1986 Bronco II needs some love.

[boomnog]

Hello! New to the forum and Broncos in general so I'm looking for some advice.

Started a project 86 BII last year with my dad in Colorado. Put in tons of work, lift, suspension, new steering everything, regeared, replaced cylinder heads. 8.8 swap etc.
Only issue is I live in the bay (SF) and am now without tools and space to keep working on the project on my own, and I've had some issues pop up.

So now I'm looking to invest some money and take it to a shop to fix a few things. I understand this is gonna be a bit of weighty post, but any thoughts or recommendations on any of the below would be greatly appreciated!

1) First problem is wiring. Fuse box had a minor fuse-explosion so it's about 1/4 fried. As far as I can tell right now it only affects the turn signals, and occasionally the radio, I can live without addressing it just yet but I'd like to just get it replaced and taken care of. Anyone have good recommendations for a shop to take care of the wiring? Would it be reasonable to assume if I can find a replacement box I could handle the wiring myself with careful labelling?

2) Bigger problem is the clutch is going out. It still shifts but started hearing some gnarly noises getting into first gear. I know pretty little about clutches tbh, but I've read you can either pull the engine or the transmission to take care of it. Anyone have any experience with replacing an old ranger/bii clutch issues or know of a good mechanic to take a look?

3) And the biggest issue is just last week started having an idle where it will run normal and drop low to just barely running. Drove it a mile and the engine was just totally gutless at times too. I'm assuming a vacuum leak at minimum, but would love to find someone/a shop to take a look at it and let me know if it's anything worse.

There's a few other smaller things I'm thinking about such as an electric fan, and the slight issue of the e-brake not exactly working but... I'll deal with those later.

Thanks in advance! Attached an obligatory photo as a peace offering.

[CityHick]

I don't know much about the Bronco II but to an extent, a car is a car, right?
I'd be curious to know exactly what happened to your fuse box and what caused it, to avoid the same thing happening again. Do you know what happened? No shame if you did something to let the smoke out of some wires - we've all done that...

I doubt that you're going to find another stock fuse box as I haven't even seen any BIIs in junkyards much less on the street, in ages. Ford did build a ton of them though, so who knows! I would think that something like this would make a suitable replacement: Painless Performance 30001 Universal Pre-Wired 14-Circuit Fuse Block. I have long thought that if a vehicle's wiring is still solid but for whatever reason one wants to replace just the fuse box, this would make it fairly simple since the wires all screw to terminals at the box.

I am not much help on locating a shop for any of this... the transmission shop that I knew and trusted, is gone (guy retired). Good luck to you!

[boomnog]

Appreciate the response!

I'm not sure what happened to the box to be honest, it was like that first time I got in to look at it. Wouldn't be surprised if the last owner melted a fuse, never looked at it and just let it keep frying.

Thanks for the tip on the universal box though. I was looking at something similar and kind of assumed the same, so it's good to hear I'm not out of line for thinking that would be a clean swap. Might feel confident enough to give that one a go myself and save some money for the other issues.

[pippinmader]

Sweet looking bronco II! I would totally replace the stock fuse block with a new universal one that uses regular blade fuses, seems like $20 well spent. Fuses that don't work consistently will drive you crazy and can result in intermittent issues that are almost impossible to track down (maybe your idle issue is electrical? Definitely check grounds!). So I would definitely do that before you work on the engine issues.

I did a clutch in a 1986 ford ranger, then rolled it over a week later, so be careful LOL. It wasn't that hard, but definitely time consuming when I was 17. If you only hear it in first it almost sounds more like a transmission than a clutch?

[Lars]

What they said ^^^^^^

This forum is pretty much a bunch of early Bronco (66-77) gearheads. The B II's were different animals. That said, that's the nicest looking Bronco II I've seen, in like oh, forever.

There is a lot of tech info on therangerstation.com. I spent a few minutes (actually a lot of minutes) looking around. You probably have a failing transmission, and if you do, it's worth upgrading it to a newer version. Yours is probably made by Mitsubishi; the desired replacement, assuming you can find one, is made by Mazda. Sounds like a near direct swap.

As for the electrical issues, if the fuse panel is melted then some circuit protection device didn't do its job. Normally fuses/circuit breakers blow and the thing doesn't melt. Hard to say what happened without seeing it. I agree that a universal box is attractive, but only if you can figure out what went wrong first.

[69crawler]

I just recently used Bayshore transmission in Burlingame.

[Efibroncoman]

Bigger problem is the clutch is going out. It still shifts but started hearing some gnarly noises getting into first gear. I know pretty little about clutches tbh, but I've read you can either pull the engine or the transmission to take care of it. Anyone have any experience with replacing an old ranger/bii clutch issues or know of a good mechanic to take a look?

My first vehicle was an ‘84 Bronco II. I did a lot of work on that before I had an EB. Changing a clutch in those is pretty simple actually. The transfer case and transmission are really lightweight. You really don’t even need a transmission jack. Definitely replace the throw out bearing and pilot bearing when you change the clutch and have your flywheel surfaced as well. If that doesn’t take care of the noise you heard you could be needing new synchros in your transmission. As for your running issue, I’d check for cracked vacuum lines, probably want to replace all of them if it hasn’t been done. Age and heat are not nice to rubber. Beyond that, your could have some built up gunk on sensors or your MAF. I would clean the throttle body and MAF before throwing parts at it.

[boomnog]

Thanks for the responses everyone! Appreciate y'all taking a break from your regularly scheduled programming to help with my BII.

Slight update took it to a shop in Soma to get it running again. Turns out the idle problem was the fuel pump failing so got that replaced. They tried to upsell me on a whole bunch of other stuff - 2k for a full new exhaust system etc, so probably won't go back, but at least she drives again.

No sounds from the transmission since the fuel pump replacement, so... I'm just going to ignore that for now and pretend that problem doesn't exist.

Next stop will be Auto Sound Performance in Daly City to take care of the wiring. They did a sleeper fog light install for me a few months ago and generally seem willing to work to find economic/clever solutions to things. Will let y'all know how that turns out.