Grunt1058
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Doesn't everyone? The more we dig, the more we find. The more we think we got ripped off by the PO.
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RyanITV's 73 Build Thread... JBG/TDK Frame Arrived - 2/5
- Thread starter RyanITV
- Start date
Doesn't everyone? The more we dig, the more we find. The more we think we got ripped off by the PO.
sellitall
Bronco Guru
Here's the link to the original build on this thing. http://classicbroncos.com/forums/showthread.php?t=41201
I knew it was familiar when I saw it. How much are you looking to get for the front bumper? I live in DE and could come get it.
I knew it was familiar when I saw it. How much are you looking to get for the front bumper? I live in DE and could come get it.
I paid $16k. My comment about Larry is not negative - I figure he made out out pretty good on it was more because the PO was selling it for under $13k a year ago. As far as I know, the only change was the addition of a body lift; it hadn't been tagged or transferred/registered. Didn't run for more than 20 minutes at a time, lots of glitches and non-working stuff. I wish I'd seen the build thread earlier; there were some clues in there (like the hole in the driver's side floor covered by the roll cage). Found a fair amount of rust under the RustBullet once I got into cleaning, even on panels that were brand new - go figure. Hindsight is always 20/20, I just wish I'd known a bit more about Bronco's when I'd picked them up - I would have been able to identify some of the problems. The body itself was pretty straight and solid... some of the floors, supports and inner pieces have to be replaced.
The suspension was all rusted up, the disc brake conversion was the same. Front and rear axles were leaking, as was the transfer case, engine and transmission. The frame was hacked up in the front and back at some point to fit some kind of bumpers. Header bolts were finger-tight and started backing out immediately.
The EFI setup was problematic; I spent 30 hours attempting to tune it to get it to run less than pig rich. The base timing as it was was 10 degrees off. That helped, but to tune it, the adjustments were limited; Edelbrock's answer was to pay $1800 and upgrade to the new version so I could fine-tune it on a laptop. The wiring was not up to my standards; the AC would only work intermittently. The top disintegrated the first time I used the zippers. The aero fuel doors were impossible to fill at the pump - I had to carry a VP fuel jug, fill that, then fill the truck from the jug.
What's being used from the original truck: 75% of the tub, the roll cage, the power steering setup, the hydroboost setup, the headers, the serpentine setup, the starter and the battery.
You deal with the cards you're dealt - that's why I've got stacks of new parts and rose to the challenge of doing it myself. While I originally bought it to just ride around in and enjoy, the more problems I had or found, the more I became convinced the only way to "fix" it was to just rebuild it myself. Fortunately I have an understanding wife...
Ryan
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Already sold - traded the bumpers for a hardtop (delivered) that's already black.
Ryan
sellitall
Bronco Guru
Wow...$16k for a bronco you're tearing completely down and rebuilding. You probably would have been better off buying a 2k beater and going from there. Maybe a little more work to do, but you get to customize it as you want and you didn't have to fork out the $16k all at once.
Tomorrow can't come soon enough! My friend's dad is coming over to weld on the WH front hoops, WH "Shock Jock" mounts (in front of the rear axle) and a few other things.
Frame is 60% stripped and ready for paint; would have it done already , but my cheap-ass 7" sander/buffer died yesterday afternoon and no one was open.
Ryan
Frame is 60% stripped and ready for paint; would have it done already , but my cheap-ass 7" sander/buffer died yesterday afternoon and no one was open.
Ryan
Suspension brackets is DONE! I would have had the frame stripped completely, but like I said, my buffer died on Thanksgiving. Still have to remove the remnants of the old radius arm bracket on one side - everything else is good. The goal is to paint it this week; we'll bolt the suspension up next weekend and get the new shock mounts welded to the rear axle.
Picture is all WH - new radius arm brackets for the extended arms, "Shock Jock" rear mounts to clear the Explorer calipers, hoops out front for the double-shock setup.
Rather than use the track bar drop bracket, I'm going the track bar riser route... that should be here this week so we can weld it on when we set the rear axle next weekend.
Going to check out the tub tomorrow; it's been blasted and I need to make some judgment calls about a couple of problem areas we didn't see until it was cleaned up... will grab pics of that as well.
Ryan
Picture is all WH - new radius arm brackets for the extended arms, "Shock Jock" rear mounts to clear the Explorer calipers, hoops out front for the double-shock setup.
Rather than use the track bar drop bracket, I'm going the track bar riser route... that should be here this week so we can weld it on when we set the rear axle next weekend.
Going to check out the tub tomorrow; it's been blasted and I need to make some judgment calls about a couple of problem areas we didn't see until it was cleaned up... will grab pics of that as well.
Ryan
Here's some pics of the body underway...
First, filling the holes with metal:
Media blasted fender; before:
Filled the antenna hole; we're going with a hidden one on the cowl because the fiberglass won't block the signal:
Bed area is cleeeeaaan; brown spots are the remnants of the factory primer. Will get cleaned off when it gets buzzed prior to epoxy sealer:
Relocating the ebrake 2" to the right so the damn handle doesn't hit the roll cage and I don't have to contort to hit the pedal:
Replacing the trans tunnel - the old one had a billion holes in it, plus a huge access hole for the old Duff twin-stick setup. New one is WH stainless to match the B&M stainless quickshifter for the NV3550:
Replacing both front fenderwells; one was rotted beneath the undercoating, the other was pretty flimsy.
Frame is even closer, about 80% stripped and prepped. Scott (the guy doing all the metal work and blasting) is picking it up Friday to go back over the OEM welds and clean them up a bit. He'll then hit any spots I missed with a smaller air tool (versus my big-ass dewalt); goal is still to paint this weekend.
Ryan
First, filling the holes with metal:
Media blasted fender; before:
Filled the antenna hole; we're going with a hidden one on the cowl because the fiberglass won't block the signal:
Bed area is cleeeeaaan; brown spots are the remnants of the factory primer. Will get cleaned off when it gets buzzed prior to epoxy sealer:
Relocating the ebrake 2" to the right so the damn handle doesn't hit the roll cage and I don't have to contort to hit the pedal:
Replacing the trans tunnel - the old one had a billion holes in it, plus a huge access hole for the old Duff twin-stick setup. New one is WH stainless to match the B&M stainless quickshifter for the NV3550:
Replacing both front fenderwells; one was rotted beneath the undercoating, the other was pretty flimsy.
Frame is even closer, about 80% stripped and prepped. Scott (the guy doing all the metal work and blasting) is picking it up Friday to go back over the OEM welds and clean them up a bit. He'll then hit any spots I missed with a smaller air tool (versus my big-ass dewalt); goal is still to paint this weekend.
Ryan
ryoungbronco
Bronco Guru
What rear disk brake kit did you use? I agree with how the frame came out the first time. I'm surprised that it was so lumpy, Por-15 usually smooths itself out. Great job so far!
hammer
Bronco Guru
- Joined
- Nov 13, 2006
- Messages
- 1,359
Seeing how his driver on the other side of the garage cost $150K I think he's doing okay.
Hey Ryan do you have any pics of what that Durabank looked like before you striped it out? We're always questioning how the different DIY bedliners hold up over time. It looks like that durabank was applied 5 years ago, I'm interested to see how it held up.
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sellitall
Bronco Guru
LOL! The GTR was only $69k. I got lucky, paid no dealer markup and got it before Nissan put the price of them up $15k.
No, sadly, I don't. The exterior stuff didn't hold up real well - it got real brittle and chipped off easily. The interior stuff was still pretty flexible; enough so that the soda blasting didn't work well on it.
Ryan
So what are you saying?
It's a question of priorities. I have friends who collect expensive watches; I don't even own a watch.
What makes more sense?
Buy a new SUV (MDX or the like) for $45-50k, possibly deal with interest and financing. In 5 years, it's worth $15k.
Tie up $30-35k buying/restoring/customizing a Bronco the way I want (and enjoying every dusty, knuckle-busting moment of it). In 5 years, the Bronco will likely still be worth $20k-$25k on the low end.
I'll take the bloody knuckles and removable top any day of the week.
Ryan
ryoungbronco
Bronco Guru
I have friends exactly the same way and I love them for it! We should be proud of RyanITV. Where I live there are many people with Ferrari, Lambo's, and Bentley and they always call my bronco a heep. At least he has good taste regardless of what he paid or has.
sellitall
Bronco Guru
What I was saying is that I would never spend $16k on a truck I was going to tear down to the frame and rebuild. It just doesn't make much sense to me. He acted like because you had a high dollar car you could afford to throw $16k on something you were going to tear down. You could have bought a $1500 resto project and went from there. Even with a 30k-35k build you would have saved a ton of coin, and done EXACTLY what you wanted to the thing. Now you're tied into the expense mods the previous owner did whether you like them or not. I've never seen the truck in person, but I can tell you if I was going to throw $16k on a bronco the last thing I'd be doing is popping the body off the frame. The way the market is now $16k can buy you one hell of an EB.
You're doing a hell of a job on the build though!!
Oh, ok - sorry, I took that the wrong way.
I agree with that - if I had gone into it planning to do a frame-off restoration, I would have bought one CHEAP. Like I said, originally, I just wanted to wrap it, clean it up and drive it. One thing led to another... problems were found and ... well, you see the pics.
I've managed to recoup about $5000 so far selling off parts from the truck that I've replaced or am not using. The other option would have been to sell the truck at a loss (say $9k) and buy a cheaper one (say $3k), but the math didn't make sense to me once I added in the cost of the steering setup, roll cage and hydroboost brakes (+ $3000). The $30-35k also includes the purchase price of the Bronco @ $16k.
Fortunately, the tub is/was pretty solid, I have about $500 in new metal to make it perfect, maybe less once more old parts sell.
Ryan
I agree with that - if I had gone into it planning to do a frame-off restoration, I would have bought one CHEAP. Like I said, originally, I just wanted to wrap it, clean it up and drive it. One thing led to another... problems were found and ... well, you see the pics.
I've managed to recoup about $5000 so far selling off parts from the truck that I've replaced or am not using. The other option would have been to sell the truck at a loss (say $9k) and buy a cheaper one (say $3k), but the math didn't make sense to me once I added in the cost of the steering setup, roll cage and hydroboost brakes (+ $3000). The $30-35k also includes the purchase price of the Bronco @ $16k.
Fortunately, the tub is/was pretty solid, I have about $500 in new metal to make it perfect, maybe less once more old parts sell.
Ryan
Another update - things have NOT gone smoothly.
So I was within 4-5 hours of having the frame ready to paint; there were a couple of spots I couldn't hit with my tools so a guy I know offered to tackle those spots and "clean up" the factory welds for me - said it would only take him a few hours, no charge.
Fast forward 3 weeks, I got the frame back and I'm not using it. Everything was "smoothed" - the pretty, dime-size welds on the new brackets got ground down and smoothed out; even where the two pieces of the frame come together on the bottom was done. All the stock pieces have the same look - it's like those Honda Civics you see where they fiberglass the body kit to the OEM metal.
It doesn't look stock, it doesn't even look natural and barring dozens of hours of cutting, rewelding and reworking, I can't use the frame. On top of all this, it was 3 weeks - I should be reassembling stuff by now.
Even worse, I can't salvage the hoops/mounts off of it. They've been flushed/smoothed so much that I doubt I can get them off and even then, not sure how I'd get them welded back on.
I'm lucky my wife is understanding. She sat there with me as I went through it, crushed. With her blessing, I said f**k it and ordered a replacement frame from JBG this morning. I've got another set of front hoops and rear mounts from WH too. This was the second frame I've worked on so far - the original was hacked/rusted, this one would have worked, but... as deep as I am into this thing, I don't have much of a choice. Why half-ass the frame when I pulled out all the stops on the rest?
Progress on the rest is good. Here's the GT40 intake, cleaned, painted wrinkle black to match the valve covers. I need to strip the fins on the upper to match the valve cover - should be hardened enough to do it tonight. New WH/Milodon oil pan - came zinc, we refinished in satin engine black; I hate shiny stuff under the hood.
Ryan
So I was within 4-5 hours of having the frame ready to paint; there were a couple of spots I couldn't hit with my tools so a guy I know offered to tackle those spots and "clean up" the factory welds for me - said it would only take him a few hours, no charge.
Fast forward 3 weeks, I got the frame back and I'm not using it. Everything was "smoothed" - the pretty, dime-size welds on the new brackets got ground down and smoothed out; even where the two pieces of the frame come together on the bottom was done. All the stock pieces have the same look - it's like those Honda Civics you see where they fiberglass the body kit to the OEM metal.
It doesn't look stock, it doesn't even look natural and barring dozens of hours of cutting, rewelding and reworking, I can't use the frame. On top of all this, it was 3 weeks - I should be reassembling stuff by now.
Even worse, I can't salvage the hoops/mounts off of it. They've been flushed/smoothed so much that I doubt I can get them off and even then, not sure how I'd get them welded back on.
I'm lucky my wife is understanding. She sat there with me as I went through it, crushed. With her blessing, I said f**k it and ordered a replacement frame from JBG this morning. I've got another set of front hoops and rear mounts from WH too. This was the second frame I've worked on so far - the original was hacked/rusted, this one would have worked, but... as deep as I am into this thing, I don't have much of a choice. Why half-ass the frame when I pulled out all the stops on the rest?
Progress on the rest is good. Here's the GT40 intake, cleaned, painted wrinkle black to match the valve covers. I need to strip the fins on the upper to match the valve cover - should be hardened enough to do it tonight. New WH/Milodon oil pan - came zinc, we refinished in satin engine black; I hate shiny stuff under the hood.
Ryan
