1984 Bronco build thread

Thanks Guys! I couldnt get the picture tool to work yesterday, Ill try again today. Ill try to include photos of the valve cover spacer, the new electrical infrastructure, etc.

When I say it drank half a gallon of coolant, that was in the first few minutes of the run and I assume it was from filling the heater core, manifold heating pocket,  and working out trapped air bubbles in the head.

Its good to know that Im not crazy about the starter sounding different. Oddly enough, I wired mine with a jumper from the batt post to the start signal post on the starter instead of moving the power lead to the starter solenoid start post. The idea of that long and large of a lead without a switch or fuse scares me. I know thats how all of the newer vehicles are. I may just have to spend some time getting comfortable with wire routing for that one.

It took me a bit of effort to do, but I think the electrical work will pay off in the ease of service and expansion as well as reliability. And it looks cleaner.

For now, my stated plan is to put the MSD box right where you suggest, on the wheel well infront of the DS2 box mount location. Its reasonably weather protected, far from exhaust heat on a L6 engine, and probably no worse than anywhere else under hood in terms of vibration. I initially wanted to mount it in the pocket in the driver side fender where the tire iron goes but it is actually too big to go in that spot. Figures.

Jim,
If I ever have a need to go back to a mechanical pump Ill focus on carters. I think this one was a delphi. Thanks!

GM & Mopar have been 100% hot at the
starter  forever....


Do NOT jumper the starter solenoid from the cable and have both coming off the fender relay.
This should be explained (in detail!) in Gary's primer on PMGR upgrades so I'm not going to get into it, and I don't mean to criticize.

Jim,
No criticism taken. I recognize that what Ive done causes both solenoids to carry the full current for the starter, and that there is no reason not to run power from the battery to the starter in electrical terms. It sure is how this starter was intended to be used not to mention just anout every other late make vehile on the planet. Short of that, is it likely to cause any damage or loss of performance?

The starter motor can (will!) backfeed the solenoid and cause it to hesitate disengaging the drive gear.

In a really bad case it could hold the starter on, because the only reason to have one (except for headers) is to keep the fender relay from welding closed, and the starter from turning constantly.

By using the fender relay output, you haven't accomplished the whole purpose for the mod...

As food for thought, in trucks that dont use the I terminal of the starter solenoid, the starter solenoid could be eliminated completely by running the wire from the s terminal down to the pmgr solenoid and landing the starter cable on the battery

Huh. I didnt realize that was a risk. I may have more wiring work to do! Thanks Jim!

Look at the documentation.
My starter solenoid is 40 amps to pull and 13 amps to hold.
You don't want to even think about running that through your ignition switch....
And that's why I say run a 10-12 gauge wire from the fender relay down to the starter solenoid.

Ford didn't include the fender relay on the 94+ trucks to pee away money.
But they did screw up, using a spade terminal down there where it's sure to get corroded.

Jim is way ahead of me on that, but I agree with what he said.

Further since you are setting up relays for everything, I tried running the PMGR starter's relay using a 40A Bosch relay.  It worked for a while but started causing the starter to disengage & re-engage during a start.  Awful sound!

I then called Powermaster, who made the starter, and they said NOT to do what I'd done, in no uncertain terms, but to use the fender mounted relay.  So I went back to having the key trigger the big fender-mounted starter relay to then pull in the starter's own relay and it works nicely.

I'm still on the cheap Chinese 40 amp relay that came with my tiny fuse box....

Holy smokes. I had no clue that the pmgr solenoid would draw that kind of amperage. It looks like I need to go back to the board on this one. Sorry and thank you!

Do you guys have any good tricks for landing so many leads on tge starter solenoid batt post and the battery terminal? Currently or in the near future, those two locations will need to host the battery-starter solenoid lead, the starter solenoid to starter lead, my winches hot cable, the MSD power wire, the truck harness power wire, and the leads that feed my two new fender mounted relays. Thats a lot! Most of those are size 4 wires with the exception of the winch (size 2), the feed to the truck, the MSD, and one of the two relays (size 10).

We have 3G alternators.
You can bring terminals to the hot to the fused post of the mega fuse holder.

Actually, Gary and I both have power distribution centers.
Mine is quite a bit less complex than his.  😂

Yes, exactly.  We have the 3G and mega fuse holders, so some of the wires come off that.  But I also have an aux battery on the driver's side and some wires come off there, including the winch and the inverter wires.  I've included my schematic for that below.  But if you want to see how the power distribution boxes are wired look in the first post here.

As for the PMGR's relay, don't miss that I have a Powermaster and I think Jim is running one from DB Electric.  Powermaster does their own thing and the pull-in current for theirs may be totally different from the standard approach that Motorcraft used, which is what the DB probably is.

And I don't know that it was current draw or back EMF that caused the problem.  But I do know that there was a significant problem and the massive fender-mounted relay fixed it.

Gary,

That is very interesting indeed. I recently gathered all of the manuals for all of my upgrade components as well as printed copies of the ford 1984 service manual for my driveline, factory ignition, etc and bound it all. The goal is to have all service information for factory parts or aftermarket upgrades available in a hard copy. Now that I have a gathering point for this info Im doing a better job of documenting the work. Ive been drawing hand sketched wiring diagrams for everything I have added and will continue to do so. A master service parts list would be mighty handy too. Ill certainly look to big blues documentation for inspiration.

You might consider the approach I'm using.  Knowing that any documentation I do may have mistakes that I'll find later, I've created documents that I then embed in the first post of Big Blue's Transformation thread.  By doing it that way when I find errors and/or make changes those changes are immediately shown in the first post.

For instance, recently I discovered that the charging and power distribution schematic didn't include a bunch of stuff, but it did include all of the detail for the passenger's side power distribution box.  And that detail kept me from adding other necessary details.  So I moved the PS PDB detail off that schematic and made it stand alone.  Ditto for the driver's side PDB.  And that gave me room to detail out the whole charging system.

And then I print the individual pages or documents and add them to the 3-ring binder that lives in Big Blue's console.  So no matter where he goes the info is available to fix or troubleshoot him.

Here are some photos of what Ive been working on. I dont recall how to fix photo rotation issues, they need to be rotate before uploading, right?

Rocker arm shims installed

Tracing out the valve cover spacer



New ground bus bars on the front fender

new relays and fuse blocks on the passenger side fender


Never mind the ring terminals bolted down on the starter solenoid bolt, those are old grounds which have been replaced. Ill remove those and run a new ground from the starter solenoid body to the ground bus. I may land several of my leads ion the fuse for the alternator, that was a good idea I hadnt considered yet.

why is it that you needed to use 1/4" worth of washers to shim the rockers? and i have not shimmed them that way. I use the rectangular shims that fit inside the retainer channel. even then only12,20,30 thousandths thick. did you get longer rocker bolts to keep thread purchase in the head the same before torquing them on fewer threads?

Hi Matt,
Infact, that is actually 0.150" worth of ground shims. They do look an awful lot like washers though. They are greater in diameter than the width of the retainer channel.

That tall shim pack is required because of the longer chevy valves.

I did find longer bolts and with careful selection in washers between the top of the rocker arm and the rocker bolt head I was able to keep thread engagement withing 2 turns of the originals.

very good. I'm glad it was thought through. I see much that is not thought through and sometimes we get to fix it. as to the chevy valves, are they 2.02 in a 4.9 head?

Thanks Matt. They are 1.94" valves. I wont pretend to be a 300 head air flow expert, but people on ford 6 occasionally talk like anything much bigger than a 1.94 may not offer much bennefit because of shrouding issues. You do occasionally see 2.02 valves but the require you to modify the combustion chamber.

Hi everyone. Ive made a bit more progress. Ive finished (for now) working on wiring including rewiring my starter. I received my pushrods and I also finished roughing out the valve cover spacer. The spacer doesnt look like much but it was a suprising bit of work to cut it out with a jig saw. I will finish it with a diegrinder inside and out. There will probably be several hours worth of work in that.

Im not really pleased with the mess of wires around the battery, starter solenoid and my two new relays. I dont believe any of it will be prone to ground out which is my first concern, but its a birds nest for sure. Ill have to think some on how to remidy this. I will remake my G3 harness soon, I may find an opportunity to incorporate a partial solution to this problem.

The new starter trigger (10, red) is strapped down tight to the frame rails along with the starter ground and the O2 meter harness. I placed the batt-to-starter wire in its own dedicated loom and placed only enough tension on its zip ties to guide it down the frame. Im preoccupied with the idea of that large cable ground and causing terrible damage. I may revisit my strategy here as well, but it will ride for now I think.