Bound4Dixie's 70 Build Up

[bound4dixie]

Welp, after all the procrastination and such. I bit the bullet and bought some new parts for the 70. Finally got a corner cleaned out in the shop to stick her and celebrated Labor Day Bronco Style. I worked most of Monday and only got into part of the teardown.

Sorry about some of the blurry pictures, I'm just gettin used to the new camera phone.

Here she is right after I pulled her in the shop.


Got both doors off and a lot of the rotted away weather stripping. Looks like I'm gonna be looking at some new floor pans in the future.



Pulled off the hood. A previous owner decided to put plenty of thick bondo on the front and cut the main support rib above the carburetor. I guess that intake and 4V was just a little too tall. Good thing is that I got another hood that should just need a little surface rust removal.

Used the chain hoist and some straps to remove the steel top. That wonderful 2" iron pipe roll cage in the bed just made the top removal a PITA.




I didn't take long before I got tired of continually pumping up the old worn out tires each time that I wanted to roll the bronco around in the shop. Luckily I had a near new (blue still on the white walls) tires that came on my 78 when I bought it. For some reason they just happened to be 33x9.50x15. Perfect!



They clear on concrete, but I don't think I'd chance it on much of a dip





I did find out that an old tobacco trailer, half dozen bales of hay, and some straps make a nice little hard top rig



And under that top I found my original color...I'm pretty sure it's boxwood green. I haven't check for a paint code yet, but it was the same color under the windshield hinge rubber. There are at least a couple more shades of green, red primer, blue, and silver chipping off from various parts of the body.



But, here she is so far. Hopefully I'll get some more done this weekend.



Parts in waiting currently:
3.5" Wild Horses Lift w/ new bushings all around
F250 Shock Towers
2" Body Lift w/ new body bushings
Front Disc Brake Conversion
Power Brake Conversion
Warn Hubs
Headers
Dual 40 Series Flowmasters

More to come when time and money allow...

[snipes243]

looking good man:beer:

[bone collector]

lookin good if you need some help and give me a bit of notice id like to come lend ya a hand if ya need it I dont know much but I love wrenching and drinkin beer

[berg bronco]

nice thread ill be watching this bronco grow.

[broncomania]

looks great.

[bound4dixie]

Thanks Guys. It's a work in progress. So...I got a little more tear down done this past Saturday.

After a lot of PB Blaster and wrenching, I finally got the front fenders/grill off so that I could get a better look at those rusty inner fender aprons.


So...There's good and bad. The bad is that someone that owned it before me decided they really liked bondo and must have had a fleet sized tub. Most of the fenders are bondo.



I pulled off upto 1/4" thick chunks of it! After pulling back some of the bondo at one of the seams, I found that the front grill was welded to fenders.



I was hoping to salvage at least the front grill, but I might have a long row to hoe after seeing this:




Yeah that's a lot of bondo in the corners.

Both of the aprons are shot, but the kick panels seem to be pretty solid except the part where it overlaps with the apron:



After removing the heater box intake and cleaning away a half inch of Wyoming dirt, I found an interesting line in the sheetmetal. Is this stock or what?


Found a little rust on the front side of the striker posts. I'm gonna have to investigate it a little more.


Got the front bumper pulled, but had to get out the blue wrench because somebody bent the horns up badly with what looks like some log chains they used at some point to pull the bronco.


All in all there's not quite as much rust as I imagined, but the amount of bondo makes me wonder what other surprises I might find...

[berg bronco]

it looks good those inner fenders arent that bad nice progress

[Mill Knob]

Your lower door post look good. If it was me I would go ahead and replace the inner kick panels. While you have the old kick panels off you could buy some Por15 and put in your door post so they will not rust away. The core support in the pictures looks great. Looks like you have alot to work with. The crest that you found under your air box, I have never seen any thing like that before. Keep up the good work. What kind of Welder do you have that you are going to weld the panels back with.Wish you were a little closer. I would help you out. Maybe you could have a wrench party at your house.

[bound4dixie]

Yeah, its not as bad as I thought and as bad as I've seen online. I think I will be able to patch a lot of the existing panels on the core. I might get a new set of inner fender aprons just because they are torn up and rusted in some hard to repair spots, but we'll see.

This is my first dive into bronco sheetmetal and body work in general so I'm learning as I go.

I was planning on trying to coat as much of the backside of some of the problem areas with something like por-15 or chassis saver. I was planning on just trying to repair the existing kick panels and probably replace the bottom of the front of the door posts. I guess it would be best to just remove it and the front floor boards to give plenty of access to the back of the door posts. Is that the best/only way to get into the door posts to coat them?

You can see part of my welder in the first picture I posted. I have a Millermatic 251 w/ spool gun. It is able to do about everything I want in a MIG.

I'll see how far I can get, but I might have to have a wrench party at some point to get some expert help :xyxthumbs:

[blazinchuck]

no problem...keep us posted, should be a great project