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Got out of work late today. Walked in the garage to see this:  That didnt take long! Got the rear end up and tires off:  That flexible Olsa light is pretty cool  Yikes  Popping the diff cover  This 10.25 had 150k on it when i put it in 125k ago. Looks pretty decent inside for 275k!  I got the drum all cleaned up but thats about all i had time for. Tomorrow morning ill pull the hub and get those oil soaked brake parts swapped out. Success  Did a quick spin around the block, no highway speeds yet but the alignment seemed good. Made an adjustment to the draglink to center the steering wheel better, will need to drive again later in the week. Got it done just in time; the green bronco got jealous and decided that it would be a good idea to have a rear wheel seal start leaking, so that one is now in the garage so i can do wheel seals and rear brakes tomorrow  Havent driven the diesel in two months so i pulled it up to the garage door so i can drive it to work tonight. Immediately afterwards i lost the leys. Spent about a half hour looking for them before i gave up, went inside and grabbed the spare set. Guess ill look for those again tomorrow after work. Ok, so. High-steer just doesnt work with coils & radius arms, its a packaging nightmare. So lets do something else. One new draglink and tie-rod custom made by my friends over at EMS Offroad, with a fresh cvoat of Chassis Black on them. The draglink is 1.25" .250" wall, and for the tierod we stepped up to 1.5" .375" wall. Beef!  If im replacing the tubing, im replacing the TREs. For the draglink im running ES2027L and ES2234R. For the tierod im running ES2233L and another ES2234R. The ES2233L needed to be reamed larger to fir the ES22334R  Since the tierod got bigger my original clamp mount for the steering ram wouldnt fit, so i made a new one
After 20+ years of wheeling abuse, the tapered holes in the knuckles were getting a bit sloppy. So i ordered a set of tapered repair sleeves from ORD. There's a re bit mnore expensive than most other, but they are also a lot nicer than pretty much everyone elses too.
With the steering links installed and a rough alignment done, i found a problem  When steering left to full lock, the bigger ram clamp contacts the diff cover   The simplest solution, seemed to be to move the fixed ram mount left towards the center of the vehicle, so the clamp could go further left as well, and hopefully clear the diff cover. The original mount:  Tabs cut off/cleaned up:  ...and flipped around, to move the ram 1.5" closer to the center of the truck. I also added that small gusset between the tabs to stiffen it up a bit  Much better now!  Full right:  ...and full left. Much better now  Nothing left to do now, but a proper front-end alignment, and then i threw the rollers back on. All thats left now is to get it outside, put the 42s back on, make sure the brakes and steering are 100%, and we're done!  Ive had a CB radio or two in this thing over the years. But, no one really uses citizens band on the trails anymore, so i havent actually used it in a few years now. So, since the bronco is already in the garage for the winter i figured nows the time to replace my old Cobra, with a proper GMRS unit. Enter the MXT575 from Midland:  Comes packaged nicely, and includes everything you need for install, from power wires to a small magnetic base antenna  The radio itself is smaller than some CBs ive had in the past, and looks like itll be pretty easy to mount  Step one is to open up the dash and remove the old CB unit. Can you see it?  This is an old Cobra 75 WXST All-In-One CB units, where all the controls are in the mic, leaving a small TX/RX unit you can hide somewhere (like i did inside the dash). Here's the whole thing:  Ok enough chitchait, lets get this the Midland installed. So right off the bat its obvious its not going to fit inside the dash, but it will fit where the ash tray is. Since i dont smoke, it seems like the perfect place to put it! I removed the ash tray from the mounting bracket  Had to make some room for the radio mount, so i trimmed the sides a bit, and added a couple rivnuts for a mounting location  ...and there you go! That was simple enough  The original power source for my CB radio...  ...now modified for the new radio's power plug  ...that was easy enough to do. Next up is the antenna. I could have used the small magnetic base antenna it came with, but i figured with the tight trail network in our area, it would always be getting knocked about by tree branches. So i opted for this antenna from Retevis. I figure with its flexible base it should probably survive getting caught on trees, and if not, well, at least it wasnt very expensive
Now all we have to do it run the antenna wire, and get the radio hooked up  ...and the final install!  Fits in the space like it was made to go there by Ford  Hey, my speedometer gear came early!  Its definitely the right gear this time so thats cool  My high steer kit showed up too  These high steer arms are beefy  I can already see this is going to be a packaging problem  Clearly im going to need to completely rework the tracbar & brackets  I think the plan for Monday will be to put the transfer case back together and get some paint on the steering arms and tierod. Then i can put those together, and begin figuring out just how im going to stuff a draglink and tracbar into this thing. Speedo gear says its supposed to arrive Monday. High steer kit from ORD says tomorrow. So what to do while i wait? How about install a single-din touchscreen headunit in the green 96 from Temu!  Supports Apple Car Play and Android Auto fully wirelessly  Came with a mic and a backup camera that actually doesnt suck, at least during the day  Full EQ, 3 USD slots, built-in microSD slot, aux input, claims it plays DVRs, has canbus connections, video out, all sorts of options. Bought it back in October for $35. Well see how long it lasts lol https://www.temu.com/goods.html?_bg_fs=1&goods_id=601099565670736 Bad weather inbound so i turned the bronco around and pulled it back in  We're looking at 1-8" of snow or ice tonight, they have no idea. So for now its in here and ready to continue with repairs. First up i figured id take a look at why my speedometer suddenly stopped working on the way out of Rausch Creek, turns out the drive gear in the case is shot:  Fortunately Bronco Graveyard has one so thats on order. So my next move will probably be to drop the rear shaft and pull the tailhousing of the 205 apart. Then ive got to deal with this mess of steering links  For now the thought is to pull it out of the garage after the speedo is fixed and use the winch to straighten the tierod, but ive also been thinking about ordering that 1.5" 7075 tierod from ORD to replace it. The draglink i might not straighten; the bend in it doesnt really hurt its function so if i can rotate it to get the wheel centered i might just call it good. Got some work done on the 88 as well. Got new seals, plus some 3M weatherstripping cement (which if youve never used before, works great)  So a buddy came by yesterday and helped me set the top back on the bronco  This was a bigger job than we expected. Seems wheeling w/o the top on i have mangled the cab corner more than i thought  Top does not seal so well on this side anymore  It was a bit of a challenge to get the top on, and not all of the bolts line up anymore. Thinking it might not be a bad idea to cut the roof out of that parts bronco, altho i also dont know that its worth that kind of effort when ill just end up smashing it again. For now, the hard top wont be coming off the gray one any time soon.  96 Bronco with a 351w under the hood! Im saving the motor for the green 96. That one has 245k on the clock, low on oil pressure and burning oil so it needs a rebuild. Long term plan is a cheap stock rebuild on this motor, which i can hopefully drop in with that ZF5 i bought years ago and never did anything with. That way i minimize the down time on my DD. This thing is a badly rotted out plow truck with a broken frame, but being a 96 theres still plenty of good parts on there to salvage for mine, so thats the plan. New brake line installed, along with a new parking brake cable from Lokar:  I accidentally cracked the reservoir on the master cylinder, so that got replaced + brakes bled:  Still havent got the hard top on, i didnt catch that the seals were backordered until i went to install them and they werent here! I re-ordered them w/o the backordered seal (the redundant seal for the top that goes on the body), so i should be able to get the top on Friday. |
