Gary Lewis

I forgot about having to shorten the axle. That makes a big difference, and coupled with the need to lift it makes it a non-starter. Ok, the plan makes sense. And, it should make a big difference. I'll be along for the virtual "ride".

Ok, let us know.

Obviously the puppy would appreciate it. As for another truck, you are in the perfect part of the country to keep your eyes open for a good deal. And good deals there are sooooo much better than elsewhere. Perhaps pick up one that doesn't need much and put it to work.

Sounds like you are planning for my favorite time of year out there - September. Kids are back in school so the crowds are smaller and the weather is better. I'm envious - of the trip, but not all the work on the Bronco.

That may not be the thread for this, but this thread is, so... The plan this winter / spring is a pretty major redo of the front suspension (among other things). The goal that started all of this is getting my radius arm mounts up higher. I lowered them a long time ago to fix my caster problems, but they are now a limiting factor. I high-center on them pretty frequently. But raising the radius arm mounts isn't something I can just do. I don't know if you're familiar with the concept of a snowball in projects like these??? So the way it goes is... Raise the radius arm mounts to gain clearance. But that makes the transfer case the lowest point (with no skid plate). I can clock the transfer case higher, but it will hit the frame rail. So... I need to notch out the frame (and then reinforce it obviously) to make room for the transfer case. Also my front driveshaft U-joint angle is currently maxed out, so moving the transfer case front output higher means I need to move the other end of the driveshaft higher too. I plan to do that in two ways. I'm not sure what lift I currently have. I think it's about 3.5", but possibly a bit more. That gives me room for at least 35" tires, maybe 37". But Lesley tells me that I'm not going bigger than 33" tires if I want her to keep coming with me. So I'm planning on putting a shorter lift on it, maybe 1.5" - 2.5". That will hurt my breakover angle a little, but I'll gain closer to 4" - 6" from the radius arm mount change, so it's still a big net gain. But that won't get my U-joint angle low enough, so the other change planned is to rotate the differential forward to raise the pinion. In addition to improving the U-joint angle in the double Cardan joint at the transfer case that will also let me get the angle in the single Cardan U-joint at the diff closer to zero, which will help with the driveline vibration I now have in 4WD. However rotating the axle forward will mess up my caster even more than just raising the radius arm mounts will. And remember, I did that to fix a caster problem originally. So the plan now is to cut the inner "C"s off the axle ends and turn them back to fix the camber. By the way, doing all of that to the front axle begs the question "why not switch to a high pinion diff?" I've thought about that, and while it would be good for U-joint angles, driveshaft clearance and gear strength, "they say" that you need at least a 4" - 6" lift to get a high pinion diff to clear the oil pan. Lesley doesn't want the Bronco to be any higher so that much lift isn't an option, so I'm sticking with the low pinion. Oh, and putting a skid plate under the transfer case seems like a good idea now too. (I'm sure you have no experience with scope creep like that!) I have no experience with creeps, scope or otherwise. But man, that's like a Jeep coming off Black Bear! Rolling, bouncing, and going faster and faster. And yes, I was thinking "high pinion" as I was reading that. But I had no concept that you'd have a problem with the oil pan. No way to solve that with a different pan? While that might mean removing the engine, that might be easier than all the work on the front axle. But, that work should sort out the pinion angle, the caster angle, and gain quite a bit of clearance. So it does seem like you've thought it through. And while I'm sure there will be creeps in your way, I'll bet you overcome them.

My wife is the single messiest person on this planet! She has Eunice stinking of horse poop real bad! Maybe you need another truck? A work truck. Something she can stink up. On the other hand, you and the Husky like the buckets, so use them in the man cave for a while?

Yes, load range E's don't make sense for a purely trail vehicle. But on Big Blue I think they do. And with his weight 15 psi seems to work pretty well. However, the amount of friction that creates is amazing. It would be hard for the truck to roll away unless it was a pretty steep incline. And that surely factors into the 4 MPG. I've actually wondered if 20 psi for the stuff that Janey and I are going to do in January might be a good compromise. Anyway, the NP435's 1st gear is amazing. I sure wish it had an overdrive as that . But, had I gone with 4.10's instead of the 3.55's I'd have had 65:1 in 1st on the ZF5. Still, the 56:1 seems to work pretty well. And the 460 doesn't mind being pulled down either. So, when do you head to Moab? What changes are you making before then? Not that this is the thread for that, but...

What is the problem? Your wife wants to USE the truck?

Those look great! You are going to love them. But how will they hold up to a load of manure?

Been thinking about this a bit. And I don't know how far I want to chase this dream of having the camera shoot through the Ford emblem. Or, maybe I should say have the "front" camera shoot through the emblem. That's because I'm thinking that I missed an opportunity... I measured the rear camera's current draw at something like 275 ma on the red wire and 140 ma on the black wire. And that's obviously quite a bit more then the 260 ma on the red wire for the front camera, and it is likely why the guy that tried using a rear camera in front fried the mirror. But, what if I used a relay? Have the red wire from the mirror pull in a relay, and have the relay then supply all of the current to the red and black wires on the camera. Typically a Bosch relay takes ~200 ma to pull in. So the mirror could easily handle that, and the relay could easily supply power to the camera. Man, just having a waterproof front camera would make all of the difference in the world. Basically I'd be wiring now instead of testing.

My crawl ratio in 1st gear is 56:1, and in 2nd it is 29:1. So you were basically starting in my 2nd gear. Yikes! No wonder you stalled it from time to time. As for airing down, I'm thinking 15 psi was still too high for the light weight of the Jeep and the stiff sidewall of the tires. I'm not seeing much flex in the tires, although I can see a difference in the way the Jeep rode. Didn't you say you are down to something like 12 psi on the Bronco? But we won't compare departure angles. Big Blue isn't in the same league.

Progress is good.

Good job on the interior wiring. Overkill is good. As for the switches, not all trucks came with them on the passenger's side. It was an option at the time. Let me see what switches I have - tomorrow.

That's cool! Glad it worked out for you, and hopefully this can help someone else.

Yup. Welcome to Ford distributors.

She should take a look to couple of threads on this forum! About the rear cam position, I personnaly prefer a higher one. Ball mount can vary, depending the trailer height. If for any reason the ball mount has to be flat or in raised position, a lower positioned cam becomes at risk of being "puched" or damaged by a wrong connecting trailer move. Yes, Gary does tend to get into some technically-difficult projects, like a significant re-wire of Big Blue to bring the electrical system up to 90's standards with fuses and relays, and lots of grounds. And EFI waiting in the wings. On the camera, I agree that height is good - to a point. Remember that I had to angle it down ~35 degrees when it was at the top of the license tag in order to be able to see the ball. And that angle is about as far down as I want to go or I'll start losing the view at the top. So I think placing it at the top of the license tag is going to be about the right height. As for the front camera, I think you missed the discussion about filling those channels in the grille with plastic and epoxy, adding studs to the back of the plastic, milling the top/back edge of the opening flat, and then sealing it with an aluminum plate and RTV. Or, as I think about it, maybe a gasket glued to the plate so it'll seal up against the raised edge of that cavity. But, there's a lot of work to be done 'twixt now and then to find out if it is even going to work. That's because I'm not sure that I can get the right angle of the camera with the clear opening in the oval. And since it is so hard to reach that area once the grille is installed in the truck, I'm going to mock it up on the work bench. I'll put the grille at the same angle it is on the truck, set up something to block the view like the bumper does, and put the draw bar in place. Then I can hold the camera in the cavity and see if it is going to work. My guess is that I'll not only have to drill out the stud hole in the grille but also the hole where the stud was in the bezel. And I suspect that I'll have to make the clear spot even bigger in order to be able to have a clear field of view for the camera. And that is assuming that I can get the clear spot clear enough that it doesn't distort the view.

I agree with Dane - I like the factory tachs. When I got Big Blue it had a huge tach that obscured part of the speedo strapped to the steering column. I removed it and added a factory tach. Not too worried how accurate it is, but it works well. Steve - You are lucky that Ford discontinued the idiot lights for '86, so we know you have gauges. And that is important as you can only add a tach to the gauge cluster, and on the trucks with gauges have the right wiring.

Next time get some pics of the lights? I'm curious what you saw.

Now you are getting into some more difficult stuff! Hard to tell in the first video how steep it is, but you get some sense of it when the back end of the Jeep walks a bit as the locker kicks in. But that rock crawling was awesome! The Jeep was pretty well dialed in, save for the carb ("Don't stall it!") and it sure came up those rocks nicely - although it didn't seem to do the bumpers any good. But you were down to 15 psi on the 2nd video? Didn't look like it in the first video, although in the 2nd they did seem a bit softer. Yes?

They might work. You can check their tension by hooking one of them to one of the existing springs and pulling to see which one gives first. Obviously that is the one that will let the timing advance faster. But, there's also the length. IIRC, one of the springs has an oversized loop on one end that lets the other spring control everything until you hit the end of the loop So the length has to be right as well.

Yep, I'm keenly aware of "the onion / snow ball". Been there, done that, continue to do that, and have done it sooooo many times I feel at home doing it. On the lighting, I've read that there are illegal LED systems that actually say SAE on them. I don't know if that's true or not, but according to Daniel Stern there are far more very poor LED headlights than there are good ones. So beware.

Well, as I think about it you are slightly into another never-never land. You need a lower speedo cable for an E4OD, but the twain never met. Saying it another way, one-piece cables were introduced in 1986 and the E4OD was introduced in 1989. So no trucks were built with E4ODs and two-piece cables. So you may have to have a cable made, which shouldn't be that hard. But I think the first thing you'll have to do is to measure to see what length cable you need, and I think you might want to do that by using a cable you already have to snake down there and either add or subtract some inches. Then you might get lucky and find a lower cable in the table below. However, let me pontificate a moment. John/Machspeed and I recently had a discussion about what information we ought to have on this site. His take was that it should be Bullnose info only. Mine was that we should include a wider range, in models and years, since we might want to pick a part from another model or year. And this discussion is a perfect example of why I said that. Our documentation for speedo cables excludes the E-Series vans. But, in looking at the MPC I found that there is one cable that is 82" long and it is for 1980-85 vans. And it seems to me that since the vans used the same VSS modules and same transmissions a van lower cable should work. So I created the new table, below, just for this conversation. And now back to our regularly-scheduled program - perhaps you can use one of these cables?

I’m out and can’t look up the numbers now, but will when I get home. However I think you have the cable from the VSS to the speed. But the one to the tranny doesn’t look right. As you said, it needs to be like the other VSS.

The function to send an email does not appear to be working for me. I fill everything out, verify I'm not a robot, and click the "send" button but nothing happens. I tried it several times and I don't think it ever did anything. The button is not grayed out or anything, just unresponsive. My email is the same as my user id, just with a period between first and last name, and the rest of it is @att.net. Shoot me an email and I'll send my snail mail address. I agree with what you are saying about the part numbers, it's just that I haven't seen where the vendors sell parts based on the part number very much. Seems like everyone uses the engineering number to describe the part, thus making it the de facto part number. But like I said, I find the whole thing confusing and maybe the part numbers and engineering numbers are similar or the same or subsets of one another. Although that would make me wonder why there is a master cross-reference. I haven't been playing with 80's Fords long enough to know what's what. Thanks! I got all of your emails. Forgot to say the function works but doesn’t look like it does. As for the part numbers, the uneducated sell based on the ID number, but Ford dealers and those who know what they are talking about usually use the part number or both. I was educated by one of the best, Bill/Numberdummy, and choose to use the numbers correctly. While it may look like I’m just being difficult, the documentation on this site is from Ford’s MPC and it uses part numbers. So we need to use them or people cannot look the part up.

Bill - You are right. This is one of those things where I'd bet Ford consolidated the remaining VSS and speedo cables from the earlier version at certain plants and installed them until they run out.