Coco's Build Thread

[Dusty]

Saving a spot for Coco's build thread. Here's one of our most recent photos showing Coco in her current state. I'll update the photo in this first post periodically to keep it updated. For the rest of the build thread , I'll be adding to it here and there

 

[Dusty]

This is what Coco looked like back in 2006, before we got her running for the first time. See the Bronco script emblem on the side that only says "Bro?" The broken off "co" was in the glovebox, and then hung on our garage wall for a time (the "n" was long lost). That "co" was the genesis of Coco's name.

 

[Dusty]

Coco's first wheeling trip! Thanksgiving 2006 at Truckhaven. We just sort of got her running with whatever we had laying around at the time. A tired old 302, 3-speed on the tree, manual steering. Open diffs and 3.50 gears in stock D30 and small bearing 9". Didn't even have a front bumper or headlights But we'd got it running enough to wheel it!

 

[Dusty]

Coco's next round of mods came back in 2008, with the 5.8L EFI engine out of a '91 E250 van. I used an Exploder upper intake and BC Broncos adapter plate for the intake, and Ric Kolibar re-worked the harness for me. We had a hell of a time getting it to run right so we eventually swapped my other 5.8L (from my other Bronco) into it. More on that later. Along with the engine swap, Coco got a C4 auto transmission.



Around that same time we also swapped in a set of full width axles. 78/79 high pinion D44 in the front with an ARB and 4:56 gears. The rear is a big bearing 9 with a Strange nodular third member and spool, with Currie 35-spline chormoly axles. Yeah, Coco was starting to grow up.



We also upgraded the suspension with 2.5" BC Broncos coils and leaf springs, with West Coast Broncos long radius arms. I swapped over my self-built front shock hoops and dual Bilstein 7100's. Coco now had some flex.





In these pics Coco has a temporary set of 37's on 15" wheels, which I eventually swapped for a set with 17's and more backspacing. But as you can see I did need to do some fender cutting.

 

[Dusty]

Here's the '91 5.8 I initially put in it. We had cleaned it up, re-gasketed it, painted it, etc. Basic shadetree refresh LOL



Here's the BC intake adapter plate. Pretty cool setup, lets you run the GT40 upper on the very common truck style lower, rather than having to locate and shell-out for the super-rare 5.8l GT40 lower. It probably could have used some porting between the adapter and the lower.



We fabbed up a simple tubular core support for it too.

 

[Dusty]

By 2010 I had added the West Coast Broncos front and rear pre-runner fenders, and was now running the 37" BFG's on 17" wheels with enough backspacing to make the tires sit just right within the fenders with the full-width axles.









I pinned the bedsides on with Autofab urethane fender washers, used a 3/4" LED for marker lights, and LED trailer lights for tail lights.

 

[Dusty]

Next I tackled the floor boards since they were about rusted through in a few places.

 

[Dusty]

Coco needed a better dash layout. Here's the "before" pic:








And here's the "After":

 

[Dusty]

Somewhere along the line I swapped in my other 5.8L, the '95 roller block with Lightning intake.



Found a better location for the ECM...



Gained the York onboard air compressor that I had already adapted to this engine on my other Bronco.



Fabricated a metal radiator hose to clear everything.



Did the remote-TFI conversion on it:

 

[Dusty]

And a 4X4X2 power steering gear.

 

[Dusty]

I think I was one of the first to install Rigid Industries LED headlights in an EB, which was back in 2012.











Here's the light comparison versus the halogens. First the halogen:



And the Rigid LED:

 

[Dusty]

Here's the cage build post that I'm copying over from classicbroncos.com, where all of the images were broken links. I'll try to find and re-link them all here.

Oct 3, 2012

My wife's Bronco, "Coco" has needed a cage for years and I've just never gotten around to it. I've had a simple 4-point bar in there for a while just to have something, but its finally time to replace it with something more substantial.



Since I work at Poison Spyder I can get DOM pretty cheaply so I'll be using 1.75" X .120 wall DOM for most of it. Here's my work space in the garage at home. Pretty primitive compared to the equipment we have at work but that stuff's for building Jeep parts LOL...



My bender is a JD Squared that I converted to air-over-hydraulic using a Harbor Freight long ram and the ram mount kit from Swag Off-Road. If anyone is looking to convert their manual bender and want to do it as low-buck as possible, I highly recommend this setup. Troy over at Swag developed this kit on my own suggestion and it turned out great.



The overall design concept for Coco has always been sort of a "4X4 muscle car" or desert pre-runner, more than a rock crawler, as I have my other Bronco for that. So I'll be building a sport style cage for it rather than the boxy family style cages you see more often. Here I have one side of the main hoops done and starting to bend up the other side. There's a splice at the middle where the B-pillar will join, which I'll sleeve together with some 1.5" OD inserts.



Both main hoops in. Already you can see the overall lines. I dig the "fastback" look of it.



If you look closely you can see the A-pillar bar going through the dash.



And that's all I have for now. I only worked on it for a few hours last weekend. Like everything I do outside of work these days, it will probably take forever. But I'll update this thread whenever I have more to show. I won't be able to work on it this weekend because I'll be at the Off-Road Expo, so it will be a couple of weeks before I can get back on it.

 

[Dusty]

Apr 8, 2013

Finally got a little more progress on this over the weekend. First a shot of my rickety Harbor Freight tube notcher LOL...



Pretty much got most of the main structure done.





This is the third Early Bronco cage I've built, and all of them have gone through the dash





I'm debating whether to put diagonals in the B-pillar section. I know it would be the smart thing to do but I don't plan on racing this thing.



Digging the fastback lines of this thing.







There's still quite a bit to do on it. I need to put the foot plates in, add a couple of gussets here and there, a couple of grab handles, some tabs and brackets. I'm also debating whether to put A-to-B and B-to-C horizontal bars in. Again it would be the smart thing to do but I'm trying to keep this thing light.

 

[Dusty]

Apr 10, 2013

The laser operator here at work just dropped my cage foot plates by my desk. I love giving them a drawing in the morning and having the parts in my hands before quitting time

 

[Dusty]

Apr 15, 2013

Worked a little more on it this weekend. Got all the foot plates in. Added the Singer-required diagonal tube. Got most of the joints burned in (what I can reach before pulling it out to finish). Now time to start adding doo-dads like handles, tabs for windshield, antenna, jack mount, etc. didn't get any pics of the progress but I did shoot this one for my Instagram feed, of the beer I was drinking while working on it LOL...

 

[Dusty]

May 14, 2013

I've been chipping away at this thing a little at a time and its just about done so I guess I should update this thread.

So when we left off, the cage was pretty much fleshed out. I just needed to add the foot plates and whatever doo-dads I wanted. So I started by bending up a couple of grab handles.



An entry handle for each side...



And an "Oh Shit!" bar for the dash bar...



Next, I wanted to add some roof panels so I drew some up, and some tabs, and asked the laser operator at work to cut them out for me. I love having a laser at work



The panels are .090 aluminum.



The tabs are cut from .125 steel.



Measure twice, cut once, and they dropped right into place. Welded the tabs and voila...







Time for a cold one. Ballast Point Sculpin!

 

[Dusty]

May 14, 2013

Mounted the CB to the center roof panel.



Antenna mount on the rear leg.



Put the 4' Firestik on a spring mount, and added a hook to the cage diagonal to hook the antenna in a down position for driving it into the garage and in my trailer.



Notice those cool little plastic cable keepers. They clip right on to the 1-3/4" tubing. I bought a pack of them a few years back at the Off-Road Expo, finally got around to using them.

And here the cage is, pretty much done.

 

[Dusty]

May 17, 2013

I pulled it out of the garage after work yesterday for some better pics.





A closer look at how it goes through the dash...



Plastic glove box trimmed to fit around the cage tube...



Tabs on each side to bolt the dash on...



Here are the speaker cans I got from Crawl Tunes. They're loaded with a pair of Infinity 6.5's.



...I got them in a package deal along with this Audiopipe marine amp with remote volume knob, and iPOD interface cable. It all sounds pretty good. Don't laugh at my old retired iPhone 3. Yeah the screen is busted but it still works great as an iPOD



Coco's glamour shots...





And of course a Mongo IPA by Port Brewing Co.

 

[Dusty]

May 17, 2013

I also had a chance last weekend to weld the tabs on to the front bumper for a Rigid Industries 20" LED light bar. I haven't run the wiring for it yet but when I do I'll try to get some good night time shots to show how it throws light.

 

[Dusty]

May 23, 2013

I've been working on getting a few more things finished up in preparation for the Big Bear Bronco Bash. High on the priority list was cooling, as it had been running a little hot in warm weather and slow crawling. So I finally got around to installing this Champion aluminum 3-core radiator that I've had sitting on the shelf for a few years.



The old radiator was an old stock one, and I had a really small, crappy external ATF cooler mounted in front of it. I ditched that in favor of the Champion's built-in fluid-to-fluid heat exchanger. Also added a steel shroud from Wild Horses. I had been running without a shroud for a little while (no doubt a big contributor to the poor cooling I was getting) because my old stock one had broken in a few places. The shroud was sitting a little too close to the alternator and the York compressor so I had to do a little tuning on it.



Also this weekend i did the 66-68 turn signal mod, using the adapter plates and some new lenses from from Wild Horses, and some used buckets I got from Mattt, one of my So Cal Broncos buddies. At some point I'm going to convert those to LED's.



For the wifey I had to address the barbarian conditions inside the cab. The floors get too hot and there was a ton of hot engine air blowing in there from all the gaps and holes in the firewall. So I added some rubber floor mats from Wild Horses...



...finally, after about ten years I finally dug up the T-case shifter boot retainer out of my parts piles and bolted that sucker down...



(don't laugh, this was a big step for me! LOL)

...and also finally put a column seal back in it. It should be a little more civilized in the cockpit now LOL...



Still got a little more to do on it before BBBB June 7-9 but its come a long way in the last few months.