The Coal Burner Bronco

[Bronco Junkie]

I saw some "coal burner" trucks on You Tube doing some very funny things to protesters. Got any similar plans?

 

[OPCJeff]

I saw some "coal burner" trucks on You Tube doing some very funny things to protesters. Got any similar plans?

Haha no I like to keep a low profile. Im just given a hard time by all my friends for having a rattle trap in there and they nick named it the coal burner. My actual goal is to make it smoke as little as possible.

Although we live in Orange County and theres been some protests around here for a few things in the last year. I told my wife if shes ever driving it and gets caught up in one that she fears for her or our kids lives to just drive. between the diesel and 37 inch tires im sure it will plow through a crowd no problem if needed. ;D

 

[Bronco Junkie]

That is my plan as well.

 

[OPCJeff]

New Mastercraft Baja RS Seats

Its been years now that I've been driving around with some pretty old seats. Climbing in and out of the Bronco really wears out the door side bolstering on the seat. Which doesnt just look bad but as you can see has been causing a foam mess that really bugs me. So I finally saved up enough $$ to buy some new seats

I got these Mastercraft BAJA RS seats in all black. I've been shopping for a while and what I liked about these is that they have a nice mix of vinyl and cloth which should help with the dog hair. I was thinking about going all vinyl but thats not very comfortable when its hot outside. They have a bunch of options to choose from so I got heaters and I also ordered them with pockets in the rear. My girls cant go anywhere without bringing their favorite stuffed animal or toy so having the pockets was somewhat required.








I ordered new belts as well. My old belts were just about wore out and probably not safe anymore either so it was time.




Mastercraft had a mounting kit specific for early Broncos so I thought that would make life a little easier. Unfortunately though when I did my body work I filled a bunch of the holes in the tub including some of the stock seat mount holes. So most of the stock holes were not usable anymore. So I just drilled new holes where i needed them.

 

[JSmall]

I dig the seats. The Baja RS with the Dirtsport covers and heat are at the top of my list.

 

[OPCJeff]

I dig the seats. The Baja RS with the Dirtsport covers and heat are at the top of my list.

Yah im pretty excited about them. Long over due. I thought Mastercraft did a really nice job with the dirtsport covers.

 

[OPCJeff]

So installing the drivers side seat was a little more work than I expected. Because I didn’t have the original mounting holes and threaded bungs I had to use washers and lock nuts on the bottom side of the tub. The good part was that Mastercraft supplied enough parts to get it done but the bad part was that I had to drop the side tank to get in there and hold the nuts while I tightened them up. Here's what i used for bolting the old seats up. Nothing like using some old scrap angle iron to fit things up. Now I will have some nice shiny black powder coated parts instead which is awesome




Another cool feature that I didn’t notice until they arrived was the billet handles for the seat recliners. My roll cage wont allow for the seats to fully recline but I have more than enough room to get comfortable if I need to take a nap while waiting for jeeps to get through the trail. Im just kidding why would I ever be on the trail behind Jeeps ?


So to drill the holes I mounted the slider handle to the sliders so they would be spaced right and then set them in place. I literally just drilled right through the mount's holes using them as a jig.


I know im gonna mount these heater switches in the console but I just havent figured out how yet. So I've held off on installing the wiring until I can get some time to pull the console. I think Im gonna put them in the tuffy box where the radio would normally go. That way I can close them in and keep them clean and looking nice


Fortunately the wiring under the seat is a one wire hook up. I should be able to just reach underneath and plug it in. Of course I will have to run the power and ground wires back to the Ron Francis Fuse block but that will be an easy hook up since there are extra fused spots waiting to be used. Once the tuffy box is out I will be able to run the wiring under the carpet no problem

 

[OPCJeff]

So here are my new Mastercraft Baja RS seats Installed I think they look really good in the Bronco and match the two 5 point rear seats ;D I still havent connected the shoulder harnesses yet. Still trying to figure out how I want to run the bar across the back of the seats I cant run it straight across the shoulder area because it will kill the back seat but I think I can run a bar across the floor board and then maybe run some diagnals down across the back of seat to raise the mounting position. I think that would get the harnesses mounted as close to correct as possible without gettingin the way of the back seat space

 

[OPCJeff]

Death Wobble and a fix

I dont know if any of you guys have experienced death wobble before but I've been struggling with it for a while and it sucks. I have a number of potential factors that may be contributing so I've gone through a lengthy process to try and narrow it down. I've read alot of posts on many sites trying to get information and its been pretty helpful but ultimately I had to try a bunch of stuff to get it right. I can tell you this though. There's two factors to most death wobble problems the thing that starts it and the suspension that lets it keep going(not including jeep Y steering). Ultimately if you fix the the thing that allows the front end to slide back and forth then you cant actually get death wobble. Unfortunately, as was in my case, that may only be possible with a heim joint on both ends of the track bar and then some more fab work on top of that.

So heres the specs of my bronco that matter. I have 9 degrees positive caster and 5 year old 37" m/t's. I run Currie Currectlink steering joints and I have Johnny Joint ends on both sides of my track bar. My track bar is slightly shorter than my drag link but runs parallel with the drag link and is almost flat. Also I get zero bump steer so all in all its a good combo. This may take me a few posts to get through the whole process I went through but I did fix the death wobble. When I first put this all together and up until recently I never had death wobble. Although I did get some random "bump" that was just wierd feeling but never really did it consistently or cause any other issues so I left it alone.

When I started having death wobble I went underneath and had my dad turn the steering wheel back and forth until I could find the movement somewhere. Since death wobble, at least in a bronco, is strictly related to the front end being allowed to move back and forth on its own I knew it had to be associated with the track bar. What I found was a lot of deflection at the top johnny joint. So i replaced the johnny joint with a new one hoping that would fix the problem. Unfortunately it didnt fix it for long. Although the first couple days it worked well. So step two was to put a heim joint on. My thought process at the time was that the upper johnny joint was smaller than the lower joint because thats all that would fit in the bracket and maybe due to the weight of the diesel etc etc that the joint was just undersized.




I needed to adjust the track bar anyways so it wouldnt hit the oil pan during articulation so this was a good time to do it. So I reworked the track bar and added a heim joint.

That once again felt like it worked for a day or two and then back to death wobble. So it wasnt the Johnny Joint after all! Which I guess isnt surprising since I had called Currie at one point and they didnt think that was the cause. They also told me that they had done extensive deflection tests and their Johnn Joints deflected a lot less than stardard urethane bushings. So theres that and now what?

After crawling back underneath I searched around some more and found that the bolt on the top that holds the track bar mount to the frame was a little loose. So I thought "hey alright I got this". So I thightened it up and then I welded it to the frame so it wouldnt move.




Once again same damn thing. Felt great for a couple days and then right back to it. I went back and checked my weld and it was fine and the heim joint wasnt flexing so it wasnt that. So I headed down the track bar to the front end mount. As you can see the track bar mount i made is about 3 inches above the knuckle and it sticks out a few inches as well to clear the coil spring. The factory bronco track bar mount and drag link connection point is set to the inside of the coil spring where there's room so when I went to the 1 ton Currie fabricated frontend it brought some challenges with it that I thought I had worked out But after having my dad move the steering around as I watched and felt around I couldnt see the track bar mount flexing so I assumed the only think left was the Johnny joint. So out with that and in with another heim joint. I gotta say heim joints are expensive! Since the axle side of the track bar had a johnny joint with threads i was able to just screw it in so that made life a little easier.


After I got it in I went for a drive and immediately noticed that it was not better. When I pulled back into the driveway I noticed that my steering wheel wasnt straight. Back underneath I went and I found the next weak link in the chain. The track bar mount on the frontend. So at that point i had no choice to fix it. At this point I didnt know how to fix it because to fix the track bar correctly I would need to get it closer to the knuckle but that would mess up my paralled arms and potentially cause bump steer. Clearly theres just too much leverage that the track bar has on the mount. I also started doubting my understanding of death wobble. Could it be the tires? Is it possible that no matter what I do its possible that I wont be able to fix it? So I got back on the forums and the interwebs trying to figure out what could be causing this.

 

[OPCJeff]

So I learned a few things that others have done to fix their death wobble. I found there were many people that cured their death wobble by changing tires. Also I learned that too much caster can cause bump in the tires and if your tires are big they may get wobbling and never stop. I still think that if the frontend is secure enough it shouldnt wobble but maybe if the tires are bad enough maybe it cant be fixed. I read the mercedez come factory with a lot of caster but they have low profile tires and they make effort to ensure the suspension can flex. If they can do so could I

So I needed to get the track bar mount lower to reduce the leverage which meant i needed to get the steering lower too. I found that Currie made another bracket that rises up a little for the drag link. That would allow me to put the drag link joint upside down effectively lowering it by about three inches which just happened to be the amount i needed to get the track bar down on the knuckle. This was a perfect solution.






Here it is with all of the steering and track bar reconfigured.






With 9 degrees positive caster it could cause bump. My thinking was that with the big tires its causing the bump and the tires take it from there. 37 inch tires have a lot of weight and rubber slinging around so from what i read and then my own logic I thought fixing this may help. Ultimately what I was trying to do was stop the tires from starting to wobble or bump and pressuring the track bar to flex. The way I had it set up was I had 4 degree positive caster bushings in it. So i got 2 degree bushings and reversed them to get me to 3 degrees positive caster. The 2 degree bushing reversed gets me 6 degrees of change.


All of this has been done for a good three weeks or more and I have some good results to share. First the death wobble is gone. I contribute this to the fixed track bar with heim joints. Whats not gone is the "bump". With only 3 degrees positive caster theres no way that thats whats causing the bump. So the only other thing it can be is the tires. Even though theres no death wobble I can definitely feel them trying to wobble. I hit certain bumps and they try really hard but the track bar keeps them in line. So what Im feeling are the tires getting out of shape and then nothing beyond that.
This is my final thought on all of this for anyone who stumbles upon this. You can not have death wobble without the frontend moving side to side on a bronco. So if you really want to eliminate the chances of that happening then heim joints are the way to go. All urethane has some deflection and if the tires are out of whack enough they can force that deflection and eventually prematurely wear out the bushings. Unfortunately heim joints cause other weaker parts to fail. Essentially the urethane bushings were doing what they were supposed to do and allowing for a little give. My tires took advantage of that and wore them out. When i added the heims it just broke the next stronger part. Eventually I got all the weak links worked out but if I was willing to spend the money tires in my case would have fixed the problem. However I feel a lot better knowing that the track bar mount on the frontend has been addressed because eventually it probably would have broken and that would have sucked if it happened in a different scenario.
Also, on the caster Im going to put 9 degrees back in. With nine degrees the bronco handled much better. It was much less darty and didnt feel like a short wheel base truck. Clearly the tires want to wobble anyways so i think its safe to say that caster did not cause my particular death wobble.

Some guys on another forum post on mentioned some other things that are worth noting too. Ultimately there are two factors that contribute to death wobble. 1 the thing that starts the movement and 2 the thing that allows the movement to continue. What allows it to continue is by definition the cause of death wobble. However I really dont think thats fair to leave it t that. Some guys have fixed their problems by replacing the tires. There's plenty of people that arent going to reconfigure their suspension to address the problem. Even if its just a matter of replacing rubber with heim joints. So fixing it by addressing the thing that's starting the movement may be the best answer. For me Im not ready to buy $375 tires yet. Muds dont last very long anyways so I dont need to replace them any sooner than needed. So for me my fix was different than others.

 

[Greenarrow]

Have you decided how you're going to mount the seat belts yet? I'm trying to plan the Barnes situation.

 

[sprdv1]

Glad you got that worked out hoss..

Love the seats

 

[Pa PITT]

Wow Nice job .. Mine was done many years ago . I don't remember that much work . Glad I don't need to do it again.

 

[steve-0]

Where'd you get the bracket for the brake booster? I'm trying to fit a vacuum boost system under my hood and the bracket won't clear the trick flow upper intake plenum. Inquiring minds want to know!

 

[sprdv1]

Where is ole Jeff....