Ms Piggy. Black and Blue!

[nhopman]

Don't know, I'm just the idea man - making it work is up to the fabricator.

[broncosbybart]

I had one Bronco that had the rear legs attached via the bumper. It worked but I didn't like it very much. I agree about the rear bar being a hassle for dragging things in and out but I do plan to make framework for a rear seat. It will be suspended above the floor anyway. I don't know of a better way to do it. I might make a 'platform' to sit on the top of the tube work to act as a floor section. Still in the thought process though. I'm all ears to ideas.

Today I started the removal process for the engine/trans/t-case. WAHOO!!

In the process, I've run across a metric ton of unnecessary wires. Need any Chuzie??

[nhopman]

Would you be running enough body lift to run a bar under the floor and above the frame rails? You could use square or rectangle tube instead of round.

[chuzie]

Sure. I still have some spits under the hood that aren't insulated with random useless wires.

Sent from my GS3 on CyanogenMod with tapatalk2

[jac77]

Nice work looking good, will the cage be tied into the frame? I was thinking somewhat the same but putting it under the seat, running tube front to back then under seat just my 2 cents, looking very good can't wait to get started on the one floating around in my head. Thanks and great job on keeping us posted. : )

[broncosbybart]

Thanks for the input all.

Jac77, not sure I'm following you but am curious as to what you are planning. My cage will be tied to the rock skis which will go to the frame at the front legs and main hoop. For the rear hoop, I was planning to use the rear body mount bolts as a shared body mount/roll cage mount. I am planning to run a rear bench seat in it and want to tie it into the roll cage cleanly.

I really need to get a Bronco on the road. Today we had 4 of us at the Uwharrie workday with 2 vehicles. Great work day but we had 1 Bronco and 1 Heep. The Heep does fine, but c'mon...

[rtj731]

Bart,
Do you have a DWG of the removable inner fenders? I got motivated and removed the fenders, grill assy.

[66Roadster]

So, why is it named Grabber?

[broncosbybart]

For a catchy name that no one understands.

Grabber for what is yet to come. I've always wanted to paint a Bronco blue, even before it was cool... Guess it is because blue is emy foavorite color and for some reason my partially color blind eyes really likes the color of grabber blue and machinery gray accents together. So, expect this thing to end up blue and gray.

Sorry Jay, no drawings for the removable apron, but I can snap a few pics of what I did and take a stab at explaining my thoughts behind how it will work. My ramblings may or may not make sense. It will be a task for me for tomorrow or over the weekend.

Did some more work on it today. No real wrenching, just some cutting, fitting, and tack welding.

Plans are to use a fold and tumble rear seat. I began making some support brackets for the forward mounting locations. There are 2 of these brackets, 1 left and 1 right. They are mirror copies of each other and I cut these out of some angle laying around. The large holes are 5/8" and the bottom holes are 5/16". These brackets will bolt to the roll cage support structure, making the seat entirely removable if need ever arises.

The 5/8" hole is a little big for the post in the Jeep TJ seat, but the original TJ seat brackets have a little plastic bushing that I'm going to remove and use in these brackets to keep it all quiet. The posts on the TJ seats are actually 1/2" diameter.

[broncosbybart]

Well, the seat brackets might not be very exciting but they sure took a while to make, so there they are. I still have to make the rear mounting brackets for the rear seat. I got sick of that though so I worked on the front seat mounting setup. Isn't ADD a wonderful thing? I can jump around from thing to thing and always have something to do because I never get anything done!

The front seat mount tube is all 1.75" .120 wall DOM as I didn't want to run 2" stuff here. If I had any 1.5" DOM, I would have used that. The seats are really tall and keeping the overall installed height reasonable is kind of challenging. Guess there are no good pics of the tube work yet. Sorry.

Here are a few pics of the bling bling door hinges and a test fit of the doors. I was sure to measure everything before I bent all the tube. Lo and behold- the doors fit with no issue! All the tubing clearances are great and the angles and fit look spot on. Enjoy!