My 89 Bronco II Choptop project...

[88_Eddie]

well, it looks good, at least it's together unlike mine

 

[lil_Blue_Ford]

well, it looks good, at least it's together unlike mine

lol, thanks, only took me like 5 years to get it back on the road!

 

[lil_Blue_Ford]

Well, Fedex finally got around to bringing my new seal today. I had this bright idea of trying to do the seal in the truck. I pulled the pitman arm off and pushed the tie rods out of the way and promptly discovered that my "professional" grade snap ring pliers just slipped off the snap ring. So I quickly got frustrated and before you knew it, I had the steering box yanked out and on the ground where I could get some leverage on things. And promptly bent the !@#$%^&* out of the interchangeable needle points on my snap ring pliers. Ended up going at it with a small set of needle nose pliers and a screwdriver. What a PITA! Then I discovered that despite being in very poor shape, the seals wouldn't come out without pulling the shaft. When I pulled the shaft I discovered that it was pitted where the seals were.

If it wasn't for bad luck I wouldn't have any at all. I swear. Really, I do. Mostly at the truck anyway, lol.

So after turning the air blue for awhile, I cleaned it up as best I could, put the new seals in (my 33mm socket for taking the pitman arm nut off worked great for putting in the new seals), I jammed it back up in the truck and bolted it back up. Attached the pressure line and then spent (read: wasted) a bunch of time making a provision to add a power steering cooler later by making up new return lines.

Hopefully it holds up. No pictures. I was covered in oily/dirty/grease stuff up to my elbows and my hands were black as a coal mine at midnight. Not getting anywhere NEAR one of my cameras like that. I'll see about snapping a few pics of the finished product tomorrow. When I go to rebuild one of my spare boxes I'll see about taking pictures and/or video of it.

 

[lil_Blue_Ford]

So all that work, I pull out of the driveway this morning and BAM. My clutch hydraulics took a dump. So much fun. Chances are pretty good that it's not going to get fixed anytime soon, I need to devote all of my time (the precious little there is) to getting my F-150 fixed at this point.

 

[alwaysFlOoReD]

^^^ that sucks!

Richard

 

[88_Eddie]

i'm pretty sure the same will happen as soon as i drive my b2 out of the garage

 

[lil_Blue_Ford]

^^^ that sucks!

Richard

Yup. Especially considering that was my last drivable vehicle. All my junk needs fixed now. But the F-150 has to take priority now because it's my work truck. Spending a day here or there on my choptop to keep it on the road is one thing, but I'm faced with a problem now. Yes, I could yank the trans and swap the slave cyl (that's what I'm suspecting blew out at this point but I really haven't had a chance to look at it), which would likely take me a day or less. But if I'm going to go through all that trouble to disconnect things and unbolt stuff, I might as well pull the engine and drop a 4.0L in. I have one of those here. I also have a new clutch, flywheel and slave for the 4.0L. I don't see a whole lot of sense in tearing it apart just to put a slave in only to have to tear it apart to do the engine again later. If I had help, I suspect I could have the engine swapped over in a day or two, but so far I've never been able to find someone to actually come and help when they say they will (well, with the exception of a few older members years ago).

Really sucks to have done all that work to it and then this happens and I can't drive it again. I only put about 1k miles on it since I got it fixed, which I enjoyed, but...

 

[lil_Blue_Ford]

i'm pretty sure the same will happen as soon as i drive my b2 out of the garage

Hopefully your luck isn't quite as bad as mine, lol

 

[lil_Blue_Ford]

Took a few minutes to check it out the other day. Looks like the slave cyl is the culprit. It's soaked in brake fluid and everything else is dry.

I also discovered that the engine is soaked in oil. Soaked to the dripping point. Not sure if it's just valve covers or if it's an oil pan gasket or a rear main seal or what, but something is leaking oil BAD. So I guess that's another vote for yanking the motor. Now if I just had the time....

 

[lil_Blue_Ford]

Replaced the slave cylinder so it's drivable, but I still have to do something about the oil leak sometime in the near future. I'll worry about it when I have some time to spare.

I did have the choptop out on the highway for the first time last night, on the flat and downhill it would hold on 65mph without much trouble, but any grade would have it on the floor to try to keep up with traffic. I suspect though that my speedo is off. I've checked it at lower speeds and up to about 45 mph it's right on. Above that it starts to get off - the actual speed being higher than the indicated speed. Doesn't really seem to make sense, but I clocked it with my GPS. I didn't have time to play around trying to hook up my GPS last night to try to get the actual speed. It handled the speed pretty good, better than I expected but I'm still not sure I want to do any long highway travels with it.


Update....

At one point, when my F-150 ate like the fourth or fifth slave cylinder, I took the choptop on a road trip, 2 hours away, to fetch home a ZF5 transmission. Handled the speed ok, but I had the go pedal flat on the floor the whole time in 4th and OD to try to keep it around 65 mph. I did the run with the weight savings of having the doors off, lol.

 

[lil_Blue_Ford]

So I've been mostly driving the choptop. I rigged up my chopped-up jeep top in place that I was using before and filled in most of below it with a piece of tarp. Still have to figure out something for closing it in a little better (it just has to be temporary for the winter) but it's closed in well enough that I don't freeze driving it. Not sure why but my heater doesn't seem to put out a lot of heat or blow very hard (mostly it doesn't seem to blow hard enough). Playing with the fan speed it does change speeds (but doesn't turn off when it's turned to the off position).

Also found that my CB radio is receiving but doesn't seem to be broadcasting... Changed it out for another one I had and got the same result...

Then I was driving it recently and all of a sudden it didn't sound right. It ran, but the exhaust sounded quieter than it should have, there was a rattle like a heat shield was loose, and it had no power. So after taking a look under it one day and not finding anything I drove it around kind of hard and figured if there was a blockage in the exhaust, I'd find it by whatever was hot.... Well, it sort of worked. The cat and the front of the muffler both were pretty hot. So I cut the pipe and pulled it apart to find.... a chunk of the guts from the aftermarket cat stuck in the pipe between the cat an muffler. Guess it'll be getting a new exhaust come summer......

 

[lil_Blue_Ford]

Looks like most of my photos were lost. I'll have to work on getting them worked back in at some point here. Until then, I got all the photos uploaded to my server so they will not be lost again. You can view the gallery at http://jjgavinpublishing.com/lbf_photo_gallery/thumbnails.php?album=3

 

[lil_Blue_Ford]

Reading through some of my build thread, I came across where I mentioned that I had an idea for something for the truck and refused to give details. Of course, since I refused to give details I don't remember exactly what I had been planning, lol. But I have a pretty good idea of what it might have been.

I have taken some measurements and did some comparisons. I'm pretty sure I can make part of it work out but I still need to find a solution to some issues. That said, I'm thinking it is a very do-able idea at this point. Since I lack a garage to work on things in and my choptop is my DD as long as the weather isn't ridiculously cold (since I have a plow hanging on my F-150 so when it's not needed, I prefer it to sit in the driveway), we're going to have to wait until the weather is appropriate (unless someone local has a garage it'll fit in and wants to help me with it).

The plan is to put Ranger bedrails on the choptop, trim and reinforce the B-pillar along with making a mating surface there. Then I'm going to trim and reinforce part of a BII top and put the windows back in it so it can be installed like a cap. Thus, choptop BII in the summer, enclosed BII for the winter. And no fuss trying to chop down a fiberglass cap or top.

 

[lil_Blue_Ford]

Finally got around to working on pinning my doors on the choptop. I'll confess that it didn't work out quite as well as I had originally hoped, but it does work (I had hoped that the pins would be a little easier to pull than they are). While I was messing with that (and getting tired of lifting the door into place and take it back out to re-adjust), I started wondering about the door rattle I've been dealing with... well... since I got the truck and first got it drivable all those years ago. I had always shrugged and blamed the door seals but they're really not all that bad. Then I realized something... the pin for the door latch was smaller than the corresponding notches in the door latch. Opened the door to my F-150 and noticed that there was a plastic bushing on the pin... which was missing from my choptop on both sides...

Scratched my head about it for a couple minutes since I really didn't want to buy new pins... and realized that the pin is roughly the diameter of the inside of a piece of 1/2" PEX tubing... and I had some of that left over from doing radiant heat in the house. Of course, the outside diameter is too large for the catch (you can jam the door closed but I wouldn't recommend it, had to pry it back open). Now trying to sand or file it down to size by hand takes forever, so after doing the first one by hand (since I had already cut it to length and didn't want to sand my fingers too), I put the flap disk on the angle grinder and with a little care, I made a new bushing. Slit both and fitted them on and no more rattles.

 

[Harley]

subscribing to this, cool build...