This '96 has been in Roswell New Mexico untill a year ago. And the desert dust is everywhere! I've used toothbrush, etc to get it out of groves on dash ***** as well as compressed air. But my instrument panel has a light coating of dust behind the clear lens. Is it hard to get in there? Maybe just enough to blow some air in there?

 

 

Yours is a totally different animal.
This may be helpful to the OP:
1983 Ford Bronco Diagrams picture | SuperMotors.net

 

Thanks to both of you, but yeah I believe that second one should get me going.

Appreciate the info!

 

Taking out the instrument cluster is surprisingly easy on these. Once it's out, taking off the plastic cover is super easy. You have to pry out the trim on the bezel with a screwdriver carefully, then take out the fasteners (it's a torx bit for the fasteners that are behind the trim)

Also, you'll want to take out the headlight switch. You can either take a thin long screwdriver and pry out the switch/rod assembly (there is a release button the headlight switch assembly but I don't remember exactly where), or you can try and take the **** off the rod (it's held in by a triangular metal clip that you can pry back with a small screwdriver.)

Once you do that, you should be able to pry out the dash bezel (it's held in by a lot of clips.) Be careful doing so because the clips can snap. With it partially pried out, you should be able to unplug any wiring (for the rear window 4x4 etc.) if you weren't able to reach it at first.

Then you'll be able to access the cluster which is held in by 4 more of the torx fasteners.




I may have forgotten some small things here or there, so if you attempt to take off the bezel, be careful so you don't accidentally break a plastic piece or something. Fortunately, these bezel pieces are pretty common if something does break.

 

Thanks Bubba, good info.

How hard was it to put a 7.3 in yours? Impressive!

 

It wasn't too hard really. It was quite a bit of work, but not necessarily hard. The more tedious processes involved re pinning some wiring harnesses to get them to work properly with my Bronco wiring, and just taking all the stuff out to replace the wiring harnesses.

The most tedious part was cleaning the donor motor and painting it etc. (then pulling it out not too long after since it had low compression and doing it all again...... I'm on the second motor, but the second one is holding up. I kept my first motor as a spare to rebuild.)

There were a few modification I had to do such as elongate some bolt holes for the transmission mount, modify the fuel pickup and fuel lines, modify the driveshafts (I measured but had a shop do this), and drill some extra holes for the motor mounts. Otherwise, it was more or less a bolt in processes. I just had to take out a lot of stuff and put a bunch of different stuff in.

Despite all the work, if I come across the time/money to do this with another Bronco, I'd do it again.