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Me and my 13 year old son have started a new father son project for his first truck. A 1985 Bronco II 5 speed 4x4 that we just drug over from our neighbors. Neighbor said the engine is a recent rebuild and he had just put a rough country lift, new explorer rear springs, and aftermarket rear drive shaft (no CV joint in it) and broke something in the driveline a few days later while out wheeling. The lift and springs still have plastic on them in places and can still read the paper stickers. It feels like a broken transfer case binding up to me. I picked up another 5 speed Toyo kyogo trans like the one in it and another transfer case already for 150 bucks. Now the cleaning phase to really see what we have. It was parked over north Texas red dirt for a few years so nature has coated everything underneath in it. It has just a few spots of rust in front of the rear tires, but not bad for what it is. I also need to find some 15" tires. Preferably ones that don't make it look like it has skipped leg day. Plans are to sand it down, minimal body repairs, then a flat color like olive drab or something. Pics because we all like pics.
After a clean up and once over of all fluids and connections, I drained the gas tank of its nasty stuff, put in 5 gallons, replaced some fuel lines and primed the fuel to the Mr Gasket electric fuel pump it has. Fired right up. I set the idle and ran it for about 30 minutes. Oil pressure works, but temp gauge is dead. It did build and hold pressure in the hoses and ran great after setting the idle. It appears first gear is what the problem is. It engages and goes in all other gears, but won't fully go into first and crunches bad if you let the clutch out while holding it there. I was able to engage 4low and start out in second and drive through all the gears. Looks like I will be swapping in the trans I have.
Not much progress. The fuel gauge is broken, I suspect the float is sitting on the bottom of the tank, so we have been driving this thing around in 2wd low range and starting in second gear. Good opportunity for my son to learn the clutch without destroying the new parts. The next task was to rip out the mouse infested interior. Found one crack in the floorboard under the driver's seat. Shouldn't be hard to patch up. It smells much better now. Considering a roll cage as now would be the time to do it...Probably give the plastics a good scrub and fogging with vinyl interior paint, get a carpet kit and some door panels from LMC or the like and use some good seat covers and call it done inside.
Got the trans and Tcase out today. I probably should have dug through that layer of crud and yanked the Tcase off before removing the trans.. oh well. I will put them back up in two pieces as they are quite awkward when bolted together. Bonus is that the clutch looks brand new and the slave cylinder is obviously quite new and the fluid was fresh with a new line and clutch master. We have time to tinker with this if something goes wrong before it hits the road so I am going to tempt fate and re-install both parts on the replacement trans. My new Tcase has a flat flange on it to the rear driveshaft and the one out of the truck has a yoke that goes to the double cardan driveshaft, so I will need to either swap the yokes or clean up the original Tcase as nothing is really wrong with it other than dirt. I also bought a welder and built up one of the shifters to work better. I threaded a nut to the end to replace the worn off plastic ball, ground it down into a ball and welded it on the end. Then I welded tabs to the shaft to hold the shifter straight to replace the broken plastic ones and finally welded a washer to hold the whole thing together. Should work for a while this way.
Thanks. It will be fun. I tore the old trans down to see what failed and the only thing I see is a bent shift fork. So bent I had a lot of trouble getting the trans to come apart. New one has all of the good parts swapped over to it and just waiting for summer camps, vacations and such to calm down.
You may have mentioned it, but which transmission this truck have? The Mitsubishi unit or the TK5, or is it the TK4? In those years Ford seemed to use all of them kind of randomly in the Ranger and BII. Not sure how plentiful parts are for any of them now, but I have seen a few TK5 parts show up on Rock Auto.
It is the FM145. I got totally lucky when I bought my replacement trans and Tcase for 150 bucks off Craigslist...it is the correct trans. The top plate had a sensor difference and the "new" transfer case has a manual shift input but has the stampings for an electric case motor. Either way it is all looking like it will bolt up fine.
wow. Its been a while since I updated this thread. but I got the "new" transmission installed. I went with a new clutch, pressure plate, flywheel and new slave cylinder just because I don't want to do this again too soon. I then had a fun time trying to bleed the clutch, I tried everything, flipping the master upside down, you name it. Turns out when I was filling the reservoir, I left the black rubber insert in there and was just filling it with fluid and wondering why I couldn't get any to to slave. After a new master cylinder didn't fix it I realized my mistake and it bled just fine. We also purchased a wrecked 90 BII 4x4 for parts. It has the bigger front axle and 3:73 gears vs the 3:45 we have now. Best 200 purchase yet. (yes we even got the rear side windows in the deal) We used the newer doors after converting them to the old mirrors and will use some of the other interior. Debating whether we want the spare tire rear hatch vs the simple one it has now. As it turns out the parts bronco fired right up with some fuel fogged into it and would run with a new fuel pump and pressure regulator setup. I even found a maintenance log with every single oil change, fuel fill, anything this truck needed money spent was logged for the full 170K miles until I was wrecked. Shame as it was in great shape. Now we are going through the old 2.8 tuneup and discovering that the PO swapped in an older Bosch distributor and a non feedback 2150 carb. We have it running OK and sitting on the "skipped leg day" tires and wheels from the parts truck until we get new ones. I will try to get better photos of progress, the sweet but sloooow progress.
Driver's door got finalized today. It is nice to have newer window felts and door panels. Did the distributor cap, rotor plugs and wires also. Runs like new again. The old plugs had a canyon burned into most of the electrodes. Never seen plugs come out quite like that . Got the brakes bled and the proportion valve back to center so the dash light would go away. One step closer to roadworthy.
Today I finished a rebuild of the 2150 non feedback carb on this thing. Easy and satisfying carb to rebuild. Probably end up back in there to swap the jets out this summer. It has 63F jets which seem large for this engine, but it is running great. With no cat it will burn your eyeballs though, so a cat is now on the list.
Finally got brakes all lined out with new wheel cylinders and such. Went with an Antique plate so I can shake this thing down before I decide to go the inspection/regular plate route. It is pretty sketchy over 55 MPH, although with a big lift using soft suspension on a short vehicle, I shouldn't be surprised, however my son is deciding whether it will work for him or not. The 75 MPH freeway is unavoidable here...
