Great topic, certainly some interesting stories here.
I currently have two Early Broncos. My trail rig is the evolution of a '75 that I originally bought from my cousin back in '95 or so. I think I originally paid $2200 for it. Both of my brothers had EB's and I wanted one too. It was an uncut stocker that ran good but had serious cancer. I wheeled it for a year then began to tear it down for a frame-off build up. Most of the sheetmetal was trashed so I cut it up and slowly fed it to the trash truck a little each week. Well I found a good deal on a '71 tub and frame neaby (traded my old '61 CJ5 for it) so I used it for my buildup, re-using most of the drivetrain from the '75 and registering it as a '71. During the early stages of the rebuild, a friend of my brother's who lived up in Oregon lost interest in his Bronco project and wanted to sell the pieces. He had a '70 that was mostly stock but had gathered up a '95 OJ Bronco 5.8 motor and all of the GT40/mass air conversion stuff for it. I WANTED that motor so I dragged my trailer up to Oregon and brought the whole thing back down with me. The deal I made was that I would buy the motor out of it then he could sell the rest of it here in So Cal where the market was hotter. So I used the 5.8l in my rig and continued the buildup. It took me about 5 years from tear-down until I finally had it back together and drivable. In the years since it has undergone several more phases of modifications and now the only parts that are still left on it from the original '75 Bronco I started with are the C4 transmission and (believe it or not) the radiator. The rig is once again currently back up on jack stands for another round of renovations, which will probably spell the end of those last couple of items from the Bronco I started out with.
My other Bronco is another interesting story. Remember that one I got the motor out of? Well its been in my back yard all these years(7 or so years, I think), the guy who owned it never really showed much interest in it and never tried to sell off the rest of it. Recently my wife began bugging me about getting her a Bronco that was more "driver friendly" than my trail rig had become. Of course our sights both set on the one that was already in our back yard grown over in the weeds. It had a very straight, nearly rust-free body and was very complete except for the motor being gone, plus a few other small parts I had "borrowed" off of it over the years. So I called the guy who owned it a couple weeks ago and made a deal on it, $2,000. For the last few weeks we've been gathering up parts for it to bring it back to life. Its been a fun project so far. I did manage to keep the old 302 out of my original '75 all these years, which will now go into this rig. I'm amazed at how easy it is to work on a fairly stock Bronco again. I can just bolt stuff on without having to fabricate a bracket or order some custom part like I have to do every time I do something on my trail rig. I had also forgotten what it was like to work on a vintage vehicle that hadn't seen any attention for many years, with all the bolts rusted and siezed on, dirt, dead leaves and rat crap falling off into your face whenever you bang on something, etc. Its also nice to be able to acquire parts without breaking the bank. Anything I do on the trail rig is extremely expensive since only the hard core stuff will do. But putting together a mostly street, mild trail use Bronco I'm able to gather lots of parts out of people's junk piles for free or really cheap. This one should be running within a couple of weeks. We're trying to just get it roadworthy so we have something to take out and have fun in while my trail rig is down during its current phase of mods. Once this one is running I'll turn my attention back to the trail rig and finish it up, then start working on some more proper mods and cosmetics for the '70.
Dusty
