My ongoing 1988 Bronco Project

[Jacampb2]

Maybe some of you guys will be interested in this. This is a thread about the build up of my 1988 Eddie Bauer Bronco. I have owned the Bronco for about 2 years now, been working on it off and on for just a bit more than the last year. I haven't touched it in the last seven months, but last week, I got back too it, and it struck me that some of you might be interested, since it will have some fiberglass work, and a huge mobile AV system when it is done, so I will detail it here as well. These first posts will all be cut and paste from other forums, but I will answer any questions I can. If something seems out of left field, it was probably because I was answering someones question in the post I am copying. I will try to edit it out to be short, and simple and more along the lines of what you guys will like.

For reference, BKO is bronco lover speak for Bronco. EB is Eddie Bauer (and in some circles early bronco, as in classic little bronco from the days of yore ) A lot of the techno speak might not make sense to guys who aren't into four wheeling, but suffice it to say, I am trying to put the best factory parts in this to make it a capable off road rig as well as daily driver.

--Begin cut and paste--

Well, I bought this '88 EB BKO about a year ago now, it has sat in my drive way the whole time I have owned it. I just picked up a '94 4x4 F-350 w/ 351W and a ZF5 for a very reasonable price and was just going to part it out and use the good parts of the front clip for a new style front clip swap.

One thing led to another and I decided to finally start on the BKO. I pulled the front clip off the BKO and found the frame to be in terrible condition, sooooo... I decided to put the BKO tub on the F-350 frame. I cut about 23"s out of the middle of the F-350 frame, spliced it back together, and added a cross member for the forward tub/bed body mounts.

The rear most tub mounts will go through the frame rail and I haven't got them done yet. The lengthened wheel base was intentional. It is stretched 6.5"s from stock BKO wheel base. The rear quarters need a lot of work anyhow, so I will move the wheel wells when I fix all of the rust.

Things still on the list to do: Install the '94 Dash and wiring. Re-plumb the fuel lines, run new brake lines, install a new tail gate, and fab up some new bumpers. The rear bumper will mount over the 4"s or so of rear frame rail that sticks out, you wont even know its there when done. After all that, then I should have it ready for paint, not sure if I am going to do it myself, or take it in to a couple of guys I know that own a body shop.

Anyhow, here are the pictures:



Here is the BKO I started with.



Here is what it looks like now, the front clip is not bolted down yet, it still needs the core support body mounts massaged... They were stuck in there pretty bad...









This one, you can just spot the frame rail splice. I intended to take more pictures of the process, however, I was working up to my buddies shop, and tight for time, so I didn't get as many pictures as I would have liked. The frame splice is a butt joint, beveled and welded, and then plated with a 3/16" thick diamond type shape on the outside, tops and bottoms.

The F-350 frame is not a perfect fit. The front two cab mounts, and the core support mounts both need about 2.5" BL so the tub clears the higher rear frame rails of the truck frame. I am going to turn some out of 3" round bar on the lathe.

The second set of cab mounts, just behind the front seats, require re-using the old BKO body mount brackets, as the pickup ones mount inboard of the frame rails through a cross member. The four mounts in the bed of the tub just require a hole saw through the frame rail on each side, but I added a 3/16" cross member to the front set for additional strength.

All in all, I am happy with the way things are coming along. I intend to sell my '99 pickup, and daily drive and tow with the BKO. I will build some custom front and rear bumpers for it, so you will not even know the front is body lifted. The pics of the truck are with no lift, that is just the difference in stock suspension height.

Later,
Jason

[Jacampb2]

Well, I got the BKO home last week, worked my fool butt off to get it into the shop today. Of course I had to clean in order to even fit it in there. 24x36 shop is getting awful small. Here is a picture of it in the shop, I had to stand outside the man door to get the pic. 10' ceiling, damn that stock F350 suspension is tall. I think I am going to buy a set of 35's for it when it is done, and run it at this height



Next is a shot of the rear frame horns with the bumper removed. It shortens it up a bunch. I think I can build a bumper around that nicely, and not have to bob them at all.



The rest are of the work I am doing to get the '94 dash and column in there. The first pic is of the '88s reinforcement/mounting plate removed from the firewall. Just drilled out all of the spot welds with a uni-bit and peeled it off.



I saved the piece of the firewall from the '94 with all of the harness pass through cut outs, the column cut out, and brake/clutch master cylinder cut outs. The '94 is different in that the reinforcement panel is spot welded to the inside of the fire wall. I separated the two pieces, trimmed the firewall piece to fit in place on the '88. There are several places where the panels regster w/ each other, so it isn't all different. There is about a 1" dimple above the ECM that is in both panels. The brake master cylinder holes and bolt patterns are the same, and I found one other bolt hole that matched up as well. I bolted the inside reinforcement panel w/ 4 7/16" bolts through the brake MC mounting holes and the piece of the '94 firewall. I got it aligned and was able to put one of the column mount bolts threw as well. I punched a few more holes to line it all up and pull it together tightly. Tomorrow I am going to pick up some weld through primer and some 3m seam sealer. I will be cutting a bit of the '88 firewall out around the ECM mounting hole and harness bulkhead connectors. I will use seam sealer around the edges, and spot welds to hold it in place.





Making progress... It sucks having to stop playing with the truck to work so I can pay for the truck... It would be so nice to be independently wealthy.

Later,
Jason

[Jacampb2]

A bit more progress today. Got the fire wall cut up and the new pieces in place. Seam sealer is not on yet. I have a few more '94 pieces that need welded in place in the interior, and I am not going to put the seam sealer on until it is all ready to go at once. The pedals are bolted in, but their upper mount needs spot welded back on. I have to fix a bit of rust under the windshield frame before I go that far. Here are the pics.



Fire wall marked up for cuts. Used a little body saw to make the cuts.



The new hole.



Outer piece spot welded in place, ready for seam sealer.



Inner piece in place, pedals in, upper mount bolted to pedals, but not welded down yet.

Later,
Jason

[Jacampb2]

A little more progress today. Got all of the parts and pieces in the firewall, seam sealer applied, pedals mounted, ECM mounted, Steering column carrier half mounted, I still need to make the A-piller mount for that. Hopefully I will have the dash back in by tomorrow. I got bored waiting for the seam sealer to dry, and started cutting back the floor to see how bad the rot was. If FORD is listening, this thing is just a piss poor design! The body mount recess/cavity was full of sand, dirt, and rocks, along with a significant portion of the metal itself. Lots more to fix, but not horrible.

Here are the pictures:







Later,
Jason

[Jacampb2]

A bit more progress today. I have been down with bronchitis for about a week now, just now feeling well enough to get out to the shop for a few hours at a time.

I got all of the mounts for the steering column carrier fabed and installed, and I got the dash and steering column in today. All in all a good day. I think it looks pretty good. Somehow I lost the "boot" that the steering column goes through in the firewall. I will keep looking, but I may have to junk yard it...

Here are the pictures:











You can also see in this pic that I was about 1" high on all of the column carrier bracket bolts. Instead of removing everything and remaking it, I just redrilled the brackets. Other than that, it lined up pretty much perfect.



Later,
Jason

[Jacampb2]

Well, I got some more work done today. The body lift blocks turned out to be a royal PITA! Anyhow it is done... Here are some pictures.



Picture of the body lift blocks that kicked my ass for two days.



And work progresses on rust repair. That is 14g check plate, just because I had it around, I am out of sheet now though, so tomorrow hopefully I will be able to go pick up a bit more. I prefer to work with a little heavier sheet metal. I am really learning to hate welding the thin factory sheet metal. I keep hoping I will get better at it, but progress is slow. I went out and bought a spool of .023 wire and .023 drive rollers for my millermatic 251. I was trying to do this with .035 wire, and that is next to impossible. The .023 has its own plethora of feed problems, but at least it doesn't punch through the sheet metal so fast...

Later,
Jason

[Jacampb2]

A bit more progress today. I finished the drivers side floor board. Switched over to the passenger side. Got most of the rust cut out, had to take a significant portion of the A pillar on this side. Got a patch in the A pillar. Should tie up the passenger side floor board tomorrow. Than it is either on to my remote shifter, or the seat belt areas that are all rotted out. Depends how sick I am of sheet metal... God bless ford for stuffing foam and insulation in every nook and cranny so that things rust out in a few years. Nothing like planned obsolescence.

Here are the pics.









Later,
Jason

[Jacampb2]

I got the passenger side floor finished up, did it in 2 pieces instead of 4, mainly because I have more metal. It was easier to do in 4 pieces though, less bending...

I decided to start on the rear cabin corners. It didn't look like it was going to be to terrible... I may have been wrong. I am not sure what is worse, contorting into a pretzel to try and get the welds burned in, or hitting a rusty patch of sheet metal while welding a piece in that you though was going to get all of the rust. Anyhow, I got a ways. It's back to work at my real job for a few weeks though.

Here are the pictures.





Later,
Jason

[Jacampb2]

Well, I got some more work done today. Patched the passenger rear cab corner. Moved on to cutting out the drivers side, I didn't have time to snap pics. I will take some tomorrow. I am holding off on patching the bed floor. I have to move the inner tubs back and would rather do one patch piece than several.

Now, on to the paint I am using. I was sold on rust bullet after reading a lot of great things about it. I have decided to try something different though. I stumbled on a paint made by Kilz. It is called rust cap, and from my research, it seems it is very similar to rust bullet. It dehydrates and seals rust in a polymer and glass resin. The added advantage is it is much cheaper than rust bullet, and it comes in aerosol cans as well as quarts and gallons. It costs about $50 a gallon, and is available in several "hammered" color finishes as well as plain finishes. I bought mine at my local ACE hardware. I also purchased some loctite brand "rust converter" which is basically phosphoric acid and wetting agents. An 8oz jar was only $7. I have yet to use it, but I am going to hit the light rust with it before painting it with the rust cap.

Here are the pictures from this afternoon.





Anyhow, another tid-bit you guys might be interested in. Home Depot now carries Norton brand abrasives. They stock the 4.5" rapid strip discs as well as a 4x1 rapid strip disc for die grinders. They are amazing products and will take everything off the metal except for the metal.

Later,
Jason

[Jacampb2]

Got some more done today. I think I have the cab area all patched up. Laid down a coat of the rust cap. I think it came out pretty good. Here are the pics:





Later,
Jason

[Jacampb2]

I cut out the inner rear wheel wells today. No unexpected issues. I cut them out so I can swap the passenger side for the driver side and end up with minimal patches. The inner splash guards were trash, and I am not going to put them back in. Just a waste of metal and a place for road salt to collect... The inner wheel wells have a fair amount of rust, but only one side went all of the way through. I will patch them up once I have them swapped. It is not going to bad, but it is still a PITA. I can't wait to be done with this sheet metal crap.

It looks like SWMBO is buying me a bead roller for Christmas. It will be a HF cheapie, so I will modify it to make it useful and make it electric!

The inside of the rear quarters is not as bad as I expected. The rust is pretty much limited to 4"s or so above the wheel wells, and the bottom skirt of the fenders. I think I am going to go with patch panels instead of new quarters.

Here are todays pictures. Just got the DS wheel well started and got called in for dinner. More tomorrow before work hopefully!







Later,
Jason

[Jacampb2]

Well, I got the drivers side rear wheel tub fully welded in. On to the passenger side soon, after that, a few little cargo area rust spots to patch and I am done cutting rust out of the interior. Hopefully I will have more time for it this week amidst the holiday festivities...

Here are the pictures.





Later,
Jason

[Jacampb2]

I am by no means done with body work yet, but I started to get bored with it, so I started on my remote shifter. I made a duplicate of the ZF shifter mount and then a copy of a spicer 1310 u-joint cross. Mated the two together, and a 1310 yoke, and so far that is as far as I have gotten. The plan is to use a heim for the new short throw shifter's pivot, back between the bucket seats, similar to a sports car's shifter. I estimate I will cut the throw approximately in half. The other end of the linkage will be another 1310 half. Both joints will be greaseable and the needle bearings should stand up to a lot more abuse than just a standard clevis style linkage.

Here are the pics so far.





All of this work is to shorten the throw, but mostly to make space for this little gem that I got in the mail the other day. It is a 15" ELO touch monitor. Surface acoustic wave touch screen, and it is going to be the heart of my BKO's PC and AV system. It is going in a custom fiberglass center console, directly bellow the hvac controls and stock radio location. Pretty much right where the stock shifter comes through the floor.



Later,
Jason

[Jacampb2]

I made a bit of progress on the actual shifter. I didn't have a lot of time today, I have to go into work in a couple hours. The shift pattern will not be reversed, I will try to draw up the assembly in sketchup tonight so it will be understood better. This part is the actual base of the shifter with the second bearing trunion installed. When done, it will have a stud for the top half of the shifter to thread onto and the stud will keep the trunion in place. It has to be done this way, or there likely would not be enough room to install the yoke.

Here is the picture.



Later,
Jason

[Jacampb2]

Okay, here is a quick sketchup model. It is not really to any realistic scale, but it should help better understand how this is going to work.







Later,
Jason

[Jacampb2]

The shifter is temporarily together, and not working out as well as I had hoped. First of all, it turns out you cannot use the pivot point to adjust the throw, because it causes the two joints to travel through different arcs. The throw has to be shortened simply by shortening the actual shifter handle. No big deal, I turned a new one on the lathe. Next, I welded the bar in the yokes just to set it up temporarily, and it worked, but not well. It has some binding even with the lower pivot point in the linkage. It looks like the ZF shifter turns slightly as it travels into each gear. This makes things significantly more complex, and is probably why there are not aftermarket setups like this... Anyhow, I think I can solve it by making a new joint for the trans side using a full u-joint. If that doesn't work, I am going to scrap this idea and make a full closed loop hydraulic shifter

Here are the pictures. Notice the cracked weld on the trans side yoke. I just had a short bead on there, and it was nickel tig rod, it bound well enough to pop it while I was testing. Needless to say it is good reason not to weld cast to mild steel, especially for something like this.





Later,
Jason

[Jacampb2]

I did manage to find some time to mess with this again, even with the wife and new baby in the hospital yet, and I am pleased to report that it is working perfectly now. It was all about the trans side joint angles. When I took the shift tower apart and got the shifter nubbin out, I found that I had it way out of alignment, both with the horizontal axis and its pitch. I cut the little adapter dealiewackie I made apart and put it all together with the shifter nubbin out on the welding table. Tacked it, got it lined up as close as I could with a tape measure, and welded it up solid. Welded the trans side yoke back on the shaft and bolted it all together real quickly before I had to head back to the hospital. It shifts into every gear perfectly, no binding now. I am going to have to machine a new connecting shaft and yokes out of aluminum though. It is heavy enough that I am worried about it staying in gear on its own. There are heavier springs I can buy for the shifter detents, but I will lighten up the shifter assembly before try messing with that.

For the doubters, it shifts into every gear with no evidence of play, it feels like the shifter is solidly connected to the trans, not remote mounted. The only thing you can feel that is different about it is the weight of it. Although the shifts are shorter and rigid, it feels very heavy.

No pics right now, the shop camera's batteries are dead. I will get some pictures of it once I am back home for good.

Later,
Jason

[Jacampb2]

Well, here are the pictures I took last night. It is hard to tell how much I changed the angle, so I am pasting one of the original pictures of how the linkage was before the change. I will take some more pictures when I take it all back apart.



This is how it was originally



This is how it is now, the pictures are taken from about the same angle. You can see how twisted it was before (pitch) what you can't really tell is how far out of alignment it was on the horizontal axis.





Later,
Jason

[Jacampb2]

I had some time to work on the center console today. I got a pretty good start to the frame for it. It is all 15/32" plywood, obviously it is not going to stay plywood, after it is together, I will pull it all apart, glue everything, and radius all of the corners. Then stretch fabric and start the glass. The reason for the cut outs is just to keep it light. The frame is just there for the fabric, so it will serve no real structural purpose once the glass is down and set.

Here's the pics:





Later,
Jason

[Jacampb2]

I got the frame for the console done today and fabric stretched. The reason for the two levels in the rear part is there is a trap door for the bottom of the top section. The bottom section will hold the trucks CPU. I will start glass as soon as I can, but with the new baby, and my wife still recovering from a c-section, it may be a few days. This weekend has been nice as my wife has been with her family

Here are the pics:









Later,
Jason

[Jacampb2]

I did get a bit of time to work on the console again today. I got the first coat of resin down. It took a lot, about 1.5 quarts before it quit soaking it up. You want to keep putting resin down until it starts to look wet, then the fleece is done absorbing the resin. As for the request for what supplies are used, from memory, here goes:

The fleece is from my local fabric store. I just bought the cheap crap that was on sale. Price was $4.99 a yard. I bought 5 yards. I needed just over 5 feet for the console, but I have other projects to do later. I would recommend buying lighter weight fleece than I did though, after seeing this thing soak up that much resin, the money I saved by buying the sale priced fabric would have been recouped in less resin...

I bought one quart of bondo fiberglass resin at my local walmart, I wanted 1 gallon, but they no longer sell gallons. The resin typically goes quite a ways, but the thick fleece soaked up a bunch. I had to run out in the middle to my local auto body supply and buy a gallon. They don't carrier the cheap bondo brand, and I ended up paying $63 for a gallon of some high end resin. You local home improvement store should have bondo brand resin for about $30 a gallon. Mine does, but I did not have time to drive across town. You don't need high end resin for this sort of work...

I bought a few packages of fiberglass mat as well. It is about $5 per package, it may not be enough, but time will tell. I use mostly the random chopped strand mat, it lays down better and is much stronger than any of the alternatives, like woven fiberglass mat.

Last, lots of nitrile gloves and cheap disposable paintbrushes. Dollar store paint brushes are perfectly fine.

Here are the pictures:



All masked off. This is an important step. You want the first few coats to be done in the vehicle to make sure it is a perfect mate to the dash and stuff. If you get the resin on almost anything, it is stuck, and you will have to sand it off. Tape is cheap and will save you lots of grief.







You can see some patches that still look wet in the pics, ideally that is what the whole thing should look like when the fleece is done soaking up the resin. I however, got called inside to help out with the babies, so I had to stop before it was 100%

Later,
Jason

[Jacampb2]

More work, the first layer of glass mat is down. It took one whole package to do one layer. I am going to do 3, and possibly 4 layers. I kind of want to pull most of the plywood frame out when it is done to make it easier to install, so the glass will have to be uber strong. You want to try to get most of the bubbles out of the mat. You keep working it with your paint brush until they lay down. The woven mat will start to become somewhat fluid and you can push and pull it around. In this case, I probably should have given the fleece one more coat before the mat went down. The fleece not being fully saturated caused more bubbles than I really wanted, but they are small enough that it should not be a problem. I also should have done the cut outs before the first coat of glass. I ran out of time when I stretched the fabric, and then got lazy yesterday and didn't do it before I started. If you cut it out before the glass you can pull the fabric around the edges and have a much nicer edge to work with. In this case, I caused myself a lot more finish work than was necessary...

Anyhow, here are the pics.









This one is just to show how tight a fit I am getting to the OE dash.

Later,
Jason

[Jacampb2]

Got another layer of mat down today, and one coat of just resin. I will probably pull it out tomorrow and sand down most of the high spots. I got interrupted in the middle of the layer of mat, wifey problems, and ended up with some stuff a bit lumpy. No biggy, at least the wife is okay. Looks like she is going to have to take it easy again for a few more days, so I may not be able to do any more work until the weekend.

Here are the pics:







Later,
Jason

[Jacampb2]

A bit more progress. I had a couple hours after our toddler went to bed, and with the wifes blessing, I headed to the shop. I pulled the console out, it came out in one piece, thank god! Hauled it to the bench and sanded the whole thing with a random orbit sander, 80 grit paper. Knocked down all of the really bad high spots, and then I cut out some of the problem areas and glued in new fleece. The worst was probably the passenger side sweeping curve. The fabric did not follow the frame very well. I should have framed in the whole curve both vertically as well as horizontally. I cut it out, glued in a piece of formed cardboard, and then glued fleece to it. I also re-did the back bottom corners, where they transition from 90° to the rounded sections. These were not terrible, but would have taken a lot of filler to get the shape I was after. Glassed up all of the new fleece, and gave the whole thing another coat of resin only. I have now gone through a 1 gallon and 1 quart of resin. I bought another gallon of resin at autozone today, much better price at only $32...

Here are the pictures:







Later,
Jason

[Jacampb2]

Well, this should be it for most of the fiberglass work. Two more coats of mat down today, and I will pull it out in a few hours. I will glass the hidden edges on the bench, and then sand it down and start with filler. I may get a few more ours later tonight to mess with it...





Later,
Jason