Black Smoke Donkey

[Kinder]

Forgot to answer JD,

I've got a NOS STC top tucked away, I plan to have it professionally extended to cover the added acreage. I'll reuse my old top bows and fab up some kind of cross brace between them so it doesn't come crashing down. I don't think I'll try the hard top extension, Jay and I have talked this over and the top has A LOT of dimensions that aren't easily accounted for, it'll take a serious body man to attempt that. I know the 4 door bronco featured in Bronco Driver did it and it looks great, but I don't have that skill. I will be running my camper during the hunting season, stay tuned for my ideas on how this will work out with 4 doors.

[Jesus_man]

Kirk - you are flying thru this and I, for one, am amazed. Even your slow day is more productive than some of my good days!

For the exhaust, are you worried about heat transfer from the muffler to the floor? Too bad you have to run a tunnel at all in the rear.

I forgot about the camper - that'll be a whole other can-o-worms.

[Kinder]

I'm wrapping the entire exhaust and I plan on a heat shield for the bend right off the turbo and I can add one above the muffler, hope that takes care of the heat.

As for the camper, it'll be like a hummer set up, when they add it they blank the rear doors. Mine will be a bit more slick, but along those lines.

[Kinder]

Floorboards, woohoo! I'll add a couple of angles under the new section so it doesn't tin can on me.

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[Crazyone]

Awesome work Kirk! Looks like it's coming along. Can't wait to see it in person.

[Colorado75bronc]

Looks great, maybe in a few weeks I can come up and check it out

[Kinder]

Thanks fellas, I'm working hard to get'r done.

Another days of tidying up, fixed a section of the exhaust that I didn't like and was able to add a flex pipe that I picked up from Justin, also added the muffler hangers to the frame. Welded in the qtr door section body mounts, put caps on my cross members and bolted them in with grade 8 hardware and added the isolators to the adapter foot. Undercoated the qtr door section of the tub (the old tub had already been done). Also tapped the frame where the 205 anti-torque plate goes, you'd think with 2 cross members that that would be enough, but when I talked to Jed's Machining about the adapter he recommended I add it.

Put the body back on, good thing Willem is big and strong! Tomorrow I'll weld up the rear section to the rest of the tub and move on to bolting things back together.

Flex pipe installed and tucked up against the frame leaving the PTO on the ZF usable, not that I'm planning on adding anything there...

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Muffler hanger, that should be beefy enough!

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Front section of tub undercoated, you can get a good look and see that I incorporated every structural component that I could. I also had to rebuild the very last one since it was flat when I started and I needed it to follow the new rear tunnel. The front one is going to stay cut to clear the ZF shifter housing, I may build up a nice curve around it depending on gumption level.

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[Kinder]

What was many is now one. Finished the last bit of welding on the door posts and floor boards today. Also added the final body mounts, decided to put them under the mid brace in the bed area, the floor board area that joined to the qtr door section was a little springy there.

Onto the next challenge, repair the lower support on the door posts that the PO of the tub cut out to run sliders. I'm sure I'm going to run sliders, but I'd like to have the supports there and tie into them.

The passenger side turned out real nice.

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The under bed body mount, ended up placing it at the stock height, I won't use a body lift piece here.

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Also finished wrapping the exhaust, I'll need to fab up a heat shield of some kind for the turbo area and the muffler.

[Kinder]

Took care of some plumbing today; brakes, power steering & hydraulic clutch are in, bleed & ready to go. I've also got 3 pedals in the donkey now, none are what you'd call hooked up, but they are all minutes away from functional. I'll need to tread the clutch master cylinder rod and couple it to a old rod I found in my bronco box. I'm using another brake pedal instead of a factory clutch pedal since the clutch master cylinder is activated horizontally.

I had to ditch the locofomoco hydro boost plate, I needed to push the whole unit up and angle it away from the injection pump. I drilled a higher hole and modified a plate that was on another booster to get it right.

Next is steering.

Easy to get to without inner fenders in the way.

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Just enough room to squeeze in the clutch master cylinder.

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Good look at where the clutch master cylinder comes through the firewall, and the two rods that will need to be joined.

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[kbank6]

I thought I was getting far by repairing my tailgate then I look at your post. Then again it must be nice to be on the ROAD program.. (Retired On Active Duty).... Looking real good.

[Jesus_man]

Ok, so be honest, how many times a day do you start it up just to hear the cackle?

Great progress. Keep at it!

[Kinder]

Not ROADing it anymore, terminal leave ended 1 Jul, I'm no kidding retired now, hence the sale of some items to fund this beast.

I'd love to start it daily, but after installing the exhaust with the old muffler and throwing soot all over my garage I'm waiting until I turn it around before I run it again.

[Jesus_man]

Lol - I used to have to put a box around my air compressor for the same reason. My PSD exhaust dumped right on it.

[71 bass boat]

How heavy do you think that it will be when it's all said an done? Without the camper? And great job

[Kinder]

I was luckily enough to weigh my setup on a scrap run, of course it had a trailer, but I'll subtract that out when I'm done. It weighed just over 5k lbs at the time; all seats, heavy rear bumper w/ spare, winch up front & rolling 35's. Trailer was empty with 35's and didn't have the spare on it. My bronco had a very stock 302, C4 & D20 and extended drive shafts for the drivetrain.

What I've added or changed; frame extension steel, additional cross member, 4bt (w/ turbo & intercooler), zf5, reduction gear portion of np203, adapter, np205, larger & longer driveshafts, qtr door section from old tub and finally I'll be adding qtr doors. From reading I'll say the 4bt weighs around 750+lbs, ZF around 150lbs, 203/205 w/ adapter 200+lbs. The frame extension should be under 100lbs, sectioned tub under 80lbs, qtr doors?

So... I'll throw out a rough guess of adding 650-750 lbs.

[Kinder]

Painfully close, it's hard to stop myself from just ping stuff on haphazardly at this point.

I made a discovery yesterday, I have a bolt on windshield frame/tub. From doing a quick search it looks like this was done until early '68. First time I've seen one, Bubba Smurf, also a '68 tub, had the windshield frame welded in.

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Tomorrow I plan on wiring in the fuel solenoid using a relay, in the future I think I'll incorporate a fuel cutoff switch like EFI vehicles use to shut the engine down in a accident.

Cut a nice sized hole in the core support for the intercooler, built a frame for it and the radiator, I've got 1" of clearance between the thermo fan clutch and the radiator. The radiator is almost back in the stock position, I'm going to 180 the shroud and clearance it a bit for the steering box and I'll be reusing it.

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Ended up doing a partial tube front end, the inner fenders were cut out and 1" square tube used in their place, I'll put in one more tube to create some triangulation. Bolted some plates to the firewall as anchor points, they'll make front clip removal easy in the future.

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Rearranged the intercooler piping, the green elbow has a damaged section so I didn't finish the fit from the IC to the manifold, I'll order up a new elbow and make the fit better. The pipes are flanged so when I cut them to fit I'll re-weld the flange on.

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Finally I set the seats in temporarily (I think this tub had a bench seat in it originally as I don't have the holes in the right spots) and bolted on the shift lever. The shifter ended up in a decent position, a little close to the driver seat, but cleared the dash nicely and it won't interfere with anything.

[landshark]

So close!

[Jesus_man]

With the level of work you've done now, you won't like the shortcuts. So keep at it one piece at a time. I know you are chomping at the bit to get it driving. I would be too!

Are you doing a roll cage? One thing I'd like to do eventually is build a full cage for mine, using 1/4" flat bar laying on the floor of my bronco welded to the cage to mount the seats to. Something you can always do later.

[Kinder]

Hell on wheels comes to mind.

http://youtu.be/oaBgxEyWPSQ

http://youtu.be/OcuabyIis-g

http://youtu.be/raxJhvXWg7w

[Kinder]

Are you doing a roll cage? One thing I'd like to do eventually is build a full cage for mine, using 1/4" flat bar laying on the floor of my bronco welded to the cage to mount the seats to. Something you can always do later.

Cage, yes. I'm in the planning stages at the moment, I'd like to use complete hoops or halos interlocked and bolted to the frame through the body mount bolts.

[Colorado75bronc]

Dude so awesome! Congrats, now get that school bus of a bronco finished completely! :P

[Kinder]

Thanks Corey, and I'm trying to get it done ASAP.

Most of today's work was soldered and wrapped. I used the factory wiring to signal the starter and fuel cutoff solenoids and ran new wire where needed. Tomorrow I'll need to figure out how to integrate the GM (1-3 wire, 150 amp, internally regulated) alternator into my wiring, that should be fun. I'll also start bolting a few things in/on, like seats, seat belts, windshield frame, front fenders & grill. I may even get some lights working, woo hoo. Oh... and I need to bleed my hydraulic clutch, at least that's what I'm hoping is wrong, I had a rough time getting it to engage fully.

Built a battery mounting position, I lost my old spot to my future cold air filter box.

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Repurposed the old starter solenoid to work as a simple relay, the cummins starter has a internal system and both pos & neg wires run to it, so now a signal wire runs off the post, added a fusible link here as well.

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Nothing exciting here really, repurposed the old hot on run coil wire to feed the fuel cut off. It's a 3 wire solenoid that also get a signal from the starter signal wire. So key to run from off nothing happens, key to start and solenoid engages, key released to run solenoid stays engaged, key off solenoid releases and fuel is cut therefore shutting down the engine. This is where I'm going to add a 40amp relay, I've read that this solenoid has the capability to pull over 20 amps. I'll also going to run a backup manual cable here, hard to believe that if this part fails I'm dead in the water.

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Also had to run a jumper wire to override my NSS, I'm leaving this in the harness for now, I may repurpose it in the future. The other 2 posts on that connector will be hooked up to the ZF's reverse light switch.

[Justin]

I've got a GM alternator in mine, you're welcome to take a look if it'll help.

[Kinder]

I'd like that, I'll check it out on Sunday.

[Jesus_man]

So cool Kirk. What a nice milestone and fuel to keep on the project!

As for the cage - a halo is in my next design. I have leaned over into trees with vertically positioned hoops and they have stopped me in my tracks. A halo would have let me slide right by.

[Colorado75bronc]

Hey I recognize that wicked awesome battery tray lol

[Kinder]

Yep, I always try to use good stuff, Willem didn't like it so it'll hold my starting bat, plan to add a second bat 4 winch & camper use

[Kinder]

Got the front clip set on today, not completely secured since I cut out the inner fenders & the fenders use a lip of them to bolt to, I'll fab up a small piece to replace it. Window frame is bolted in temporarily, it had the old vacuum operated wipers so swapping in the electric will take some fab work. The front fenders are pretty tweaked, I'll spend a bit of time sorting them out and bolt on some big flares to make them look reasonable.

Bleed the clutch today and adjusted the coupling rod I made, this seems to have done the trick on the clutch engaging and I can now shift into reverse without shutting the engine off. I was a little worried about the slave and/or the throw out bearing not engaging the pressure plate sufficiently, I would have had to drop the trans if either needed fixing. Stopped a small leak on the low pressure PS hose & put the front end up in the air and cranked her left and right to help bleed the system, seems good, no whining.

Bolted the seats down as well as the lap belts, I'll be adding some u channel for some of the bolts since they didn't all grab a super secure spot, I'd love to have the bench seat to put back in this thing. Set the seats back about an inch further than stock, I can use the extra leg room and they didn't push back into the qtr opening too bad.

Also messed around with the alternator today, confirmed it was a 3 wire setup and not a 1 wire, I wish I would have grabbed the factory harness off the back for this thing, the plugs are recessed and its going to be tough to get the wires in there securely, I may be digging around the yards for a solution.

I think I'll be adding some small bubbles or cut outs for the hood to clear the intercooler, I could lower it a little if I reworked the passenger side core support body mount, I guess we'll see how close it ends up being and go from there.

Now if only my son would stop asking me to work on his rig I could get this thing finished, dang teenagers!

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[Jesus_man]

Dang-it, I knew I was forgetting something. I meant to tell you that the last time I bled my ZF, I ended up having to actuate it with a pry-bar thru the hole in the bell to get it to bleed all the way. A trick the tranny rebuilder told me about. Internal slaves bring the suck! But maybe you don't have to go that far since it's good now.

[Kinder]

JD, so far it is engaging okay, I'd like it to be setup a little better so I'll mess around with the adjustable rod and try to get it to engage at a level I like. Thanks for the tip on getting the slave to bleed, if I fight it some more I'll employ the method.