ClassicBroncos.com Tech Articles » – Dash & Guages

Glove Box Hinge

eds66bronco — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 18:15:07 +0000

After adding my front cage, I realized the glove box was going to need to be modified in order to be of any use. After searching all over the net and looking at all the mods that people have done, I was surprised at how complicated people had made this project. Cutting, welding, messing with hinges and latches… there had to be something that was quick, and could be swapped back to stock if I ever wanted to.

I poked around the shop and found a length of rod that was about 1/8″ thick and cut it to the length shown in red in the picture above. I then marked the location where I wanted the door to hinge and marked it on the dash and the door. I removed the hinges and door and transfered the lines to the inside of the door and the flange of the opening. Center punched the spots to drill and made the holes. The door has a nice flat spot on the top and bottom to drill and the front and back panels have just enough room to fit the rod inside.

Once the holes were drilled and the rod was placed inside the door, I inserted the rod into the upper hole in the opening flange. By pushing the rod up flush with the bottom of the door, I inserted a piece of cut-off brake tubing (pictures above) as a spacer to keep the door at the proper height. Now I was able to line up the bottom hole and with a pair of needle nose pliers, I pushed the rod down until it bottomed out where the lower dash bends.

I was surprised at how well it worked with the stock latch. It closes and opens very well and the only thing it still needs is a paint job and new rubber bumper to help push it open as the stock one is 39 years old and no longer resembles rubber.

If you are wondering about the writing on the box door, I had to leave it. It’s one of the few PO mods (along with the 50 mph Max Speed painted on the dash – rather than fix the track bar bushings) that were too funny to change. (I left the dash but fixed the bushings) He was from New Mexico and had several nice stereo’s stolen one summer. He finally got a pos cheap-o stereo for 20 bucks and wrote the following message on the box door: “Don’t steal this stereo! It’s a piece of $#!t I’ll buy you a brand new one! Seriously ! Call ….. ” Well, that was the last stereo he ever installed and he never did get a phone call so I had to leave it too! Good luck and enjoy the use of your glove box once again!

Tech article by eds66bronco

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Glove Box Relocation for Roll Cage

admin — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 18:07:41 +0000

Installing a front roll cage was actually quite a bit more complicated and thought intensive than simply fitting some pre-bent tubes together and welding them in place. It was all the work done to make room for the cage that took the most time. Clearance becomes a premium when deciding exactly where to install the cage. The main clearance problems to consider when installing any front cage are:

All tops (hard, soft & bikini) must fit after installation
Give adequate space between the spreader bar and wiper motor
The parking brake will need enough clearance (or modification)
The glove box won’t have room to open (modify, take off or keep permanently closed)
Wing windows need clearance (or the door needs to be opened to fully open the wing windows)
Door window cranks may hit bars

The tubes that come in the Smittybilt kit are long enough to give you some leeway during installation. You have a few options to make sure that everything still works the way it did before. You can either give adequate clearance everywhere and deal with the vertical bars being very far back and possibly interfering with driving and getting in and out of the truck…or…put the bars right up against the dash and deal with not having your glove box or parking brake…or…you can choose to modify everything, create a lot of work for yourself, and turn a 3 hour cage installation into a two week tear down of the entire interior. I went with the latter.

Glove Box Modification

This is the stock glove box…and as soon as a bar goes in there it becomes completely useless! Some people never use their glove box anyway so it’s no great loss, but if you like the storage and (on some years) ever want to change any fuses, there are a few options. You can take the door off and use it as an open storage tray, you can hinge it on the right side instead of the bottom and open it sideways or you can do what I did and just move it.

This is what it looked like when the jig saw blade finally came to a stop. I just traced a perfect rectangle and cut clean, straight lines (well…not really. The corners weren’t square, and the lines were all over the place.) I should have actually been more careful with the cuts. If I did it again I would use a square and go nice and slow. The more square and straight the cut is the less welding and filling you’ll have to do later.

The cut out frame needs a little work before it can be turned up side down and expected to perform the way it should. The hinges and latch need to swap positions so that the hinges are on the new bottom and the latch is on top. Luckily there’s enough metal on both top and bottom to make this work. The lip on the old latch side (the new bottom) is too wide for the hinges and needs to be trimmed out as shown. The side to the left of the latch has not been trimmed and the side to the right has. Then holes need to be drilled for the latch and hinges. If you centered your cut top to bottom then everything should work well with just the factory play in the hinge and latch screws (I wasn’t quite centered so I had to enlarge some holes)

After welding the frame back in, grinding down all the welds, using a little bondo and repainting it, I realized that I really should have painted the whole dash. And since all the bezels on Bronco dashes are almost impossible to mask off, I took the whole dash out to paint it. If I had known I was going to take it off I would have welded it from behind and made my life a lot easier! I suppose that’s how working on a Bronco is sometimes.

So here’s the finished product. The new glove box position will work out well I think. It keeps full use of the box, door and hinges and puts the speaker grille behind the roll bar where it really does about as much good as it did in it’s stock location. Now that the glove box problem is taken care of it’s time to install the actual cage.

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Early Bronco Glove Box by Tuffy Security Products

admin — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 21:44:01 +0000

Product Review by Jon Hanna (Admin)
Having bought other items from Tuffy Security Products I knew I could expect their new 66-77 Bronco glove box to be heavy duty, and I certainly wasn’t disappointed. Just like their consoles, the Bronco glove box is a solid 16 guage steel box with a tough black powder coating. It has a large locking mechanism and heavy hinge with a nice solid feel to it. This box is made specifically for early Broncos and solves the common problem of your roll cage blocking access to the glove box door. The Tuffy door is offset so the right side remains solid. This gives plenty of space for your cage bar to come down without interfering with the door.I’m in no hurry to have some punk theif put it to the test, but the system looks to be very secure. Once installed and locked, none of the mounting bolts are accessible. And because it’s solid steel all the way around they won’t be able to break in from underneath like plastic or cardboard glove boxes.

Installation was very easy and took me just over an hour, which included time to shoot photos. See below for instructions and installation tips.

The kit includes box, mounting bracket and hardware. Note the hole provided for on the left for the stock Bronco fuse block. If your fuse block isn’t glove box mounted simply bolt on the provided block-off plate.

1. Start by removing your stock glove box door. Take off all hinges, latches and support straps. Note that my glove box looks a little different then yours because years ago I relocated it to clear my roll bar. That was before the Tuffy box was on the market.

2. Install the mounting bracket. You’ll be adhereing the bracket to the top flange surrounding the stock glove box opening in the dash. See figure 2 above. Be sure to clean off all surfaces thoroughly so the tape sticks.
Carefully position the bracket so it’s holes line up with the stock holes in the opening flange. You’ll be screwing into these to mount the new box.

3. Insert the Tuffy box. If you aren’t going to use the fuse block hole now is the time to install the supplied block-off plate. If you are going to attach your fuse block don’t do it quite yet. You’ll need the box to be inserted into the dash opening first. The fuse block should have 2 mounting flanges on it fastened with 2 screws. Remove the screws and outer flange, but leave the inner flange attached to the block. Push the fuse block as far to the left as you can and push away any other wiring. Insert the glove box most of the way in and then reach under the dash and position the fuse block into the hole. Re-attach the fuse panel outer flange with the original screws.

4. Secure the glove box. Line up the 4 mounting holes in the glove box with the factory holes and Tuffy mounting bracket behind them. The far right side screw will be a bit of a challenge. It’s behind the solid portion of the glove box door where it’s hard to see. I used a flash light and small mirror to check that the holes were lined up and then start the screw. The top, left screw is more easily installed if you unbolt the locking mechanism for clearance.

5. Finished product. Be sure the door closes cleanly without hitting the dash and then tighten all 4 screws completely.
And you’re done! In less than an hour you now have a secure glove box where you can safely store your valuables. For more infomation about Tuffy Security Products visit their web site at http://www.tuffyproducts.com

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Removing your Bronco Dash

IowaMike — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 19:52:08 +0000

Tech article by Mike Henningsen (IowaMike)

Since I had to ask several questions when I removed my dash, I’m sure there are others with some of the same issues; here’s how I ended up doing it:

This was the starting point, an intact dash. First thing to do would be get the W/S out of the way. Do this by removing the bolts holding the W/S to the top if the top is still installed and loosening the rest of the top to body bolts. In hindsight, I would suggest removing the top completely if possible (storage space was my reason for not doing exactly that). Disconnect the wiring for the wiper motor and/or wiper motor cover light at the connectors behind the dash on the left side. This will allow the wire bundle the slack needed to lower the W/S. Next remove the large bolts that go through the dash into the W/S frame (one on each side).

With this done, the W/S should go forward to give you access to the screws that were hidden on the front side of the dash.

Remove these screws (I think there are seven of them), make sure you get the dash screws and not the dash pad screws (the harder ones to get to, I used an offset screwdriver). Then go back to the inside of the cab. Disconnect all the wiring you can from the back of the dash including ignition switch, headlight switch, hazards, etc. Unclamp the main wire bundle that runs in the trough formed by the lower back of the dash. Disconnect the heater control cables by loosening the screw on the cable clamps and slipping the cable spring loop off the pin. 2 of these are under the dash and one is in the engine compartment, make sure you disconnect all 3. This would also be a good time to remove the steering wheel, turn signal lever, and column shift lever if not already off. Now you can remove the steering column shroud and the remaining bolts/screws holding the dash in place.

The emergency brake pedal assembly may have to be removed to get to the bracket bolts on the lower left attach point. The curved arrow in the picture is referencing the outboard most attach bolt on the side of the dash. There is also 1 screw in the center of the dash just below the dash pad. The right side attach points are located just like the left side depictions. With everything disconnected, double check that you didn’t miss something. The dash isn’t heavy but trying to pull it out and finding something still connected can get interesting in a hurry, especially if there’s not a second set of hands around to help. The end result will look like this:

Now you can tackle any rust, wiring, or dash modification issues a little easier.by Mike Henningsen

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