Pippin's Pricey Perpetual Project ;)

[earlybronco72]

Re: Pippin's Pricey Perpetual Project

My wife wouldn't come out and check on me unless the dogs were in the garage with me.
Way to go.

[California Monkey]

Re: Pippin's Pricey Perpetual Project

that looks really nice. I like the motor mounts

[CityHick]

Re: Pippin's Pricey Perpetual Project

You are moving right along on this... it looks good, and the fact it's alive is even better. Open exhaust is fun

[pippinmader]

Re: Pippin's Pricey Perpetual Project

I guess it is time for an update. When I got so close to getting it on the road I kind of gave up on documenting anything. Overall it all works together better than I ever thought it could, there are some advantages to getting older and in less of a hurry. I think the steering is tighter than my 2004 superduty and the hydroboost brakes are “aggressive” It goes straight down the road, I am not even scared to go over 55 mph anymore! Ran it up to 85 on the freeway and other than being windy it was great! I haven’t had a chance to try it out offroad much except a tiny bit at broncoctober fest (thanks Jeff).

I don’t believe you can have too much power, but it does seem to have enough, enough to break both 35” rear tires loose in second gear at a rolling 10 mph on dry pavement, and enough to break them loose again when you shift into third. The beauty of EFI is you can have a hot engine that will still idle nicely in traffic and pull away smoothly from 1000 RPMs. I took my dad for a spin to show him what it would do, and then ask him if he wanted to try it, he never let go of the roll bar and just shook his head.

Here are a few things:

Radiator:
Went with a champion aluminum reversed inlet/outlet radiator, it works really nice although you do have to use 4 core radiator mounts. Since nothing is stock I decided to make my own radiator shroud which is cheap but SUPER time consuming. With it all finished up it seems to work/look real nice. The only issue I had was running the reversed inlet/outlet AND the explorer oil cooler made the lower radiator hose about 6 inches long and straight. It turns out there is a reason no stock setups are like this, it is almost impossible to get the hose on the ends, I sure hope I never have to replace that hose.

Exhaust:
As awesome as open headers are, I had to deal with exhaust. After asking around the consensus ( thanks Lars) was a build-your-own kit was the way to go, I went with the flow mater 2.5 inch kit with H pipe. Did you know Flowmaster is right here in West Sacramento? Building exhaust doesn’t turn out to be hard, but welding under a vehicle sucks, I ended with about 10 burns in my elbow from sparks running down my sleeves. I used mufflers from a 2012 5.0 mustang, they are nice (and FREE!) but TAKE UP A TON OF SPACE. If I had to do it again I might go with something from the aftermarket to save some space, they do sound nice though, not to loud but you know there is a V8 in there!

Tuning the ECU:
It turned out the engine would actually start and idle using the stock mustang tune, I never tried driving it that way though. I was very concerned with how tuning was going to go but it was much easier than I thought, I used a quarter horse chip and changes 3 things to make the EDIS work properly, input the injector parameters I found on the ford racing website, found a transfer table for the lightning MAF on EECtuning.org, turned off the EGR and smog pump, changed the idle speed, and compensated for long tube headers all on my desktop computer. From there it was just plug and play, it just ran from the very beginning; how awesome is fuel injection!?!?

Misc:
I snagged a family cage (thanks Muddy) which only needed minor modifications to fit under a hard top and now I have shoulder belts front and back, safety first especially with a car seat! Put in a new auxiliary fuel tank (thanks Bronco Brian) which took some modification to fit the way I wanted but it is nice to have another 12 gal of fuel.

Next:
Paint, now it is definitely time to save up for paint!
New main fuel tank - Ryan is hooking me up with his "old" aftermarket fuel tank, I plan on welding a new skid plate bottom on it and having almost 35 gallons of capacity.
Wiring - does it ever end, still need to mount the engine light and wire in the wipers.

[Henry66]

Re: Pippin's Pricey Perpetual Project

I could see you getting bored with it and start building an airplane like some other person around here.

[California Monkey]

Re: Pippin's Pricey Perpetual Project

I'm green with envy

[crawlin68]

Re: Pippin's Pricey Perpetual Project

Very nice Pippin. Do you have any pics of your headers? I have wanted to build a custom set of headers from scratch for many years. One of these days I will down that far on my to do list!

[pippinmader]

Re: Pippin's Pricey Perpetual Project

Thanks Henry, Rich, and Patrick!
I don't know about airplanes, but a kit car with a coyote 5.0 does sound fun!

The headers are just long tubes from Wild Horses, I only built the exhaust from the collector back.

[jperry1290]

Re: Pippin's Pricey Perpetual Project

Pippin here is the paint I was talking about http://www.tcpglobal.com/RestorationShop/

[pippinmader]

Re: Pippin's Pricey Perpetual Project

Trail test resulted in some issues, my power steering reservoir is from a 2003 Ford Superduty mounted to the inner fender seemed like a great idea when I installed it (see above post) but it turns out it does not work good for a high power or off-road rigs. When I accelerate hard or am climbing a steep hill it starves the pump because the reservoir is real flat and not mounted directly above the pump. I called PSC, but they wanted a fortune for a “universal” reservoir that would still require major modifications to fit. I eventually decided on making my own, the shape and size were dictated by the space under the hood and the piece of aluminum I found at Blue Collar Supply. Here are a few pictures, I used a weld-in cap and ¾ NPT bung from summit racing. I had to modify the Explorer bracket to make the pump supply line work and I may have to “adjust” the cross brace under the hood a tiny bit, but overall it seems to be working right now, although I haven’t had it at weird angles yet.

[California Monkey]

Re: Pippin's Pricey Perpetual Project

I like your level line on the outside. no cooler in line for your power steering?

[pippinmader]

Re: Pippin's Pricey Perpetual Project

I am using an automatic transmission cooler for a v8 ford explorer as an oversized power steering cooler. Only the flow from the power steering goes through it (not the hydroboost).

[tim]

Re: Pippin's Pricey Perpetual Project

That's pretty cool Pippin. The level tube is a cool idea.

[Filgas]

Re: Pippin's Pricey Perpetual Project

It looks like you moved the coilpacks to behind the intake. Looks much cleaner than mine. I like it.

[pippinmader]

Re: Pippin's Pricey Perpetual Project

Always use protection……bumpers, rocker guards, diff cover, and pinion guard.

I got tired of my crappy tube bumpers that really didn’t protect the body so I upgraded to a set of “impact series” bumpers from Tom’s, thanks to McDobson for bring them down, enjoy the . The rear bumper went on with minimal effort since it all I had to do was modify it for a future spare tire carrier.

The front on the other hand needed major “adjustments.” The first problem I ran into was that this bronco had clearly hit something in the past….hard….and the front frame horns were totally mangled, the solution that someone found was to pound a piece of 2x4 steel tube inside the mangled frame and weld it in place. I cut off all the old metal and replaced the front 6 inches of frame with all new steel.

The bumper also needed some modifications; the stock mounting points put the bumper up REALLY high, like the top of the bumper was even with the lower openings in the grill and was at least 3 inches higher than the rear bumper. It looked like a recipe for a rock to the lower radiator to me and I wanted to use my 8274 winch, which is really tall…..so the mounts had to go and new ones were welded on two inches lower. Then to mounting the 8274, which Tom’s explicitly said didn’t fit; they were right. I had to cut the whole front of the bumper out and put in a new piece that allowed the winch to sit down about another 2 inches into the bumper, if you look closely you can see the bump hanging down. A trip to the Rubicon also showed that roller fair leads are not that “impact resistant” unless you weld all the flanges together.

For rocker guards I wanted to use the brake formed ones that cover the stock rockers but still stick out to protect the doors in case I get too friendly with a rock or tree. I started with the blanks from west coast broncos and finished the ends by compound mitering them at 45 degrees and 30 degrees so they will ride up on an obstacle and push the bronco away at the same time. I am happy with how they turned out considering I finished them up at 11:00 at night before my first Rubicon shakedown run (Broncos unite, Pipelayer!).

To round out my protection package I went with the Blue Torch dana 44 diff cover and the Ruff Stuff 9” pinion guard. So everything has worked well, although my paint/primer is hardly worth protecting. I took it through little sluice with no major damage! This past week I also took a trip up into the coast range with my brother (previous owner). Where he photobombed the bronco!

Next: Atlas time!