migs Bronco Barn - a chronicle of what's happening at the new place

[tasker]

Couple I have from the weekend. Cant thank you enough for the effort!

 

[NGABronco]

Congrats big guy!!! That rig deserves a trophy!!!

 

[Dude 713]

As bright as that is you don't need sun.
Love it!

 

[migs]

It's been a while, haven't done much Bronco wise over the summer, but the last couple of months I've had another Local Bronco in for some work...You may recognize her as miss december 2026 Already a pretty solid truck, not really in need of anything major, the owner just had a wish list of small tasks and fixes for me to pick away at in my spare time.

Well' here it is upon arrival. Some of the smaller tasks such as some minor electrical issues and a coolant leak aren't really picture worthy so let's move on to those larger tasks.

 

[migs]

First up was to investigate an issue with shifting into four wheel drive. The shifter had some pretty severe slop in it, but getting at the J shifter mounting bolts is not a simple task with no body lift and exhaust pipes running down both sides. However, while exploring underneath I could see part of what looked like an access panel that some previous owner had added to the tunnel at some point. Well, since I needed to pull the driver's seat out to deal with a loose, spinning seat mounting bolt anyway, figured it wouldn't be too much to peel up the glued in carpet on that side to gain access to that panel....

Snowball rolling now! So that access panel turned out to be a whole "new" tunnel hacked together with thin aluminum and old license plates. The giant hole combined with the weird bends in the transfer case shifter, I'm guessing someone had installed a manual trans with a floor shifter at some point in it's history. So this all led to pulling out the rest of the interior to access and make things better.

 

[migs]

More of the interior tear down

 

[migs]

I cut the needed tunnel section out of a saved leftover piece in my used parts pile and started the trimming and fitting process before welding it in.

 

[migs]

More of the tunnel rebuild

 

[migs]

I then treated the floor pans with a rust converter product, applied seam sealer to the seams and painted the entire floor. I also left an access port to be able to install the replacement T-case shifter with ease.

 

[migs]

So the original shifter had broken, missing and worn out parts, hence the difficulty getting the shift rails to fully engage. I replaced it with a good working used unit. Once that was bolted in place, I made an aluminum cover for the access port, installed it and began working on installing a new carpet and under padding kit. Trimmed and fit the padding before gluing it down.

 

[migs]

Then started fitting the new carpet, trimming and gluing where necessary, and reinstalled the rest of the interior along with new stainless carpet hold down strips.

 

[toddz69]

Amazing what you uncover when you start digging. Did you attach the new access panel with sheetmetal screws? Nutserts and machine screws?

Todd Z.

 

[migs]

Sheetmetal screws, along with sealant around the perimeter.

 

[migs]

Another item on the list was the possibility of changing out the large door mirrors for the smaller ones. But I didn't want to open that can of worms potentially finding other issues while dealing with filling in the extra screw holes and paint work. So Instead I freshened up what was there. Media blasted the rust off of the lower brackets and painted them. The screws used to mount them to the doors were a mismatched set of oddballs and most of the holes were stripped, so I drilled them out and installed 1/4-20 nutserts and used stainless button heads to mount them.

 

[migs]

Next on the list was to spruce up the inside of the bed a bit and fix a small rust spot on the rear fuel filler bump out.
Removed the roll bar and old tailgate seal brackets.

 

[migs]

Fixed that rust spot, added a little seam sealer then cleaned, prepped and masked it off.

 

[migs]

Sprayed it with Raptor Liner and reinstalled the roll bar.

 

[migs]

Next up was this quickie fix of this evil looking crack/hole on the edge of the hood on the driver's side, pretty brutal and poorly repaired in the past. The hood isn't in the best of conditions to begin with and again, not wanting to create a big project and potentially open up another big can of worms by attempting to cut out a section and weld in a new piece and have to deal with a much larger area of body work and paint, I opted for a smaller touch up approach.
I formed a heavier piece of steel to fit in there on the underside for reinforcement, and glued it in with panel adhesive and a few strategic tack welds. A little filler and primer, then blend in the base coat and clear.

 

[migs]

Here's with the base and clear. Of course it had to be a black pearl making it a little more challenging. I just did this today so tomorrow I'll buff it. It may not be perfect but I think it looks a lot better than before

 

[turbotim2]

Whoa! Nice work as usual Migs!