96' Daily Driver

[motorbreath53]

Hey Friends,

Longtime Lurker, first time build thread.

I have a 96' XLT that ive owned for 7 years now. (Damn time flies!) We bought it as a cheap to maintain driver while my wife quit working for school. A few years back it became my daily. We play primarily in Glamis with some other toys, but I do make a handful of trips with the Bronco every year. (I'm closest to Ocotillo, Plaster City, but its been around O'Wells too.)

This is the earliest shot I have of it being ours. All I had done at this point was remove the Harley Davidson Accessories that the previous owner had added to create his version of a Harley Edition Bronco... (It may have come up short of his vision) Its pictured of course alongside our 94' F350, and the awful landscaping of our project house we had at the time. We've since moved to another project house... that currently has awful landscape too...


Only basic maintenance was performed for a while. Mitigating some oil leaks, swapping out the cracked exhaust manifolds with some JBA headers etc.




It did get fitted with some no lift BFG 33s pretty early on... but remained otherwise stock until just recently.


Then my 33's were nearing the end of their life... and I found a good deal on a set of 35's...

[motorbreath53]

Since its due for tires this seemed like as good a time as any to move up to 35's and make it a bit more capable. Unfortunately, I don't focus well, and my money is spread thin. So, the Bronco for now is being upgraded from the "left over parts bins" of my friends and of course Craigslist.
Tires... my daily driver Bronco needed tires.. so why wouldn't it get 35 BFG muds right...


To fit said 35s and not be a total ParkingLotPoser, I wanted to at very least do some extended radius arms, and some shocks that were in some way better than the 200k originals (what did I say about how I kept up on maintenance?) I found some well used Rancho Arms and 4" Springs on OfferUp for $100. With some plating I expect that they will hold up... at least until I can spend some money on this thing. Never mind the disaster in the bed of my truck... long story...

I also bough some of the MOOG cc820 progressive springs to try out. I plan on playing with both to find a ride height happy place and doing the cut turn as necessary from there.


My $100 score after removing the previous owners brushed on black paint. Seriously what the hell?


I made templates and let Competitive Metals cut the plating out with thier shear. Money well spent.




I plan on doing the usual plating on the beams. I've studied the pics of failed beams on the interwebs and sniffed at all the pics from the companies that know what they are doing. I'd happily go pay Solo or Threat... its just not in the cards at the moment.




The front and rear diffs got sent to my buddy Bry at Current Automotive for the differential work. I just had him do some fresh TracLoks and some 4.88s. The shocks are half craigslist finds, and scraps from my buddies garages.


This is where it currently sits. I have to finish up the plating and cut/turn on the beams, play with the different springs, and reassemble. Done by the end of my next day off right?

[hobbyturnedobsession]

Looking good! You have to start somewhere. The radius should do pretty well with a basic cut and turn. If I were you I'd run rubber bushings rather than the poly. I've been debating 4.56 or 4.88 myself.

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[zachwabbit]

Interested to see how this goes with the moog coils and extended radius arms, I may do something similar.. I wish I had as much focus and self control as you though! I keep jumping around from project to project lol


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[motorbreath53]

HobbyLobby- Thanks for the attaboys. I'm with you on the rubber bushings. Rubber is what I ordered. I argued with myself about the 4.56vs4.88 idea. Ultimately I found on a ratio calculator that the difference on the highway should only be a few hundres RPM more. What the hell. Lifes too short to drive boring stuff right?

SillyWabbit- Me too on the coils. Im skeptical after seeing them honestly. They are thicker diameter, but barely taller than the stockers. It'll be interesting to set the truck on its wheels for the first time.

As for focus and self control... don't go giving me that undeserved credit... ive got the attention span of a hummingbird at best...

[hobbyturnedobsession]

I was thinking the same thing myself. Lol it's ok most of us do. This is the other toy. Hey it keeps us busy.

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[Becks_Bronco]

Super clean Bronco, and it looks like a nice mild build with great components!

[motorbreath53]

Dig the Baja HTO! Ive had quite a few. My current baja became a roller with a bus box and quite a few other goodies just by collecting throw away freebie parts. I'm short a carb, manifold, alternator and oil cooler...

Becks- Thanks man. I think im on the right track... but sniffing through the amazing builds on here has me dreaming bigger for sure...

Progress is small... slowly but slowly. Im close to done with all the gussets etc on the big beam. I got the bashgaurd cut and tac'd on the bottom of the pumpkin, and got to the halfway point on the truss.Getting close to a welding day.

[motorbreath53]

[motorbreath53]

My shop time has been limited due to daddydaycare etc. This would be done if I could spend more than an hour at a time.

I got to do some welding. It's not the weldporn badassery that some of you lay down, but for an weekend warrior fabricator ive got my chin up. Hoping to get this thing reassembled for by the weekend for a shakedown run.

[ChaseTruck754]

Close enough to weld porn for me! Lookin good. Also good to hear I'm not the only one living it up 5 minutes at a time in the shop...

[hobbyturnedobsession]

Hey mine started with nothing but used parts. I broke parts and replaced with new. Beams are looking good!

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[Pickuptrucker]

Looks food!

[motorbreath53]

So, I am not sure if ill need to move the balljoint yet... so I may have jumped the gun with the paint... but since its just bombercan no biggie anyway. And this way if the new alignment cam will handle the leveling coils I dont have to disable for paint after mock up.





Thanks for all the kind words fellas. Pretty excited for this thing.

[motorbreath53]

Stuck at work, so no progress on the passenger beam. (Though I did get all the plate cut last time I was home.)

I made use of my lunchtime/ downtime at work with a refresh of my $50 FOX 2.0s. Yea I'm closer to $150 after seals and oil... but nevermind that...


Hopefully setting the truck back on its wheels before next weekend. I guess we'll see what kind of sense of humor my babies have about "nap time."

[motorbreath53]

HA! Shoulda' known better than to think I was done cutting/grinding/welding on this project.

Went to mock up to decide how much to move the pivot brackets for the radius arm. (Thinking 13.5" instead of the 15" suggested in Rancho's instructions)

Anyway, I found that the shock body will bottom out long before the bumpstop on the chassis. Obviously that wont do...

So, looks like im making some coilbuckets... hopefully some simple ones since a coilover is in the ultimate plan... but some adjustable ones would be sooo coooool...

[hobbyturnedobsession]

What about getting a shorter shaft? Or you could cut the sticker bucket down and build a shock hoops to remount the shocks. I've seen where the coil bucket is cut between the shock mounts and gusset and reinforce the bucket

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[motorbreath53]

So I had forgotten how fun drilling frame rails isn't! A mag drill setup would be in my Amazon cart if I was doing that with any kind of regularity.

Rear axle is in, though im holding out on gluing the cover until ive convinced myself I don't need that desolate brace/cover. Or maybe just a bearing cap support type cover.


Got the front diff RTV'd and stuck. Front end is all painted up... at least as far as I could justify wire wheeling for my daily driver truck. This isn't a frame off deal afterall...URL=http://s641.photobucket.com/user/motorb ... 9.jpg.html][/URL]


I think I have scored some Autofab buckets with some proper shocks... we'll see how that pans out Sat morning.

[Becks_Bronco]

Will you be using the same beams when you go to coilover? If so, did you consider doing uniball beam pivots in place of bushings?

[Becks_Bronco]

I think I have scored some Autofab buckets with some proper shocks... we'll see how that pans out Sat morning.

Nice!!