Welcome back to Project Bronco.
This is actually Denise’s Bronco, and it has a rather long history with her and us. I won’t have time to really get into that history here-but it is quite an entertaining story.
Instead, I’d like to try and show you all some of the highlights of the project throughout the week, and maybe at the end, get some updated pictures as it sits right now.
One thing that became obvious to me as I looked at some of the pictures I’m about to share here is that digital cameras have sure come a long ways since some of these pictures were taken!
Here the Bronco is circa 2009. You can see in the background what appears to be a scrap from @wash11 custom fire pit I built them back in the day. If that fire pit could talk! They still have that fire pit, BTW, and although it’s worse for wear after all these years, they still use it regularly.
At that time, the custom 5-link front and mezzanine/cantilever 4-link rear custom suspensions I designed and built were done and installed.
The floors and firewalls were about 90%, and most of the major systems were installed or at least mocked up, and IIRC, this was a picture of it being put together to go to LC engineering to have the headers and exhaust built for it-the only thing on the truck that I didn’t build myself.
Here it is getting dropped off at LC Engineering for the exhaust.
As I look through my massive archive of pictures, I don’t see any of the completed exhaust. I know I have some-but I’m not wading through the mountain of old files looking for them. I’ll get some pictures of it later. Suffice to say for now, the crew over at LC Engineering did a great job on the headers and exhaust.
Here’s a shot that shows the half-rocker steering I designed and built for the 5-link. Zero bumpsteer throughout about 24 inches of travel. The tie rods are 1 1/4″ heavy wall 4130 tubing that I drilled and tapped to accept the rod ends and machined wrench flats onto.
The Howe power steering ram is tucked as far out of harms way as I could get it on the Dynatrac Pro Rock 60 front axle.
In the engine bay, things were exceptionally cramped with the rather large King 18″x3.0 coilovers taking up most of the space. The engine was pushed rearward and down as low as I feasibly could to get the center of gravity as low and as centered as possible, which meant that things were even more cramped because the engine now resides at least partially in the passenger compartment. All that combined with the fact that I wanted to have a LOT of accessories meant that every square inch under the hood-and indeed, on the entire vehicle- had to be carefully utilized.
The truck would have dual redundant fuel systems, dual redundant ignition systems, an engine driven onboard compressed air system, and engine driven onboard welder system, engine oil cooler, transmission cooler, Power steering cooler, additional filters, air conditioning system, manual brakes with dual reservoirs and balance beam setup with turning brakes, a beefy electrical system with three Odyssey batteries-the list goes on and on…
To that end, I needed the engine driven accessories to be neat, compact, and easy to work on.
And strangely, nobody makes anything even remotely like what I needed to cram all that crap onto a Ford 5.0 engine, so I had to design and build the entire accessory drive system myself.
A Sanden style compressor for onboard air (there was no way a York compressor was going to fit unfortunately-more on the onboard air system later), a Sanden style air conditioning compressor, a custom Howe power steering pump, and an alternator/welder power supply, all on V drive belts with turnbuckle adjusters.
I have an uncurable and unfortunate love affair with polished aluminum.
