The Motley Crue: White '97 OBS Crew Cab Build

[nubreed71]

Some of you might remember my last build, "White 1994 F-150 Sleeper Build" that turned out to not really be much of a sleeper after 5 years of building the truck. Just in case you haven't seen the build thread:

http://www.gofastbroncos.com/forum/view ... =19&t=4676

Well, after that one I tried a 2012 Raptor for a couple years, and while it was a cool truck, I think I just prefer the OBS stuff more. So that leads us to this one, a 1997 F-250 with the 460, and 86.5k original miles. Since I can pretty much pinpoint the exact moment when things snowballed out of control with the '94 f-150, I've got a pretty clear plan for the build on this one. The plan is to stay stock width, stock fenders/bedsides, and end up on coilovers up front, and do some sort of revised upper shock mount with Deavers out back. Outside of that, I plan to have fun geeking out on all the little detail stuff and making this truck into a dual duty off-roader and family beach mobile.

Here's a few pics of the truck on the day I picked it up back in October. Overall the truck is in pretty nice shape for its age, needing just some basic cleanup work and maybe a little bit of paint/body work if I want to make it perfect.

[nubreed71]

As I started pulling stuff off the truck from the previous owner, I was really stoked to see how clean the bed was...I don't think this truck had ever hauled anything very heavy judging by the condition of the sheetmetal in the bed. I also found an invoice taped to the backside of the liner from '97, so I suspect this liner was in there for the life of the truck.





I also started pulling all the body trim off the truck:



The next order of business was to address a whole bunch of stuff you couldn't really see, but from owning a number of OBS trucks in the past, I knew had to be done. I pulled the door panels and installed the solo door reinforcement plates on the front doors, along with some sound deadener in the doors, and swapped out the front and rear speakers. I also pulled the outside mirrors and door handles and hit the doors with some polishing compound to get rid of the dirt halos around the attachment points on the outside of the doors. Also, I had the rear drivers side power lock actuator swapped out while everything was apart, and I installed a front drivers side door panel reinforcement plate from OBS solutions, along with a fresh power window switch panel. Finally, I topped it off with the Dorman black metal handles.

Then once I had that all sorted out, I sent the truck over to a buddy for some maintenance stuff that I didn't wanna deal with, like an oil change, new plugs/wires, coolant flush, and new ignition module. I also had him swap in a new sag pump/bracket (Thanks Travis/S00TLYFE!) to get rid of the whiny ford PS pump.

[nubreed71]

Here's some pics of the new sag pump installed:



And while I was in there, I couldn't help powder coating the battery tray, adding some nice kicker battery terminals, and swapping in a fresh coolant overflow/washer fluid resi:







Then it was time to start cleaning up the inside of the truck. Here's the OEM steering wheel before, and after I had it re-wrapped:





I also pulled the gauge cluster to replace the bulbs with LED's, install a fresh cluster lens, and cluster bezel (because I broke the old one removing it, d'oh!). This also gave me a chance to start wiring up the switches for all my aux lighting.



Speaking of lighting, I grabbed a set of LED projector retrofitted headlights from Tony (TCMGLX), along with a nice little pile of parts from Autofab:

[RyanDS650X]

This is gonna be rad! I love your builds they're always so clean. Lets see if you stick to the sleeper program...

Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk

[nubreed71]

Hahahaha that will be the challenge. Going wider is just such a can of worms because of having to do fiberglass and a widened rear axle. The fact that this one already has a factory full floater is what's really making me not want to go wider. The plan is to throw a Giant axle truss, and Ruffstuff disc brake conversion on the rearend and just run the hell out of it.

I'm sure I'll find other ways to throw money at this vehicle...hahahahaha

[tcm glx]

Paint your bed dude! Hahahaha. Couldn’t help myself.

Can’t wait to see the outcome Taylor. Gonna be sweet!

[nubreed71]

Lol, thanks bud! Paint/body work are next on the list. I should be pulling the trigger on that this week. It will be nice to have all the paint cleaned up, the new third brake light on there, and all the new badging reinstalled.

Still debating if I should cut a hole in the bed to access the rear fuel pump/sending unit while the bed is off the truck. Probably not a terrible idea.

[ChaseTruck754]

Awesome! As you said, Raptors are cool, but the OBS stuff is just hard to beat. Looking forward to if you can avoid the snowball on this. A full on built crew cab OBS would be pretty sweet. Just sayin...

[nubreed71]

Hahaha, only time will tell. I think there will be plenty of little detail work stuff I can geek out on before I go off the deep end.

[nubreed71]

Since I'd already begun wiring the switches for the aux lighting, I figured I might as well keep the ball rolling, and get everything all wired up and ready to go. It was odd, this truck didn't come with an underhood light and I couldn't find the wiring for it under the hood, so I ended up adding a KC Cyclone with a little toggle switch while I was at it.











I opted to mount a couple pairs of BD Squadron Pros in the front bumper using a set of mounting brackets from CP Addict. Pretty decent mounts, and they only required a little bit of modification to the backside of the bumper to get everything nice and centered in the cutouts.





Also, this bad boy showed up from Evil Manufacturing. The plan is to make all the cuts to to the back of the cab to mount it right before I send the truck off to paint/body work since they'll repaint the back of the cab and the roof and then I won't have exposed metal edges around the third brake light hole in the cab. True to form, the regular silver zinc socket cap screws that held the BD lights to the black housing were not going to cut it, so I had a bunch of little button head screws zinc coated black for a cleaner look.

[Tchajagos]

I just put a new dash bezel, new window, and new led lights in the gauges and it’s like a new truck. Highly recommended for everyone haha.

[nubreed71]

Makes such a huge difference!

[nubreed71]

I've got a whole bunch of stuff that I'm waiting to install on the truck until after the paint/body work is done, like new chrome grille, headlight trim, LED projector headlights, LED taillights, fender badges, etc... but in the meantime, I've been doing some fun little upgrades here and there, as well as working on the wheels/tires that I'm gonna run after the suspension is all buttoned up.

Here's a few more goodies that I picked up from the zinc coaters a couple weeks back:



Some newer Super Duty bed bolts that I machined the heads down to clear some D-ring washers. Time to get rid of those awful carriage bolt style bed bolts.



Machined sill plates from OBS Solutions:



And then a set of factory Alcoas that I dropped off with the polisher to work his magic. I'm gonna run these with 315/75R16 BFG KO2's once the suspension is installed.

[ChaseTruck754]

This thing is gonna look so clean!!

[nubreed71]

Next up, I had to figure out a more suitable rear bumper, since the OEM one hangs off the back of the truck way too low, and was also a bit bent up from the previous owner. I got lucky and found a weld it yourself rear bumper that someone had bought and decided not to finish. This was exactly the bumper I wanted to get, and since I don't believe that Will (WSDmoto) is selling them anymore, I was stoked to grab one.

Since I know exactly nothing about welding, I had Christian at VitalDesigns weld it up and blend everything for me. All that's left is to trim the mounting tabs down and drill the mounting holes. My plan is to powder coat the bumper gray, and then have the top surface Linexed. I'll also run 2 Baja Designs S2 pros in the bumper.

[nubreed71]

So the plan for the front bumper, even before I bought the truck was something along the lines of a stock front bumper possibly sectioned and shortened, with a tube structure/skidplate behind the stock bumper. Then when I sold my Raptor, I got to see almost exactly what I was thinking of on a Bronco that was owned by the Raptor buyer.



Fast forward to late last week, and the now owner of my old Raptor shot me a text asking if I was interested in his skidplate setup. You gotta love when stuff like that just pans out. I picked up the skid on Friday, and proceeded to countersink the skidplate bolts. I'll end up powder coating it, and will run it behind my stock bumper.



I also had a chance to start making the template for my race radio speaker plate that will fill the stereo/climate control area on the Expedition console that I plan to install in the crewcut.

[nubreed71]

Christian @ Vital Designs took my template and whipped up this speaker mount for me. I'm stoked on how it came out! The plan is to repaint the console gray, but I think I'll paint the border around the center section black like it was from the factory, and then powdercoat the metal plate semi-gloss black.

[Tchajagos]

Double check the skid plate fitment. Our frames are different than broncos. Especially where the lower part bolts to. Might have to make adapter plates. Or modify it.

[nubreed71]

Yep, it's definitely different, but I checked the fitment before purchasing. I should be able to make the skid work with some small adapter plates, or by doing a piece of box tubing that bolts from frame rail to frame rail and then the skid bolts to that.

[Becks_Bronco]

Awesome! Love the detail on this, and all your builds.

Having a plan, and an end goal in your mind before starting always help a ton.