Nothing Special – ’71 daily driver – trail rig build thread

[Nothing Special]

I didn't do much on the Bronco through 2019 other than drive it. But my wife and I did take it out to Moab, Utah in September. This was our first time there, but it won't be the last! This was probably our favorite place that we've gone 'wheeling so far!

We arrived in Moab on a Monday afternoon, early enough to have plenty of time to set up camp (we travel in a 28' RV) and take a walk through town, but not early enough to hit a trail yet. That night Lesley asked me what trail we were going to start with. I told her "Hell's Revenge" so she looked it up in and freaked out a little when the book we have listed it as a "difficult" trail, but eventually accepted my explanation that the book was aimed as a broad audience and it wasn't going to be difficult for us (at least not in a bad way!). So on Tuesday, with significant trepidation on Lesley's part, we headed for Hell's Revenge.

This ended up being both Lesley's and my favorite trail of the trip! The terrain is so unlike anything we typically see. And experiencing the traction you get on slickrock is amazing! Throughout the week there were several places that I couldn't walk on, but the Bronco could just putt up or down easily! It took a few of these for the butterflies to settle down to the point where it was just fun, but a few butterflies are fun too! There were a few places that made me pick a line carefully, but nothing I would consider difficult for me or my vehicle (we skipped Hell's Gate, the Escalator, Tip-Over Challenge, and all of the hot tubs). Overall we spent about 5 hours on the trail, including time for lunch, watching a few others play, and taking 187 pictures! We ran into five other groups of vehicles and three different solos. So not at all busy, but not desolate either.

Enough of listening to me talk. Time for some of those 187 pictures!

This fin is right near the start of the trail, giving you a quick intro to what's different about 'wheeling in Moab!

Again near the start of the trail. This was the only place I needed to engage my front locker (the Detroit in the rear is always working of course). I couldn't stay to the right of the center ditch (Broncos are too wide) and I don't have enough flex to keep enough tires planted to crawl this without the front locker. By the way, a little while later we caught up with the Jeeps you see behind me here (I let them pass as soon as I got to a wide spot). One had forgotten to unlock his front diff and broke a Dana 60 U-joint with the good traction you get on slickrock. That made me decide I wasn't going to use my front locker except when I needed to, which ended up being pretty rarely.

Another fun section, showing the "amazing" flex of a Bronco front axle!

We got to watch some "big dogs" play on Hell's Gate.

Along with the less-than-stellar flex, a down-side to Broncos off-road is the huge flat hood. This is all you can see out of the windshield pretty frequently on this trail!

I've been a little concerned about my front overhang since I added the receiver-mount winch. I guess I don't need to worry so much! I was sure I was going to stuff it at the bottom of this hill and it looks like I've got about 10" of clearance still.

We also got to watch some of the big dogs on Escalator. We didn't see this guy start up, but their guide was explaining that he had gone too far left in that hole and slid his right tires to the bottom. That stuffed his right rear corner into the hole so he couldn't back up, and when he went forward his left front reached for the sky (the Jeep wave?). We got there just as they were rigging the winch line to hold his front end down.

After his buddy stayed too far left, this guy wasn't going to make that mistake! He stayed too far right and flopped it on its left side! He was able to put it in reverse and back out of this, flopping back onto all fours. He then motored up pretty easily. But this cemented the idea that we weren't doing Escalator on this trip!

And finally, a solo side-by-side came up. He didn't even stop to talk, but just headed up. He had to back up once or twice to get the right line in the hole, but made Escalator look easy when the really well-built Jeeps were struggling. I guess size ain't everything!

Anyway, that was Hell's Revenge! Thanks for reading, and there's more to come!

 

[Nothing Special]

I decided to try Poison Spider the next day. I was a little concerned about "The Waterfall" about 2 miles in. It sounds like that's a tough spot with no bypass and I promised Lesley that we'd turn around there if it was more that we should attempt on this trip. Turns out I didn't need to worry about that...

About 1/2 mile up the third switchback turned us back. Here's a picture of as far up as we came. The issue was that the big rock Lesley's feet are on wouldn't let me move farther right, and my left tires would be hanging over the edge of the rocks they'd be climbing. I'm sure I could've made it with a spotter, and really I'm even sure I could've while doing my own spotting. But this early in the trip I didn't want to risk my marriage by pushing my luck here.

Our back-up trail for this day was Fins N Things, so we headed over there. Overall this was an enjoyable trail, but it's a lot like Hell's Revenge without being quite as good somehow. I'm glad we did it, but if anyone is asking me, if you only do one of these two trails make it Hell's Revenge.

We only took 35 pictures on this trail. Part of the reduction from the 187 pictures from Hell's Revenge was likely that this was day 2 and that was day 1. But also Lesley rode more on Fins N Things and she takes more pictures when she's out walking. She walks when the trail makes her nervous, so that tells you something about the two trails too. And I never engaged the front locker.

The entire ~9 miles of the trail took us about 3.5 hours, including a lunch stop. We did meet up with a group of 3 TJs from Washington state and ran with them for a while which was fun. The only other vehicle we saw was a lone JK that had been rented by a couple guys who spoke very little English (I was surprised by what a large percentage of the tourists we saw were from outside the US, earlier in this trip we were at the Grand Canyon where we heard that 40% of the visitors to the National Park are foreign).

Just a fun trail picture.

Sorry for the poor picture quality, this was a screen capture from a video. This was an optional obstacle on the south loop in Campground H (I don't take ALL of the bypasses)

At the top of a steep descent on the north loop

Another steep descent on the north loop

And a view that I'm sure is familiar to all who have been there. But for us newbies it was kind of funny to see the "blacktop road" stretching out so far

Even with the false start at Poison Spider and airing down and up twice, we were still back at camp by 4:30, plenty of time for another soak in the pool before dinner and an evening of being tourists (and getting more ice cream at the Moab Diner!).

Still more to come...

 

[Nothing Special]

Thursday was a tourist day, which saw us visiting Arches National Park. That was great in its own right, but wasn't fourwheeling so I'm not covering it here.

So on Friday we headed out for a trail called Top of the World. What do I say about Top of the World? What do I THINK about Top of the World? It was one of the worst trails I've been on. It was one of the BEST trails I've been on! Seriously, I'm very glad we went on this trail, and we'll definitely do it again.

Top of the World starts with a 33 mile, hour long drive out highway 128. Counting the return trip that's 2 hours of the day spent on pavement. Still, this was actually a very enjoyable part of the day. Highway 128 is a BEAUTIFUL drive! Winding along through deep canyons alongside the Colorado River, with a whole bunch of small campgrounds along the river it was a really nice way to spend some time. Here's one picture from highway 128.

Eventually that drive ends and you are at the trailhead! Sort of. It's actually more of a gravel road for a while, but not a good gravel road. It took half an hour to drive 5 miles up to the point the trail actually starts. OK, a half hour isn't that long, but after spending an hour on a beautiful, smooth highway, another half hour on a rough road with really not a lot of scenery (at least in comparison to most other places in Moab) wasn't really appreciated.

But then you're at the trail! Well, not really. The next ~3 miles took about an hour, and it was more of just a worse road than a trail. Not smooth enough to go fast, but not rough enough to be challenging. And still not particularly scenic as you mostly wind through scrub pine.

But now the trail starts! And now it's for real! The first obstacle is the hardest. At first it looked like the right side would be the hardest with a bypass to the left. (Here's a picture of the right side from the drive back down)

Lesley asked me to take the bypass so I did. But the "bypass" just made the climb later, and was hardest right before the two joined up. As it turned out I couldn't quite make it up the last ledge on this section, even with the front locker (the second time on the trip I'd engaged it). I thought about repositioning for another stab at it, and I thought about backing down and going up the first part we had seen. But I decided to take the quick way out and winched over the ledge.

From here to the top it's a constant stream of challenging ledges. Nothing too extreme, but consistently fun! I did need the front locker one more time, as well as a slight bump once to get the back tires up (no pictures of that, Lesley was shooting video at that time). But that one bump and the one winch were the only times in the entire week I didn't crawl all of the obstacles.

It took an hour and a half to get the next ~1.5 miles (a half hour of that was winching over that first ledge), but it was a fun hour and a half! And at the end of that was "the payoff!" Lesley had Googled the trail (as she had the others I told her we were doing) and had made me promise not to drive too far out on the ledge, so I let her tell me when to stop. When she did stop me I told her that I had to pull at least a LITTLE farther forward, otherwise we wouldn't get both the Bronco and the ledge in the same picture! So this is where we ended up

And I know that there are pictures of a lot of vehicles quite a bit farther out. But here's the view from the passenger seat where we did stop (and no, Lesley wasn't in the Bronco as I drove out, she was firmly planted on the wide point where the pictures are taken from).

While we were there two couples in/on side-by-sides and ATVs drove up. One couple took a picture sitting with their legs hanging over the ledge. Lesley saw that and said "Hey, I can do that!" So she handed her camera to one of them, sat down about 6 feet from the edge and scootched up to it. So I sat down beside her for this picture

The best part about this was that evening after we down loaded the pictures and were looking at them on the computer screen. Lesley saw the picture looking out the passenger window and said "I had my feet hanging over that!?!?!?" And then we got to the pictures with us sitting there and she said "AND I WAS SITTING THAT FAR OUT ON THE OVERHANG!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?" It reminds me of the T-shirt with a picture of a Jeep in some impossible position with a caption that says something like "confidence is 80% not having any idea what you are doing"

The ATVers told us that if we continued around the loop there was a big ledge at the end. I wanted to go see it, But Lesley asked if we couldn't go down the same way we had come up since she knew what to expect there. So I don't know what the rest of the loop looks like. As the picture above already gave away, we took the other branch at the point where we winched on the way up. The far left side going down (right going up) wasn't too difficult and I'm sure I could have crawled that if we had taken that route going up.

The other funny thing from this trail was that I have a bad place on my ring gear, and twice in the trip the starter wouldn't engage. The first time I just pushed the clutch in, let it roll a bit and popped the clutch. It didn't get going fast enough to start, but it shifted the engine enough that I could use the starter. But on Top of the World it happened on an almost perfectly smooth rock slab with a nice slope downhill. It was the "almost" that got me! The one bump on the slab was right in front of my tire! Nothing I could do to get it rolling! So I pulled cable again and winched myself DOWN an almost perfectly smooth hill! I was unrigging the cable when the ATVers caught up with us. The looks on their faces as they asked "are you OK???" was priceless!

So in the end we spent 2 hours on the highway, 1 hour on a bad gravel road, another 2 hours on a rough but kind of dull trail so we could spend about 4 hours on a really fun trail with an incredible view (an hour of which was pictures and lunch at the top, about another hour was the two winch sessions). It was a long day (we didn't hit the pool this night, but we did still walk to the diner for shakes!), but well worth it. As I said at the start, I'm really glad we did this trail. The top section probably was my favorite part of the 'wheeling we did, but the rest of the trail was awfully long, so overall Hell's Revenge was my favorite. I'm sure we'll do Top of the World again, but probably not every time we go to Moab.

 

[Nothing Special]

I had planned to take a look at Moab Rim, Metal Masher or Behind the Rocks on our last day. But Lesley wanted to do a "nice" trail that we could actually finish rather than start a harder trail and maybe get turned back again. Plus with it being our last day it would be good to finish up earlier so we could get the Bronco hooked up to be towed home. Trying one or two harder trails didn't seem like the best way to do that. So Friday evening I looked through the trail book we had and found Sevenmile Rim toward the easier end of the "difficult" classification. It had two warnings: that there was a steep off-camber pitch near the south end of the loop and that there were a lot of criss-crossing trails that made it easy to get lost. Criss-crossing trails sounded like the perfect solution to the problem of a steep off-camber pitch, so I opened up my mapping program and found a way we could get from Sevenmile Rim to the Courthouse Rock trail. This would bring us back to our starting point without taking the off-camber section. After getting the route loaded into my GPS we were ready to explore!

There was a BIG group of mostly newer Jeeps in the staging area on the west side of highway 191 about 9 miles north of town. Turns out the Red Rock Fourwheelers were having their monthly club run there. After finding out that they weren't going to be on the same trail we aired down and headed out.

It took about 10 minutes to go 2 miles up Cotter Mine Road to the trailhead. Then it took about 2 hours to go 4 miles to where we ate lunch, another hour to go 2.5 miles to where we broke off of the Sevenmile Rim trail and another hour to go the 6.5 miles back to the staging area via the Courthouse Rock trail (rated "moderate") and Cotter Mine Road.

This did end up being a nice trail. It wasn't as distinctively "Moab" as the other trails, with more white / gray rocks and not the incredible traction of slickrock all of the time. There were still stretches of that, but if you are going for a "quintessential Moab trail", this isn't it. There were a lot of sections just difficult enough to be fun, but nothing that raised the adrenaline level. And while there were some places where you could see a long way, a lot of the time it was more the scrub pines again. It was my least favorite trail of the 4 we did, but even last place was still definitely a winner. All in all not bad for a last trail day.

Here's sort of a typical view with a fun-but-not-difficult part of the trail (and some of the less red rock)

Here's a descent that gets your attention (and back into the red rock)

Another red rock section that was difficult enough to make me scout it (no stills of this obstacle because Lesley was taking video). This was the 4th and last place I used the front locker. I wouldn't have needed to, but it was a little off-camber and it would have been a little more exciting if I had slipped the back tires and dropped to the left off those steps.

Another couple of interesting parts. The second picture below sort of shows one of the vistas.

The trail gets you to Uranium Arch, This was a really nice place for lunch, with shade and a lot of greenery to keep it cooler. There were also some petroglyphs here, but since they included the symbols "2015" I think they mostly would be categorized as graffiti . Which brings up... I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir here, but probably every day we saw places where people had decided that the marked trail must not offer enough challenges, so they had made tracks off the trail. DON'T DO THAT! Don't give people reasons to close areas like this! OK, PSA over, here's the picture of Uranium Arch

After lunch the trail continued as before to where we turned off Sevenmile Rim. Then it was a pretty fast (by 'wheeling standards) sandy two-track over to the Courthouse Rock trail, which was rougher, but still went pretty quickly. And just like that our Moab vacation was over (well, after one more trip downtown and another stop at the diner for shakes!).

We both really enjoyed this trip (Lesley is asking if we can go back next year!). Moab is so different from the other places we've 'wheeled! It was fun just to experience the differences. I do hope to get a chance to do some of the harder trails on future trips. That might require a few upgrades to my Bronco. And it will definitely require some more support, at least a spotter and preferably another vehicle (or more).

But now all I have of this trip is the memories (and still a lot of red dust!). Thanks for reading!

 

[stout22]

Thanks for sharing. We were out there last year for the first time and will definitely go back.

 

[Nothing Special]

Converting back to drum brakes - January 2020

A while back I had converted from manual 4 wheel drums to vacuum-assisted 4 wheel disks. Those brakes worked well enough until the vacuum booster gave up the ghost last summer. I did a lot of driving with manual brakes again, and knew I had to do something about that. And I decided that I wanted to get a parking brake back. So I decided to switch the rear brakes back to drums (to get the parking brake) and to convert to hydroboost (more on that later).

I didn't have the original brake parts, so I had to scrounge a bit, and hit up NAPA a lot. But I was able to get drum brakes back on it in January. I don't have the parking brake cables hooked up yet, that'll have to wait it's turn. And I haven't driven it with the drums, or tried to get them adjusted yet. But they're on.

 

[Nothing Special]

Starting the hydroboost conversion - Mar 2020

I was never thrilled with the vacuum assist brakes. They seemed to need too much pedal travel and more force than I'd prefer. And when the grommet that sealed up around the vacuum line tore I wasn't able to figure out what it was from to get parts for it (it had been an aftermarket kit). So when the booster gave out last summer I decided it was time for some fairly drastic measures. (Along with the pedal effort going up even higher, the engine idle was getting worse, but would improve when I hit the brakes. So evidently I had a vacuum leak in the booster. I removed and capped the vacuum line and my engine idle improved a lot and the brakes really didn't suffer. So it was definitely time to lose that booster.)

After a bunch of reading on this forum I decided to go with a hydroboost unit and master cylinder from a Chevy Astro van (it actually ended up being a '95 GMC Safari with AWD and front disk / rear drum brakes if anyone wants the details). That came in the mail this week, so I pulled the old booster and master cylinder out and stuck the new one more-or-less in place to see what I was up against. I'm up against a lot if I try to put it in like I show here! The boost unit has 4 studs that don't look like they'll play well with the firewall, the accumulator on the boost unit wants to be right where the throttle linkage is, and the master cylinder hits the oil fill cap. You can see all of that in the pictures below.

After doing that and washing up I thought about putting the new booster and master on the angled bracket that I had with the vacuum system. That will take care of all of those problems. It will put the master pretty close to the inner fender, but I think it'll clear. So I'll check that out more completely another day.

One other potential interference is the reservoirs on top of the master might hit the hood. Eyeballing it I think it'll clear, but if not I think I can use a different reservoir on this master that will sit lower.

Anyway, here is the aftermarket vacuum system that came out, on the angled bracket that I might reuse.

Here is the new hydroboost and master after unboxing.

And here a few showing how it doesn't want to just go in quietly.

More to come...

 

[stout22]

I want to do the same swap - from vacuum booster to hydroboost so I'll be paying attention to what you work out.

 

[904Bronco]

I am getting ready to do this swap for the 3rd time...

1990 - 1995 Astro van boosters work with the factory angle bracket. Never tried using an after market angle bracket that came with vacuum booster from one of the Vendors.

There is a Gentleman here on the site "Catfan" who manufactures aftermarket brackets to use Astro van HB units. He sells on EBay. He has a couple of different styles, but what I have found is he sells a revised Bell crank pivot that allows you to use any of the above years HB units without modification to the unit itself.
So many threads about custom modifications done to make a HB unit work on a Bronco... but what happens if the unit takes a dump when you are away from home? The core is now unacceptable and a replacement needs modified..

https://www.ebay.com/sch/deals4u5309/m.html?item=223798243453&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2562

Here is the item I just purchased,maybe another option to make the job easier?

 

[Nothing Special]

.... So many threads about custom modifications done to make a HB unit work on a Bronco... but what happens if the unit takes a dump when you are away from home? The core is now unacceptable and a replacement needs modified....

I don't plan to modify anything on the booster except probably the push rod that connects it to the pedal arm (or the bellcrank in the angled bracket in my case I hope). I could be wrong but I'm anticipating that I will be able to remove the rod from the booster and put it on a new one if I need a replacement at some point.

Similarly with the master I'm thinking that the only modification might be to remove the reservoir and put on a different one. And in the even of a replacement I should be able to move the reservoir over to the new master.

But so far this is all theory. Hopefully I'll be able to make a little progress on it tonight.

 

[Howard2x4x4]

Great thread! you're a good story teller and photo journalist!

 

[SavageBurro]

Looks like you guys had an amazing time. Thx for the pics and excellent narration.

 

[Nothing Special]

Great thread! you're a good story teller and photo journalist!

Looks like you guys had an amazing time. Thx for the pics and excellent narration.

Thanks! It was a great time! Tentative plans to go back to Moab this summer sometime, but it's awfully hard to make any plans involving the next few months right now, so we'll see what ends up happening. (And I've got to get a few Bronco projects wrapped up first too!)

 

[Nothing Special]

.... I could be wrong but I'm anticipating that I will be able to remove the rod from the booster and put it on a new one if I need a replacement at some point....

... and I was wrong. It turns out that I can't easily remove the rod from the booster. At least not easily enough to do it in a NAPA parking lot in Moab if I need to replace it sometime while we're on vacation. So on to plan C.

The hole in the hydroboost pushrod is bigger than the pin in the bellcrank, so I can bush the hole to make that work out. And the hydroboost pushrod sticks out quite a bit farther than the pushrod in the old vacuum booster. So if I can space the hydroboost the right distance away from the angle bracket it should work with the stock pushrod.

I opened up the mounting holes in the angle bracket so the studs from the hydroboost would fit, and I made some 1" spacers (the longest I could use with the studs that came in the booster). Tonight I put it togehter like that to see what I have to work with. It looks like it'll work out well! I found out that the new pushrod sticks out 2 3/8" farther than the old one, so I'll need to push the studs out, get longer bolts and some 2 3/8" spacers. But from how it looks with the 1" spacers I should be good! I'll probably have to move a power distribution box that I have on the driver's inner fender, but other than that everything looks like it has plenty of room! The reservoirs look pretty high, but there's definitely enough room to close the hood.

Here's a picture showing the length of the hydroboost pushrod compared to the old vacuum boost:

And here are a couple showing the fit with the angle bracket and the 1" spacers:

 

[Nothing Special]

A little more progress today. The hydroboost and master cylinder are now bolted in, and the pedal linkage is hooked up! I made a bronze bushing to make the Astro hydroboost pushrod fit the bellcrank that came with my aftermarket angle bracket and four spacers to mount the hydroboost to the angle bracket at the right place for the linkage to work out. And the lengths of everything seems pretty good! The pedal is essentially at the top of it's travel at rest, but there's just enough play that I know it isn't applying the brakes. The pedal does go all the way to the floor, so I'll have to see if I'm getting enough travel in the master to fully apply the brakes. I'd guess that I am, but I won't really know until the hydraulics are hooked up.

So now the next step is to figure out the hoses for the hydroboost. Then get brake lines hooked up (I'll need a new proportioning valve since I'm going from 4 wheel disks to disk/drum). And then it should be good to go! (or should I say "good to stop!"?)

Picture time. Here's a better picture of why I couldn't "just bolt it to the firewall." This is looking through the hole in the firewall that the rod from the pedal comes through. You can see part of the dash support / pedal assembly through the hole. There's another piece on the near side as well. Also you can see a flange bent out just to the far side of the hole. And it's not flat or smooth around the steering column either. I'm not saying it wouldn't be possible to bolt it directly to the firewall. But if it is possible it would be challenging to figure it all out without messing anything else up. And then there's the throttle linkage and clearance to the oil fill cap. So I'm happy with my choice to use the angle bracket.

Here's the bushing in the hole of the hydroboost pushrod

And here's the hydroboost and master cylinder mounted to the angle bracket. I did see in other threads now how others did this without the long spacers. They get a different bellcrank to allow the hydroboost rod to come back a lot farther. The angle brackets in the pictures look different from mine too. I'm thinking they are stock Bronco units while mine is aftermarket, but I don't know if they are dimensionally different or not. Anyway, that would be cleaner, but I'm using what I have and I'm very OK with how this is turning out. I shifted my power distribution box over about an inch and now everything clears.

 

[904Bronco]

Well you are doing things a little differently than I have seen... so now you have me watching.

 

[Nothing Special]

I'm thinking that doesn't sound like a compliment!

But seriously, most old vehicle forums have a "name" for people who messed up their vehicle before they got it. Often it's just "the PO". But on one other forum I'm on it's "Bubba." Still, they recognize that although "Bubba" didn't always do things the cleanest way, he kept the old iron going, and that's better than if someone would have scrapped it. I'm Bubba. I'm not saying I'm proud of it, but I'll own it. I do jobs like this in a way they will work, but not in a way that will let me get into a car show!

But that reminds me of an answer I gave to a question I got last fall. I was coming off of a trail in Moab and a group of guys were unloading their built JK Wranglers off their trailers. One of them asked me "What does it take to 'wheel a collectible vehicle?" My answer was "Don't think it's a collectible vehicle!"

In the case of this hydroboost conversion, I'm using stock off-the-shelf parts and what I already had on hand. I think it'll work out well (time will tell). But will it show well? Heck, look at the background in my underhood pictures and tell me if you think I care about that!

 

[Howard2x4x4]

Nothing, you are special! Great outlook and makin' it your Bronco! Kudos, I tip my hat!

 

[Nothing Special]

Thanks!

Full disclosure, when I picked my screen name it was with some intentional irony regarding all of my vehicles. I don't tend to want new or flashy vehicles (my daily driver is a '97 F-250 crew cab). And although an early Bronco isn't exactly "nothing special" now, it was still pretty much a run-of-the-mill old truck when I got it. But I do make my vehicles my own. And they are pretty special, at least to me.

 

[txtruk15]

really have enjoyed your postings of the trails and of the vehicle - both are special and much appreciated.