We call this “REDNECK PIMPIN’ “
…….. Oct. 14th at 10 a.m. I can’t wait I will be taking the day off from work to go do the closing and then me and my buddy Jimmy will start moving furniture and whatever else we can get moved. I plan to have everything out of our apartment by Thursday so that I can start on the fence over the weekend, I want to have all this done so that while I am in the middle of a shut down at the plant I work in Brandy can get the apartment cleaned out so that we can get our deposit back.
After 2 years of building and offroading my 1989 Ford BroncoII I am selling it so that I can pay a down payment on a new house. It has been alot of fun both building and wheeling this truck but in the end it is more important for me to buy my family a nice house and I feel that we have succeeded in finding a great house for us. It is a 3 bedroom 1 bath with a detached Garage with a very big yard. In march I plan on finding a new toy to build but until then all my efforts will be put into the house. First thing I plan on doing is putting up some fence so that my dog has somewhere to exert some energy.
I have been doing some wheelin and dealin recently trying to get some things goin on the Bronco. I just swapped a Ford 9″ out of an 84 F-150 for a set of flat top knuckles for a D44 and a set of warn premium hubs for the D44. This weekend I will be helping a friend strip a wagoneer he wants the motor and tranny and he told me I can have the D44 front and rear if I help him pull the motor and tranny.
I still need to gather up a bunch of stuff to get the axles ready to be installed in the Bronco.
Things I need
Well as far as the list in a previous post I have completed everything accept the regearing of my axles. I have been on a couple trips since the last post. In June a bunch of members from the club went down to Uwharrie national forest in North Carolina, that was a very good time, we towed our new to us pop-up camper down and it was a whole lot nicer than sleeping on the ground. I broke a universal in my front axle but had no trouble making it back home. On the way home from this trip we picked up a puppy that we named “Kodak” after the rock climb that busted my universal.
Last weekend the club had our summer picnic down in Hatteras North Carolina. That was a good time also the waves were brutal but we still had alot of fun.
Today we went to one of the local Jeep dealerships where they were having their outdoor day. The dealership has spent the last couple of months building a very fun and challenging off-road coarse that had a bit of everything mud, hills,rocks. I made 2 runs and did pretty good on both runs, and managed not to break anything.
Also in the time since my last post I have built new bumpers and installed a Warn M8000 winch on the front, I re did my on board air to work with the new motor.
It seems that i have run accross a string of good luck, Saturday after finishing up Tom’s lift we headed out to the junkyard in search of a new tranny for the BroncoII but we didn’t succeed but we did end up finding and pulling a Borg Warner manual1354 transfer case which is like a needle in a hay stack. I only payed $124 which is alot better than the going price of about $350 on the RBV forums. Then yesterday I was searching Craigslist and found a guy parting out a 1995 Explorer any part for $20 so I called and asked if the deal was good for the complete axle assembly and he said yes so i told him I was on my way, he called me back and offered to pull it for an additional $40 so I said go ahead and pull it. The best part is that it is geared the same as my current axle and still has the limited slip so I am gonna swap the entire axle in and sell my other one to my buddy Jimmy. So baically I have alot of work ahead of me on the BroncoII.
Things to come
1. tcase swap
2. rear axle swap
3. 4.0 motor swap
4. 5speed tranny swap
5. finish up mounting my GPS setup
6. regear the axles
7. new seats
8. change out the explorer leaf springs and belltech shackels for 4″ skyjacker soft ride leaf springs
9.
It started off with me having friday off cause I worked four 10’s. My buddy also had friday off and he got the last of his parts so we could do his lift on the 1990 cherokee that he has.
I was way off on my guess of completion I originally guessed 5-6 hrs that turned into about eleven hours yesterday and about four hours today. and he still doesn’t have shocks on cause they didn’t send the bushings.
Problems we had.
1. front leaf bolts wouldn’t come out they were seized in the sleeve.
2. he didn’t get new leaf bolts before we started like I told him to cause I new we were gonna have to cut a few.
3. took him forever to find the right bolts and a tap for the bolts.
4. couldn’t get the track bar tierod end out needed to use4 heat.
even tiny should be able to paint with that stuff. yeah yeah I am the one always complaining about that joke but I had to get it first.
today after we cleaned up we went out to the JY which I was really dreading that but it turned out to be a wise decision cause I hit the jack pot check out what I got. I only paid $124.35 for it and the shifter and boots and plate
I couldn’t believe it I was really starting to think that they were extinct. But I am now the proud owner of a manual 1354 transcase I can’t wait to get it in but i will hold off till i get the tranny and motor ready to go in.
oh yeah here are the pics of the heep that consumed most of my time for the last 2 days.
he actually drove it around the block like that.
gonna need some trimming
It’s been awhile since I posted so I figured I would update the site. I February I made two wheeling trips both were trail cleanups but we had a good time on both trips the first trip was to Crozet,Va my buddy Tom rode with me in my BroncoII and we followed Paul out to Crozet we left Friday afternoon and stayed at Misty Mountain campground in one of their cabins. Friday night after we got settled in at the cabin we ran into town to find some grub but the only thing that was open was Subway and we were lucky to get that cause we got in the door just before they locked up so they were a little rude because we were holding them up, we pretty much just went back to the cabin and ate and then went to sleep we had to be at the property by 8am to meet up for assignments on the trail clean up. My group got stuck with cutting a new trail that was a pretty long task but by 2pm we where all at a good stopping point so they fixed us some BBQ for lunch and then we had free reign on the property the bronco was doing great untill I made an attempt at “Hard rock highway ” I failed so as I was backing out we saw what appeared to be smoke coming from under my hood but I got out and popped the hood and come to find out what acctually happened was my battery slid into the alternater fan and cut the case and slung acid all over the place, so I got my truck up to the shop so we could neutralize the acid with some baking powder. I decided instead of replacing the battery with another advance auto special I would go ahead and upgrade to an Optima battery so one of the guys we rode with was kind enough to pick me up a yellow top OPTIMA and some battery acid neutralizer while he was out and I didn’t get it until like 8pm but wasn’t a biggie since after it got dark Chris told us all to come hang out in there cabin and we ordered pizza and drank shots of vodka. Sunday I decided after the battery incident to take it easy since i still had a three and a half hour drive home so I hung out on the bunny slopes (yeah thats a joke nothing out there is a bunny slope) we left around noon and made a run for the house it was an un eventful trip home. We had an awesome time and met a lot of cool people.
The following weekend Me and my wife Brandy decided to go an help out at the Oakridge Estates with their trail cleanup even though we never got out of the truck to cleanup cause the group was so long all the debris was cleaned up by the folks up front. Again we had a great time and got to see some new terrain cuase this was more trailriding with a few obsticles where Crozet was alot of rock trails.
The week after Oak Ridge my new tires finaly came in so I put those on the truck and boy they are some angry tires I think they came in on a tuesday and on friday me and a couple of guys from work went out to the powerplant and found some pretty nast ditches to go mudding in. Everything was going good we were getting ready to leave that set of ditches and go find some other spots when all of a sudden steqam started coming from under my hood I figured it was just a bad line but that wasn’t the case I had acctually snapped the uper inlet on the radiator so my day was over. i went out that night and bought a new radiator and fixed that on saturday. Sunday I started on my spare tire carrier cause i was tired of hearing the kids complain about getting hit in the head by my full size spare cause it wouldn’t lay down in the back of my truck. I finally finished it the next saturday and I am very impressed with how it came out.
Yesterday I decided to drive my BroncoII to work and on the way home the tranny started dumping fluid on to the “Y” pipe and smoking really bad so I have decided to spend this Saturday searching the junkyards for a 5speed manual tranny out of an explorer and go ahead with the 4L swap hopefully I can get this done before the trip back out to Oak Ridge in April.
I put another 5 hours in today and I am pretty much finished all I am lacking now is 1 spring for the passenger side head light and some coolant. Oh yeah and to fix the harness that I hit with my sawzall I cut through like 3 wires in the bundle so I threw my hands up and said I need a break. anyways here are the pics
here is a pic of how I screwed the plastic wheel well to the inner fender
this is one showing how I mounted the trans cooler
this one shows how much clearance I have since I trimmed the fender
this one shows how I trimmed the lower trim to match the fender
this one is just a pic of the front you can see that i don’t have the headlight in cause I seem to have lost it .
I plan on going to the parts store to get the spring and coolant later on. I still need to finish the bumper and rewire the on board air and while I am at it I am gonna go ahead and wire up the lights that sit under the rear bumper.
I didn’t get to work on the truck yesterday but today I got off work early and started in on reassembling the front end. I got the inner fenders bolted in and then I took the plastic wheelwells and trimed those and bent them up and screwed the trimmings to the inner fender I will get pics tomorrow cause that is a bit hard to imagine. I had to get the radiator supports relocated for the 4.0L radiator, and then mount the trans cooler I got the cooler plumbed and the radiator all hooked back up. I got all the wires put back where they belong and noticed something cool about all the lights up front on each side of the truck there is a total of 3 light sockets 1 is the head light 1 is the front turn signal and 1 is the side marker light out of the 3 the only rewire i need to do is the head light the plugs don’t match up but the other 2 the sockets from the second gen lights will twist in to the gen1 light housings this is cool because now I don’t have to rewire all of the lights. I found that i am gonna have to adjust the amount of sheetmetal that I am planning on trimming so it doesn’t look stupid if I trim it as much as I had originally planned you will see some of the core support and I don’t want that. all I have left is to FINISH hahahaha
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