1971 Bronco Crawler Build - Texas

[SSDDBRONCO]

Looking good. Are you running 1310 or 1350 yokes??


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[Mountain Ram]

It would be best to wait until everything is installed and your sitting on your suspension to measure for driveshafts.

And move the axles to max compression and extension... My initial measurements were wrong and I found out by how much when I pulled the springs and moved the axle.

 

[tribaltalon]

Got the top bars over the passenger compartment fitted and tacked in. Tonight I'll be working on door bars and floor bars. I'd love to be able to get the rear bench seat frame built before the weekend (running a TJ rear bench seat with 3 harnesses for 3 little kids). This weekend I'll be going junkyard searching for a 60/40 ranger front seat. That way we'll be able to fit myself, my 8 and 4 year old, and my girlfriend and her 4 and 2 year olds.


I ordered the Atlas with 1350 yokes.. I'll be running 1350 driveshafts on both ends.


Yeah I'll wait to get everything bolted in and be sure to flex it out and get all the right measurements. The driveshafts will be the last thing I order and install.

 

[tribaltalon]

Still grinding away at the cage. Got the floor bars done last night, now I just need to get a new tube notcher since my HF one broke last night. Then i can get the seat mounts started on the rear seat, I'd like to go ahead and get the rear seat and the harness mounts for the rear seat all done this evening if I can. Then if I get a ranger 60/40 front seat over the weekend all I'll have left to do is get the seat mounts built for the front seat and then tie this thing into the cage.





I put the floor bars as low as humanly possible to give myself as much room as I can. Now that I have a normal height cage instead of my NBA basketball player cage I have to think about things like this. LOL

 

[tribaltalon]

Wasn't able to find a ford ranger seat like I'd hoped... but I did pick up a GM Colorado rear seat that was nearly perfect and it fits amazingly well. Granted I am building seat mounts tied into my roll cage but it looks great and feels nice. I'm super stoked about it. Also made some good progress on the engine cage.

 

[broncoman1972]

That Colorado seat looks really good in there. Good to know it's now an option.

Sent on the fly

 

[mdside]

I was wonder how a bench seat would look up front, I dig it!

PS glad to see the extra update here (just read your other thread on pirate)

 

[tribaltalon]

The Colorado seat would NOT be a bolt in swap for a normal floor mounted seat. Pretty much the only way it'll work is to have a seat mount welded into the cage. It just fits well dimension wise. Also the seat being a rear seat does not recline. For a normal EB I would still recommend a ford ranger 60/40, but for my rock crawler this thing will work great (especially for the 40 bucks I paid for it at the junkyard)

 

[tribaltalon]

Just thought I'd update this. Nothing really changed from the time I last updated this thread back in May of last year. I moved from Katy to Humble, and took on some more responsibilities with work, and am going to college full time as well. So the bronco sat in the garage for the last year, basically. I just shipped the truck off to a shop called Moonshine Motor Company and Evan is getting the bronco running and driving for me. It was really nice to find someone who is passionate about fabrication and that understood the concept of what I was building this bronco for.

Heading to the shop

At its new home for the next few weeks

building the double ended ram mount out of a trailgear kit that I'd bought.

Once he wraps the steering install up he's going to install the NP435 and Atlas T-case, and then attack the rear suspension. We'll probably end up going back to spring over, and just moving the shackle mounts up to keep the thing low. I'll update this and Pirate as I get pictures. You can also follow me on Instagram - I'm boostedvette on there.

 

[sprdv1]

Nice.. gonna perform well I bet..

 

[tribaltalon]

Moonshine Motor Company made some pretty good progress. Got the rear suspension essentially done, and started on the comp cut. It's all rough right now and we'll tidy up the lines and all that stuff later once it's been flexed out and everything finalized. Tomorrow they're going to stab the NP435 and the Atlas. Then I think they'll pretty much be ready to start articulating suspension and seeing what hits and what doesn't. They're pretty sure the track bar is going to hit the frame on the passenger side at full stuff, but we'll see.

I'll probably also dovetail the rear a little while all that structure is cut out of it. What i'd really like to do is run tube along the comp cut line from rock slider to rear cage to add some structural integrity but for now the mantra is just get the fawking thing done.

Another thing that we've been talking about is the shock placement in the rear. I bought one of those crossmember thingamajiggers that welds in between the frame rails for shocks to be installed in the /\ configuration. Evan noted that with the new placement of the rear axle (stretched back at least another 3-4 inches), it wouldn't be hard at all to put shock mounts on the cage and run longer shocks straight up and down. What do you guys think? This thing is straight up crawler, it'll never be a ultra 4 car or anything driven remotely fast.

 

[tribaltalon]

Got the NP435 and Atlas II 5.0:1 in today. The body is so rusty that we're pretty sure it's lower than its supposed to be, a ton of floor had to be cut out to get the atlas in.

Still thinking about how I want to do the skid plate for the atlas.

I'm debating how I want to try and repair the floors. I really don't want to get all new floors, because eventually my plan is to get a fiberglass rock crawler body. Any ideas? I'm almost just tempted to get sheet metal and self tapping screws and put some bedliner over it all. By the time the floors get really bad again I'll probably be ready to put a new tub on it anyway. Thoughts?

 

[Desert Thrasher]

I would make some patch panels and at least spot weld them in for the floors.
As for the rear shocks, I would run them straight up to the cage. They will be much more effective this way.

 

[Gummi Bear]

Did they replace the body mount bushings before butchering the floor pans?

That would be my first move. It is inexpensive and pretty easy. Buy the kit with 1" body lift and hardware included. Keeps your COG low, and buys the clearance you need.


I've been following this build since you resurrected it a little while back. I like where you're going with it.

 

[tribaltalon]

honestly, the body mounts and surrounding areas are so rusty that its not worth replacing the bushings. Floor's already been cut up, it actually ended up not being horrifically bad. Evan was looking at the meth-fueled roll cage that I hacked up and half-assedly attempted to save, and said that there's no way he's going to waste any mig wire on that thing. It was just FUBAR to begin with, and it's just going to be better to toss the whole contraption and start from scratch. Kind of a bummer, because the front of the cage really wasn't all that bad. So now I'm searching around for the cage kit that I want to go with. I'll probably have Evan add on some additional bracing, but he said if I bought a pre-bent kit it'll save money for me in the long run. Right now he's getting ready to figure out the core support and fender supports for the front end and build the Orbital mount. It's getting there.

And yes, the front end is just sitting on the frame rails right now. The nose will be going up to line up the body lines from back to front.

 

[tribaltalon]

Shop flexed the suspension out a little. the front doesn't even want to flex with how soft the rear is. I'm not sure how much up travel I want to go with on the rear. there's no bumpstops or anything yet other than the quarter panel LOL. Not sure how we're going to get the front to articulate a whole bunch to check the clearances up there. Ordering a pre-fabbed cage kit from D&C Extreme tonight it looks like. Evan is also going to work on building a bolt on transmission tunnel which will be really nice in case i ever need to do anything to the Atlas.

 

[5001craig]

Very nice!

Interested in the bolt on transmission tunnel.

 

[sprdv1]

Oh yeah.. Looking snazzy man...

 

[tribaltalon]

Got to check out the custom transmission tunnel which is fawking cool. We also talked about bumpstops and travel. We're going to end up having to limit the driver side uptravel quite a bit because the driveshaft will hit the frame way before anything else starts to hit (other than the tire hitting the fender) Got driveshaft measurements and so I'll call around on Monday and see who's got the best prices and timeframes. It's actually looking like this thing might be done in a couple weeks. holy shit.

You can see how it was built with round stock, and then he used 16 gauge sheetmetal to plate it all in. it could use some bondo and a little more effort to really make it look perfect but meh. i think with some paint it'll look just fine.

He also started on building the core support and fender supports. The bars off the stinger are tied into the coil buckets, and eventually will tie back into the new cage when that's installed.

New cage from D&C Extreme is on the way and should be at the shop on Wednesday. Now I'm starting to wonder if maybe I could actually make a Memorial Day shakedown run.... hmmmm

 

[mp]

Why did your fab shop not notch the frame and clock the Atlas up for flat belly? Now with the tunnel cover complete, it's probably too late now.