Back in the Bronco!!

Well I finally drove my bronco to work again! OK, it may not sound exciting to most, but to me it's big, as I love my 1977 Ford Bronco!

The story. I think it was Sunday, September 9th 2007, my wife and I were coming back from Menard's in the bronco. I take off a little quick from a stop and she says "well get on it why don't you." Of course I tell her I didn't and at the next stop, yeah I know, I said "this is getting on it." I step hard on the gas and the transmission starts to slip, then grabs hard and pushes everything forward enough to push the fan through the radiator! We were only about 3/4 of a mile from home so I drove on back, parked it, and watched all the fluid gushing onto the driveway.

Yeah that was eight and a half weeks ago that I did that, and today, was the first day I got to drive it to work. I didn't just replace the radiator and fan though. I chose this opportunity to replace the stock truck fuel injection parts for those from a Lightning. The engine was already pretty healthy, but man I tell you changing from 19lb fuel injectors and stock 70mm mass air flow sensor to 24lb fuel injectors and a 90mm sensor, then a 65mm throttle body, and the much much better air flow path of the GT-40 intake setup really, really woke up the motor. It went from sounding kind of plain, about like a truck, to sounding like a monster! I also can tell you that it now doesn't have a problem spinning the 35" tires on pavement!

OK, ignore that last part, as its probably the reason the transmission is crap and needs replaced.

Anyway, I ended up putting new 24lb fuel injectors, GT40 upper and lower intakes, 65mm throttle body, 90mm mass air flow sensor, 4 core aluminum Howe Racing radiator with out transmission cooler, Flex-a-lite transmission fluid cooler with build in electric fan, and a two speed electric fan out of a Ford Taurus.

All of this would have been easy, but as any early Bronco owner knows, big electric fans do not fit without modification.

What I ended up doing was first removing the hood latch parts as they were going to be in the way, and since I already had hood pins it was a non-issue. I then decided the only way it was going to happen was to either move the radiator forward, or move it back. Since moving it forward would have forced me to also move it down or cut the upper brace on the core support, I decided to move it back. Then test fitting the fan proved to me that the lower support was going to be in the way. I decided to cut it out and move it about an inch and a half further into the engine compartment. That gave me enough room to mount the fan, and the radiator, and I have about 2 inches between the water pump and the radiator.

I did see that I have a very small coolant leak somewhere, but after a 15 minute drive then parking it for a few hours and there is about a baseball sized wet spot under the passenger side of the radiator, no biggie, I will get to it soon enough.

I still have not gotten a thermostat for the electric fan(s), but for right now I have low speed on the two speed fan wired through a relay that comes on with the key, along with the transmission cooler fan, which is also wired through a relay that comes on with the key. I plan on getting two thermostats, one for the transmission cooler, and one for the radiator fan. Might thinking about getting two for the radiator fan, one set around 160 degrees to kick low speed on, and one about 200 that kicks the high speed on. Then maybe a 3 way switch to either force the fan off, force it on, or leave it up to the thermostats.

OK, enough rambling, but I am sure my wife will be happy I didn't bore her with all this.

But she will need to give me the OK to buy the thermostats for the transmission cooler and the radiator if she ever does read this!

Alright, that's it for now.