Well you’ve heard the adage about the plumber who’s own house has the leakiest pipes in town? I’m kinda like that. I’m half owner of a Bronco shop that builds some pretty awesome rigs, but my own stuff suffers from neglect. But we’ve been able to piece together a few things and spend a little bit of time cobbling it together. I’m hesitant to post too many photos of it though, as it is not a good representative of the quality of work we do here at WCB—its just hastily thrown together whenever we have a little spare time which is rare. At any rate here are the basics. It has a full width D44 from a 78/79 Bronco. The coil buckets were spaced outboard from the frame using some prototype spacer brackets we’ve been working on for eventual sale as a kit. Its running West Coast Broncos long travel tubular radius arms. The D44 has an ARB and Warn axles. The rear is a full width 9 out of an early 80’s OJB with 35-spline Currie axles, Strange nodular third member, spool, and Explorer disk brakes. Gears are 4.56:1. The springs are 2.5” Deavers front and rear. Front shocks are Bilstein 7100s on a set of custom hoops that I built myself many years ago for a different rig, which we moved over to this one. The Bronco has a SEFI 5.8L and C4 with D20. I have a STaK Mini Monster Box on the way for it.
Its actually my wife’s Bronco, affectionately known around here as “Coco” (her name for it) but I’ve sort of commandeered it recently since I needed her to have more of a trail rig than what it was. My philosophy for it is to keep it light, low and wide rather than tall and heavy like most trail rigs are. I intend for it to be just as at home in the high speed dirt as it is in the rocks. I’m committed to cut wherever and however I have to in order to fit those tires without going any higher. Its close now but needs a little more trimming. The front inner fenders are gone (replaced by a WCB prototype tubular core support) so that makes things easy in the front although I may need to section a small sliver where the floorboard meets the kick panel. In the rear I will probably have to similarly section the front and rear corners of the wheel tubs, as I already have the pinch flanges trimmed back as far as they’ll go. By the way, the offset on those wheels is a little more than I want, so if I ever get around to replacing them it should suck the wheels back inboard an inch each side. Still I hope to have enough clearance inside the rear wheel tubs to build custom shock hoops that extend up into the tub rather than leaning forward or inboard, or having to cut into the interior space for clearance.
It’s a cool little rig and my wife and I are looking forward to getting it back out on the trail soon. Someday it will have a proper WCB cage, some of the rust cancer fixed, PRP seats, etc.
Dusty