A customer brought us a 1979, low mileage Ford Bronco for a 4BT conversion. This thing is in pretty amazing condition. It has the original 400 and C6 in it. The plan is a rotary pump 3.9 and 4R100 automatic.
We have a trans and transfer case ordered for the Bronco. Since there's time, we started on the suspension and tires. 4 inch Wild Horse lift package
Lift, wheels and tires. Complete. 35" Maxxis Razr's.
Next major step was get the engine/trans and t-case out and start prepping the frame.
The reman'd engine showed up from Reviva. Needed a true Ford Blue paint job! This is just a stock 4BT reman, no frills or power adders, all mileage.
Gotta love it when a big 'ol box shows up!! The trans is here, and mockup can begin. The owner opted to keep the Bronco an automatic, but update to an overdrive trans. In this case a 4R100 from Monster transmissions. Needs some black paint. We'll use a US Shift Quick 4 to control the trans.
The early Fords have a very basic package to get the 4BT in there, a DCS #1257 adapter and an #1169 torque convertor adapter with a set of #1129 motor mounts.
There isn't a lot of prep work as far as fabrication to install the 4BT. The very front at the cross member needed a little bit of finesse to clear the fluid damper on the 4BT. The motor mounts are a pretty basic package to span across and the isolators rest on top of the frame rail and get through-bolted into place.
The physical install--getting it in there and resting on the mounts-went pretty quick. Jesse can start on crossmembers, t-case shift cables and wiring.
The customer wanted to go with a modern Digital dash, in this case sourced from Dakota Digital. It does add quite a bit of wiring and some controllers to hide. It required some signal conditioning and even an interface with the trans controller to have the gear selector display work on the dash. Installation is pretty straight forward, Dakota provides the sensors, and a comprehensive install manual.
in order to hide the little controllers, we 3D printed a two-piece (a one-piece was too large for the surface area of the printer) modular board to fasten in behind the glove box to provide central mounting. All of the sensors go to the controllers, then a single comm cable to the dashboard.
i pre-drilled the holes for the controller, then mounted the board.
once the board and and controllers were mounted, it was time to run the wires.
once the engine was in, the next phase was the transmission crossmember and and assorted bracketry for the 4R100 and the new Atlas t-case. once that's done we'll wire up the trans controller.
Back up front we went with just a replacement aluminum radiator and twin electric fans. Stock 4BT, cooling shouldn't be any kind of issue.
The customer intended to retain the AC, so we installed a DCS#2300 high-mount AC and alternator relocation package. We used a one-wire GM alternator for this application as well.
