|
Its home!
Friday afternoon i dropped off the green bronco (due for inspection) and drove this one home. I made it! Motor makes good oil pressure and is nice and quiet. Suspension rode pretty nice but i only got to drive it for about 15 minutes. Transmission (E4OD) shifts weird. She took it for a drive friday night, made it maybe 10 minutes from the house and then called saying the trans wasnt shifting. I went to go find her and drive it home and yup, it dont shift right. Wouldnt go into 2nd until ~3200 rpm, and 3rd & 4th were about the same. The downshifts are weird. Doesnt look like the converter is locking. I had the pan off a couple months back when i changed the filter and didnt find any debris in the pan, so i unplugged the solenoid pack, and the connector is wet:  Got in there with a mirror and sure enough the plug is full of ATF  Looks like the solenoid pack has failed. Hoping thats all that's wrong. Ive got a reman pack on order but i wont have it until Friday. In the meantime ive got the 96 back from inspection, but it needs rear brakes; it would appear the adjuster cable on the one side is frayed, so im rebuilding the rear brakes:  Once the solenoid pack shows up we'll drop the pan on the '90 and see what we find. So far so good, on the Thunderer Trac Grip MTs im running on the green bronco. 10k miles, and im at 16/32 on tread depth, so still a decent amount of tread. Im guessing ill get 35k out of them which is pretty decent for a cheap MT. Tires are wearing nice and evenly. Typical MT hum, not bad at all considering its my daily driver. Overall happy with their performance up to this point.   We're back from the Roundup! All said, it was a good time. We arrived wednesday, set up camp, and just chilled out for the day  Towed the 88 out there with the diesel, and Dawn drove the 96 out. We had a big of an issue with the deisel; during my pre-trip prep, i broke the nozzle for the water-methanol injection!  There was no time to fix it (broke the day before) so we made the trip without it. Parts are on the counter, we'll get this fixed next week. So, the Roundup! Thursday it rained basically the whole day. People were showing up as the day went on and the campground filled up. Friday was the official start, which consisted of some street cruises and an offroad trip to Rausch Creek. We went for the wheelin trip, but the kiddo isnt quite ready for that stuff yet so we bailed early and went back to go hang out in the pool instead. Friday evening was the SHow N Shine + dinner, and then Saturday was another offroad trip (this one to AOAA) and a street cruise to Pioneer Tunnel, an old coal mine that closed during the great depression. I wont bore you with family pics, but it is actually a very cool place to go if youre ever in the area. Once again followed by a big dinner, along with all the club's raffles and awards. So baring the family photos, we have a collection of pics from the Show N Shine friday night along with a couple misc pics: There was a really cool EB done up in a Ghostbusters theme and loaded with all sorts of cool little details. A beautiful stock uncut one (orange), a lowered 2wd green one with a mod motor (mustang). A blue one with a black stripe, except it was styled as a topographic map with locations of offroad parks theyve been to. Of course Joe's monster diesel bronco was there. I think the most noteworthy though was a beautiful dark green one complete with custom trail used to haul their son's wheelchair, which was super awesome. In our case, ti was the little dude's first Roundup and he was a little overwhelmed so we kind of kept a low key and just chilled out for the duration, but next year i imagine we'll be a bit more involved. We're already planning the list of upgrades to get done before then! The 24th Annual East Coast Bronco Roundup is happening on June 23-25th at Twin Valley Campground. Its been a few years since weve attended (other than being passengers for trail rides), but this year we'll be there for the whole event, with both the 88 & 96 broncos! Hope to see everyone there!
With the world the way it is, you just cant get tires as easily as you used to, or nearly as cheap. So the 96 needs tires, and winter is upon us. So i decided to try out a set of tires ive been eyeing for a while, but was never brave enough to try. Thunderer Trac Grip MTs. So here we go!  So they arrived yesterday, and i got them installed today, just in time for snow!  They look good on the bronco, and the tread pattern looks pretty decent  I had them bead balanced, and theyre nice and smooth on the highway. First impressions is they actually arent all that loud; they didnt seem much noisier than the old mostly bald BFG A/Ts they replaced. As youd expect theres a low hum in the background, but i thought theyd be pretty loud and theyre not. So i guess time will tell if they were a good purchase, but first impressions are good. Ok so the very first thing i wanted to do after my junkyard trip, was to get my headliners installed, before i ended up wrecking them in the garage! My front headliner was pretty saggy. It was already starting to droop, and then driving around for a couple summers with the top off definitely made the situation worse:  Being an XL, this thing didnt come equipped from the factory with the liner in the hard top, nor did it have the cargo light (the light is suspended by the liner itself). All it has is this round black plug:  Luckily if you remove it, it exposes the plug for the cargo light so no wiring required to make it work, its all already there!  I dont really have any progress pics, but this is a pretty easy swap. In the rear the liner is actually held up in place by the rear window seals, so you can remove all the trim & even the top w/o the liner coming down. This also made the original removal in the junkyard a little difficult, but the install went quite easy. The finished product looks pretty good too!   I have not installed the rear cargo panels yet. If youll notice in the pic below, the arm pads from the little storage pockets are missing, so i still have to source a set of those.  I also havent swapped the glovebox door yet; i have the lock removed, but i need to drop it off at the locksmith to get rekeyed and havent done so yet. Hoping to get both of these done soon though! LMC to the rescue!  One new 'diesel' bumper with trim: I also ordered new bumper brackets because one of them was bent  Removed the trim from across the bottom, and the large braces are next:  Original braces cleaned up and painted!  Now weve got to put this thing together!  Before we do that though, were going to carefully trim the corner of the bumper, to make some room for the 35s. Before:
And after:
Its a decent amount of material, but once the bumper is installed you dont even notice its missing. So moving on, brackets, braces & trim installed, next up is the moulding!  ...and the finished product!   Heres a close-up of the corner. You cant even tell it was cut.  Overall this is a decent bumper. As youd expect of the aftermarket, its a little thinner than the OEM bumper, but it looks good, and all the holes were in the right place, so i cant complain too much. I do like the look of this bumper more than the solid XL bumper, i just wish it didnt have to get swapped under these circumstances. I got the front-end alignment adjusted during the week, so we're good to go to drive this thing again! Swerved to dodge a car in the snow this morning, ended up losing it and hitting a guardrail. Shoulda had the hubs locked in, oh well too late now.  Caught it dead in-line with the frame horn.  The whole bumper is twisted, so thats gonna have to go  Frame horn is bent in slightly, as is the bumper bracket   Steering wheel is crooked so its gonna need a front-end alignment. Still snowing so i dug out the diesel (which i never did from the big storm last week) so i can drive that to work tonight. Ive got a plan for tomorrow to straighten the frame horn, and then ive got to come up with a plan for a new front bumper.  It lives again! What a crazy adventure. So we had the storms from the hurricane that dumped almost two feet of rain on us which definitely delayed me! A poorly installed intake gasket that i re-did, new Ford Racing lifters, and the craziest coolant leak youve ever seen that led to swapping out for a different set of stock heads, but finally she's a runner once more! Hopefully there will be no more problems popping up, cuz i am ready to turn some wrenches on the big bronco and finally get her running again! Got the heads off today:  #4 was definitely blown  Luckliy the rest of the motor appears ok, so i guess im get some gaskets and put it back together! |
