Monkeys with wrenches, Chickens with electricity, and other things that don’t make sense-A day in the life of an off-grid solar installer

[poncho]

You would have made one hell of a Chief Engineer on ships, well rounded skill set and the ability to hit new things easily.

 

[monkeyswrench]

The PPE thing can be a hard lesson...and some of us aren't too bright. I'm starting to get better about eyes, but still find myself doing the safety squint on singles. The dust masks I've been pretty good about when doing multiple cuts. Found out cutting a bunch of concrete roof tiles once, that the cloud of dust was apparently quite dangerous. Sicker than snot, and blowing bloody, concrete boogers. Shooting urethane foam I was good about gearing up. In my head, aerosol chemicals were dangerous...but didn't understand that particulate matter could be just as bad.

 

[RichL]

The PPE thing can be a hard lesson...and some of us aren't too bright. I'm starting to get better about eyes, but still find myself doing the safety squint on singles. The dust masks I've been pretty good about when doing multiple cuts. Found out cutting a bunch of concrete roof tiles once, that the cloud of dust was apparently quite dangerous. Sicker than snot, and blowing bloody, concrete boogers. Shooting urethane foam I was good about gearing up. In my head, aerosol chemicals were dangerous...but didn't understand that particulate matter could be just as bad.

Silicosis of the lungs is a real thing. Not good.

 

[The Chicken]

Once all the slats were cut, I installed one and took this picture to show the new and improved clearance under the slats.

I also added a higher pressure pump with a hose and a garden sprayer to help wash down the table.

Then it was time to load all the slats in it and fill ‘er up!
Here is the whole setup ready for action.

 

[lbhsbz]

The PPE thing can be a hard lesson...and some of us aren't too bright. I'm starting to get better about eyes, but still find myself doing the safety squint on singles. The dust masks I've been pretty good about when doing multiple cuts. Found out cutting a bunch of concrete roof tiles once, that the cloud of dust was apparently quite dangerous. Sicker than snot, and blowing bloody, concrete boogers. Shooting urethane foam I was good about gearing up. In my head, aerosol chemicals were dangerous...but didn't understand that particulate matter could be just as bad.

I put on a faceshield if I need to pick up a hacksaw anymore.....getting stuff cut out of your eyeball gets old after the 10th time or so.

 

[monkeyswrench]

Silicosis of the lungs is a real thing. Not good.

I'd never heard of it, or been warned of it before. While I was on the couch that night, pretty sure I was dying, read all about it on the internet

 

[The Chicken]

Being kinda handy can be, well- kinda handy.
It’s often nice to have the ability to fix things when they go wrong, get yourself out of a jam when needed, or avoid costly service calls.
On the other hand, being kinda handy can be kinda a pain in the ass.
A recent example, my sister invites us to her place in Havascrew ( which is actually our old house that we sold her when we moved-but that’s another story ) for a Christmas get together right before Christmas.
Cool!
Except “ Hey, seeing as you’re coming down here anyway, could you look at this thing we’re having problems with? Pretty please?”
Aw crap.
It’s my sister-how am I supposed to say no?!
( Actually, my sister and I are very close, and neither of us have much issue telling the other to fuck off when we need to. But that actually rarely happens, and we often help each other. )

So anyway, she’s acquired some old screen printing equipment, and the ink curing heater has unknown issues. But the fact that it’s got issues is apparent when you go to plug it in.

The fact that the cord cap has obviously suffered some damage is readily apparent. But perhaps more disturbing is the fact that it was a 120 volt twist lock on a 240 volt machine. So someone had been doing some pretty questionable electrical work on this thing.
We opened up the control panel to see if we could figure out what else might be going on with it.
There was plenty to find.
The first thing were these heat damaged loose crimp terminals. Loose electrical connections can do some strange things.

It’s not real obvious in this picture of the dubiously re-wired controls that someone did, but this machine had suffered at least one significant electrical failure where magic smoke had been let out as was evidenced by the black carbon trails all over the inside of the cabinet.

Here I am tracing the mess and figuring out what is what. There was obviously no schematic For this thing that someone had gotten creative with in the wiring department.

Once all the loose connections had been addressed and a new and correct cord end had been installed, we fired up the heater/conveyor to see if it would work or if more magic smoke would come out.
It worked, but one of the two ceramic heating elements wasn’t coming producing any heat, so time to take it further apart.
The heating elements issue was pretty apparent-the victim of yet another loose connection.

We salvaged as much of the high temperature wire as we could, crimped on a new high temperature terminal, and then attempted to drill out the heating elements connector to accept a ring terminal with a nut and screw.
Turns out it was made out of stainless steel that had been heat cycled too many times and after smoking two drill bits we realized there was just no way we were going to successfully drill a hole in this thing that had become so hard.
So out came the welder.

One carefully placed tack weld and it was as good as it was ever going to be.
So we put it back together.

Then it was time for a couple of beers ( hey-technically we were on vacation!!) while we let it run and monitored the temperature with a heat gun.

Success!
It was working as good as it was going to, now she will just have to figure out the adjustments.

 

[The Chicken]

I put on a faceshield if I need to pick up a hacksaw anymore.....getting stuff cut out of your eyeball gets old after the 10th time or so.

I got away without proper eye protection for years-right up until the day I didn’t.
I decided that having an eye doctor taking what is basically a die grinder to your eye was unpleasant at best, and I should strive to not repeat the experience-or worse.
As for respiratory protection-I was unfortunately a bit longer in learning that lesson. But eventually I did, and switched over to filtered forced air helmets for both welding and grinding for all but the very shortest of those tasks.
The difference was immediate and dramatic. No more dirty boogers, headaches or funky odor stuck in my nostrils, and just better overall breathing. Plus on hot days, the forced air helps to cool you somewhat and just about totally eliminated fogged up glasses, safety glass, goggles or face shields. And the fully enclosed face shield absolutely eliminates any chance of eye damage short of something literally exploding in your face.
The forced air PAPR units are far from cheap-but are a bargain at twice the price. You can protect your health but you can’t buy it back.

Funny story on foreign object damage to eyes.
Many years ago when Denise were first dating, and I had recently learned my lesson the hard way about eye protection, I had a metal chip come off of a Sawzall blade, somehow bounce off my cheek, then ricochet off the INSIDE of my safety glasses straight into my right eye that I thought was protected.
All my usual tricks could not dislodge that chunk of metal-eyewash, Q-tip, magnet on the eye-tried them all with no luck. I think it was so hot when it hit it sorta seared itself into my eye.
Of course this happens on a Friday night.
I had already learned the foley of going to the local ER for minor eye trauma-they were not properly equipped, and the last doctor I had there was so fuckin blind he couldn’t see the metal flake embedded in my iris even after I told him exactly where to look. So he blundered around with a half dozen Q-tips for ten minutes, hurting my eye further in the process, not actually removing the metal, then handing me a ridiculous bill and telling me to see an eye specialist come Monday.
So this time I toughed it out through the weekend and went to an eye doctor on Monday.
It was a place that I had unfortunately been to before.
But THIS time the older male doctor I had seen wasn’t there, and instead there was a new doctor.
And SHE was young, gorgeous, with an incredible figure and beautiful red hair. And she was simply charming in the personality department with a southern accent that was absolutely music to the ear. (I should add here that I’ve been infatuated with beautiful redhead women since I was a small boy.
I have no idea why. And as a kid I once had a crush on a beautiful girl who had a similar amazing Texas accent. ) In short, this new doctor was simply smoking hot in every way.
I was struggling to keep my composure.
Now, anyone who has ever had their eyes worked on is probably familiar with the contraption eye doctors have that you rest your chin on and on the other side the doctor has lights, magnifying glasses, tool rests, etc so they can work on your eyes.
This hot doctor sets me up in this contraption and then sits on her stool right in front of me, and my peripheral vision notices that all I have to to is glance down and I will be treated to the spectacular view of her rather ample cleavage that her low cut blouse right under my face is revealing.
The problem is, the attractive owner of said cleavage is staring directly into my right eye with a magnifying glass, and if I look down there is absolutely no way she’s NOT going to notice, and no way she’s not going to figure out just what is is I’m looking at.
And so it was that I had the most agonizing 10 minutes of eye work I’ve ever had-forcing myself to look straight ahead the whole time when all I wanted to do was look down at the beauty before me. I was sweating. On a perhaps positive note, I was struggling so hard with that moral and physical dilemma that I did not feel a thing as she ground, poked and prodded at my eye.

 

[lbhsbz]

I got away without proper eye protection for years-right up until the day I didn’t.
I decided that having an eye doctor taking what is basically a die grinder to your eye was unpleasant at best, and I should strive to not repeat the experience-or worse.
As for respiratory protection-I was unfortunately a bit longer in learning that lesson. But eventually I did, and switched over to filtered forced air helmets for both welding and grinding for all but the very shortest of those tasks.
The difference was immediate and dramatic. No more dirty boogers, headaches or funky odor stuck in my nostrils, and just better overall breathing. Plus on hot days, the forced air helps to cool you somewhat and just about totally eliminated fogged up glasses, safety glass, goggles or face shields. And the fully enclosed face shield absolutely eliminates any chance of eye damage short of something literally exploding in your face.
The forced air PAPR units are far from cheap-but are a bargain at twice the price. You can protect your health but you can’t buy it back.

Funny story on foreign object damage to eyes.
Many years ago when Denise were first dating, and I had recently learned my lesson the hard way about eye protection, I had a metal chip come off of a Sawzall blade, somehow bounce off my cheek, then ricochet off the INSIDE of my safety glasses straight into my right eye that I thought was protected.
All my usual tricks could not dislodge that chunk of metal-eyewash, Q-tip, magnet on the eye-tried them all with no luck. I think it was so hot when it hit it sorta seared itself into my eye.
Of course this happens on a Friday night.
I had already learned the foley of going to the local ER for minor eye trauma-they were not properly equipped, and the last doctor I had there was so fuckin blind he couldn’t see the metal flake embedded in my iris even after I told him exactly where to look. So he blundered around with a half dozen Q-tips for ten minutes, hurting my eye further in the process, not actually removing the metal, then handing me a ridiculous bill and telling me to see an eye specialist come Monday.
So this time I toughed it out through the weekend and went to an eye doctor on Monday.
It was a place that I had unfortunately been to before.
But THIS time the older male doctor I had seen wasn’t there, and instead there was a new doctor.
And SHE was young, gorgeous, with an incredible figure and beautiful red hair. And she was simply charming in the personality department with a southern accent that was absolutely music to the ear. (I should add here that I’ve been infatuated with beautiful redhead women since I was a small boy.
I have no idea why. And as a kid I once had a crush on a beautiful girl who had a similar amazing Texas accent. ) In short, this new doctor was simply smoking hot in every way.
I was struggling to keep my composure.
Now, anyone who has ever had their eyes worked on is probably familiar with the contraption eye doctors have that you rest your chin on and on the other side the doctor has lights, magnifying glasses, tool rests, etc so they can work on your eyes.
This hot doctor sets me up in this contraption and then sits on her stool right in front of me, and my peripheral vision notices that all I have to to is glance down and I will be treated to the spectacular view of her rather ample cleavage that her low cut blouse right under my face is revealing.
The problem is, the attractive owner of said cleavage is staring directly into my right eye with a magnifying glass, and if I look down there is absolutely no way she’s NOT going to notice, and no way she’s not going to figure out just what is is I’m looking at.
And so it was that I had the most agonizing 10 minutes of eye work I’ve ever had-forcing myself to look straight ahead the whole time when all I wanted to do was look down at the beauty before me. I was sweating. On a perhaps positive note, I was struggling so hard with that moral and physical dilemma that I did not feel a thing as she ground, poked and prodded at my eye.

My favorite part is when their little pick hooks on your cornea/lense and pulls it away from your eyeball and things go out of focus for a second and then the audible "snap" as it comes back home....lol.

 

[The Chicken]

My favorite part is when their little pick hooks on your cornea/lense and pulls it away from your eyeball and things go out of focus for a second and then the audible "snap" as it comes back home....lol.

Ummm-fuck that.
My favorite part was the redhead.

 

[The Chicken]

No great story today.
Just wanted to share that our loader has been up at Joel and Amy’s place for some time and I just snapped this picture of it.
Quite obviously, it’s a cat.

 

[The Chicken]

“If you’re cold, they’re cold!”
Actually-bullshit.
This common tagline to remind people that their dogs get cold easily too doesn’t apply to all dogs.
This is our mama dog Stella.
She’s a Great Pyrenees, and thousands of years of breeding for cold weather as a working dog means that not only is she NOT cold when we’re cold-she’s probably hot.

This picture was taken a couple weeks ago early one frigid 18 degree morning, and Stella was so happy to find this ice to cool off on after patrolling the property. In fact, she wouldn’t leave her little frozen tub.
Fittingly, her nickname is “Crazy Polar Bear Bitch. “

 

[lbhsbz]

“If you’re cold, they’re cold!”
Actually-bullshit.
This common tagline to remind people that their dogs get cold easily too doesn’t apply to all dogs.
This is our mama dog Stella.
She’s a Great Pyrenees, and thousands of years of breeding for cold weather as a working dog means that not only is she NOT cold when we’re cold-she’s probably hot.

View attachment 1465772

This picture was taken a couple weeks ago early one frigid 18 degree morning, and Stella was so happy to find this ice too cool off on after patrolling the property. In fact, she wouldn’t leave her little frozen tub.
Fittingly, her nickname is “Crazy Polar Bear Bitch. “

She looks pissed off at you, probably because she was thirsty and couldn't drink it. lol

 

[The Chicken]

The first "work" week of the new year has me in the office for the most part.
In an attempt to make my office days more fun for me, I'm going to try and post up some past pictures of a project vehicle I sorta teased you all with some months ago.
Welcome back to Project Bronco.
This is actually Denise's Bronco, and it has a rather long history with her and us. I won't have time to really get into that history here-but it is quite an entertaining story.
Instead, I'd like to try and show you all some of the highlights of the project throughout the week, and maybe at the end, get some updated pictures as it sits right now.
One thing that became obvious to me as I looked at some of the pictures I'm about to share here is that digital cameras have sure come a long ways since some of these pictures were taken!
Here the Bronco is circa 2009. You can see in the background what appears to be a scrap from @wash11 custom fire pit I built them back in the day. If that fire pit could talk! They still have that fire pit, BTW, and although it's worse for wear after all these years, they still use it regularly.

At that time, the custom 5-link front and mezzanine/cantilever 4-link rear custom suspensions I designed and built were done and installed.
The floors and firewalls were about 90%, and most of the major systems were installed or at least mocked up, and IIRC, this was a picture of it being put together to go to LC engineering to have the headers and exhaust built for it-the only thing on the truck that I didn't build myself.

Here it is getting dropped off at LC Engineering for the exhaust.

As I look through my massive archive of pictures, I don't see any of the completed exhaust. I know I have some-but I'm not wading through the mountain of old files looking for them. I'll get some pictures of it later. Suffice to say for now, the crew over at LC Engineering did a great job on the headers and exhaust.

Here's a shot that shows the half-rocker steering I designed and built for the 5-link. Zero bumpsteer throughout about 24 inches of travel. The tie rods are 1 1/4" heavy wall 4130 tubing that I drilled and tapped to accept the rod ends and machined wrench flats onto.
The Howe power steering ram is tucked as far out of harms way as I could get it on the Dynatrac Pro Rock 60 front axle.

In the engine bay, things were exceptionally cramped with the rather large King 18"x3.0 coilovers taking up most of the space. The engine was pushed rearward and down as low as I feasibly could to get the center of gravity as low and as centered as possible, which meant that things were even more cramped because the engine now resides at least partially in the passenger compartment. All that combined with the fact that I wanted to have a LOT of accessories meant that every square inch under the hood-and indeed, on the entire vehicle- had to be carefully utilized.
The truck would have dual redundant fuel systems, dual redundant ignition systems, an engine driven onboard compressed air system, and engine driven onboard welder system, engine oil cooler, transmission cooler, Power steering cooler, additional filters, air conditioning system, manual brakes with dual reservoirs and balance beam setup with turning brakes, a beefy electrical system with three Odyssey batteries-the list goes on and on...
To that end, I needed the engine driven accessories to be neat, compact, and easy to work on.
And strangely, nobody makes anything even remotely like what I needed to cram all that crap onto a Ford 5.0 engine, so I had to design and build the entire accessory drive system myself.
A Sanden style compressor for onboard air (there was no way a York compressor was going to fit unfortunately-more on the onboard air system later), a Sanden style air conditioning compressor, a custom Howe power steering pump, and an alternator/welder power supply, all on V drive belts with turnbuckle adjusters.

I have an uncurable and unfortunate love affair with polished aluminum.

 

[callbob]

Going chubby here

 

[monkeyswrench]

Holy crap! I was so zoned out about the steering and suspension, I'd never looked at the accessories and mounting on the front of the motor.

 

[The Chicken]

Holy crap! I was so zoned out about the steering and suspension, I'd never looked at the accessories and mounting on the front of the motor.

This thing is the proverbial 10 pounds of shit in the 5 pound bag. The more you look, the more things you will find.

 

[rivermobster]

This thing is the proverbial 10 pounds of shit in the 5 pound bag. The more you look, the more things you will find.

Pretty sweet design on the belts. Keeping em all nice and short.

 

[The Chicken]

I mentioned earlier about the Bronco's redundant fuel systems.
I'm gonna dive into that next-but first perhaps I should back up a bit and explain the vision and intent of the Project Bronco build, along with a bit of it's history.
For starters, my involvement with Denise's Bronco started way back in 2000, shortly after her and I started seeing each other.
At the time, I was running a side hustle out of my little two car garage doing metal fab. I would build pretty much anything out of metal if someone would pay for it-metal art, gates, fences, tools, parts-whatever. But my passion was off road vehicles, and I had built or modified a number of 4x4's, prerunners, or race vehicles.
It developed one day that Denise had this old '74 Bronco that she had bought off her brother some years ago, but she could never keep it running and it would always overheat. So I told her I would drag it over to my house and see if I could figure out what it needed.
When I picked it up, it would barely run, and you had to blip the throttle frequently just to keep it idling, and to get the engine to spool up seemed to require a double pump of the gas pedal followed by a slight delay and then the engine would run away.
Which is exactly what happened at the first intersection I came to as I left her house-engine stumbled, stumbled, then-BAM! came on like a light switch and lit up the 33" tires in a fairly impressive but accidental burnout through half the intersection. As the rubber began squealing I noticed the police car parked a half block away to my right, and it was immediately obvious to me that he had taken note of the old bronco doing a burnout right in front of him, so I just coasted to the shoulder of the road after clearing the intersection saving us both the embarrassment of having to be asked to pull over.
Fortunately, the officer was in a good mood, and believed my story for the accidental burnout, and let me off with a warning. It probably didn't hurt that at the time, I was actually kinda in charge of the city traffic signal maintenance as a traffic signal tech, and he recognized me as the guy that was often up in a bucket truck working on Lake Havasu's traffic lights. (Yeah, add that to my list of interesting work experiences-for a time I did traffic signal maintenance and installations.)
Anyway, that incident was a kinda funny and perhaps indicative start to my long running love/hate relationship with the Bronco.
The Cliffs notes for the next chapter of the Bronco's history is: via a motor swap, I finally got the old horse running (someone had rebuilt the 302 in the Bronco when I got ahold of it-but had bored it too big, and it just would not stay cool), beat and massaged a bunch of it into functioning shape, and Denise and I took it on a bunch of different adventures over the next several years.
The Bronco was reasonably capable, reasonably reliable, and all-in-all, not a bad truck. Except it was a 1974 Bronco with a cheap Rancho 3" suspension lift and it rode like it. Fuck, that thing would punish you for spending a long day on the trail in it. And I came from a world of long travel, plush riding pre-runners, so the ride quality was something of an insult to me.
But it was Denise who ultimately and perhaps unwittingly turned the Bronco into the long running project that it has become, when-after spending several days in it on a back country camping trip, what today you would call an overlanding trip-she declared that she was tired of getting beat up and wanted to sell the bone-jarring Bronco and perhaps build an Explorer like the one we had been camping with all week, and whose occupants were cheery and limber and happy with the ride, as opposed to the occupants of the bronco who were grumpy and sore and unhappy with the ride. (the Explorer I refer to, in case you haven't figured it out, is what we currently call the Mud Taxi, but at that time was in full prerunner trim and I had just recently finished building it for my now brother-in-law.)
I have to say, it was at this point that I should have been elated to get rid of that old Bronco. It had been a constant pain in my ass for a number of years by that time, I seemed to constantly have to work on it, and I kinda hated it. The problem was, I somehow also kinda loved that old thing, and I somehow convinced Denise that we could rebuild it to be as good as or better than an explorer. And that I could chop it up, build a bunch of custom suspension, and glue it back together in about 6 months.
Oops.
Not only should I have let her just sell it, I'm obviously terrible at estimating how long it takes to build something like this.
In my defense, the original build idea was NOTHING even remotely as complex as it became. Somehow Project Bronco took on a life of it's own and morphed into trying to build the absolute best vehicle I could build with as many features and functions as I could cram into it.
Which brings us to the build/design philosophy that has been Project Bronco's roadmap.
The overarching idea was to build a vehicle that could go just about anywhere in reasonable comfort, and have the ability to get itself back home even in the event of minor mechanical failures.
And that's the reason for the big tires, big axles, big suspension, and all the systems crammed into it. Reliable and self-reliant were the goals.

And so without further ado, I'd like to present you with Project Bronco's fuel system.
Here is an overhead view of the twin suction side filters and twin fuel pumps that are shoehorned in between the rear suspension and the chassis. It's a tighter fit than it looks. You can see some of the all stainless exhaust system in this picture too. Notice all the V-band clamps. I wanted it to be easy to service.

Here is a view from underneath with the floor installed.
One other thing I obviously didn't build in this picture-the drivelines, which I had custom built to my specs by High Angle Driveline.

The fuel tank I designed and built myself, and it's pretty special. I knew that I needed to cram all the fuel capacity I could into it, while at the same time keeping the tank out of harms way-no easy task on a vehicle with so much wheel travel and expected to traverse rough terrain regularly.
To keep the tank strong, and to help control fuel slosh without resorting to foam, the tank is made from 1/8" thick aluminum and is carefully baffled.
Here's a view of the bottom of the tank during it's construction.

Here is a view from the top rear that shows the tanks tab and slot construction a bit better.

This next picture is unfortunately not very good, but it shows two important features of the rear of the tank.
First, you can see there are square holes in the sides and middle baffle of the tank-these would later become a reinforced tube that runs through the tank, which would allow the rear sway bar to go through the tank.
Second is the indentation in the rear of the tank-this allows you to get your hand between the tank and the rear bumper to get to the bumper's hidden hitch pin.

Here is one of the two pickup tube assemblies I built that allow the pickup connection to be on top of the tank where it is protected, but allows the actual pickup point to be at the very bottom of the tank to scavenge as much fuel as possible. There wasn't really room to do a pickup sump without reducing ground clearance, so I'm relying on the baffles and the large pre-pump filters to act as a sump/reservoir.

Fueling the Bronco isn't really straightforward, as there were no real good spots to put a filler neck where it either wasn't vulnerable or in the way. I finally decided to stash the filler behind the tailgate behind a rear shock.

Not the greatest picture, but if you look close here behind the shock, you can see the stainless fuel tank fill line, the back side of the filler neck, and the braided stainless vent line that goes to an external roll-over valve.
You can also see the air bump in the foreground.
If you look real closely, you can see a large round aluminum tube with big brackets-that's an air tank for the onboard air system.

Here you can see above the transmission with the floor removed, the four stainless hard lines covered with high temp silicone/fiberglass sleeve that make up the fuel feed lines and bypass regulator return lines for the two fuel pumps.
You can also see the transmission cooler lines, and the air conditioner system from Vintage Air shoehorned in up under the dash.

Here is a shot of the near-completed engine bay.
On the passenger side of the carb, you can see the two pressure regulators, and the check valves that allow one pump/regulator or the other to run independently without using any of the other fuel lines. The two fuel systems are kept totally separate right up to this point to allow maximum reliability in case of damaged fuel system components.
I set the engine and fuel system up to be carbureted because at the time, in my opinion, fuel injection systems just were not that reliable. Whenever we finally get around to making this thing run, I will likely install one of those aftermarket injection systems that are designed to replace a carb, as they seem to have gotten much more reliable and just over all better over the last several years.
You can see a lot of the other systems in this picture too.
The beginnings of the dual ignition system with a dual pickup distributor.
The air conditioning condenser and lines and dryer.
The two huge oil coolers and fans for the engine and transmission.
The brake master cylinders, and next to them, the power steering reservoir.

Here is the fuel tank installed-even though you can barely see the fuel tank, as it is completely covered by its 1/4" thick aluminum skid plate protector.
You can see the two bolts and straps (with red tape on them) that secure the tank in place.
And if you look close, you can see the large machined steel ring that is the mounting flange for the cantilever arms pivot point. The cantilevers pivot on Dana 44 hub snouts so I could use off the shelf parts like bearings and seals. But more importantly, the Dana 44 snouts are hollow, and will allow me to use the cantilever arms as sway bar links too, and now you know why there is a tube going through the fuel tank.

Here is another look at the skid plate/fuel tank that show the recess for accessing the hitch pin in the rear bumper.

Anyway, there's the fuel system, and a bit more, of Project Bronco.

 

[Ladsm]

Bitchen work but might want to look at drive shaft loops. I built alot of jeeps and when those short driveshaft u-joints let go they flap around and will hear straight for your fuel system.

 

[monkeyswrench]

The Dana pivot assembly is freaking awesome! (Fuel tank's not too shabby either I guess )
You know, if you know a machinist, you could machine injector bungs for the intake, plumb a throttle body and MAF, and run a 99ish EEC-IV from a V8 Explorer with an EDIS module and coil packs. EFI that is pretty bulletproof.

 

[The Chicken]

Bitchen work but might want to look at drive shaft loops. I built alot of jeeps and when those short driveshaft u-joints let go they flap around and will hear straight for your fuel system.

The best is when the front of the rear driveshaft parts company with the transfer case and turns into a really cool, but really expensive pole vault.
Yeah, at the very least, some limit strap loops are in order here, possibly a mid-span hard loop. It gets tricky with 2 feet of suspension travel though.

 

[The Chicken]

The Dana pivot assembly is freaking awesome! (Fuel tank's not too shabby either I guess )
You know, if you know a machinist, you could machine injector bungs for the intake, plumb a throttle body and MAF, and run a 99ish EEC-IV from a V8 Explorer with an EDIS module and coil packs. EFI that is pretty bulletproof.

Back when we were helping pit for a class one and then a "Trick Truck" for a BITD team in the '07-'09ish years, I remember so many cars had gone to the "new" LS motors, while the car we helped (Scott Kincaid) ran an old school Dart aluminum small block with a carburetor. ( I don't remember all the specs on that motor, but Scott's brother Gary Kincaid built it and it was a friggin' monster! I mean that small block flat got with it-and it sounded sooooo damn good!!!)
Sooooo many of those LS powered cars would drop out or fall behind due to wiring or sensor issues, while the old carb motor just ran.
Prior to that, in prerunners, I saw so many fuel injection systems that had similar issues, making them not real reliable and a PITA to work on out in the desert.
Rusty from the Converter Shop used to call it "Fuel Infection".

Obviously, the reliability and quality of fuel injection systems has come a long way since then, and it's pretty hard to ignore the benefits of a good fuel injection system nowdays.

 

[The Chicken]

One of my proudest creations on Project Bronco is the hand built aluminum dash I built for it.
IMHO, it turned out pretty damn good.
It was certainly a lot of work.
Here it is under construction at a fairly early stage getting checked for fit.

I had built my own radius bender, and used it to form the rounded edges of the dash assembly.
The inside corners needed a bunch of tiny pieces and a lot of careful welding.
Everything is .060 aluminum.

The outside corners were a bit easier.
I built a little steel/oak press buck to form the little caps.

Here it is on the bench getting the side access panels made and fitted.

Perhaps the crowning achievement on the dash is the glovebox.

The glovebox has a pretty big interior that allows for quite a bit of storage. Here is the interior piece.

The A/C vents are Ford factory units from a Superduty that I adapted to fit.

Here it is mostly done and sitting in the truck for another test fit.
The oval cutout is where the twin transfer case sticks come out.
The center console area will likely get filled with wiring and electronics.

 

[RichL]

So much talent!

 

[The Chicken]

The electrical system of Project Bronco remains largely non-existent at this point.
I have, however, located the batteries and built the mounts for them.
Tucked away infront of the rear tire, and just behind the driver's seat is a custom mount designed to hold two Odyssey 925 batteries as the accessory batteries.

On the passenger side, a single 925 battery will serve as the starting or reserve battery.
Here is the battery mount for that.
Both battery mounts are based on Odyssey battery boxes that i successfully built, deployed and sold for off-road applications for a number of years.

Brakes.
Project Bronco is expected to be on the heavy side, and even a light truck needs good binders with 40" tires.
Here I faced some difficult decisions and not a few challenges.
First, for the sake of simplicity, packaging, and reliability, I didn't want vacuum boosters or a hydro boost.
So full manual brakes it is. But that's a big challenge to have brakes good enough to slow this big thing down adequately without huge pedal effort.
To that end, I spent a bunch of time talking to brake component manufactures and race car builders and came up with what I hope will be a good braking solution.
We will find out if I'm am a hero or a zero in that department when the truck finally drives again.
In any event, here's what I came up with:
Double CNC master cylinders (1 1/4" bore, IIRC) hung in a forward swing position to get the reservoirs out into the engine bay.
Remote controlled balance beam for the masters.
Custom, high leverage pedal.
14" trophy truck discs bolted to custom machined Colman rotor hats with Wilwood 6 piston calipers on custom brackets.
Here's the brakes after I machined the hats and the gas slots into the rotors with the rather large calipers on the left. On the right are the factory GM single piston calipers and small-ish rotor that came with the Dana 60 axles.

I'm pretty fond of the brake pedal I came up with.

Here's the rotor and caliper installed on the front axle. They just clear the 17" Walker Evans beadlock rims.

Another small but important item is the coolant overflow tank, which had to be shoehorned into a very tight spot in the engine bay.
It has an external level reading tube, radiator inlet/outlet line, overflow line, and uses a radiator cap so that if the cap goes bad on the radiator, a spare is always on hand.
Here it is being pressure tested on the bench.

The firewall and inner fender wells were challenging, to say the least. Lots of complex shapes.
The front inner fender wells, IMHO, turned out really nice.
The goal was to protect the engine bay as much as possible from tire-thrown debris, while still allowing easy service by being fairly easy to remove.

 

[callbob]

Automotive porn is all I can say. What a talent or should be talents.

 

[n2otoofast4u]

Holy shit!!

 

[Willie B]

OMG

 

[wash11]

The cubic dollars spent on parts alone, minus any labor..........makes me a little horny. Finally, a decent pic of the headers LC Engineering built

 

[Warlock1]

Man I so wish you were closer because I love to do wiring ...

 

[The Chicken]

Man I so wish you were closer because I love to do wiring ...

Nice work!
Reminds me of how much I hate wiring boats because no matter what, I always seem to get the fiberglass itches from them somehow.

 

[The Chicken]

Project Broncos on board air is something of a more-than-meets-the-eye crazy experimental project unto itself.
As I had stated in an earlier post, I had to use a Sanden style compressor because a York style will not fit.
Now, generally speaking a York style air-conditioning compressor is a better onboard air compressor because it uses a piston style pump that is easier to modify for in on board air system.
A sand and style compressor uses something like a swash plate in multiple small pistons to accomplish the same thing but in a more compact package. The problem with using either one of these platforms is you have to remember that air conditioning systems carry lubricant within the refrigerant and it is a closed system. In an onboard air scenario, it is an open system-meaning we intake air from the atmosphere and then exhaust it somewhere else so lubricant for the pump does not recirculate within the system. And this is a problem, especially for Sanden style compressors that require lots of lubrication.
My solution is to automatically recover the lube oil the compressor discharges with the high pressure air output, separate that oil from the compressed air, then automatically discharge the scavenged oil back into the compressor intake, thus making the lobe oil sorta a closed system while the air is a open system.
I’ll show you how I go about doing this.
First, here is how the engine bay looks currently, you’ll notice some changes/additions from previous pictures.

You will see that the dual ignition setup has progressed, some air conditioning components have moved, there’s even more lines and hoses and there’s a big box on the passenger side.
Let’s break off and check out that box real quick-it will house the controller for the Premier Power Welder.

Back to the compressed air system.
Here’s a close up of the back of the Sanden compressor and its inlet/outlet braided stainless lines.
The large line is the air inlet, and it goes to a hard line then to a custom intake box that is baffled to control noise. More on that in a sec.
There are two smaller lines-one is the high pressure discharge, the other is the pressurized oil return.
If you look real closely under the fuel pressure regulators, you can see the check valve that prevents the compressed air in the remote mounted air tanks from escaping back into the compressor.
I modified the back of the compressor to port how I needed it to and welded on the male A/N fittings.

Here’s an overhead view of the plumbing.
You can see the braided stainless line that goes to an aluminum hard line, which terminates in a small aluminum box at the bottom right of the picture.
This is the air intake line.

Here’s the baffled/filtered air intake box, mounted up high and out of harms way.

Now, the discharge and oil return lines change to stainless hard line. The discharge line goes to this manifold on the firewall that holds a pressure gauge, pressure switch and a safety blow-off.

From this manifold, the discharge air goes to a set of special oil removal filters buried under the drivers front fender.
An auto drain on the filters sends the scavenged oil back to the compressor’s intake port.
The now oil-free compressed air then goes to the trucks air storage tanks and air chucks.

That’s the bulk of the compressed air system.
There’s a lot of little details to it.

Let’s get a slightly better look at the LC Engineering header and passenger side inner fender well while we’re here.

And looking towards the rear on the passenger front, you can see some more of the exhaust, the air-gapped heat shields I built, the twin MSB ignition boxes, and some other goodies.

And what will probably be the last Project Bronco picture for awhile-fittingly its rear end.
Now, the spare tire carrier and tailgate are minor works of art themselves with more functions than a Swiss Army Knife-but to show you all that I’d have to move the truck-and I just don’t have that much time right now.
Perhaps when I get some free time I can get some better rear end pictures, and I really need to show you all the crazy suspension-but for right now, I leave you with a picture of Project Broncos ass.

 

[The Chicken]

Yesterday afternoon after I got a chance to put some more work in on the plasma table.
When we ordered the machine, we ordered it with an optional laser pointer-but unfortunately the machine didn’t ship with the pointer, and it took another 7 months for it to show up.
And when it did show up, it came with the wrong mounting bracket.
Tired of waiting, I took matters into my own hands and decided to just make whatever I was sent work.
Here’s the lasers and the bracket next to my torch. The bracket they sent is for a larger diameter torch.

I took the laser bracket apart and removed one of the torch clamps off and took some measurements and hatched a plan.

Fired up the mill and drilled some holes in the laser brackets.

Drilled and tapped some corresponding 10/32 holes in the torch bracket.

Was happy to discover that I measured everything correctly and the parts bolted right up.

And here is the whole mess all put together and lit up.
Now I just have to load the software update that controls the laser and all its background functions like head offsets and alignment functions.