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So im doing more prep for the Ford Nationals. Monday i pulled the top off the 88:  Having the flat bed makes it easy to remove/move/store by myself  Figured since were going to a bronco event, and theres going to be all sorts of stuff there, i might as well do something different and put the half cab on  Unfortunately on the last wheelin trip i sort of crunched the passenger b-pillar, and the half cab no longer fits!  The back side of the pillar appears to have moved in a half inch! I messed around with it for about an hour and couldnt get it to move back even a little bit, so i said screw it and dug out the bows and tracks for the soft top. That was about all i had time for that day. Tuesday morning on my way home my wife texts me. Its super important. The kiddo said i have to wait until he gets home from school to put the soft top on so he can help! So me and him put the top on yesterday afternoon!   Just in time too- its absolutely pouring right now, and its supposed to rain for the next 5 or 6 days i think. Ok, were back at it. First up, adding a seal to the header  I made some simple spacers for the bolts that hold the header in place, so when you torque them down they wont deform the fiberglass. Time will tell if this was a good idea or not.  With that done, the header & bulkhead can now be installed:  The lower bulkhead leaves a gap at the sides that i dont like, so i made filler panels to seal it off
Those pieces then got tack welded to the original side panels to make assembly easier  How it looks (prior to weatherstripping)  And the completed panels now fully installed, and bolted to both the b-pillar and bulkhead. SPeakers are installed too, which officially completes the cab enclosure  Moving on to the back, the tonneau simply bolts to that rail up near the header. It has studs for struts on the lid, and i grabbed the longest ones i could find an Autozone, application unknown, and installed them!  The bottom end is some universal strut mounts i got from Amazon, with some Ford sheetmetal screws i had laying around holding them in place. By pure luck the struts are perfect; they lift the lid nice and slowly and hold it up there just fine.  Out back at the tailgate i have installed the catches for the latches. I needed bump stops, and it just so happens that OBS Ford hood bumpers are the same size (6mm) as the older bronco's hardtop bolts, so i just threaded a pair right into the existing captured nuts in the body:  And......thats it! Installed!
Unloading this morning:  All the parts:
 This is a half cab/tonneau conversion kit from the (now) defunct Creative Products. Here's an old screenshot from the ad they used to have on their website:  Theyre fairly rare these days, altho i still see one popping up now again. This one seems in great shape, like it either was never fully installed, or only installed once or twice. I got a box full of weather stripping (still missing some), no hardware and no instructions. Sent a pic of the pieces laying in the garage to a buddy and he simply replied "im on my way". So we got to work removing the hard top:  Poser pics (i dont actually have any topless pics of the truck since i finished it!)    Side panel, encloses the cab. If you look closely you can see i have laid out a hole to cut in it, so i can reinstall the rear speakers  ...and this is how the lower header fits up:   Unfortunately, this is where progress ended. The top half bolts into the original captured nuts for the hard top, but the screws need to be almost 1" longer, and we couldnt find 6mm bolts that length in any of the hardware stores we went to. So we cleaned up and put all the parts back in the garage, because i needed to pack the truck and get it loaded up for a wheelin trip tomorrow. We'll revisit this next week once i have longer hardware. |
