So last Thursday a bunch of buddies came by, we rolled the truck over to the tent, lifted the body off and got it set up.

The frame is back in the garage for now. Im stealing some brackets off it, plus all the body mount hardware, and then chopping it up for scrap.

​So yesterday morning after I got home from work I suited up, grabbed the wire wheel & the sand blaster and went at it!

​...so that's where she sits as of now. Before you ask, im not sand blasting the entire tub, only the underside. I have no intention on driving this thing in the road salt, but i dont want to get it all done and have the floorpan start rusting away a year or two later. The fenders & interior are clean with good paint on them, so theyre just going to get prepped and painted later on. The underside is going to get sprayed as soon as im done down there, so I can get it on my frame and get it back in the garage.

Progress on this thing is pretty slow as currently Im only working on it a couple days a week. Today im painting in the house, but hopefully tomorrow I can get back out there and do some more blasting!

​Fast forward to about two weeks ago.

Doors are now off

​And I stripped and removed the front clip:

There is no real rot on the under-side of the tub, but there is rust at all the seams in the sheetmetal. So after going back and forth I said screw it and set up the tent in the stones

The last of the interior & dash came out

​Rust hole up near parking brake pedal:

​...and a little bit of rust back near the tailgate:

​...That's actually the worst of it! The rear fenders have some rot, but it doesn't matter since I have to cut the fenders to clear the 42s anyway. That will all come way later on.


This part is concerning though:

The previous owner welded a piece of box tubing into the body out back instead of using body lift pucks, so im gonna have to get this cut out and see whats going on behind it. Don't want the body lift, the truck is tall enough as it is.

I also got the sound deadener stripped off the floor as well:

That was back in May, it pretty much just sat in the stones at my house until closer to the 4th of July, when a buddy came over to help me get this project started.


We scrubbed the hell out of the hard top (it still needs a lot more work) and then yanked it off and set it on the trailer.  Then gave this thing its first bath in 10+years!

​Pulled the tailgate off; the shell is shot but the hardware is all in great shape. Started yanking out the interior and found an old mouse-house behind the real panel, along with the former tenant

We pretty much gutted the whole interior except for the dash, and then then called it quits for the day.
​
So much clean sheetmetal!

​​...and stuffed into the garage until the next time I could get around to working on it:

​So after years of wheeling and not caring, ive pretty well thrashed the body on my bronco.

​The whole cab is twisted so the full doors don't come even close to closing so we have to use the half doors any time we take the truck out, and then tarp it up so it doesn't get wet inside n the rain/snow.
So after going back and forth, we decided to go back to a bronco body on this thing. The cab/bed was cool and all, but it dosent really have much room for carrying much gear, and not being able to drive it on the road sucks. So I stared looking for a bronco project. I wanted to stay true to the trucks roots (I have owned it 16 years afterall) which meant the body has to be an 87-91. I wanted to find something clean because im not a sheetmetal guy, and the condition of the drivetrain was completely irrelevant because im just going to drop the body on my frame when im done.

So I snooped around CL for quite some time. Seen trucks come and go, but nothing really jumped out at me. Then one day I spotted a lift 4-door bronco on CL up in the Poconos. Only two pics of the exterior, but it looked like a decent buy for the price, so I made the trip. On an impulse i decided to go up there and see if it would be a decent beater to cruise around in. Unfortunately it was a bit rough around the edges, more-so than I would've liked for a street cruiser so I decded to pass on it. But while BSing with the guy, he told me about this bronco he had planned to restore, but it never really happened. So we go over to take a look at it, and its perfect. its a '90 in decent shape with no motor or trans. The perfect donor vehicle! So we struck up a deal, and I brought it home :thumbup


So here she is, in all her glory.

​It was a parked in stones under a tree for 10 years, so while being absolutely covered in moss, appeared to be in decent shape!

He had put a body lift in it (homemade, about 2"), and he built his own shackle flip for the rear with some extra leafs stuffed in there for some more lift. And there it sat, never got around to lifting the front, or doing anything else to it.

​This isnt really the beginning, this is arguably Phase Four.  Five?  I guess it depends on how you look at it.
i could consider Phase One from bone stock to when i had the 36" iroks, but Phase Two is definitely when i did the one-tons and 42s.  Phase Three has to be when i put the pickup cab on.  But does that make Phase Four the big block?  or is that an extension of Phase Three?  Like Phase Three, Part 2 or something.  It wasnt exactly planned, so im gonna go with that.  So that means we're entering Phase Four.

Here she is, an all her glory!

Went to go look at a truck up in the Poconos yesterday, and while that one was a bust, this was in his yard, and apparently also for sale. It is a '90 with 29k original miles! The rear fenders have a bit of cancer along with the tailgate, but the rest of the body is 100%. Definitely very clean for a truck that originally came from nj.
Fell into the hands of the current (now previous) owner because the motor blew. Currently has no engine/trans/tcase in it, along with a new body lift, and a shackle flip in the rear.

So, what to do with it????? Well............
...my bronco is gonna be a bronco again! The p/u cab on my frame is twisted pretty badly and the whole front clip is thrashed from years of not-so-gentle wheelin. So ive decided to go back to my roots, and put another bronco body on my frame! Its gonna take a little bit of work (I have to remove my custom cab x-member and reinstall the factory brackets on the frame), and since its a 90 the dash harness wont work with my truck so ill have to swap the harness. And of course slice the fenders wide open.  Im sure theres a few other things that wont work as well (dont think the exhaust will). But im hoping to start tearing into the donor this summer, and then start tearing into mine this fall. After 16 years I feel its time to build some new bumpers for it, roll cage, etc, so I don't expect it to go super fast, but it should be awesome when its done.

So yeah, flame on!

So here we go! For those that don't know, this event is currently on-going; it started Thursday and will continue through til Sunday.
First off, let me say that the FSB presence at the Round Up this year was incredible! Tons of FSBs everywhere!  Sorry I didn't get to say Hi to everyone, we weren't doing the whole pic thing, so we kinda just unloaded, aired down and went off into the park.

Me & Ox decided to go on Friday, to get some wheelin in with Darrel, because he's usually one of the only FSB'ers dumb enough to keep goin wheelin with us!  But seriously, we limited ourselves to one day because weve got another trip coming up, and usually one of us breaks something big

Anyways, enough babbling, on to the pics!
From left to right:
me, Darrel, Ox

We went over to the NE side, and went straight to Outer Limits, which is wayyyy far away from everything.

...and unfortunately this is where Darrel t​he d.side motor mount, which lead to a torn trans mount, & the front d.shaft & trans linkage came apart.
We had to pull him down off the climb.  Getting the winch cable re-set, his truck deicded to roll away! Fortunately, I was parked behind him. Unfortunately, with the angle, his bumper went right under mine and we smashed his tailgate up pretty good.  We also bent his front right leaf during the extraction process, but he has another at home so its not the end of the world.

From here we were able to get the trans linkage and the d.shaft back together, and he was able to limp it out of the park under its own power.

We dropped Darrel's rig off in the parking lot, and he rode with me/ox the rest of the day. We went over to the south side to run Cemetary.  I shot a vid of Ox coming up the hill climb/exit, he makes it look easy (it kinda was).
From there we went over to the West side to run Trail 20 (awesome new-ish black trail), then 13a, then we cut thru Rock Creek and headed into Death Trap

​This runs out to 23, which loops around to the Power lines. But by then it was already 5pm, so we headed back to the parking lot and loaded up to go home.

Not a lot of pics, but it was still a good day of wheelin; lots of good trails run, and we did ~15-18 miles so we definitely covered some ground. Darrel shot some pics/vids, so hopefully he gets them online soon!

There is a thread running over on FSB with pics from some of the other people that attended, you can check it out here. 

Got some new tires on Tuesday!
Found a local shop that could get 35" BFGs for my 16.5s, so I ordered a set.

Ive missed these tires! The Goodyears were ok, but performance-wise, these tires are phenomenal. For those that remember I used to run these, but then for a while a few years back no one could get any. I thought they were disco-d (like most other 16.5s) and gone forever (which is when I switched to the 37s), but these days theres plenty of em out there. So I happily jumped on the chance to get another set. Only been on a couple days, but man I love em.

And for a little bit of tech, I have them balanced with Counteract Balancing Beads, which are basically the same thing as Equal (you can get them on Ebay). Little glass beads inside the tire. Glass is nice because it wont get all clumpy from moisture like the cheaper ones that are basically sand. I used 12oz bags which is a bit much, probably could've gotten away with 10oz, but a little extra doesn't hurt.  And theyre smooth as glass on the highway.

Some misc pics from Saturday:

This was a pretty sweet EB with a 6bt under the hood!

​Taking a break (literally) while the same EB replaced a hub. This was on DeathTrap, which is a pretty awesome trail.

Another cool EB on the trail with us today. Those 39.5s sure look small next to these rocks!

​Deathtrap leads into the far end of Rock Creek. So since we had time while waiting for a locking hub, he decided to run the creek. I decided to follow.

Somebody was not having a good day, found a damn-near new ujoint in the middle of the Creek, missing a few caps. I bet someone dropped it.

Got to the other end, and stumbled upon some other FSBs, iuncluding Jim and his too-pretty-to-wheel bronco.  So shiny!

​From there we went over to Crawl Daddy:

That's more or less all I got form the day.
You can view my full photogallery of pics from friday, here, and from saturday, here.
Theres a thread on the whole event over on FSB, located here.