my Bronco's lift went on. There's a lot of large grade 8 bolts in a box I have tucked away.

Haaaand.







The instructions said to leave the bolts for the side brackets loose enough so that the brackets could be centered on the frame. However, I would have needed to have maybe a half inch of bolt between the side brackets and the center piece of the hitch in order to make things work.

The instructions also said the side brackets would deflect when everything was bolted tight, but I don't know if I want to suck them in a half inch on each side. That's a lot of bending and stress on the bolts holding everything together, never mind a trailer on the hitch. So for now I'm using the step bumper and I'll probably just leave the new bumper off until I get custom brackets made for the hitch so it sits where I want it.

The step bumper went back on easy enough. Just set it on my floor jack and raised it up and all I had to do was wiggle it around to line up the holes. At least something went right and was easy.

Today I installed the T for the 4-pin plug wiring harness. Just unplug the factory connector for the truck's rear lights and plug this one in between them. Sure beats the stupid t-taps that had been previously used. I'm gonna go back and remove them and see if I can weather proof the exposed portions of wire for the factory harness.





I was going to just install the new 7-pin socket somewhere underneath on the rear crossmember, or something like that, with the bracket it comes with, but then realized I could just unbolt the old rusty 7-pin socket in the step bumper, so I just installed it there in its place. I did have to open up the hole a bit to fit the new one as it's slightly larger as it has a 4-pin along with a 7-pin and the circle is just a smidge larger due to that. That was fun considering the hole looks to have been originally cut out with a torch. I do not have a torch. lol

Once the hole was hacked open a bit and I was able to slide the new 7-pin in. The mounting holes for the old one lined up perfectly with the new one. Then I just plugged the 4-pin plug I just added with the T into the 4-pin socket on the back side of the new 7-pin socket. I used a self tapping screw that was in my random nuts and bolts storage that most old timers might call my truck's ash tray and then grounded the new 4-pin T and the new 7-pin socket onto the rear crossmember.

After that, I plugged in the camper and tried out all the lights and everything is working, so I'm happy there. I will add the 7-pin features later as for now this is what I needed and I'm kind of sick of messing with it. lol









I also repacked the wheel bearings for the trailer yesterday. That was a fun goose chase trying to figure out who carried all the goodies for this thing. Turns out the place where I get my dog food (D&B Supply) has a nice selection of trailer parts. I just replaced the rear seals and repacked the old bearings with new grease. I'll probably do new bearings at the end of this season. These bearings looked and felt ok, but I have no idea how old they are and I'd rather be safe than sorry.







When I was repacking the bearings, I noticed one of the tires had some deep cracks in between all the tread lugs. I'm assuming its where the tire was sitting on the ground. It's basically been sitting in bark/gravel for months and I'm sure all the moisture ate it up. I bought two new tires on rims for good measure and tossed the non-cracked tire with its original rim onto the back of the camper as it didn't have a spare when I got it.

Only issue there is that the new rims have a larger center bore than the originals. The originals were clearly hub centric and I'm not sure if these trailer lugs will keep the new wheels centered by themselves. Plan is to go down the street to a small shop that sells and installs used tires and see if they can swap my new tires onto the old, hub centric wheels.

After I get that all sorted out, I'm gonna try to get some miles on this combo over the next few days and see if anything decides to rear its head on me. Better here than 500 miles away or something.

Doosenberry said:

I'm gonna go back and remove them and see if I can weather proof the exposed portions of wire for the factory harness.

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I've been using some of this stuff lately. So far it seems to seal pretty well. I've seen black, red, white, & green.

I was wondering if something like that existed. Thank you.

I'm also wondering if everything is already here for the extra features provided by the 7-pin socket. It clearly had more than 4 wires going into the old 7-pin when I was removing the step bumper, but who knows if everything was wired in.

This truck had an old trailer brake controller in the cab when I first got it and it was one of the first things I removed (also removed the gun rack at the same time) as I had zero intension of towing with it. I don't remember what kind of wiring it had, if any, but I do remember it had a brake line tapping into the master cylinder, which I thought was interesting and is why I remember it. I don't think they make them that way anymore.

There's also some sort of coiled wire deal attached to the inner fender below the brake booster that kind of looks like maybe a resistor setup, like a very large version of what's in the heater for the varying fan speeds. I'm assuming it's trailer related as well and I left it alone as I didn't know what it was tied into and didn't want to mess things up at the time.

Not the greatest pic, but you can see the coiled wires at the bottom right. Wish my booster still looked like that.

Took it for a test drive a couple days ago and decided I wanted to get a pin for the tongue latch dealy ma bobber that clamps down on the ball. Mine is spring loaded, but it also has holes for a pin to secure it and with as much as this thing bounces and teeter totters while I'm pulling it, I figure I may as well double up on safety there.

Stopped at Lowe's and tried a couple pins out until I found Goldilocks.









I also stopped by the tire shop I had planned on visiting to see if they could swap rims for me with the new tires I bought. They actually told me they were too busy, so I tried another shop and they did it for me on the house. That was nice of them. Then I just couldn't stop buying stuff and I bought a third new tire/rim for a spare. When they took off the old tires at that shop, they were full of fix-a-flat and were very weathered, so why bother at that point.







I'll have to pull that rear bumper out some day, it was pushed in like that when I bought the camper. I also bought a replacement LED side marker for the trailer since there's one light that's busted. I'll see if I can get that working today. I may get lucky and just be able to put the LED and cover onto that base plate and have it turn on. I can hope, anyway.





Then I took the camper for another spin and I still had a bounce/vibration coming from the front. 🤦‍♂️ Just never ends. Another long story short, but I went back to the shop that swapped my trailer tires for me and they looked some things over and then rebalanced my front tires and about 95% of my bounce disappeared. Turns out the techs at Walmart who balanced and rotated my tires for me a couple weeks ago did a shit job, imagine that. These guys also balanced my front tires on the house. I guess this means I have to keep going to them, right? Is that how earning business works?

Oh, and about me selling my GT40 heads. I guess I've been sitting around waiting long enough that I got that itch again, so I'm going to go a little further with the 347 build. The owner of the machine shop built a 347 several months ago for a guy that helps out at his shop very part time, but refuses pay. One of those "he just likes the work" kind of deals.

Anyway, I guess he did that for a year or more and the owner was like, ok, let me put a motor together for your Ranchero then, so that's what they did. The owner used a set of Enforcer heads and was really surprised by them and he was telling me about it back when they dyno'd it and I asked if he'd show me the dyno results. I'm basically going to copy that build as I think it'll give me what I really want. Enough low end torque to yank this pop up and a bed full of gear around without any problems and then it'll rev out to 6k+ with enough hp to be "hot-roddy" when I'm not towing something.