Dusty
Bronco Guru
- Joined
- Jun 28, 2001
- Messages
- 2,965
[NOTE: This started out as a thread for the cage build. But I've turned it into the "Coco's Mods" thread to include any other mods or upgrades I'm doing, or have done, to it. Rather than starting a new thread every time I bolt something on LOL...anyhow, it starts with the cage build and goes from there...]
My wife's Bronco, "Coco" has needed a cage for years and I've just never gotten around to it. I've had a simple 4-point bar in there for a while just to have something, but its finally time to replace it with something more substantial.
Since I work at Poison Spyder I can get DOM pretty cheaply so I'll be using 1.75" X .120 wall DOM for most of it. Here's my work space in the garage at home. Pretty primitive compared to the equipment we have at work but that stuff's for building Jeep parts LOL...
My bender is a JD Squared that I converted to air-over-hydraulic using a Harbor Freight long ram and the ram mount kit from Swag Off-Road. If anyone is looking to convert their manual bender and want to do it as low-buck as possible, I highly recommend this setup. Troy over at Swag developed this kit on my own suggestion and it turned out great.
The overall design concept for Coco has always been sort of a "4X4 muscle car" or desert pre-runner, more than a rock crawler, as I have my other Bronco for that. So I'll be building a sport style cage for it rather than the boxy family style cages you see more often. Here I have one side of the main hoops done and starting to bend up the other side. There's a splice at the middle where the B-pillar will join, which I'll sleeve together with some 1.5" OD inserts.
Both main hoops in. Already you can see the overall lines. I dig the "fastback" look of it.
If you look closely you can see the A-pillar bar going through the dash.
And that's all I have for now. I only worked on it for a few hours last weekend. Like everything I do outside of work these days, it will probably take forever. But I'll update this thread whenever I have more to show. I won't be able to work on it this weekend because I'll be at the Off-Road Expo, so it will be a couple of weeks before I can get back on it.
My wife's Bronco, "Coco" has needed a cage for years and I've just never gotten around to it. I've had a simple 4-point bar in there for a while just to have something, but its finally time to replace it with something more substantial.
Since I work at Poison Spyder I can get DOM pretty cheaply so I'll be using 1.75" X .120 wall DOM for most of it. Here's my work space in the garage at home. Pretty primitive compared to the equipment we have at work but that stuff's for building Jeep parts LOL...
My bender is a JD Squared that I converted to air-over-hydraulic using a Harbor Freight long ram and the ram mount kit from Swag Off-Road. If anyone is looking to convert their manual bender and want to do it as low-buck as possible, I highly recommend this setup. Troy over at Swag developed this kit on my own suggestion and it turned out great.
The overall design concept for Coco has always been sort of a "4X4 muscle car" or desert pre-runner, more than a rock crawler, as I have my other Bronco for that. So I'll be building a sport style cage for it rather than the boxy family style cages you see more often. Here I have one side of the main hoops done and starting to bend up the other side. There's a splice at the middle where the B-pillar will join, which I'll sleeve together with some 1.5" OD inserts.
Both main hoops in. Already you can see the overall lines. I dig the "fastback" look of it.
If you look closely you can see the A-pillar bar going through the dash.
And that's all I have for now. I only worked on it for a few hours last weekend. Like everything I do outside of work these days, it will probably take forever. But I'll update this thread whenever I have more to show. I won't be able to work on it this weekend because I'll be at the Off-Road Expo, so it will be a couple of weeks before I can get back on it.
Last edited:
