wow, you guys are super nice. and i mean that with all sincerity. if i had posted this on pirate4x4 everyone would have been calling me a moron for starting on something this rusty. lol. i appreciate the wait and see what happens attitude from everyone that has scoped out this thread so far. i admit, i have had my doubts about it too. there has been times i wish i had parted this out and gone straight to arizona for a clean one. i figure if im going to ruin one it may as well be a crappy one. i did by a 2 post lift for the shop, and id like to eventually pull the body off this and sandblast the frame someday to clean it up. for right now im counting it as a learning experience.
so now the front is basically together, it was time to start on the rear. (eventually the front will under go stage 2 with coilovers and engine cage, better steering and hydro assist etc.)
for the rear i went back to the donor f150 chassis and pulled the rear out of it. who ever had this f150 before i did definitely got some use out of it. it is equipped with 4.56 gears, and a detroit locker.
once i looked close i started to see signs of abuse, and some facepalm type jerry rigging. the original setup on the f150 was stock springs with some sort of after market overload setup, a 3 inch ford block on top of a 2 inch block. with 4 inch ubolts. pretty sure this was a sema build at somepoint. lol. if you look close you can see the 1/4" grooves that are worn in the tubes from the ubolts moving around. you can see where it dug into the block.
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i figured i can weld up the grooves and be ok for now. totally missing the warning signs. so i moved on to welding the diff to the tubes. i had my millermatic 35 set to kill, and zapped them in, after some work with a wire wheel, acetone, and a torch to preheat. it had plenty of blueing, so it seemed like the penetration was good, and i didnt get any cracks out of it. i let it cool with a welding blanket around it. when i wire wheeled it to get a good look at the weld the blueing seemed to go away. maybe im reading it wrong, but it seems ok. time will tell.
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i was pretty proud of how the weld turned out, so i was excited to stab it under the bronco. and thats when i noticed it. the tube on the right was twisted in the housing already. not a lot, just enough to tweak the pass side block. the p.o. had goobered some weld on it to attempt to level it out, that i had completely missed in my excitement. Facepalm.
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so i torched off the perches with my lincoln amateur hour torch, cleaned that up nice and waited for some new 3" perches from ruffstuff to come in. once those got here i ditched the 2inch block, and put the 3 inch in there with the bronco block. looked super sketchy. thought about taking off the bronco block, but id still have that 3 inch block in there, travel would suck, long term its not what i want, why do all that work for crap suspension, etc. and i talked my self into a set of deaver springs, from desolate motorsports, and a new 2.5inch axle swap kit from ruff stuff for the 8.8.
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i have some chevy truck shackle hangers that im going to use instead of the broncos. broncos are 6" drop, chevys are 8" drop and meant for 2.5 " springs. im planning on dropping them down so the bottom 2 mounting bolts are below the frame. leap frogging? piggyback? there is a term for it somewhere. i will tear the springs down to one leaf and cycle them so that it is done right.
this pretty much catches us up to where im at on the build. i had to take a break for a couple of weeks to encourage 40 something small birds to stop using the shop as a coop and crapping everywhere. RIP. now thats done the shop is mostly sealed up, got some new pallet shelving in there to help with organization, need to get the lift setup and then itll be back to work on the bronco.
thanks all for your patience with judgements so far. im open to criticism and better ways to do things. if you have any suggestions let me know. this is going to be a very much homebuilt type setup, where i can. i want to do gofast things, but i dont quite have that racer budget yet. lol. im hoping to get this together enough to be at king of the hammers in 2019. i missed the last couple of years and im excited to head back.
@outdoorexplorationgear on Instagram, focused on Krustythebronco, building a towrig, creating a prerunner/rockcrawler business.
