My 89 Bronco II Choptop project...

lil_Blue_Ford · Jun 25, 2012

Yea, I finally decided to do a build thread.... :thefinger:

It has kind of been one of those really long term projects, unfortunately. But it's been a great learning experience as it was the first truck that I made an attempt to modify. So without further delay...

I bought the truck off a former? member on here (some of the older crowd may remember him, sherrodwannab2, aka Farva. I have no idea if he still lurks here or not. He cracked a head which resulted in a small fire in the engine compartment and burned the wiring harness. I was going to buy some parts off him till we struck a deal on the whole thing... for $160.

1989 Bronco II 2wd, 5-speed. I got it with Hijacker air shocks in the back, 31" tires, and a 3.55 gear ratio. Previous owner had cut the top off (but saved the glass which I got with the truck). Oh, and it had like 30 aftermarket lights, none of which worked.

This is how the truck looked when I got it. Suspension was entirely stock (supposedly) aside from the air shocks in the back.

And the engine fire....

shane96ranger · Jun 25, 2012

Nice score. What have you done to it so far?

lil_Blue_Ford · Jun 25, 2012

The modifications begin... first I tore the engine down and yanked off the cracked head (while it was in the truck) and swapped another head on. Picked up a newly used wiring harness from a junkyard and fought with it for awhile getting the timing close enough for it to start so I could set the timing. I bought the replacement head off of Zman who came over for awhile one weekend.

Combs Customs and one of his buddies came over and spent a whole weekend helping me tear into the truck as well. I traded him the TIB gear for a spare D-28 and misc stuff that he brought along.

When it was all said and done, I had 2" lift coils in the front and a completed 4x4 conversion. Then I aired up the back shocks so it sat level and drove it home from a family friend's place.

For the 4x4 conversion, I picked up an 86 BII from a member on here that was being sold for parts. I ended up not using the axle that Combs Customs brought since it was a 3.73 gear ratio. The parts truck I bought had 4.10 geared axles, locked front and a packed l/s rear. Because of the way BIIs were set up, all I had to do was change the axle pivot for the passenger side beam to bolt up the front axle. Then I had to drop the dummy t-case (yes, they used 4x4 trans with a fully machined - but gutted - BW-1350 t-case on the 2wds) and bolt up a real t-case. There was even a plug hanging there to plug it in so the 4x4 lights would work.

So now I had a 4.10 geared BII with 31" tires and 2" of lift....

lil_Blue_Ford · Jun 25, 2012

shane96ranger said:
Nice score. What have you done to it so far?

lol, I'm getting there, breaking it up into posts so the first page isn't insanely long.

lil_Blue_Ford · Jun 25, 2012

Well, I was still working on fixing up various little things on it and removing lights when I came across someone selling a used James Duff 3" lift kit.... They only had the axle pivot drop brackets and coils, but that was enough to satisfy me at the time. They said they were selling it because they were upgrading to a 5.5" lift.

So... on went the 3" lift kit.

Then dad gave me some old bias-ply tires he had for winter tires for his F-150. Since they were in good shape with no evident dry rot and the size worked out to be a 33x12.50.....

I also did a custom rear leaf pack since one of the spring eyes were cracked on the original springs. I modified a set of Explorer leafs by cutting the spring eyes off a main leaf and placing it below the main on the Explorer pack plus fitting in another leaf.

lil_Blue_Ford · Jun 25, 2012

But that didn't last long at all, probably my shortest-lived modification....

Belltech drop shackles and F-150 spring perches came along.... I also got a member (RedneckWelder) to fab me up some extended radius arms and mounts.
So now I had around 5" of lift and 33's....

lil_Blue_Ford · Jun 25, 2012

That last photo, yea... that was the day I managed to crack/warp BOTH heads. (fortunately for me, my ranger is in the background so I was able to tow my BII back to be repaired).

I was debating on what to do about the motor when I came across a junkyard deal... I had made friends with the owner of a junkyard at college and I got to strip a wrecked 87/88 BII. From the damage of the wreck, I figured the 2.9 that was in it must have ran pretty good... and since it only cost me $100 and my time to strip out the other BII (plus I was able to park my choptop right near by and just pull the motor from the junker and plunk it in my choptop).

Took awhile of fighting with the motor to get it to cough to life. It'd spin over all day long, but nothing. Played with the timing half of forever. Tore the top of the motor down to the heads, swapped fuel injectors, fuel rails, intakes, etc. Checked the compression 3 or 4 times, always came up good to excellent. Spent a week or two playing with it and after running the battery down for the umpteenth time, I just hooked up jumper cables (instead of charging the battery again) for one last try.... and it fired right up.

Since the body mount bushings were pretty well toasted.... I bought new poly ones from Duff. And at the time I did, they had their body lifts on sale (a pretty good deal too), so I figured that it was worth the money for the bolts. I don't care much for body lifts, so I went with the 2" kit. After putting it on, I was happy I did, it made things much easier to reach to work on, but I'm not sure that I'd do a 3" body lift unless I absolutely had to. 1-2" is enough to make life easier.

A good buddy of mine who lived up around the one college I went to came down for a weekend to help me with the body lift as well.

First time welding - old school oxy-acet work, and yes, I used the proper welding rod.

Second weld. Yea, I had to patch two of the frame mounts since they were rusted through.

And done.

lil_Blue_Ford · Jun 25, 2012

I had this crazy thought at the time that the D-28 might not really be all that weak and that the real problem was probably that people let the U-joints go bad and never replaced them before they seized up and detonated.... so I had put new joints in mine....

I also put the truck on the road and drove it around a bit. Got it out in the dirt and played around some. Then came the inevitable...

I swapped in a spare shaft and was tooling down the road one day with the front hubs locked in doing around 45 mph (and in 2wd) when I heard a pair of rapid fire thumps into the floor boards (and felt it too). I made a couple funny faces in the dark, wished I had a working flashlight (I wouldn't leave anything valuable in the truck), unlocked my hubs just on the off chance that the problem was in the front axle, and went home. In the morning I discovered that it threw two caps into my floorboards.

Soo.....

lil_Blue_Ford · Jun 25, 2012

Up until this point, I had a grand total (including what I paid for the truck) of about $1,650 invested in this project. But the cost has now taken a giant leap forwards.... By the time I finish this latest rendition, I will have untold hours invested and around $3,300.... or so I figure.

I had picked up a D-35 for really cheap awhile back out of a 93 Explorer. It sat around and collected rust till I tracked down a 4.10 geared center chunk for it. Then it sat some more till I collected the parts to do this right.

Once I'm done with my D-35 upgrade, I'm going to jump right into fitting a roll cage in it since it needs a new windshield and I figure while the windshield is out, that would be the time for the cage....

And it's getting bigger tires....

And I have another change that I picked up parts for, but that is going to be delayed because I would really like to drive this thing again before winter gets here, I've been wasting enough warm weather time working on the D-35 swap and cage.

New goodies....

Hmm.... looks like I got some repair work to do....

Looks kind of silly like that....

New frame brackets for the extended arms...

Showing off one of my stick welds. They're not always that pretty, but they're getting there. Most of my welds have been ground or are not really going to be seen, but I decided to leave one mostly untouched. I've been grinding a number of them for fit or finish (I know, everyone says you shouldn't grind them), but I have faith that even ground the welds are good and solid (and most of the more critical welds have an untouched weld on the backside where it's not really seen).

lil_Blue_Ford · Jun 25, 2012

Cleaned up the D-35 beam while I was at it and squirted some fresh paint on it. I also added a drain plug (although after doing it I came up with a better idea, but decided I wasn't really interested in spending more time on the project right now, so it may be a future modification).

I also welded up around the pivot hole and added a short brace.

Opened up the window for the passenger side axle shaft.

And plated the passenger side axle shaft near the pivot.

lil_Blue_Ford · Jun 25, 2012

And on to some questions/crazy thoughts....

I had bought some replacement axle pivot bushings from James Duff, but when I punched out the old rubber ones, I discovered that the pivot bushing sleeves were shot. So after some debate, I decided maybe it would be best just to replace the sleeves. I was going to buy a new set of bushings until realized that I had a set complete with sleeves that I had picked up for my F-150. As luck would have it, they use the same bushing size.

Only thing is, I can't decide which bushing to stick in there now. The Duff ones are one piece blue poly and the Energy Suspension (box says something about hyperflex bushings) come in four pieces plus the metal inner sleeve and the outer sleeve. Anybody have any recommendations?

And then while I was messing with things today, I had this crazy thought trip through my mind so I dug into my scrap pile and yanked out one of the worn-out coils I took off my F-150. For the F-150, it was worn out, the front end sat about 2.5" lower than it was supposed to. I set the coil with my 3" Duff lift coils and it is surprisingly similar.... hard to tell pressing on it, but it feels like both coils have similar give....

So should I stick with the Duff coils or should I give the worn F-150 coils a try?

pwrranger88 · Jun 26, 2012

Sweet b2 on the coils id keep the duff I tried 150 coils in my old ranger and it made the ride unbaribly rough

88_Eddie · Jun 26, 2012

sweet....i'll have to check this thing out when we come up to butler in august

lil_Blue_Ford · Jun 26, 2012

88_Eddie said:
sweet....i'll have to check this thing out when we come up to butler in august

With luck it might be drivable by then! :icon_rofl:

lil_Blue_Ford · Jun 26, 2012

pwrranger88 said:
Sweet b2 on the coils id keep the duff I tried 150 coils in my old ranger and it made the ride unbaribly rough

Thanks for the props!

I was trying to decide on the coils, I figured that maybe since they were softened up a lil bit by being on my F-150 since 1995 they might not be any stiffer than my Duff coils but I dunno...

My 89 Bronco II Choptop project...

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