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Found this bad boy and picked it up yesterday!   Looks like we're gonna be doing a 5spd swap in the 96 bronco this winter... Next up i had to finish the hinge. So i started by welding in that second xmember i made a while back, along with a piece of 4"x.250" plate underneath the whole frame, to give myself a place to bolt the bed to the hinge. In this pic its just clamped in place:  With that sorted, i drilled holes for four bolts (the previous dump conversion only used two), and i then added two gussets to it, to stiffen the area up:
So this means, with the use of the gantry, i can now tilt the bed!  So now theres two more issues to deal with. #1 is the front bed support:  Currently i just have it sitting on a piece of 2x2 box. Im probably going to use a longer piece, and then make tabs to bolt it to the frame + make guides to align the front of the bed. it doesnt necessarily need it but will make it more stable when loaded, The second is dealing with the mount for the scissor. Looking closely you can see it almost lines up with the existing xmembers in the bed:  Im planning on building a new one to fit the bed better, but it gave me an idea. So i grabbed one of the old frame rails i cut off, and made two more xmembers out of it:  ...and welded in! They line up with two of the small i-beams that support the bed floor, so theyre welded into the frame rails, and those beams, which should stiffen up the middle section of the bed significantly:  My next move is going to be to build a new frame for the scissor that will bolt to those two xmembers, and then the bed will go up and down by itself again! Rewind to 2018, and you have the hinges i first built for the dump conversion  Now, those hinges and have been joined together, with a piece of 4x.5" plate:  I wanted to remove the rear tank, but that necessitated the removal of the trailer hitch, so off it came!  Tank removed. This one wont be going back in (more on that later)  Looking at this side of the frame rail, we have some rust to deal with  With the hangar off, you can see how rough the frame is 
So step one of the repair required making a backing plate that fit inside the frame rail. Its bolted in at the corners, and i transferred the 4 holes for the helper spring pad, so i could cut the bad section out, without having to worry about getting the pad back in the correct place later:  I cut the bad section out of the frame, and made a patch to fill the void. I purposely didnt do a square, over concerns of creating a stress point in the corners. I intentionally made the patch small so i could burn into the back plate when welding it in, as i have no intention of removing it.  Vertical section welded and ground, tacking in the top section now
All done welding, ground and painted
the back plate is now fully welded into the frame as well  Moving on from there, i grabbed one of the old frame rails i cut off the aluminum bed, to try to get an idea of how the bed is going to fit onto the frame  All this really showed me though, it that i could do all the mockups i want, but really i just need to bring the bed outside and get it sitting on the frame. So, outside it went!  On its way down  ...and onto the frame it goes!
 For now its just sitting there, with the bed rails c-clamped to the hinge so it doesnt move. The next step is going to be to get the rear crossmember built so the bed can actually be bolted to the hinge... This update has been slow in the making. First up, the bed had to come off:  Located safely in the toolbox is my water/methanol injection pump & tank, which also had to come out:
Bumper, taillights & associated wiring removed:  ..and off the bed came!  I set it down on the back of the donor Superduty  ...and the successfully scabbed it onto the frame!  I had to put a couple notches in & make a couple simple spacers, at which point i simply drilled new holes in the bed floor and bolted it down to the trucks frame! Whipped up a simple license plate bracket, and then sold the truck for $1k, which is almost half of what i originally bought it for! Lost some time troubleshooting a drivability issue in the '90 Bronco. Started running rich but no codes. Took me a longer than im willing to admit, to figure out the ECU had failed. In addition to the usual capacitor failure, we also had a resistor blow  A buddy fixed the ECU for me, but im my troubleshooting i replaced the injectors, assuming i had a sticky one. After reinstalling the ECU the bronco ran just as bad if not worse; some more troubleshooting revealed that one of the reman injectors had failed and was stuck open, just dumping fuel down the intake. So back apart she came:  I ended up putting the original injectors back in (the ones i had rebuilt myself about a year ago) and now its back to running just fine again! The moral of the story is, troubleshoot better, and dont assume the ECU in a 33 year old vehicle is still good!  |
