I’m sure most of you guys know the story behind this Bronco since many of you helped my wife find this one for me. For those that don’t know the story, the old thread is here but most of the images are broken from the Photobucket fiasco. viewtopic.php?f=4&t=8633

While I’ve had this thing for quite a while now, not much has been done to it because I’m just too busy to work on it. Well, this year they announced that there would be a Supercell West right here in CO. I had so much fun on the club trip out to TN for the 50th-anniversary Supercell that I decided that there is no way I can’t go to the first one here Broncoless.

So, now I’ve put a pause on harness reworks to allow me some time to work on it and I’ve already invested a ton of money into this trip, so there is plenty of motivation to get this thing going. The original plan was to just replace the bad 1/4 panel and windshield frame, then send it off to paint. Build the motor and trans while it’s getting painted and it in. Keep it simple, get it to Supercell, and make it a real trail rig next year. While that sounds easy, I’ve already been hit by the Classic Bronco snowball effect and things have changed a bit.

I’ve been struggling to come up with a name for this thing, “Booger” seems the most appropriate now but it’s sort of taken already. I think I’m going to name him Diez for the number of different paint colors that were on it when I got it. It may also be foreshadowing some future plans should the right opportunity arise.

Before I go into the build (or disassembly) I just want to thank all of you that have been helping me! I’d still be struggling with that 1/4 panel if it wasn’t for you guys.

John (D&D 72), Eck, and Chris show up to replace this 1/4 and windshield frame. In less than an hour my already cluttered garage looked like a Bronco had Exploded in it, body panels everywhere. Eck and Chris went to work on the 1/4, John removed the bad windshield frame, and I went to work trying to fill the unused holes in the firewall. Chris discovered just how hacked in the 1/4 was and all of the rust still present in the edge on the upper 1/4. It had a strip of metal tacked in on top of it which I knew but didn’t realize it was placed over rusty metal. Eck spent a bunch of time grinding it all out.

John found the floorpans hacked in and started to remove the driver's side. Chris found that my replacement 1/4 was a terrible fit. And I noticed that my Bronco had a smile, the windshield support was sagging 3/8 of an inch or so in the middle. We also discovered some hackery in the rockers. These finds left much left to ponder about how to fix this thing and how far to go with what will ultimately be “just a trail rig”.

John (Trail Psycho) shows up with beer, work winds down, and much discussion begins on my options. I eventually ordered a new 1/4, driver's floorpan, and driver's inner fender.

(I think a couple of weeks later): John (D&D) sourced some strips of 16 gauge to replace all of the rust in the upper 1/4s and I got those welded in. I took my time, made a Brazillian spot welds to keep the heat down and plug welded the other 1/4 in using Chris’s directions. My wife cleaned up under the upper 1/4 with a grinder and Tim ground out some of the tight spots with a deburring bit, he also ground out the rust on the other other upper.

Adam removed the rest of the driver's floor pan and cleaned up the floor support. John (Trail Psycho) removed the inner fender. Adam found some poor patchwork in the inner rocker when the floorpan was out. When he went home he made me a replacement panel for it and also some1/4 extension panels in the rear. My sheet metal parts showed up later that week and I gave them to Adam to epoxy primer for me since he was already doing some floor pans for Tim.

I think it was at this point that I decided to go straight to trail rig mode instead of LUBR because it made more sense to put in some of Justin’s custom rocksliders than it did to repair the rockers. So I scheduled a day for him to come play too and ordered some Gorrila Warflares from Wildhorses. Later that week I cleaned the crud from the floor support and adding some rest preventive stuff that Chris brought me.

I got my freshly painted and custom made panels from Adam. I got the new 1/4 finally all welded in with help from John (Trail Psycho) and Tim. That week I worked on welding in the new inner fender to stiffen things up before Justin arrived. And after talking to both Chris and Adam I decided to pull the trigger on a new cowl and windshield support.

Turns out that the Warflares are back ordered and I can only get Justin’s help on this weekend because he has some camping trips scheduled. John (D&D) hooked me up with steel for the sliders and some other needed steel. Justin came over and spent probably 10 hours working around the hackery to get the sliders welded in. He did a pretty amazing job on them while I was mostly a tool fetcher for a day. Once the Warflares show up we’ll need to cut the fenders, trim the edges of the sliders, and weld some caps to the end of them.

I added some strips of steel along the trans tunnel to add some support for the floor pan and finished welding it in place.

Still no Warflares but both the cowl and the windshield support came in. So Tim, John, Adam, and I went to work on removing the old stuff. I used some old fence post to stiffen things up before removing them. It was an all day project cutting through the original plug welds that held the cowl on. Once it was out the upper kick panel on the driver's side where it meets the cowl was looking pretty ugly. Adam blacksimthed a replacement piece for it in the driveway with a vice and a hammer and I got it welded in.

I spent the rest of the week trying to do final cleanup and straightening to the surface the cowl sits on. I also spent a bunch of time trying to fix up the driver's firewall. It had been hacked together, with lots of booger welds and some warping, but it looked salvageable. John, Jeff, and Tim showed up with the plan being to finish grinding the rest of the booger welds and patches to seal the holes in the firewall, then get the cowl and support tacked in. Jeff kept getting burn through on the firewall with just a flap disc and after a couple of attempts to save it we decided it was garbage and got a new panel on order.

There was also a sketchy rust spot and hacked patch panel where the firewall and kick panel come together, so rather than make a new patch panel for that too I just ordered a new kick panel. Adams's driveway blacksmithing was all for not. Continuing on with trying to fill in all of the underhood holes, rust revealed itself in the passenger side inner fender. It was so flimsy that I think undercoating was all that held it together. I heard my wallet let out a small yelp and ordered one of those too.

Despite the setbacks, John made all of my thousands of booger spot welds in the upper quarters and drivers floor pan look pretty good. Tim drilled out holes for plug welds in the passenger floor pan to the floor supports. I got those welded in and John ground them down smooth. We also welded in the core support to inner fender braces, with a second one added to make battery relocation easier.

That’s where it sits now, I’m just praying all of the replacement parts show up by the end of the week. We’re planning on working on it both Saturday and Sunday next weekend (and probably all weekends leading up to Supercell) as long as parts show up. I’m running out of time and need to get this thing into paint ASAP. Volunteers are certainly welcome!

Lots of work to do but this group has done several of these deadline builds.

Lets continue the track record on this one !

See you guys next week end !

Looking good! Let me know what's on the docket for next weekend. I can load up and bring some better metal shaping tools so I'm not repeating the caveman style.



Sent from my KFKAWI using Tapatalk

Looks great! It’s almost there. I might be able to drop by to help out next weekend

Nice work fellas!

I wish I could come over and help. Still a little nervous being out around people in close proximity with the whole diabetes thing.

Nice work guys! I so wish I were in the area to be involved in things like this!! Would give me more confidence to tackle some of the work needed on my own watching the experts get after it!

Garry - glad to see this rig get put on the front burner.

Nice to hear your going to attend the SuperCell, I cant wait to see what you have planned for this build!

Thanks guys. I haven't accomplished much in the last two days, I've been doing a bunch of remote tuning sessions. But, I am happy to report that beer is flowing from the kegerator and the swamp cooler is now running in the garage.

The tracking on the sheet metal shows that it should all be here Thursday, Toms was quick and shipped it right away, but the shipping cost hurt a bit. I also ordered a bunch of the spotweld bits. Probably more than I'll ever need but someone here will need some eventually. I also got a hole puncher coming, I figure it should make the cowl install go much faster.

Unfortunately, Wildhorses has pushed the flares back even further. I'm #22 in line for the next batch that should arrive on the 17th. This might screw me on paint...

On the good news side of things, I just got word from Phil that my transmission is ready and so is my steering box. He only sent a picture of the steering box though, which has me kind of worried that the transmission might be painted pink.



Also, Chris was nice enough to donate the steering linkage that I need to replace the ummm, high steer modified version that I currently have. Not sure what was going on there, but really didn't want to trust my life with it. Thanks, Chris!

I've seen better steering linkages after they've broke! Wow that is horrible!

Really glad to be able to help. I will be there on Saturday, the 13th, for sure and can possibly be there part of Sunday.

Ill bring that rectangular tube section that after some shaping should be a good fit for the frame/crossmember brace up front. Additionally, some of the 16 guage 90 for the driver door striker section that we were talking about last weekend.

Really excited to see this project come together for you and Michelle, buddy. Its going to be greatand the slight delays are well worth it for the long haul.

I will be over Saturday morning for a few hours to help out. This thing is going to be so much better, now that you are doing it the right way. One thing to consider would be to "borrow" some warflares from someone's rig to cut the fenders how you want them since they would need to be removed for paint anyways. Then you are not waiting on them to send things to paint.

Looking good, Garry!

Are you using the stock harness in this truck?

Todd Z.

Let’s see some updates!

This weekend I had a bunch of helpers show up. Thank you Jeff, John, Tim, Eck, Rob, and Adam!

John worked on making my missing front frame brace. Adam brought over a sheet metal brake and fabbed up a bunch of parts for us. Tim worked on removing the passenger side inner fender and we even let him play with the plasma cutter. The rest of the crew battled with removing the firewall and kick panels and getting some test fit and modifications to the new metal.

We got the old panels out and the firewall screwed in place. I was pleased to see only surface rust inside of the doorpost, we were expecting much worse. I treated it all with Chris’s magic rust formula Saturday night before continuing on Sunday.

None of the panels fit very well without some cutting, welding, and cussing. The firewall was too short to tuck under the floor pan, so the decision was made to attach it to the outside of the original firewall so that there would not be a seam pointing up to allow water to intrude.

The cowl had an area slanting down towards the passenger side that the original cowl didn’t (just under John’s finger in the picture). This interfered with the windshield support underneath it. Rather than cut on the cowl we cut at the brake in the windshield support, bent it to clear the cowl, and then stitched it back together.







Adam did a great job fabbing up some parts. He made this piece running from the fireall to the inner fender. i’m going to try to duplicate this for the other side, just not as long, I don’t think I can pull off the multiple bends like he did.






He also made new support brackets for the inner fender. Then he turned out a new firewall support panel that is wider than the factory one so that I can move my Hydroboost further over to the driver’s side than the original booster location.





I spent most of Sunday modifying the kick panel. The nuts welded on the back interfered with the hinge supports and had to be trimmed. Once it was sitting flat against the doorpost it was clear to see that the brake done at the door edge was completely off. It had a half-inch gap. So, similar to what was done with the windshield support, I cut it at the brake bent it to where it needed to be and then stitched it together with a ton of spot welds. That portion fits perfectly now. I also added a lot of holes so that it’s ready to plug weld in.






The one challenge that still remains before I can do a final burn-in on all theses panels is the fitment between the cowl and the kick panel. The cowl fit great with the old kick panel which leads me to believe the top flange is at the wrong angle on this kick panel.




I’m going to mock up a fender to see if I can get away with fixing this the same way I did the other edge and the windshield support. If not, then I’ll probably need to pull it back out, hammer it flat, and then see if I can get it correct with the brake. It looks pretty good with everything mocked up, I’m getting excited to do the final burn-in and be over this hump.

Hopefully, I can get it done this week then the plan for this week will be cutting out for the flares since Rob was nice enough to give me his to use. I’ll just give him mine when they show up. Thanks Rob! There are a few very small fixes after this that I need to do before paint but it feels like we’re getting so close!

Great progress everyone it’s coming together nicely

Nice work! I'm sure you can make those bends. If not, call me and I'll swing back down.

Sent from my KFKAWI using Tapatalk