- Joined
- Oct 22, 2003
- Messages
- 1,020
I'm getting started in earnest on a project that's been sitting in my garage for years. It's a 1970 wagon that will be for my son to drive while he finishes out high school.
A little background:
I have owned at least one running bronco (and usually several carcasses) continuously for the last 20 years. All of my kids have grown up around EB's and they all naturally want to own one. Of course, I'm not giving any of them mine so I bought this rolling chassis several years ago with the intention of building it with my oldest son so he could learn a little about cars and have something different to drive when he was in high school. Well, life has its little challenges and in the time since we started this I've gotten divorced, changed jobs and moved to another state for work. Through all of that, I had lots of other problems and bills to deal with so this project went on the back burner. Time flies. My son was 11 when we started all of this, now he's turning 15 and I basically haven't done squat on his rig. He can already visualize his drivers license so he boosted me to get started a few weeks ago. Now our goal is to have this from a rolling chasis to a drivable bronco in one year. He works on it every other weekend when he visits and I work on it whenever I can. I have collected a pile of parts for this build over the years when I was able to swing it. It also gets the benefit of hand-me-down parts when I upgrade my own bronco.
The Build Goal:
The goal is to build a moderate off-roader on a budget with as much reliability as possible. Parts we have so far:
- 3.5" rear springs - donated (thanks Dave)
- 3.5" WH coils
- '76 D44 front end - from my bronco, blown posi, 4.56:1, alloy axles on one side (an unfortunate Moab casualty)
- '71 BB rear end, detriot locker, 4.56:1, alloy axles, Caddy disks - also from my bronco (following a FW swap related to the unfortunate Moab casualty incident, maybe it wasn't that unfortunate afterall )
- Entire drivetrain from a running 1991 big bronco, 5.8L, E4OD, EFI and main harness - This was a long time vehicle of a good friend of mine that met it's doom during a freeway rollover accident. It was donated for the cost of the towing bill and a six pack
- New front door posts, outer rockers, kick panels and miscellaneous cowl pieces from JBG
- New inner fenders and wheel wells from the local classifieds
- Used core support from '66 from the local classifieds
- A couple of sheets of bare 18 ga
Hopefully, as we go forward this will all come together like we want it to. I am fairly good at the mechanical stuff and a little less rounded with the body work. I'm sure I will ask for lots of advice along the way. From the years on this board I know I can count on the rest of the members for good advice.
I know these threads aren't worth much without some pics, so here are the starting shots:
A little background:
I have owned at least one running bronco (and usually several carcasses) continuously for the last 20 years. All of my kids have grown up around EB's and they all naturally want to own one. Of course, I'm not giving any of them mine so I bought this rolling chassis several years ago with the intention of building it with my oldest son so he could learn a little about cars and have something different to drive when he was in high school. Well, life has its little challenges and in the time since we started this I've gotten divorced, changed jobs and moved to another state for work. Through all of that, I had lots of other problems and bills to deal with so this project went on the back burner. Time flies. My son was 11 when we started all of this, now he's turning 15 and I basically haven't done squat on his rig. He can already visualize his drivers license so he boosted me to get started a few weeks ago. Now our goal is to have this from a rolling chasis to a drivable bronco in one year. He works on it every other weekend when he visits and I work on it whenever I can. I have collected a pile of parts for this build over the years when I was able to swing it. It also gets the benefit of hand-me-down parts when I upgrade my own bronco.
The Build Goal:
The goal is to build a moderate off-roader on a budget with as much reliability as possible. Parts we have so far:
- 3.5" rear springs - donated (thanks Dave)
- 3.5" WH coils
- '76 D44 front end - from my bronco, blown posi, 4.56:1, alloy axles on one side (an unfortunate Moab casualty)
- '71 BB rear end, detriot locker, 4.56:1, alloy axles, Caddy disks - also from my bronco (following a FW swap related to the unfortunate Moab casualty incident, maybe it wasn't that unfortunate afterall )
- Entire drivetrain from a running 1991 big bronco, 5.8L, E4OD, EFI and main harness - This was a long time vehicle of a good friend of mine that met it's doom during a freeway rollover accident. It was donated for the cost of the towing bill and a six pack
- New front door posts, outer rockers, kick panels and miscellaneous cowl pieces from JBG
- New inner fenders and wheel wells from the local classifieds
- Used core support from '66 from the local classifieds
- A couple of sheets of bare 18 ga
Hopefully, as we go forward this will all come together like we want it to. I am fairly good at the mechanical stuff and a little less rounded with the body work. I'm sure I will ask for lots of advice along the way. From the years on this board I know I can count on the rest of the members for good advice.
I know these threads aren't worth much without some pics, so here are the starting shots:
Attachments
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