1/23/04

I came down with the flu towards the end of the week but thanks to modern medicine I was still able to weld a few things between sneezes. Below is a picture of my efforts. I got all four cats where I need them and connected everything to the Y-pipe. I'm still trying to figure out what muffler to use since the one from the '04 is too big to fit. One of the discussion groups said that just straight pipe after the cats on newer rigs sounds great, but I'm thinking that may be too loud for my tastes. I want this to seem like a new rig, and having to compete with my exhaust during a conversation just doesn't sound appealing.

Here's what the stock '04 F-150 muffler looks like. It's huge! It's been recommended that I go with flowmaster 40's, but if I do use a flowmaster it will likely be their 50 SUV model. I may just try the straight pipe until I'm road worthy to see how bad it really is.

2/6/05

I spent this weekend installing the 2004 hood latch on the bronco. In case you didn't know, all the old 70's Ford hoods can be opened from the outside by simply pulling on a lever. Newer cars have a release inside the passenger compartment that must be actuated before the hood will open. I feel the new style latch is a must for this project to ensure I don't get people peering under the hood when I'm not around.

Here's a shot of the factory hardware under the hood.

Here's the new striker fabbed in place. Notice there's no spring. The new latch has a spring designed into it.

Here's what the latch side looked like before (I took out the old mechanism a long time ago to make room for the radiator).

Here's what the new latch looks like with the fabrication complete. Notice the cables on each side and the corresponding handles hanging below. One handle will be mounted inside the cab and the other tucked somewhere around the grill.

Here's a shot from below with the hood closed. The cables actually work and I no longer need to slam the hood to close it.

3/06/05

I appologize for not having updated the site in a month but I was getting a little burned out on this project. Plus I had a friend who needed help with an engine swap on his bronco II. It was refreshing to just drop a motor in place, wire it up, connect the fuel lines and wham you're on the road. Not with this project.

The weather is just starting to get nice here in Oregon and I'm remembering what it was like to drive my bronco around with the top off. This gave me extra motivation to get back on the project. I cleaned off the worst of the rust on the frame around where the gas tank goes and painted it with some rust treatment. I also cleaned up the outside of the tank and covered it with the paint as well. Here's a shot from underneath with the tank installed.

Unfortunately when I jacked it into place I found the fuel lines from the new pump were interfering with the floor panel in the back of the bronco. I always thought it would be a good idea to put a removable panel over an in-tank pump to make it easy to replace, I just wasn't going to do it on this rig. Well Murphy forced my hand and now I'm installing one. See pic below.

Not bad huh? When it's done I'll have a flat panel about 1/2" higher than the original floor, but I can live with that. Putting the tank in place with the pump installed meant I needed to really start looking at my wiring situation. I thought it would be fun to stretch out all the wires and see what the big picture looked like. It's ugly.

This isn't even all of them! The engine/transmission harness is on the motor where it's supposed to be and I wasn't about to take it off for the picture. It will be interesting making all that fit on the old bronco.

3/13/05

This weekend I put most of my time into the firewall. I had to make a decision whether or not to leave an access panel above the transmission. The old bronco had one but the new truck did not. This is probably because the new transmission and transfer case don't have the mechanical linkages that the old ones did. Still, there's a lot of wires and vacuum hoses to connect so I decided to make things easier down the road by salvaging what I could of the access panel.

The original panel was about 2-3 inches high which interfered with the new ductwork from the 2004. I chose to save only the flange from the old cover where it attached to the floor and fill in the center with sheet metal. I didn't think the 18 gauge stuff I had was strong enough so I used some leftover sections from the 2004 truck bed. It already had ridges bent into it so it was plenty stiff enough for the small section I needed. I'll probably wish I'd made it go further forward, but a straight flat panel is much easier to make and this way I can remove it with the ductwork still in place.

3/20/05

My sheet metal techniques are definitely improving. The square hole to the upper right is the air intake for the ductwork. Just about everything on the inside is welded up and ready to seal. A little to the left of center at the bottom you'll see kind of a square patch with a 1" hole in it. This is where the drain for the a/c goes.

Here's what it looks like from the front. What you can't see is a baffle I put in just below the the vents at the base of the windshield that will divert all rainwater over to where the joint on the wiper arm is. This plus another baffle I have yet to install should keep all rain water away from the intake but allow the air to flow through unrestricted.

3/27/05

The original bronco brakes had a front and a rear circuit. This meant a single brake line could be run to each of the two axles. Since I will be taking advantage of the ABS from the 2004 I'll have to route things a little differently. Rather than have a single flex line to the front axle then one at each wheel I've now run a flex line to each wheel directly from the frame. The line has to be a little longer to allow for both steering and suspension travel, but I simply used the ones from the 2004 which were set up the same way. See picture below.

I also spent a little more time on sheet metal work to get my battery / wiper fluid support tray in place. Notice I used some more truck bed material from the 2004. I originally planned to use some long square tube pieces here but then remembered there's a reason they make steering columns collapsible.

4/10/04

When I tried to bolt up the air conditioning compressor on the passenger side of the engine I found it wouldn't fit due to interference from the frame. This weekend I pulled the motor and transmission back out and notched the frame for a better fit. See picture below. I did reduce the effective "moment" of the frame but used much thicker material to compensate.

Before moving on I wanted to check the fit. Looks like it's going to work.

4/17/03

With the transmission out of the way I was able to finalize work on the support piece. The original transmission support bolted directly to the radius arm brackets as well as the frame. The radius arms keep your front axle from going backwards when you hit a curb, speed bump, pot hole, you name it. I didn't feel good about removing some of their support without adding something back. Here's how I decided to do it.

I welded these pieces of 1/4" strap to the radius arm brackets then bolted them to my new transmission support.

5/15/05

It's been a while since I've worked on the bronco because I took a two week vacation overseas. I'm back now and motivated to get this project done. The final ventilation air intake/grill area design was still undecided so I ended up spending a lot of time Saturday just trying to make up my mind. I'd wanted to pull the vent air in right in front of the windshield, but I just couldn't think of a way to make it look good. I ended up allowing it to take air from the engine compartment but left it such that I could modify it later if needed. I even had time to prime/paint the firewall when I was done. I'm just about ready to put the engine back permanently assuming I can mask and paint and weld a few things with the engine in place.

5/22/05

Looking pretty good huh? All the little things I've worked on over the last year are really starting to pay off. I'm finding the installation goes much faster when everything has already been designed and fitted to the application. The only thing missing here is wiring and the cpu. Part of the wiring requires a hole in the floor on the driver's side which I still need to make. Also the fuel tank and vapor canister were never completely installed. Once those are done and the dash/column is in place I should be able to start it up. I'm hoping to be able to do that next weekend.