Category Bullnose Garage

If you ignore the fact that one of these is an F-150 and the other is a Bronco, then these two trucks are almost identical. They both run the trusty 300 inline 6. They both have an NP435 four-speed transmission. And of course, they both wear that classic bullnose style. But other than the model and the paint color, there is one pretty big difference. The Bronco has four-wheel drive. Howdy, folks. Ed here. Welcome back to Bullnose Garage. Four-wheel drive is one of those topics that can divide truck guys. Some folks will tell you that a truck without 4×4 is just a car with a bed. Others have never even needed it, let alone actually put a truck in four-wheel drive. But here’s the thing. Even if you’re in the first camp, the guys who swear by 4×4, do you actually know how the system works in an 80s era Ford? Ask any Ford guy what transfer case he’s running and you’ll either get a blank stare or a half-hour lecture. So today I’m going to save you the trouble of both. We’ll look at how the 4×4 system works in bullnose trucks, what transfer cases Ford used, how they differ, and how it all ties together with the hubs, the axles, and that floor shifter down by your right leg. And just to make it interesting, we’ll use my ’82 Bronco here as the guinea pig. It’s running a Borg Warner 1345 hooked up to an NP435 transmission. Even though the door tag says it should have been a T18. So somewhere along the way, this thing got a little surgery. You know, that’s half the fun of these old Fords. You never quite know what you got until you actually crawl under there and check it out. So, let’s check it out. So, before we dig into transfer cases and all the details, let’s zoom out and look at the big picture of how four-wheel drive actually works on these bullnose trucks. Because it’s not just one part, it’s a whole system working together. In two-wheel drive, power runs from the engine into the transmission, through the output shaft, into the drive shaft, and straight back to the rear axle. Simple enough. You’re just pushing the truck with the back wheels. But when you add four-wheel drive into the mix, the transfer case gets involved. That’s the box hanging off the back of the transmission, and its whole job is to split the power. One output goes to the rear drive shaft like normal, and the other output sends power forward to the front drive shaft. The catch with these older trucks is that the front wheels aren’t always connected. And so, let me introduce you whippersnappers out there to the old school manual locking hubs. This means if you shift the transfer case into four high or four low, but don’t lock the hubs, well, the front drive shaft will spin, the differential will spin, and even the axle shafts inside the knuckles will spin. But the wheels themselves are just freewheeling. You’re not actually putting the front tires in 4×4 until those hubs are locked. Funny enough, you could technically just lock one hub and not the other. And this means that the rear axle is pushing and one front wheel is pulling and you’ve basically invented three-wheel drive. It’s not smart, but it is possible. And I guarantee a few people watching have probably done that. And because I know some keyboard warrior out there is going to call me out. Technically with open diffs, you only ever drive one tire per axle at a time, but you get the idea. The whole open versus lock diff thing is a rabbit hole of its own. Two-wheel drive, four-wheel drive, one-wheel peel, py lockers, but that’s a topic for another day. Anyway, so let’s talk transfer cases. This is the heart of the whole 4×4 system, and it’s what makes the magic happen. Ford gave us a few different options of the bullnose years depending on the truck and the year. The most common one you’re going to find is the Borg Warner 1345. That’s what’s in mine. It’s aluminum chain driven and it was the bread and butter of the F-150s and Broncos in the early to mid-80s. Lighter than the old cast iron monsters, but still tough enough for what most guys use these trucks for. It weighs about 85 to 90 lbs dry, handles enough torque for both those applications, and uses a 2.72 to 1 low range with a chain about an inch and a quarter wide. It’s plenty stout for a small block or a six-cylinder, but if you throw a big block or crazy torque at it, that chain, it’s eventually going to stretch. Another one that you’ll run into is a new process 208 aluminum case, also chain driven, and just a bit lighter duty than the Borg Warner, about 80 pounds with 2.61 to 1 low range. A lot of F-150s and Broncos had them and while they get the job done, the housing was just a little bit weaker. You drop one on a rock and you’ll find out real quick why a lot of guys like to swap them out. Now we go to the NP 205. It is the Brute. All cast iron gear driven, tip of the scales at about 140 lbs dry. It’s got a shallow 6 to 1 low range, but what it lacks in gear reduction it makes up for in sheer indestructibility. By the bullnose years, you weren’t likely to see one of those in a half-ton or a Bronco because they mostly lived in the F250s and 350s or they got swapped in later by guys who wanted bulletproof strength. These things will take a thousand ft-lbs of torque without even blinking, which is why rock crawlers and heavy haulers still hunt them down today. And finally, at the very beginning of the Bricknose era in 1987, you had the Borg Warner 1356, just a touch heavier than its brother with 2.69 to 1 low range. Think of it as the 1345’s bigger brother. Still chain driven, but beefed up for the next generation. And I’m mentioning here because even though it’s not a bullnose transfer case, it’s a potential swap in. So, quick note here on the difference between a chain driven case and a gear driven case. Gear-driven cases like the NP 205 are heavier, they’re noisy, and they’re pretty much indestructible because it’s just gears meshing together. Chain-driven cases like the 1345 or 208 are lighter, quieter. The chain is always the weak link. You could stretch it, skip it, break it, and if you do, you’re dead in the water. It’s a classic trade-off: strength, weight, and durability versus refinement, manners, and everyday drivability. My ’82 Bronco has the Borg Warner 1345 transfer case. Down here on the floor, you have the shifter with four positions: two high, four high, neutral, and four low. In two high, you’re sending power straight back to the rear wheels. Shift into four high, and the front drive shaft gets engaged, putting you in four-wheel drive at a 1:1 ratio. Neutral disconnects everything, useful for flat towing or certain recovery situations. Ford included neutral as a true towing mode, with an internal pump that keeps things lubricated even when flat towed behind an RV. Four low is where things get serious, with a 2.72:1 reduction applied to both the front and rear drive shafts, increasing torque for crawling through tough terrain. My Bronco runs this 1345 behind an NP 435 four-speed, even though the door tag says it should have been a T18. Someone swapped it, but it doesn’t change how the transfer case works. With the NP 435’s ultra-low granny first gear, if I put the transmission in first and the transfer case in four low, the reduction multiplies to about an 18:1 overall reduction before hitting the axles. With my gears and 31-inch tires, that’s over a 60:1 final drive at the wheels. Translation: I can just about pull a freight train at 1 mph. Obviously, that doesn’t mean my Bronco could actually tow a freight train. The gearing gives control and torque multiplication, but the driveline parts are only so strong. Low range is built for crawling through tough terrain or easing a heavy trailer into place, not dragging half the Santa Fe railroad behind you. It’s a good way to understand the mechanical advantage these old Fords can give you. One thing I love about these old trucks is how simple the shifters are. No buttons, no electronics, just a lever on the floor. In my Bronco, this shifter goes straight into the Borg Warner 1345. It’s a mechanical linkage, so when I pull it, it physically moves the gears inside the transfer case. The pattern is simple: two high, four high, neutral, and four low. You feel it clunk into each position, and you know exactly where you’re at. It’s not the smoothest thing; sometimes you have to roll the truck a bit to get it to drop in, but that’s part of the character. It’s raw and mechanical, and you’re connected directly to what’s happening underneath. These old Borg Warner cases weren’t true shift-on-the-fly setups like newer trucks. The manual says you can slip it into four high while rolling real slow, maybe under 5 mph, but it can be rough. Four low is full stop only. Yank while moving, and you’ll quickly find out why replacement parts are hard to come by. Treat it like the old 40-year-old mechanical box that it is. Smooth, deliberate shifts will serve you well. Fast forward three decades, and my 2015 F-150 has a neat little knob on the dash and a digital readout that tells me I’m in four-wheel drive. It even shows how much power is going to each wheel. It’s super convenient, but it lacks the character and charm of that old-school floor shifter. With the old trucks, you feel the clunk, hear the gears, and know something mechanical just happened. It’s a whole different feeling. Let’s move up front because the transfer case is only half the story. This Bronco, like most bullnose F-150s and Broncos, is running a Dana 44 twin traction beam front axle. That’s Ford’s unique take on independent front suspension, with two beams that pivot in the middle and a differential offset to one side. Some people love it, some hate it, but it was Ford’s way of trying to give a smoother ride without going full independent. On the ends, you have the locking hubs. These are manual hubs, meaning if you want four-wheel drive, you have to hop out, grab the dial, and twist it from free to lock. That physically connects the wheel to the axle shaft. When the front drive shaft spins, the wheels spin with it. Leave it on free, and the front wheels just coast while everything else spins inside. Ford also offered automatic locking hubs starting in the early ’80s, especially with select shift automatics. They became more common by around ’83 or ’84 when automatics became more popular, especially on higher trim Broncos and F-150s. By ’85 and ’86, they were fairly common, though manuals were still available, and many trucks stuck with them. Mechanically, the difference is simple. Manual hubs are driver-controlled. You turn the dial on the hub, and that physically locks the wheel hub to the axle shaft with a set of splines and a clutch ring. Once it’s locked, you’re connected. Period. Automatic hubs, on the other hand, use a cam spring setup inside the hub. When the axle shaft starts turning under power, the cam engages the clutch and locks the wheel to the shaft automatically. That sounds great, but the problem is that they rely on friction and movement to engage. If the system’s worn out or you’re in a tricky spot, sometimes they’ll flip, half engage, or not engage at all. That’s why a lot of guys today either swap back to manuals or wish they had. Manuals are dead simple. You lock them and you know you’re good. Since we’re talking about the Dana 44 twin traction beam, here’s a fun tidbit. Ford kept this design alive all the way into the ’90s. Some folks even argue that the basic concept is still alive in a lot of trucks today. A lot of people bash on it compared to a solid front axle, but the twin traction beam did what Ford wanted. It rode nicer on the highway, still gave you four-wheel drive off-road, and it’s become a hallmark of Ford trucks from that era. Love it or hate it, it is pure bullnose DNA. If you’re interested, I have a great video specifically about the twin I beam and twin traction beam setup on these trucks. Definitely go check that video out because it dives into all that information. Let’s tie it all together and actually go through the process of engaging four-wheel drive on this Bronco. First, I got the truck sitting in two-wheel drive. That means the transfer case is in two high, sending power straight back to the rear axle, and the hubs are set to free. In this state, the front drive shaft and the axle can spin around, but the wheels aren’t connected. Basically, just a rear-wheel drive truck. Now, let’s say I want four-wheel drive. Step one is to lock the hubs. Walk up to each front wheel, twist the dial from free to lock. Now those wheels are physically connected to the axle shaft. Step two is to hop back in the cab and move the transfer case shifter from two high into four high. At that point, the case engages the front drive shaft. Because the hubs are locked, the front wheels now get power. Congratulations. You’re officially in 4×4. You might be wondering what happens if you lock the hubs but leave the transfer case in two high. In that case, the front wheels spin the axle shafts, which spin the differential, which spins the front drive shaft, which spins the front gears inside the transfer case, but none of that’s actually engaged to the engine. All you’re really doing is turning a bunch of extra iron for no real reason. You’re adding wear, you’re adding drag, and you’re getting reduced fuel economy. On a bonus Ford, reduced fuel economy usually just means a little more terrible. Once you’re in 4×4, a couple things change in how the truck behaves. There’s no center differential in these part-time systems. That means the front and rear axles are locked together at the transfer case, spinning at the same speed. It’s great for traction in mud, snow, or dirt, but if you try to run on dry pavement, you’ll feel it bind up in the turns. That’s called driveline bind, and it’s why you should only use 4×4 on loose or slippery surfaces. Another thing to keep in mind, tire size and pressure matter. If your front and rear tires are mismatched even slightly, the transfer case is going to feel that difference and start fighting itself. If you push it hard enough, something’s going to give, usually a U-joint or a chain. Now that we’ve covered the basics of how it all works, let’s talk about some of the quirks, common issues, and things you want to stay on top of if you’re keeping one of these old Ford trucks on the road. First up, chain stretch. The Borg Warner 1345 and 1356 both use a chain to drive the front output, as does the NP208. Over time, that chain can stretch, especially if the truck’s been used hard in four low. You’ll know it’s happening when you start hearing a rattling or popping sound under load, almost like the chain is skipping teeth. If you ignore it, you’ll eventually be sitting in the mud with a whole lot of noise and no forward motion. Then there’s the case on the NP208. Easy transfer case for what it was, but the housing could be a weak point. They were pretty lightweight, but one smack on a rock or over-torque the mounting bolts and you could end up with a crack. Once that happens, you’re not fixing it with JB Weld. You’re just hunting for another case. Shift linkages are another wear item. After 40 years, the bushings get sloppy and you’ll feel it when the shifter doesn’t want to fully drop into gear or feels a little bit vague. Sometimes guys think the whole transfer case is shot, but really it’s just a linkage that needs a refresh. Don’t forget about seals. These cases can leak, and output shaft seals get tired. If you don’t keep an eye on them, you can run low on fluid. Speaking of fluid, here’s a critical one. The Borg Warner and new process chain-driven cases use ATF, automatic transmission fluid, not gear oil. The gear oil can ruin the internals. The NP205 is the exception. It’s gear-driven and it takes gear oil. Knowing what belongs in your case is step one. Regular fluid changes are cheap insurance. Ford called for around every 30,000 miles, but let’s be real, most of these trucks went decades without one. If you buy a bullnose and don’t know its history, draining and refilling the transfer case should probably be one of the first jobs on your list. On the axle side, keep an eye on the U-joints. If you hear clicking when turning in 4×4, that’s your sign they’re worn out. They’re cheap and easy to replace, but ignore them and you risk a failure that could take out a yoke or drive shaft. As for upgrades, there are a few no-brainers. If you have automatic hubs, swap back to manual. Manuals, upgrade. That alone can save you some headaches. If you’re doing a Borg Warner 1345 or 1356 behind something making serious torque, you need to consider an upgraded heavy-duty chain. And if you’re building a hardcore off-roader, the NP 205 is still the king. Heavier, shallower, low range, but about as close to unbreakable as it gets. One last fun bit of trivia: some guys lock the hubs while driving in too high, especially in winter or muddy conditions, to avoid getting out of the cab to lock the wheels every time they get stuck. It adds a little drag, wear, and maybe knocks half a mile per gallon off fuel economy, but on a bullnose Ford getting 12 mpg anyway, who’s counting? That’s the rundown on how Ford’s four-wheel drive system worked back in the bullnose years. From the transfer cases, whether it’s the Borg Warner 1345 like mine, the NP 208, or the legendary NP 205, to the floor shifters, the hubs, and the D44 twin traction beam up front. It all comes together to give these trucks their character. Modern trucks have knobs on the dash, digital readouts, and fancy electronics do the thinking for you. Convenient, sure, but there’s something satisfying about pulling a lever, feeling it chunk into gear, and knowing those front wheels are locked in because you made it happen. Four-wheel drive isn’t just about getting unstuck. It’s about understanding how all the parts work together and respecting what these old trucks were built to do. They may not be the most efficient or the smoothest, but they’ve got a kind of honesty and mechanical charm you just don’t get anymore. That’s why I love working with them. For me, that’s what makes this ’82 Bronco and that F-150 special. It’s not just another truck. It’s a reminder of how Ford built 4x4s tough, simple, and ready for anything. Love them or hate them, bullnose Fords have their own DNA, and it’s alive every time you roll out of the driveway in two-wheel or four-wheel drive. So, there you have it. Everything I know or pretend to know about bullnose Ford 4×4 systems and transfer cases. If you have any questions, concerns, gripes, or got something wrong, drop it in the comments and let me know. As always, thanks so much for watching, and we will see you next time. She’s rough around the edges, but she’s doing fine. Tinker Moon’s garage. She’s considered divine. Thanks again for watching. We will see you next time.

I’m going to get you a little bit closer. Why? Because I’m a nice dad. No, you’re not. I’m not? That’s not very nice to say. Why am I not a nice dad? You’re a good dad. I am a good dad. No. No. Hug right here. All right, fine. Get out, you hooligan. Out. Out. Out. He’s telling you to get out. Bye, girls. Love you. Yep. Have a good day. Be good. Bye. Bye, Dad. Bye, kid. Here. Howdy, folks. Ed here. Welcome back to Bono’s Garage. Today, we’re trying something different. I’m going to call it Bullno’s Garage on the road. You guys have to let me know if you like this format or not. It’s something new. Basically, it’s just going to be me off the top of my head, driving on the way to work. During the summer, I’m sure you guys have noticed that I just don’t drop videos. I’ve said it before; I may sound like a broken record, but I just don’t have any time with the kids, family obligations, work, and everything else going on during the summer. There’s just no time to produce and film videos. I don’t have a lot of time, even in the evenings, but what I do have is a 20-minute commute to work. So, I think I’m going to try this little thing where you and I just sit in my truck on my way to work and talk. It’s not really a conversation because you’re not talking back to me, but it’s kind of like a podcast type thing, except it’s mostly just a YouTube version of that. Let me know if you like this because if you do, if you find it entertaining, then I’ll keep doing it. If you don’t, then I won’t. I have no problem not doing something if you guys aren’t interested in it. It’s just going to be talking about things like bullnose-related stuff, garage-related stuff, automotive-related stuff, and it’s just off the top of my head about what I find interesting or what I’ve worked on lately. I’m still working on stuff even though I’m not doing a lot of videos during the summer. I don’t have a lot of time, but at night after the kids go to bed, I can tinker in the garage a little bit or work on some things. I try not to work on the trucks too much without you guys there. I’ve done quite a bit of work on the Bronco and got it running. I have an interesting story about that too, which I’ll get to at some point. I’m not going to work on the F-150 without doing videos on it, but I also work on all the other garage-related stuff. For instance, I’m trying to teach myself how to weld. I’ve always found welding fascinating. How cool is it to stick two pieces of metal together with fire? That’s pretty neat. But I’ve never really gotten into it; I’ve never had the chance. It’s super useful. The number of times in my life that I’ve thought, “Man, I’d really like to get these two pieces of metal together” is way too high. So, I figured, you know what, I’ll learn how to weld. There’s a local place that has classes, but I don’t have time for that. YouTube is a thing, and welders are fairly affordable for the most part now. I thought, let’s go out and get myself a welder and give that a try to see if I can teach myself how to weld. I know I’m going to miss some things, and teaching myself is going to handicap me a little bit from the beginning because there are things that a pro or even a teacher would know that they could tell me right up front. I may teach myself bad habits and all that kind of stuff, and I understand that. But it’s something I want to teach myself and get into anyway. Ultimately, the goal is to hopefully get good enough to weld body panels. The Bronco has a little bit of rust right now. For the Northeast or near the coast, it’s not hardly any rust at all, but for down here, it’s actually quite a bit. There are a couple of places where there are holes in the body panels that are completely rusted through. I’d like to learn how to cut out a piece, weld in a replacement, grind it flat, and make it look nice so that you could paint it and not even know it was done. I don’t know that I’ll ever get that good, but that’s a goal. I do feel like I can at least get good enough to potentially weld a mount for a seat. I’ve got a back seat from a 2005 F250. It’s a rear seat with nice fold-down cup holders in the middle, and I want to put that in the F-150. Of course, those seats are not going to fit. They’ll fit dimensionally, but the mount points aren’t the same. So, I’m going to have to fabricate something. I want to get good enough to the point where I could at least fabricate that and feel confident in the welds I do so that I’m not going to go flying out of the vehicle at 70 mph with the seat attached to me because it’s no longer attached to the truck. Hopefully, I can get to that point. I’m not there yet, but welding is an art. Respect to you guys that do it because it looks easy. These guys on YouTube make welding look super easy. They just get out the gun, set the machine, strike an arc, and do some stuff, and then it makes a stack of dimes, right? But it’s nowhere near that easy to do. Look, it’s fairly easy to use a welder to get a couple of pieces of metal to stick together strong enough that if you bang it with a hammer, it’s not going to come apart. That’s not that hard. But making them look good and be truly structurally sound so that they can work in an application is a different story. I hope to get there. You can set yourself up for failure right from the beginning if you don’t get your spool speed correct, your wire feed speed, or your power levels. You need to use the right diameter of wire. You have to know how thick the metal is that you’re working on and what kind of metal it is. You have to make sure the metal’s clean. You need to have the right equipment. I went out and got myself a Captain MP205. This is not an advertisement for them. They have advertisements all over YouTube for this thing, but I’m not advertising for them. I thought about reaching out to them to see if they would give me one for free, but I’m just going to pay for my own stuff every now and then anyway. That way, I can talk to you guys about it without having to worry about some corporate sponsor. So far, so good. It seems to work pretty well. It’s a little expensive, but it does all the stuff right. It does MIG and TIG, pulse MIG, pulse TIG, and it even has a plasma cutter, which is cool. I’ve never plasma cut anything before in my entire life. That’s actually a lot harder than you’d think it would be, too. I tried plasma cutting, and I’m wiggling all over the place. The plasma cutter is like a lightsaber; it has no resistance whatsoever. It’s just a plasma arc slicing through metal like a hot knife through butter. It’s awesome, but it’s actually pretty hard to be straight. It makes a mess if you don’t have the settings right. I’ve found that using a cutoff wheel is better than the plasma cutter for me because it’s quicker to set up, and it cuts straighter, leaving cleaner lines. The plasma is undeniably cool, but I’m not great at it, so I’m wandering all over the place. Anyway, it’s got all that stuff, and I’m teaching myself with flux MIG for now because buying a bottle of gas, 75/25, is a whole thing. They’re expensive. You can get a bottle of gas for MIG on Amazon for 300 bucks, and it’s full. The problem is that I don’t even know if a place around here will fill it. What’s that about? It’s a legal bottle; it holds gas and has all the stamps and markings. It’s been tested and everything. It should be fine, but I guess some places won’t do it unless you buy their bottle because they want to make the money. To be fair, I haven’t checked with any place around here whether they will refill a bottle from Amazon. I have an 8 to 5 job, and all these places are open from 8 to 5, so I can’t just pop out of work and go down to the welding shop to ask about a bottle. I may have to take a day off one of these days to run some errands and make that one of my stops. Anyway, I’m teaching myself with flux, and it’s not bad. There’s a lot of spatter, but I feel like I’m doing pretty good. I’m building a welding table, which is the first thing you build when you’re learning to weld. I got some old angle iron from my father-in-law and found a couple of guys selling some old angle on Facebook Marketplace. The top is going to be an old industrial shelf, 4×2, that I just had laying around. I just tossed it together, and the angle is actually pretty nice. If you’re from the Southwest or some of the drier places, you know that a lot of less advantaged people will use what’s called a swamp cooler instead of an air conditioning unit. Swamp coolers suck, but they’re better than nothing, especially when it’s 100 degrees outside. Basically, you run some water over an element, and a big fan blows the humidity into your house, helping to keep the air a little cooler. They put these on top of roofs, and to get them up there, you need some kind of scaffold or mount. A lot of guys make those mounts out of angle; they just weld some angle together and plop it on top of a roof to hold the swamp cooler. Many of those are just hanging out in salvage yards around here. My father-in-law had a couple of those laying around, so I got those from him, cut the pieces off, cleaned them up, welded them together, and now I have the beginnings of a welding table. But like I said, I’m using a cutoff wheel. I bought a big cutoff wheel for my chop saw. I know you’re not supposed to use a chop saw. for cutting metal like that. It’s not really designed for that, but it works. It makes nice straight cuts, which is important when you’re building a table because you don’t want it to be wobbly, right? So, I got the table and I put some casters on it, and I’m working to put it together. But man, welding is an art. I feel like I’m not doing too bad. I’m definitely not stacking dimes, but I’m trying to learn how to see the puddle and how to manipulate it, and what pattern I like the best. There’s a lot of muscle memory involved. You have to know what angle to be at and your stick out, and how far away you are. I find myself wandering away as I’m going down the line, and that’s a problem. You have to keep the angle right. There’s a lot of stuff that you don’t think about, and you shouldn’t have to think about it if you’re a good welder. You just do it, and it comes naturally to you. I’m just waiting to get to that point. But like I said, I may never get to the point where I can do body work. I may end up trying TIG one of these days to see if that’ll be better for body work. But again, I want to get at least decent with the fundamentals of MIG before I do that stuff. Anyway, it’s fun though. I enjoy it. I look forward to doing it, but it’s a process. I got this MP 205, and it’s like an $800 machine, which I had to save up to get. But then you can’t just buy the machine; you’ve got to have all the stuff. You need a helmet because, god forbid, you don’t have an auto-darkening helmet. You may as well just throw in the towel. So, you have to get one of those. They’re not super expensive, but the stuff adds up. You need gloves, and a welding jacket or shirt to keep yourself from getting burned. You have to have the wire and the consumables, a cart, and a table. I’m building my own, but you still have to get the materials for that because not all the materials I have are from the junk pile. You need some stuff to stitch things together. It gets expensive, but I’m having a good time. I have a whole wish list full of things on Amazon to try to make my life better when it comes to welding. Who knows, it may be the flavor of the month for me. One of the issues I have in my life is that I get excited about something and I’m all in for a few weeks or a couple of months, or maybe even a year, depending on what it is, and then I just lose interest and move on to something else. So, we’ll see if welding is that thing for me. Luckily, the YouTube thing and the F-150 thing have stayed pretty well cemented. I’m keeping myself from playing video games at night because if I do, I’ll get sucked in and then I won’t make videos or do anything else in my spare time, which I don’t have much of. I’m teaching myself, and I’ll show you guys the welding table once it’s done. I’m pretty happy with it. I have some cool features planned, like a vice mount that rotates and some other neat stuff. I want to add my own touch and make it neat. Hopefully, one day I’ll be able to do the Bronco thing and weld some body panels together. Now, I look around and every piece of metal I see is an opportunity. I can build something out of that. I’m planning to build an engine stand, a run stand, with all the gauges, fuel tank, and radiator mount because those are expensive too. If I can build my own, that’s a win. But that’s one of those practical applications where you have to ensure you have good solid welds because, god forbid, the engine flops off while it’s running. It’s a learning experience, and I’m kind of a scatterbrain. I constantly set tools down and forget where I put them. I spend half of my time looking for tools, and I know I do that, but I still do it. I’m especially scatterbrained when it comes to something I’m not familiar with or new at. I was cutting some angle irons for this welding table and dropped a piece of angle iron right on top of a brand new set of Basset racing wheels. I think it’s Basset; I always mix it up with Barrett. I found a set of really nice painted red wagon wheels for the Bronco because I like that classic look. I was looking for a set, and some guy had them for sale on Facebook. I thought, “That’s perfect,” and he advertised them as five on five and a half. I brought them home and tried to put my hub on them, but the holes didn’t line up. I measured, and it’s five on four and a half. That’s on me for not checking it, right? So, I didn’t check it, and now I have these wheels I need to sell. In the midst of trying to sell these wheels, I found someone on Facebook selling Basset racing wheels, and I really like the look of those. I need a different lug nut for those since they’re racing wheels, but that’s okay; I’ll figure it out. I went out and got those, had them in my garage, and dropped a piece of angle iron. It hit the back of one of the wheels right where the bead seat is and left a divot. I believe the divot is big enough that it might cause a tire not to seat and hold air. However, they are steel wheels, and I’m learning how to weld, so I might be able to fix it by welding. I might try pulse welding for that because I think it will be better at controlling the heat and not blowing through. But I’ve never done pulse welding before, so I’ll need to test that on a piece of scrap angle first. It’s interesting that learning how to weld caused me to drop something onto a wheel that I can now fix by welding, now that I kind of know how to do it. We’ll see. By the way, these Basset racing wheels aren’t street legal. The ones I got aren’t even marked, so that’s another thing we’ll have to contend with. I will probably talk about that in another episode because I’m pulling into my parking lot as we speak. So, like I said, let me know if you like this format. It’s just me sitting in a truck talking, but it’s what I have time to do. It’s easy for me to edit these and get them out to you quickly. If you like this, I will keep doing it. I have all kinds of topics I could ramble about. I like to talk; I can hear myself talk. Anyway, thanks again so much for watching, guys. We’ll see you next time. She’s rough around the edges, but she’s doing fine. Getting things to shine at Moon Knows Garage. She’s considered divine. Thanks again for watching. We’ll see you next time.

All right guys, here we go. This just showed up at my door today, and I know what you’re thinking: oh no, Ed, not another sponsored video. Yes, it is, but this one’s really cool because here’s the deal. Ever since I got the Bronco, I’ve been looking for a way to store the cap, right? ‘Cause you get this big old cap on the back of a Bronco, you want to take it out and go under the sun and go off-road and have some good times with the cap off. You got to have a place to put it, and I’ve been trying to think of a way to do that. And in the middle of doing that, this isn’t a joke, these guys actually reached out to me and said, ‘Hey Ed, we noticed that your garage is, uh, kind of, you know, cluttery all the time, and we think that maybe we’ve got a way to help you clean it up, and if you can do a video on it, we’ll go ahead and give you a unit for free.’ I said, ‘Okay.’ And then I looked into this, and you can actually use this. It’s got enough lifting capacity to tie the cap of the Bronco to this thing and lift it to the top of the garage. This is a Fleximounts GL1 ceiling storage lift, and I’m going to mount it right back there, back the Bronco in, and then we’re going to store the cap up on top of the garage ceiling. All right, so according to the contract I signed, I got 30 days to get this thing installed, get the Bronco in here, and get this up on the lift and show you guys exactly how it works. That’s pretty neat.

It’s kind of loud, but it works. Now you may think that’s a lot of time, but, uh, not in my world. That’s a turkey. That’s a turkey. You’re a turkey? No, that’s a turkey in there. Oh, what are you taking a picture of? Ew, don’t hit the tree! Don’t hit the tree! You want the holy cow?

Hello.

Howdy folks, Ed here. Welcome back to Bullnose Garage. And as you can see, my garage is a complete disaster area. I’ve been working on stuff all spring, and I got no room for anything in here. The engine still sits right there, mocking me as I walk around the garage working on other stuff. But I’m hoping that with this, I can knock out two birds with one stone and kind of clean things up a little bit, get some storage space to store things in, and find a cool way, an innovative way, to store the Bronco cap. Now that’s not what this is advertised to do, right? It’s not for that purpose, but I’m hoping that I can make that work. And if I can, then, uh, maybe you guys who have Broncos out there looking for a place to store your cap can, uh, can follow suit. So we’re going to open this thing up, do a little bit of an unboxing, uh, and get it installed and see how it works. So, uh, stick around.

All right guys, finally got some time to, uh, put this thing together. Let’s see if we can get it installed. First things first, uh, I’ll go ahead and open the box for you so you can see exactly what comes and, uh, kind of what we’re dealing with. So here’s kind of a picture of what it is. Basically, it’s a lift that’s built for your garage or storage area, uh, to put some stuff on and lift it up. This thing can lift up to 300 lb, so, um, that’s pretty good, but it does mean that you have to have it sturdily mounted to your ceiling, uh, on some joists. So, uh, ceiling joists are generally, uh, 2ft center apart, so, uh, this is designed to be, uh, 48 in centers. And luckily, my ceiling, even though it wasn’t, uh, built great back in the day, it was built to that spec, so, uh, I’m good there. All right, let’s see what we got.

Okay, so obviously we got our, uh, hardware here, and, uh, manual out there. And this looks like the first piece that will probably go up on the ceiling. Looks pretty sturdy. This got all the cables, this side of here, just like that. Now this looks like the, uh, handle to roll it up and down. That’s pretty cool. Um, it does actually come with some tape so that you can mount the mounting, um, template to your ceiling so you know exactly where to pre-drill the holes and to put the, uh, the hardware. So that’s actually really cool. All the different bits and pieces I have to go through to see what exactly all this stuff is, but I mean, so far it looks like it’s pretty sturdy. Oh yeah, okay, so see, there’s our installation template. Uh, that’s going to go up against the ceiling to tell us exactly where all the bits and pieces are going to go. Um, and that’s what tape is for, to tape it to your ceiling. So that’s pretty cool. I like the fact that they include that. That’ll make things a little bit easier. Oh, here’s the rollers. Cable’s packed really well, which is nice. I I’ve got some of this stuff from places, and their packing is just, yeah, so substandard. You get it, and there’s, you know, I mean, you guys know UPS and FedEx and even the postal service, these guys bang around your packages all the time, especially getting auto parts and stuff. You get them, and they’re all tore up. So it’s really nice when a, uh, a company packs things well. I appreciate that. I’m not trying to find things to give kudos for, right? You know, this is an honest overview here, but kudos where kudos are due. I’ve seen some pretty bad packaging. Here’s your handle for raising up and down, and there’s the bottom grate here. Now I’m not sure how easy this is going to be to install for a one-man show like myself. We’re going to find out, and the box already says team lift, right? Which I completely ignore like everybody else does. All right, let me lay this stuff out, and we’ll take a look.

All right, so here we are all unpacked. Actually, there’s just a few pieces here, so I’m hoping, um, that it’s a pretty simple installation. Um, I haven’t gone through the instructions yet. I’ll do that next. Uh, for something like this, that this sort of, uh, industrial kind of garage equipment, you probably should go through the instructions first just to set yourself up and know exactly what you’re doing. I don’t usually do that, but in this case, um, I’m going to go ahead and do that first because this thing is pretty heavy, and I’m hanging it from the ceiling of my garage, so I want to make sure that I get it right. So, uh, yeah, I’m going to go through.

that and then the next thing is going to be putting that template up on my ceiling so I know exactly where it’s going to mount. All right, well there we go. My template is all up on the ceiling. You can see the size of this sucker. It’s 4×4, 4T x 4T, so it’s pretty good size. I am going to be able to fit a lot of stuff on there, and when it comes time to put the Bronco cap on, yeah, that’s a perfect size for that. So I’m just going to use a couple of ratchet straps underneath the cap to basically hang it. I’m not going to do any kind of tightening or really hard strapping down. It’s going to be just hanging up here. I don’t come through here with anything tall, and really, I’m not going to plan on leaving the cap off of the Bronco for an extended period of time. Maybe someday down the road I’ll get like a soft cap or something, but if I do that, then that cap will go into storage, right? It won’t stay in here. So this is just for like if I want to go out on the weekend, I back the Bronco in, pop the cap off, raise it up, get it out of the way, and then drive off. And now I’m cool. I can do my stuff. I can go, you know, out rock crawling in the desert with the kids or whatever. And then when I’m done, back the Bronco back in, lower the cap back down, attach it, and drive out. And now I’m back to having my space back again, and I can use the actual lift itself to put some things on, car parts, tools I don’t use all the time, you know, whatever stuff that I’ve got laying around that just sort of like takes up space on the floor in my garage. Now I can lift it up, so this is a win-win. But I’m really looking forward to seeing how it works. Also, guys, just to let you know, I just double checked with my handy dandy crapola stud finder. These things are garbage, aren’t they? Anyway, it did give me a reading exactly where I expected the stud to be up there, right in line with the second part of that template there, so I think I’m good to go. Now it’s time to start mounting the thing.

All right, guys, changed my hat. Starting to sweat, actually doing some work today. Okay, so I am not a like interior DIY channel generally, so I’m not going to go through every last single step with you guys for installing this thing. But I will go through it when to take the cap off the Bronco, ’cause that’s the kind of channel I am. Anyway, the next step is to use these two brackets. These are the ones that go on the side where you crank it, and then these two pulley pieces here, you stick them up there, mark where the holes go to meet the template that they’ve got, and then we pre-drill. I think I have to go check my instructions, but I think that’s what we do next. So yeah, I’m going to go stick these up there and mark my spots.

All right, guys, real quick. I made a mistake when I set this up. My plan was to put the cranking side closer to the skylight, and actually turns out this template matters which direction you go, and I didn’t think that way. I just kind of sort of slapped it up there. So the cranking side, according to this template, is now closer to me, which you know what? I’m okay with. It doesn’t really matter which side has the crank on it. The crank itself gets stored somewhere else. You just lift it up and put it in there and then crank it down. So it doesn’t make any difference which side it goes on. So yeah, so this is the bracket for the cranking side, and that lines up with, there’s some little divots up there in the template. So I already marked the spots for the pulley side of the template, but that’s okay. This will cover that up. Nobody cares. I don’t care. So anyway, yeah, so rather than pull that thing down, flip it around, and put it back up, I’m just going to go ahead and flip where the crank side is, and I don’t think it really even matters. So that’s just God’s way of saying this is the direction it’s supposed to be.

Well, all my holes are pre-drilled. I guess now it’s time to mount things up. Two hours later. So I don’t know if you can tell by looking or not, but my ceiling actually has a bit of a slope to it ’cause I’ve got a flat roof on the house, and so the whole thing slopes downward so the rain and the water will run off that direction. And it’s actually enough to cause me a problem. It’s about a 2-inch difference from one side where I’m going to mount these pieces to the other, and it’s a little bit different for the front and the back because they’re different widths. So, you know, I did some measuring and everything. I’m just going to try to get close to level with some fender washers and a 2×4 and some plywood just to try to get some spacers in there. So I got out my trusty can of Ford blue and made a couple of spacers here to go up there, and we’re going to see how that goes. Now, I actually had to go to the store and spend about 16 bucks on some lag screws. Yeah, so I had to go to the store and get some lag screws. This is the one that came with the kit. This is the one that I’m going to use to sort of make sure that my screw goes through all my spacers and up into the rafter, and it’s good, getting good, getting good, getting secure up there. So yeah, couple little changes here to deal with my sloped ceiling, but I think I’m going to make it work. It might void my warranty, but you know, do what you got to do. We’ll see how it goes.

It was at this moment he knew he up. Hey guys, future Ed here. I was in no mood after that happened to try to analyze or explain exactly what happened there, but I can look back on it now and laugh. So I’m going to go ahead and explain to you exactly what happened and the results of that whole thing. So here is what’s left of the main support bar from the GL1 mount. As you can see, the mount is no longer attached here. That piece is, is this piece here. This is the bracket that slides into the bracket that goes onto the ceiling.

It goes on there and then there’s another piece here that goes on top of there. There’s a cotter pin that holds that, and normally there would be a little bearing inside of there, and this is what is left of that bearing. There’s a couple more pieces that I had to pound out, and they’re gone now, but, uh, yeah, then the, um, the balls are long gone. I have no idea where they even went, unfortunately. This, um, the bearing was just right inside this hole right here, and it was press fit in. There’s nothing out there on the market that that’s like this. This has got to be a custom part that they have made for this bracket specifically, so, uh, I couldn’t find anything out there that would, um, that would do this. So here’s kind of what happened there. Because my ceiling is sloped, the mounting brackets are also a little bit sloped, which means that when I hung this up on the ceiling, it was caned just a little bit. I mean, this is exaggerated, but it was caned a little bit like this. And so to get this side in, I had to kind of bend it down just a little bit, and that caused that bracket to be a little bit tighter than it would be if the ceiling was flat. And so I found myself needing to use a rubber mallet to get that pounded in. This, uh, piece of equipment telescopes to go to the right size so they can pack it. This side telescopes really easy, and this side is kind of harder, right? And so I opened this to what I thought was full extension, but it turns out there’s actually a little bit more extension on this that I didn’t get because of how tight that little last piece is. And so I didn’t have it extended all the way. And so what happened was, when I, and you can see it on the video, I got to a certain point where this had already, um, this, the length of this wasn’t quite long enough to go in between both mounts exactly. And when I pounded this side in, this side started coming out, and as I got this side locked completely in, the other side popped out and swung down, and then gravity did its thing, and this, uh, here just bent inside that bearing and popped that bearing right out of there. And, uh, things went flying, and that was it. And there was just no, uh, yeah, no way to stop that from happening. So this is completely my fault. One, I wasn’t paying attention to how far the extension was on this. Two, I wasn’t really watching while I was pounding in. You can see on the video I turn around and look just right before it happens just to check to make sure that I’m okay, and the last couple pounds I did, it moved a lot, right? It just popped right out of there and swung down. Um, but again, that’s on me. And also because my ceiling is, is, is, uh, at an angle, that’s an atypical installation. I think most folks are going to have straight, straight ceilings, so, um, and it’s, and again, it’s on me as the installer to make sure that I’m doing what I got to do to account for that kind of stuff, and I didn’t. So anyway, bottom line is don’t think too badly of the product. That was all on me. It’s not because of cheap materials; it’s because there’s no bearing out there this size that would handle the weight of this thing swinging down like that. That’s all there is to it. So let’s go ahead and continue on and see how it got resolved.

One week later. Hey guys, so it’s about a week later after my little, uh, incident, and I just got home from a field trip with the kiddos. As you can see, I’m very appropriately dressed for that. And, uh, look at what I have here on my front stoop. It is another GL1 from Flexmounts. I got a hold of them and let them know that, uh, I had the little accident and I was really sorry about that. It was totally my fault. I wasn’t paying attention. It was all me, and they sent me a whole new one. And I’m guessing it’s because these parts are all manufactured together, and they can’t just send me like the little bearing piece or the mount piece or whatever it is. So they sent me a whole new one, and they didn’t even complain or nothing. As a matter of fact, I haven’t even heard from them. They just, I sent them the email, and then a week later one shows up on my front stoop. So we are going to finish this installation and, uh, show you how it works.

Okay, let’s try this again with a new one, fully telescoped this time. Yeah, see this one telescopes easier than the last one, and I don’t blame them for that. I don’t, that’s, that’s not their fault. I mean, they can’t manufacture everything to the exact same specs, and I should have read the directions better and known that how the telescoping thing worked before I tried to put it up here. But that’s, see, it is sturdy enough. Oh, I moved my ladder’s in the wrong spot. So these brackets, mounting points, and this bar are sturdy enough that when I get it in here like that, it will stay, you know, it’ll stay in there, and I can hang it just like that with this other bracket coming down. So I have room and time to move over here and get that one mounted in. Now, last time I had to use a hammer, a little bit of persuasion to get it in. Let’s see if this one’s the same thing, and I’m going to keep an eye on the other side, you better believe this time, to make sure that I’m not pulling it out of there.

Oh wow, okay, yeah, that’s much easier this time. And there we go, not going anywhere this time, he said confidently. All right, now it says to assemble the grid. So I put together a lot of things like this where the instruction manual just kind of gives you a bunch of pictures, and you have to kind of infer how things are oriented based on how the instruction manual looks, and I hate that because I like to be more exact than that. So I do appreciate that Flexi Mounts, their instructions actually tell you things like the label face is out, make sure that the bars are perpendicular to the stacked grid, and, you know, this is exactly how this goes, make sure you do this, make sure you do that. So I appreciate all that. Oh, there’s even labels on here that says this side of the wire deck should face upward. It’s nice when product designers actually think about the people.

Doing the installation, it kind of tells you like where this should be located and how far back and forth it should be and that there should be enough like an equal amount of bar on both sides and all this. So yeah, pretty good.

All right, basket assembled. Now it’s time to hook it up. I’m a cheat. I don’t feel like bending over, so I got my grid all wired up, everything’s hooked, got my handy dandy winding pole here. It says before using the product to unlatch the safety catch on the gearbox, and I’m guessing you just put that in there like that, and now you can wind it. Okay, it takes a little bit of work to get it wound. It’s got a low gearing, so that’s so you can raise all that weight. But it’s nice that you can kind of move this wherever you want.

Now it says it holds 300 lb evenly distributed. I’m not 300 lb, but I’m also not evenly distributed, so I think I’m going to try it with something I can put right in the middle. So I don’t know if you can see in the camera or not, but there’s a fair bit of slack in some of these cables, and one of the things that the instructions does tell you to do is to put a heavy load on there the very first time that you lift the lift up so that it can take some of that slack out and it can wind things up appropriately.

So I just happened to have a relatively heavy load over here that I was going to actually use this thing to store anyway, which is my tote full of parts from the Windsor. And this seems like a pretty good way to store that stuff. I may have to move some things out of the tote so I can, you know, have more vertical room, but that’s a pretty heavy load there to start with.

Oh yeah, see, it’s starting to take the slack up there. Oh, and one other thing that the instructions noted is that if you want to, you can take the handle off and use a power drill to do this. So, um, yeah, that’s pretty neat.

It’s kind of loud, but it works.

All right, so that is as far as I can get it. How much do I trust this thing? Huh, that’s as far as I can get it without the parts inside that tote actually touching the ceiling. But that’s pretty nice, you know, I can walk underneath of it, and it’s a little lower in the front than it is in the back. I think that’s just, don’t kill me, so little lower in the front than it is in the back. And I think that’s just due to, you know, the slop that’s inherent in mounting things like this. It’s not going anywhere, so that’s pretty nice.

Yeah, yeah, I like that. And I’ll end up taking those parts out of that tote, the ones that stick up there, laying them next to it, and then I can put all those parts up there and it gets them off my floor. That’s pretty slick.

All right, so there it is tucked all the way up. Yeah, that’s not bad. Yeah, that’s pretty nice, actually.

Well guys, unfortunately, I couldn’t get my Bronco running. I tried to get it running this morning and didn’t have any luck. I still don’t know exactly what’s going on with it. The spark plugs are black and carbony even though they’re brand new. It popped on me once or twice, and now it won’t start even with starter fluid, so I still got some work to do there.

But luckily for me, past Ed had some foresight and put in this cool little doohickey right here, which ignore the clothes garage sale stuff. I have a video about where I how I did this if you want to see. And this just allows me to use a comealong basically to get the Bronco up over the hump in the front right there. I could push it on my own or pull it without that hump there, but with that hump, I don’t have the strength to do it, so this comealong helps me get over the hump. It also gives me a little bit of safety so it doesn’t go flying forward or anything if, you know, I lose control of it.

So yep, that’s what we’re doing right now. Come on.

Woo guys, this is nuts! Look at how close I am to everything here. Can you see that? That is ridiculous. It’s not actually touching, but it is pretty much exactly where it needs to be to be underneath this flex amounts lift. So now I get to learn how to take a back off a Bronco, the cap off, and see if we can’t get that sucker lifted up.

Hey guys, welcome to the inside of my Bronco, and as things are beautiful in here, we’re going to see if we can get this cap off.

All right, now I know some models have some interior lights back here. You’d have to disconnect the wiring. I don’t see any in this one, so I’m going to assume that there’s no wiring in here. Even the cab light is like empty, you can see right there, so even if there was a light, it’s probably not hooked up. And you can see where the trim is all but completely missing on both sides. I have to take some of this off, but I could just rip it off really. It’s pretty roached out.

But there’s, take, if you have a nicer Bronco, you would take the trim off, you would unplug the light, and then there’s these bolts here that you take off, and there’s some pins here that help kind of guide it on. But, yeah, that should be about it. Once I get the bolts off, it should come off, and we’re going to see what happens.

All right guys, so to be honest, there’s more to this than I thought. I’ve never taken the cap off a Bronco before, so you have to take all this trim off, and there’s some bolts up there too, and these bolts are kind of a pain to get out. They’re really fine threaded, so they take a long time. But we’re working through it, and eventually I think I’m going to leave all this trim off. I’m not putting the trim back on, and I think I may try to create like a quick method of putting this cap on and off. I’m not sure what I can do there. I’ll have to take a look and see what other guys have done. But, yeah, ’cause I’d like to be able to just like remove this thing for a few hours for a fun on a weekend and then come back and pop it back on. So we will see what I’m going to do, but for now I just got to.

Get it off. Okay, so now comes the only part that I’m actually really kind of concerned about, which is getting the top actually off. Who knows how long it’s been since this thing has moved? Uh, I got all the bolts out, got all the trim off, uh, so it should be good to go. But, uh, there’s a little bit of sealant, I think, um, keeping this thing on. So you can hear where and see where it kind of moves. Make sure if you’re doing this, use a trim removal tool and not something more, uh, aggressive than that. You don’t want to crack this fiberglass. That would be really, really bad news. So see if I can get it off. I feel like this is a bigger pain than it would normally be ’cause I’ve got my engine back there and a bunch of just stuff crammed in this garage. It’s the consequences of being a dad in the summertime with the family and all that stuff. There’s yard sale stuff in here and just random bits of whatever. There’s one way to do it. So I think what I’m going to do now is I’m going to lower the, uh, the lift down to basically touch the top of the, uh, cap so that, uh, when I ratchet strap it, it’s already kind of right there. There we go. All right, here we go, all tightened up. Moment of truth, come on. Yeah, so for something like this, I think I’m going to use the hand crank rather than this, uh, this drill because the drill is a little bit clunky for this. That’s pretty impressive. All right, guys, well, there you go, a completely novel way to store your Bronco cap. I mean, you could probably even store a Blazer cap or a Jeep cap or, um, yeah, a newer Bronco or anything really that’ll pop off like this. Um, you know, you can maybe do like, uh, those hard cover, uh, tanu covers if you wanted to take those off and go off to the, uh, the store and get you something from the hardware store that’s a little bit bigger or furniture or whatever, or refrigerator, you know, and take that hard cap off. And this is a place to store it, right? I think it’s a really, really cool use for this thing. I didn’t see this use case advertised anywhere on the Flexi Mounts website. Flexi Mounts, I think that’s an untapped market that you should look into, but hey, I’m helping you out with that, so you’re welcome. Uh, as far as Flexi Mounts and the GL1 lift goes, pretty impressed. Obviously, I made a little bit of a mistake and that thing swung down and I busted it, but they sent me a whole new replacement. Now, I can’t guarantee that they would be the same way for you guys ’cause I’m doing a video for them. We kind of have a contract thing going on, so, you know, and I don’t know what’s going to happen once this is done and over with. I got to send it back to them. What’s going to happen with that? I got to work that out with them. But anyway, um, I’m going to keep one of these. True story, if they were to say, ‘because you broke it, you got to pay for it,’ I would pay for it to keep it. And that’s not a joke. I would. This is so useful, uh, that I would definitely, definitely pay for it. So, um, yeah. And on top of that, you know, you can see up there, I’m not sure you can see very well, but there’s a little bit of space between the top of that rack and the ceiling, so I could store some other stuff, being mindful I don’t go over 300 lb with this cap on there. But yeah, and that’s what it’s for, right? It’s for storing, uh, garage items up and out of the way. Uh, but I mean, you can hang stuff from it ’cause it’s got the grate and everything. It’s really super useful. You know, I was thinking of a way to store my cap, and I was looking at things like, I don’t know, I’ll put it on some pallets outside or maybe I could build a rack or maybe I could, I don’t know what I could do. Maybe I could get a winch. That would be pretty cool, right? And then Flex Mounts, literally just a couple of weeks after I had that thought, sent me an email saying, ‘Hey Ed, you know your garage is full of garbage and we think it would be great for you to store some of that garbage on our lift and get it out of your way.’ No, that’s not what they said. What they said was, ‘We like your channel, we like your style, we would like to have you talk about our lift on your channel.’ I said, ‘Well, yeah, okay, let me take a look at it as I do.’ And when I did, I went, ‘Oh my gosh, this would be perfect for storing a Bronco cap.’ And it is. I mean, guys, look, look at how cool it is. Look at that. This, this, I’m not acting like that’s super cool. I could just drive this thing out, go out, have a great day, back it in, drop this down. Now look, this is not as simple as taking off parts of a Jeep, right? But with a piece of equipment like this, it does make the up and down and taking this thing off a whole lot easier. I did this alone. Nobody helped me. And, um, it’s just going to sit here while I drive out. If I could, I can’t because this is broken, but hopefully yours isn’t. So if you have one, you can just drive out, do your stuff, drive back, pop it down, bolt it on, and you’re good to go. And I think at some point in the life cycle of this vehicle, I’m going to try to figure out a way to make this a little bit easier to take on and off. Uh, maybe put some studs here with some, um, uh, wing nuts or something. I’ll figure something out. I mean, do they have kits for that to make it easier to take a cap on and off on a Bronco? Uh, I don’t know. If not, I’ll figure something out. Um, but yeah, so anyway, bottom line, uh, Flexi Mounts GL1 lift, big thumbs up, big five stars, super impressed with it. It is not that expensive, guys. Go check it out. The link is in the description of the video. Uh, you know, as always, if you learned something today, you learned how to take a Bronco cap off, learn a great way to store a Bronco cap, um, give me a like, give me a subscribe. That really does help me out. I am super sorry that I’m not putting out very many videos right now. In the middle of the summer, it is just so much going on. I have literally taken days off of work to make this video happen because, uh, I just haven’t had any time otherwise. Uh, but I do appreciate every single comment.

Every single, like every single subscribe, keep doing that stuff. This engine back here will get worked on eventually, I promise. As always, guys, thanks again so much for watching, and we will see you next time.

She’s rough around the edges, but she’s doing fine. Take her head away, getting things to shine at Bullnose Garage. She’s considered divine. Thanks again for watching, we will see you next time. Thanks again for watching, we will see you next time.

Hey guys, Ed here. Welcome back to Bullnose Garage. And you may have noticed I’m not posting as much lately as I have been in the recent past, and that’s just because of the time of year that it is. Spring and summer, man, there’s so much going on. I got a huge honeydew list, and, uh, you know, we got a bunch of stuff to go to: birthday parties, Easter stuff, man, it’s crazy. I haven’t had a free weekend in, well, pretty much since I put out my last video, and that’s not going to change anytime soon.

So, uh, I really do want to keep working on stuff. I do plan on it, I just haven’t had time. And you can see right here, the engine is pretty much still in one piece, and that’s like the biggest thing that I want to do, but I haven’t had a chance. So to make it up to you guys, um, I made you this quick little music video. Now I know what you’re going to say: Ed, if you have time to make a music video, you got time to, uh, make a regular video too. Well, no, because this music video was, uh, written and produced completely by AI. So enjoy, um, this completely tongue-in-cheek, over-the-top AI fever dream of a music video.

Just a guy in his truck being judged from afar by thousands of people on YouTube. I’m swapping out my inline six for a 408 stroke, but you’d think I kicked my dog or took a shot at the Pope. Purists crying mortal sin in social circles online, calling me a hacker, whack, and say I’m wasting my time. They say, ‘Boy, you flap your gums way more than you wrench.’ Well, I call that content, not just riding the bench. I film in the garage, do voiceovers in the hall. My kid walked in mid-take, now she’s famous, y’all.

Just so you know, I ain’t building it for you. I’m building it for the dude I was when I was 22, that young broke kid dreaming chrome and steel, watching Dukes of Hazard, saying someday I will. Making content ain’t a walk in the park, all right? I film my edit till well after dark. You hit play once I’ve sat through take 22, so before you judge, remember I ain’t doing it for you.

Got a comment last night said, ‘I ain’t got smarts, but my truck runs fine.’ And the channel buys parts. ‘You’ll ruin that truck,’ they cry from the couch, looking like a judgmental Oscar the Grouch. Half my comments say I’m doing it wrong, and the other half ask why I’m taking so long. But I like the challenge, making sure it’s done right, and I like free parts or cash on the side. I write the scripts, run the site, shoot the vids, fix the trucks, then some joker shows up griping about my AI crutch.

Yeah, I use some AI, so what’s the crime? It don’t wrench the bolts, just saves me time. Son, I’m using AI to help, why is that so wrong? Ain’t nobody got time, hell, I wrote this song. You gripe that I’m slow, then gripe when I get an assist. Maybe gripe less and check something off your own damn list. I torque when I can, but the kids come first. Long days, long nights, flu season’s the worst.

The truck’s been almost done since the 4th of July, but dreams don’t have deadlines, and neither do I. Got a Bronco in the yard, yes, she runs like trash. Truck in the garage, he runs, just not that fast. People say, ‘Man, you ever going to get it done?’ Right after dinner, bath time, and a Bluey rerun.

Just so you know, I ain’t building it for you. I’m building it for the dude I was when I was 22, that young broke kid dreaming chrome and steel, watching Dukes of Hazard, saying, ‘Someday I will.’ So call me slow, call me clueless, or maybe even insane, but I’m making smoking magic for the kid in my brain. And when she roars into life as the dream comes true, you’ll know without question I didn’t build it for you.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to torque a head bolt, find a juice box. Where’d I put that camera? Is this thing on?

anybody who works on engines knows that you need three basic things for an engine to run at least an internal combustion engine. You need air, you need spark, and you need fuel. Without any one of those three things, an engine is basically just a gigantic paper weight. Last time I was working on the Bronco on my channel, I uh took care of the spark problem because uh there was no battery in the truck and now there is and it works. And luckily for me, all the other spark stuff uh seems to be working okay. The distributor is fine, the spark plugs are fine, um at least fine enough to run the way that it is right now. I haven’t gone through and done a uh tuneup or anything, but it runs right. So uh air is also really easy ’cause I mean it just sort of sucks it from the atmosphere and as long there’s there’s uh no blockage anywhere, you’re pretty much good to go. But fuel, fuel is what I’m tackling today.

Howy folks, Ed here. Welcome back to Bullnose Garage and today I’m be looking at the fuel system of this Bronco, dropping the fuel tank and trying to figure out why it was disconnected. Hello! All right guys, so here’s what we’re looking at for this fuel system repair. Um for some reason, the fuel line right up here in the engine bay is uh was disconnected from the fuel line that runs back to the tank in the rear of the Bronco. And uh the guy that I bought it from just had it uh running with a bottle of gasoline, a water bottle full of gasoline that went right into the fuel pump. So I don’t know why that was disconnected. I don’t know if it’s um because the guy I bought it from just wanted to get it running really quick and so he just disconnected it and uh popped the bottle on there and he didn’t to deal with the entire fuel system or if it was disconnected for a different reason. Uh maybe that fuel line is blocked, there’s a problem with the filter, or there’s a problem in the gas tank. I really don’t know, so I got to go through the whole thing and I’m going to start with a gas tank.

Now, uh this was what was in the engine bay. This is just a a pre-arb oret fuel filter. I have no idea what the microns are, I have no idea what model it is. Um there’s not really any markings on it. I I’m I’m not going to use this. Um I’ve got uh a better idea. So depending on which model you have, whether or not it came from the factory with a fuel filter, a pre-pump fuel filter, um in the frame rail, my my 85 has one, this Bronco does not. There is a rubber hose connection down there between um the two metal hoses that a fuel filter could go on. I don’t know if it came from the factory like that, but that is what I’m going to do. Um I’m a fan of two-stage filtering, so I got a couple of 100 Micron metal filters on the way uh that I’m going to use to replace that. So for a pre-pump filter, I’m also going to do the one on my 85 while I’m working on it and uh then the post pump filter is going to be right uh in front of the carburetor and that’s just a little uh tiny Motorcraft filter. I’ll show you that when I get there. Um I’m going to replace both of them while I’m doing it uh on both vehicles, so uh there’s that. But first things first, I got to drop the tank.

Now dropping the tank in these isn’t real hard, but you do have to undo all the connections. There’s the fuel filler neck, there’s the uh um obviously the gas hose itself, the sending unit electrical, uh which is just uh power for the uh um the meter and ground, and then there’s the EVAP system which is just a line that runs from the gas tank for venting up to a charcoal canister uh in the front of the truck here. Now on both of these trucks, that charcoal canister is not hooked up to anything. It just runs from the gas tank up into the canister and then there’s nothing going to the uh the rest of the emissions system or the carburetor or anything like that. So um I think, I’m not sure yet, but I think I’m just going to cut out the canister in the Bronco and probably just put either an inline um evap valve on the tank itself or get a vented gas cap. I’m not sure which one I’m going to do yet, um but that’ll take care of that.

So uh yeah, once you got all those lines disconnected and everything’s kind of a free, then you put a jack underneath, uh start on doing the straps and the tank should just drop right down. So uh especially if it’s really old, a lot of those lines can be really hard to to get off. Um so you just want to be patient and uh jack the back of the vehicle up to give you some extra room to get up in there. Uh but yeah, we’re just going work on that and uh I’ll bring you guys along.

All right guys, so here’s our fuel tank for the 82 Bronco and uh outside it looks pretty good. The straps are a little rusty, but that’s not that big of a deal and uh I don’t see anything wrong with the tank. I think it’s empty, it feels empty, so uh that’s good. We’re going to see when I drop it if there’s any fluid in there, but I’ve already found a really kind of a big problem. Um whoever had this Bronco before me did some uh some questionable work in terms of uh the bumper hitch here and I kind of got like a rear-ended Pinto situation going on. So uh yeah, before I run this thing in any real capacity down the road, this is going to have to come off. I have said it before, say it again, inheriting someone else’s project is uh always an interesting endeavor.

So anyway, these are the straps. You can see that I’ve already got some PB Blaster um on the bolts there or the nuts to help me get that off there. And there up here we have the fuel line, so I’ve got to get that disconnected. Um somewhere there is a power cable I believe that goes to the sending unit that I’ve got to get taken care of and then also uh the uh fuel filler neck here, I got to get that um unclamped from there so I can drop this thing down.

All right guys, sorry I lost a little bit of footage, uh but it was just basically me unscrewing everything down here. So I am now ready to drop the tank. I got everything disconnected and I have the straps off. Well, the only thing I don’t have disconnected yet is the uh the sending unit electrical is not disconnected, but I can’t reach up there and get to that until I drop it a little bit. So all my hope is that I can drop this a little bit and then get up into there and I’ll plug it without this falling down and killing me. So let’s see what happens.

There we go. Ah, there we go. This is just about the exact right size to fit up into here. So oh yeah, all kinds of yeah spider eggs and all kinds of great stuff up there. See up here? Hey, there we go, it just pops right off the top. All right, now I should just be able to drop the whole thing down and should be good to go. Don’t kill yourself, Edwardo. This is pretty jank, right? That’s as low as that goes. Yeah, it feels like there’s a little bit of fuel in there. Oh, it’s the fuel filling neck. All right, all right, I’m just going to take that out. Yeah, there’s actually a bit more fuel in here than I thought there was, but it’s not too bad. There we go, all right, tank is down and the underneath of this actually looks really good.

All right, let’s get this puppy out of here and we can take a look at it. All right, so there it is. That’s the tank. Other than being pretty dirty, actually doesn’t look too bad on the outside. There’s not a lot of rust, I don’t see any corrosion, it does not feel weak at all. There’s a dent on the bottom, but that’s to be expected in a Bronco, I’m sure. Yep, get it open, take a look inside. Wow, that puppy’s not moving at all. You got your uh fuel sending unit lock ring here, which is a real pain of the keester. Um I’ve hit it with PB Blaster, I’ve probed to get it off a little bit. I’m going to try again here. Um really just got to keep at it. PB Blaster should soak in for a while using a brass punch so there’s no spark and so that the brass that the uh the punch doesn’t mar up my rings here. I don’t know if I’ll reuse this sending unit or not, but um we’re going to see what the condition is like and if it’s in good condition, there’s no reason to to replace it.

With something new, so yeah, let’s see if I can get this thing knocked loose. There we go. All right, looks a little rough but not horrible. There is some rust and gunk on there. Yeah, I will probably replace this just because of the rust on this arm and the way that that looks right there. Okay, there’s some gunk on the bottom, but man, the inside of that thing looks clean, and the gas actually doesn’t look that bad. It doesn’t smell that bad either for the age of the Bronco. Now, I don’t know how old this gas stank gets. It’s got dirt and debris on it, so it must have been there for a while. For the age of this, I am not disappointed in how clean this looks and that gas. I mean, you guys can, I don’t know if you see this or hear this. There you go. Yeah, see, now it looks like there’s a piece of Velcro or something in there. I don’t know what that is right there. There’s a little bit of sediment that you can see, but the gas itself looks pretty good, and the bottom of the tank looks actually really good. So here you go. Yeah, it actually looks pretty good in there. Happy with that.

All right, guys, so the next step is going to be to clean this tank out. I got to get the gas out of there, dispose of it properly, get it all cleaned up, and clean out the inside. I’ll go through with you on how I’m going to do that, what I’m going to use to clean out the inside to get whatever sediment there is in there out. While I’ve got it out, may as well go ahead and clean it up. I don’t know yet if I’m going to put a finish on this, like paint it or anything. I really don’t think I will. There’s no rust on it, and it’s in pretty good shape. I guess I could just spray a real quick coat of rust inhibitor or something on there just to, you know, while I got it out, clean it up and make it a little bit better. But, um, yeah, and then, obviously, like I said, I’m going to replace the sending unit because I don’t like the look of this. The float here, the arm that it’s attached to, there’s a lot of corrosion on that. So these sending units are not super expensive, so I’ll just replace that. I got to replace the fuel line. I got some new fuel line coming in. This one here cracked on me. I don’t know if I did that, if it was like that. It’s entirely possible that this was already there, and that’s why it was disconnected, that there was a fuel leak there. I don’t know. It’s hard telling. Like I said, I don’t know what all happened to this thing before I got it.

Yeah, so, and then this is the vent that would go up to the charcoal canister in the front of the vehicle. I had to cut this off with a knife because I couldn’t get it off any other way. I think I’m just going to put an inline vent here and take the charcoal canister out because it hasn’t been hooked up in my other truck either for basically forever, so it doesn’t really do anything. So it doesn’t seem to hurt the way that it runs. It’s one less thing to worry about, and so I’m just going to go ahead and put an inline vent in here or pop a vent in the top of here. I got to do some research on which way I want to go there. But other than that, yeah, so the next thing is cleaning it up.

Why you do that? W, that’s a lot of gas. Yeah, it is. It’s so huge. I feel like Go Go Juice. W, it’s called the pressure washer. All right, guys, we are in the garage, going to finish cleaning this up on the outside. There’s still a little bit of stickiness and some stuff here from where the strap pads were on either side here. Just a little bit of rust. I’m going to clean that up with a wire brush in my drill, and there’s some stuff on the inside of the tank. I’m not sure exactly what it is, like little bits and pieces. There’s like a cap of some kind, like a plastic cap or something in there. I don’t know how that got in there, if that was something that fell in there when I was working on stuff or if that’s something that’s been in there for a while. But I got my shop vac here. I’m just going to stick the shop vac inside there, clean it out real good, and then I’m going to hit it with the wire reel and get it kind of cleaned up. So we’ll do that next.

Sorry I got to shoot at night, guys. It’s a little dark out here, but this is the time that I got. You know, I work full-time and got a couple kids, so do what you can. All right, so I’m ready to do my acetone rinse, and I went ahead and put the old sending unit cap back on. I cut the rust and sealed it off. I’m going to replace that anyway, so I just got the cap in there so that it seals it. I found a lid to like an old masonry jar, so that actually just pops right on here. It’s not going to make an airtight seal, but it’s going to keep most of the vapors on the inside so it won’t evaporate too quickly. Then I’m just going to cover this with some metal tape. That way it won’t eat through the flash, and it should come off without leaving any residue. We’re going to see how this works. I haven’t tried this yet, but we’re going to give it a go.

So now all I got to do is pour my acetone in there and give it a swish. This should probably be good. Use a whole container. Obviously, guys, I’m doing this outside. You don’t want to mess with this stuff inside a not ventilated room like my garage. Probably should be wearing gloves, but I’m not. So the nice thing about this setup, and I didn’t plan it this way, it sort of worked out this way, is that acetone will, of course, evaporate over time, which can build just a little bit of pressure inside the tank. Not that it’s going to get dangerous or anything, but if you want to release some of that pressure, you can have just a little opening, and this actually works for that because this cap isn’t perfectly on here. It’s just kind of sitting on it. It snaps on really well, but it’s not sealed, so that will give me a little bit of an escape path for some of the fumes and stuff.

So, all right, I’m going to go ahead and swish this around and get the tank a good coat on the inside, and then I will leave it overnight. And then tomorrow, even thing, I’ll come back out and we’ll rinse it, and I’m going to use isopropyl alcohol for that, and I will tell you why I do that. Let that sit, and I will come out in just a little bit, probably another hour or so, and do that again, and I’ll do that until bedtime. And then tomorrow morning, I’ll come out and check it to see how much acetone evaporation I’ve got, and hope there’s still some in there. If there is, I’ll shake it again, and we’ll just go from there.

So we’ve had our acetone in there for just about 24 hours. I’ve come out three or four times over the course of the last day and swished things around. Got the acetone moving around in there. It’s actually not evaporated that much, so that’s good. You can get it sloshing out of there. So now I got to get the acetone out of there, and to expedite that process, I’m going to rinse with 91% isopropyl alcohol. This is about a quart of it. Isopropyl alcohol mixes really well with acetone, and it helps increase the evaporation time. It also binds with any water that might be left over in there from when I did the rinse out earlier, although there shouldn’t be anything in there. But yeah, so we’re going to use isopropyl alcohol to rinse out the acetone, and then we’ll use my air compressor to blow it out, make sure it’s plenty dry, and then we’ll talk about painting it.

So one thing I do want to mention here is that you’ve got a lot of options when you’re cleaning out one of these things. I used acetone for a couple of reasons. One, it’s pretty powerful stuff. It does a really good job of cleaning things. It dries really fast, evaporates, and it’s readily available. You just go to the hardware store and pick up a gallon like this. It’s a little expensive; they’re around 20 bucks for that gallon. But it’s so cheaper than going out and buying a brand new tank. You’ve got a lot of options.

You could use, now one thing that I use, acetone. I use acetone because there’s not a lot of rust on the inside of this tank. Acetone isn’t going to help you with a rust problem. If you have a rust problem, then what you might want to do is use like muriatic acid. And you be careful with muriatic acid, it’s pretty potent stuff. Um, make sure you’re not like breathing in while you’re doing the muriatic acid thing, uh, because it will get into your nose and just kind of screw you up, right? Uh, but I use it for the pool all the time that we have, so you know, I know kind of how it works and everything. But it, uh, I didn’t really need to use muriatic acid because I don’t have a lot of rust in there. I just have the gunk and the varnish from all the old gas, so acetone works pretty well for that. Uh, you could also use something like, um, Simple Green or LA’s Totally Awesome, some kind of degreaser. Um, there’s one called Super Clean in a big purple container that you could use if you want something that’s a little bit less, um, powerful than acetone. Um, but I like acetone because it does, it evaporates really quick. It’s really easy just to dump out, get on the concrete here, it just evaporates into the air, doesn’t hurt anything. One thing I am going to do before I, uh, I dump the acetone out and rinse everything is, uh, I got one of these, uh, she’s called a bottle brush, and I’m just going to open her up and get inside and just kind of swish things around and do a little bit of scrubbing with these nylon bristles. You don’t want to do a whole lot of that with acetone ’cause the acetone will eat into the bristles, but if you’re only doing it for, you know, 10 minutes or so, it’s not going to have any significant impact, really. So, um, I’m going to do that real quick just to get the last little bits out, uh, right before I dump it out and then rinse it with my alcohol. Now, I said there’s a lot of stuff you can use to clean these tanks out, and you saw me use my, uh, my pressure washer and water and some detergent to do this as my first stage. Um, and that’s totally okay to do. Uh, it’s much better for me here because we’re in a super dry environment, so, uh, the fact that I’m using water isn’t really going to institute any kind of flash rust or anything, I don’t think, down here. Um, and I didn’t, I can see inside clearly, there’s no, there’s no rust or anything down there. Um, but you do want to make sure that you get that water out of there, which is one of the reasons why I’m using isopropyl alcohol. I don’t know if you guys know this, but isopropyl alcohol actually binds with water, um, and helps it, uh, to evaporate much quicker. And you can use, um, like a, uh, reverse flipped, uh, shop vac or a, uh, air compressor to blow it out and just get it that much drier, that much quicker. Um, so I’m using isopropyl alcohol again because it’ll help, uh, dry faster than the acetone by itself, and if there just happens to be any water left over from what I rinsed it earlier, this will take care of that. All right, guys, so after looking at this tank and actually reading the directions on this undercoat stuff that I got from Rust-Oleum, uh, it says do not apply, it says do not apply directly over rust. I thought this stuff could do that. It says stops rust right there on the can, but it doesn’t say that you can apply over top of it. So what I’m going to use is actually some Eastwood Rust Encapsulator, uh, that I’ve got for another project, and hopefully I don’t use the entire can on this ’cause I need to use this for some other parts of the Bronco, actually, that are like the body that’s rusting out. I want to put this on top of the body to keep it from rusting too bad. Um, but since there is a light coat of rust on top of this, and, uh, I don’t want the rust to spread underneath the coat that I’m going to put, uh, the undercoating, I’m going to go ahead and spray this on there. And if I got to buy another can, I got to buy another can. So, uh, there you go. Well, there’s everything painted up with the, uh, Eastwood Rust Encapsulator. Um, now I’m not super impressed with this stuff. Um, it came out of the can really splotchy and, uh, kind of thick, and it, you, I don’t know if you can see all the drips and stuff that are on the floor, uh, that all dripped out of the can while I was painting. And I actually got some drips on the floor of my garage, which you cannot get up if you let it sit for more than like 2 minutes. Uh, you can’t peel it up anymore, so those are now white spots on my garage floor that are pretty much permanent. I mean, luckily they blend in with the other white splotchy stuff that are down there, but yeah, so I mean, we’ll see how well it dries and how well the black undercoating goes over top of it. I mean, I know how well you can see the, uh, the tank. This is about one can worth, and man, I mean, look at, you can see the splotchiness and the spots and the drips and everything. Now, like I said, I’m going to cover this with a black undercoating, so I’m not too worried about it. It’s rubberized, so it should be thick enough to cover up these little bumps and everything else. It’s not that it matters, this is the top of the tank, nobody’s ever going to see it, so it doesn’t really matter. This is just to cover up so that it doesn’t continue to rust. But I was planning on using this on the outside of my, uh, my Bronco. Can’t really see it over there, dark, but I was planning on using this on the outside of my Bronco ’cause it matches the white paint on my Bronco. But after spraying this, man, I don’t know. I don’t know that I would want to use something like this, um, on the outside of a vehicle like that. Now, I mean, it could be my technique, um, it could be that, you know, um, I just did it poorly or whatever, but I mean, I, you know, I, after my initial opening of the can and using it, I couldn’t even continue to shake it ’cause if I shook it, I’d get white splotches just went everywhere when I shook the can. So, I mean, this is all just dripping from the can as I’m spraying. So anyway, maybe I just got a defective can. Uh, I don’t know. I mean, if you guys have used this kind of stuff, let me know in the comments what you think, if maybe I’m doing it wrong or if I just got a bad can or what’s going on. But anyway, I got everything covered, um, so I should be able to, uh, cover it with the rubberized coating tomorrow. Hopefully that sticks a little bit better, and, uh, yeah, we’ll let it dry overnight and see how it goes. Okay, this stuff is nice. I like it. It goes on real nice, real easy. It looks real good. That’s impressive. All right. All right, guys, next step is to replace the pre-carb fuel filter, which is that guy right there. And for those be curious, there’s the information, just a little guy. And I believe that is, um, does it say what it is? I’m not sure if it says what micron it is. I think it’s 10, but I’m not 100% sure. Um, yeah, anyway, that’s your fine filter that’s right before your carb. So I have no idea how long since it’s been since this one’s been changed, but since I’m doing the whole fuel system, hey, might as well go ahead and do that. Pretty easy, just unscrew it and replace it. All right, guys, well, there she is all painted up. Had to move things outside ’cause, uh, it’s actually a pretty nice day today, so I can paint outside. And, uh, I was getting some overspray inside the garage on my garage floor, so moved it all out here. But I’m pretty happy with it. Looks really nice for a gas tank. So I’ve been working on the fuel system in this Bronco, and, uh, yeah, they did something here. I don’t know if that was, if it got melted or if they tried to, to somehow, uh, seal that or something. I’m guessing it’s melting. I’m not sure what’s going on there. Is, uh, like with any used vehicle that you don’t know the history of, there’s always going to be some other stuff. I’m doing an oil change and stuff on my other F-150 while I’m doing all this. I may as well do the fuel and oil and everything else, so we’re doing that. But yeah, they actually had, um, some plumber’s pipe tape on there on both sides of this filter. Now, guys, you don’t want to use plumber’s pipe tape here because, uh

Fuel can degrade that stuff and then it’s going to go into your carb and mess things up. So yeah, we got that taken care of. Now, of course, I haven’t run any fuel through this thing yet, so I don’t know if there’s any leaks. When I did this, there was a leak over here, but I got that taken care of. I just didn’t have it on tight enough, so that’s all there is to it. But yeah, and I got my new oil filter on there and some other stuff. So yeah, we’re working through things.

So I want to show you guys this too. This is the inline fuel filter that I’m using. This is the pre-pump filter. It’s Earl’s Vapor Guard, it’s 100 Micron, and that’s just to filter out any kind of big stuff before I get to the actual pre-carb filter. You don’t necessarily need one of these, but they’re fairly cheap, and I’m going to go ahead and use them anyway. I got one for both trucks. So the Bronco actually didn’t have a filter in that location, so I’m going to add this, and my ’85 F150 does have a filter in that location, so I’m going to replace it.

So here we are underneath the Bronco, and you can kind of see where we are. There’s the trans case, there’s the rear axle, and along the frame rail on the driver side is this little patch right here, and that is where the fuel filter is going to go. Hopefully, I’ve got enough room in here to put that filter. It’s going to be real close, but I think we can make it work.

All right, so here we are back under the truck. I got my filter assembly made up. I did this inside the garage; it’s way easier to do all that inside of there than out here. Got new pieces of hose, and the problem that I see is that this is going to be really tight. I don’t have a whole lot of room in here, so we’re going to see if I can get this all put together. I don’t know how I’m going to manage this. I think I have just enough room, but I don’t have enough room to like pop it on. I really don’t want to have to undo these brackets, but I may have to. I’m not sure what they’re going on with. Oh, it’s just like a plastic clip. Well, that’s bad news; that means I have to break them. It’s in brackets there too, and I don’t think I can move it back because it’s right against that cross beam back there. So how am I going to do this? Do I have enough room to do that? Oh, I can bend the rubber bits just enough. Hey, there we go.

All right, now unfortunately I don’t have my gas tank in yet, so it’ll be interesting to see. I have to monitor this real close for leaks once I get everything in. All right, so next task is pretty simple: hook this up to this completely new piece of hose. This one here actually looks pretty good, but I don’t know where it came from, so I’m just going to use the hose that I bought. But before I do that, I’m going to blow out this line and just make sure that it’s clear. I’m going to do that with just a little bit like compressed air. The can, this would be better if I could be two places at once because then I can feel the other end, make sure there’s air coming out, but I can’t be, so I just got to deal with what I got. Let’s see if this works. I’m going to put a little flat piece of, uh, bit like a white piece of, uh, it’s like concrete sludge stuff, kind of, but it’s real light. It’s like the stuff that sits on top, and I’m going to see if I can blow that off there from the end. Survey says, well, it’s gone. I guess I’ll have to review the footage and see if they actually blew off of it. All right, well, I guess we’ll see if that leaks when I start her up. Got to get the fuel tank in first though.

Well, for some reason I lost the audio to this part of the video, but that’s okay. Really, all I’m doing here is just going through, showing you some of the parts that I’m replacing and kind of giving you an overview. So you can see in the background there that the tank is done, it’s painted. I’ve got the straps also painted all the way around. You can see that right now I’m putting in the new gasket for the EVAP valve that goes on top there. The one that came with it, that I pulled out of the truck, was pretty well rotted away, so I just replaced that. Again, that’s not very expensive, just like the sending unit. And also, you can see on the tank there that I’ve got some neoprene strips. It’s just rubber neoprene that goes on the top there, like I think it’s like an inch and a half wide, just lays in there. I took some spray adhesive and put it down there so it doesn’t move around. I mean, once I get it mounted, it’s not going to move, but that’s just to keep it where I want it while I’m mounting it onto the actual Bronco when I get to that point. And you can see over there on the right-hand side where I’ve got the straps already with the same exact treatment. I put a piece of neoprene rubber on there with some spray adhesive just to kind of keep everything together.

Here I am putting the new gasket for the sending unit together and getting ready to put the sending unit in. The new sending unit wasn’t very expensive, so that’s worth replacing, especially considering how coated that old one was. So yeah, just kind of putting the finishing touches on the tank and getting ready to mount it up. Woo, just get out of the way. So now I got to get the fuel filler hooked up. Having kind of dread in this, to be honest. Probably got to get the hose clamps on before I do all this crap, huh? All right, well, here we are about to hit the moment of truth. Everything’s hooked back up, and we just got to get the gas.

All right, guys, here it is, proverbial moment of truth. A, that was cheap. That, and there’s clearly some other stuff going on here too, guys. It smokes pretty bad and doesn’t want to stay running very well.

All right, guys, real quick fuel line and brake line 101 here on Bullnose Garage. This is a flare wrench, or called a line wrench. You want to make sure that you use these on your fuel lines and your brake lines, another kind of flare nut lines, because if you don’t, what you get is this. Yeah, that is what’s left of the nut that goes from the fuel line or on the fuel line that goes into the carburetor on the Bronco. And yeah, that’s pretty well mangled because somebody at some point in the past did not use a flare nut wrench or a line wrench on that nut. As a consequence, trying to get that put back on, I kinked the hose badly enough that it actually has a couple of holes in it. So when I did my startup test, it was actually spraying fuel into the engine. Now, I don’t know if the little bit of fuel spray that this was doing is enough to cause the engine to not run at idle like mine didn’t very well. So, you know, we’re going to find that out because I’m going to put a new fuel line on it. I’m actually just going to use a rubber fuel line, so I’ve got a couple of these flare nut fittings that’ll go in there, and then you just clamp a hose, a fuel line onto there. And I’ve got one for the carburetor side and one for the fuel pump side, so I’m just going to use a regular rubber hose instead of the metal piece there. Now, if I was getting super fancy, I could use like, you know, braided steel hoses and stuff, but I’m not going to do that right now. So yeah, we’re going to get this on and see if that fixes the issue.

So I don’t know if you guys are anything like me or not, but if I got a problem that I think I might have the solution to or know how to solve, even if it’s the middle of the night, I’m going to be working on it because I can’t just let things go and sleep on them. So that’s what I’m doing right here. You can kind of see there’s my new fuel hose going down to the fuel pump, down to the fuel pump and then up to the carb. And we are going to see right now in the middle of the night if it actually makes a difference. We’ll mount you. It’ll be a little bit wobbly, and we’re going to mount you right to the truck here. Here we go. Okay, so there’s a couple things that I’m looking for here to make sure of. One is that this doesn’t leak right here.

This doesn’t leak right here, and then it actually will run at idle without me having to goose it. So, uh, we’re going to see if any of that stuff happens. Okay, it is running. I’m not in the truck. It’s a little rough, but I don’t see any leaks. I mean, I feel like I probably also have some vacuum issues going on, but this is definitely better than it was. Oh, start to get some smoke now, so we’ll have to troubleshoot that. Oh, almost lost it. Yep, so we got some work to do, guys.

All right, guys, here we are. It’s a couple weeks later. I haven’t had much of a chance to work on the Bronco, uh, but I’m going to wrap this episode up and just let you know that all the fuel stuff is in. The tank is back up. I got fuel in there. Um, unfortunately, the Bronco won’t stay running. Uh, it’ll run for just a little bit, uh, but then it dies. If I give it some gas, it’ll run choppy, um, until I take the gas off. And then I, I don’t have time to get around to the front of the truck to see what’s going on before it dies. So I’m going to mess with the carburetor a little bit, see if I can get the idle tuned up, uh, so I can at least have it run long enough for me to come over here and see what’s going on.

I got to check fuel delivery because I just worked on that system, so it could very well be something going on there. Um, I got, uh, the vacuum system. The vacuum in this truck has been, uh, just mangled. So I, I don’t know, um, what else is going on with the vacuum system in there. There may be a vacuum leak. Um, who knows? There’s a lot of stuff going on. So, uh, but that is another episode. So, uh, yeah, thanks for watching, guys. As always, if you have any questions, comments, concerns, gripes, or ramblings, stick them below, and we will see you next time’s. Edes but’s away getting things to shine. Oh, no, garage considered divine. Thanks again for watching. We will see you next time. Thanks again for watching. We will see you next time.

The goal today is simple: get this ’82 Bronco running. All I’ve got to do to make that happen is put a battery in here and, uh, fix these old worn-out posts hopefully. And to do that, I got some nice new toys that I’m going to show you guys. And, uh, I figure while I’m doing that with nice new toys, I may as well go ahead and update this one too, so the ’85 is also going to get new battery terminals. See how it goes. Let me, uh, show you what I got.

Hi folks, Ed here. Welcome back to Bullnose Garage. And on today’s episode of tools I absolutely do not need but absolutely have to have is, uh, some heavy-duty battery cable cutters and, uh, a battery cable crimp tool along with brand new battery posts and all the fun stuff to go along with all of that. This is the battery that I’m using. It’s a, uh, cheapest battery I can find. It’s a Walmart special, EverStart value brand, 650 cold cranking amps. Uh, it’s, uh, group size 65, which is what fits in the Bronco. Pretty simple. These are about as cheap as you can get. Uh, but really when it comes to car batteries, I mean, it depends on who you ask, but they’re all basically about the same. What you’re paying for is a warranty usually unless you go with something, um, like a higher tier of battery that you, you like, maybe Optima, though I’ve heard some bad things about Optima. Anyway, that’s off the topic. Um, so yeah, just a cheap Walmart battery’s got a one-year warranty. Um, and because I’m not going to be starting the Bronco very often, I also got this 20W, uh, solar panel, which is basically a trickle charge maintainer. Um, I actually have one in the ’85. It works a treat, so I’m going to put one in the Bronco to make sure that this thing doesn’t die on me next time I want to go start it. So, uh, yeah, go ahead and get started.

Hello. Now, first thing I want to do is get this battery mounted. We go like a glove, and we’re going to put on the first brand new nifty thingy that I got, which is this, uh, battery hold down. The old one was pretty well rotted away, so I actually had to cut it off. Uh, it’s not perfect. I’ll just go this way, that way, not to worry about the ridges. There we go. All right, guys, just had to, uh, cut the ends off of these real quick with a Dremel. That way they don’t stick up too far and, uh, bonk my hood when I’m doing this. So yeah, that’ll be about right. Uh, quick tip: if you’re ever cutting the ends off of these things with a Dremel, uh, screws like this, just make sure you got a nut on the inside of there when you do it. That way, when you’re done, you can thread the nut off the end, and that will help reshape the threads so that it’s easier to get your nut back on once you’ve, uh, done the trimming.

So now it’s time to do the wires. Now, in this truck, for some reason, the positive is a black wire, and the, uh, the negative, wherever that went, yeah, is also a black wire. So I’m not entirely sure why they’re both black, but they are. And you can know that this one here is the positive because it goes to the, uh, starter solenoid. And then, of course, the negative goes down to, uh, the frame and underneath, uh, down there. So, uh, yeah, I’m not sure why the positive on this one is a black wire, but hey, you know, it is what it is. Give me a nice fresh connection here. Not too bad. Man, that’s pretty, uh, corroded even down inside there. That’s all right. And we’ll do the same here. Now this one’s got a couple of wires on it that I’m going to have to deal with here, but I think I can take care of that. That, okay, where’s that wire go? What is that wire for? That wire goes into the cab through the firewall, so who knows what that’s for? I may just leave that unhooked and see what happens. No, now I’ll hook it up, but I’m going to hook it up different. I’m not going to hook it up the way this is hooked up. Man, that’s a red wire too, isn’t it? Why would that be a red wire? That annoys me they would use a red wire for this. Is that a red wire or am I seeing things? I don’t know.

So that was the cheapest cutters. Uh, this is the nice expensive cutters. I didn’t use these ’cause I wanted to see how the other ones work. These actually, uh, you can use these to strip the wires, so that is actually really nice, and that’s what I will be using these for. There we go. Man, that’s corroded. I may have to replace that whole wire. That’s rough. Of course, want something, you know. Okay, guys, so as corroded as that cable is, I’ve decided to go ahead and just replace the whole thing. It shouldn’t take very long. I’ve got all the bits and pieces, and I’ve got the cable. So this isn’t exactly the same stuff. I mean, obviously, it’s not going to be stock. Uh, this is audio cable. Well, it’s not audio cable, it’s power cable for audio amplifiers, but it’s 4 gauge, which should be enough. Now, um, I will probably upgrade to a gauge in the not too distant future for this, but, um, for what we’re doing today, just to get this thing started, I’ll go ahead and go with 4 gauge ’cause that’s what I have.

All right, let’s try out my fancy dancy new, uh, crimper here. Ooh, look at that. Never enough hands for everything that I want to do here. It’s on there now. Put that wire in there. All right, and that didn’t do jack. All right, and it’s hard to do this on camera. Did it go? Yep, seems like it went. What the hell? Well, that thing’s kind of garbage, man. That sucks. Sharp knife is just as good, if not better for that. Son of a—what the hell? Never enough hands. What a load of—how is that? This shouldn’t be this hard. I’m sorry I did the, uh, the crimping and the, uh, heat shrinking off camera because that crimping with wire this large is a real pain in the butt, and the heat shrink just happened to be in my garage. The, uh, heat shrink gun is in my garage, so I’ll bring it out here for the other cable. But for now, it was just easy to do it this way. Look at that, guy. Yeah, fancy, right? TIY, Lefty Lucy guy. Remember years ago when I first got my ’85, I was looking for a good set of battery terminals like these, and I couldn’t find a good set. These seem like they’re pretty good. Pretty good. Extra points if you know who I’m, uh, pretending to be there.

Okay, now I got to cut this puppy and do him. Okay, so here’s the thing, guys. Uh, let me start with this. I do not recommend this tool. Um, it’s kind of expensive. I thought it was kind of neat, um, but, uh, it doesn’t really work very well. It’s not super sharp, and it doesn’t, uh, strip very well. I’ve actually found that it’s easier just to use a good sharp knife and to cut around carefully so you don’t, you know, slice your thumb open. I mean, it’s not super precise, and there’s always the option to cut your finger off, but even with those considerations, it seems to work better than, uh, than that tool. So there we go. All right, now this crimper that I have here is also not really super great. It’s hard to use, and, um, it seems to like you have to kind of preload it a little bit to get the shape, and then you turn it around so that it crimps both sides evenly, and that’s just kind of the way that it is. Not a big fan of that, but we’ll see how it works with this guy right here. This, these wires are a little bit easier ’cause they’re not fine strands, and the verdict is not great. All right, yeah, that did it. Nothing is ever as easy as it should be.

All right, guys, well, my other camera died, so now here I am with my phone doing this. So wh—That’s what I was afraid of. Now with the fun part, we’re going to see if I release any of the magic blue smoke. I don’t see anything. Now it’s time to see if this thing will start. Okay, here we go. Fuel system’s next on the list, but before I get there, I want to get this electrical stuff figured out. So it does seem though like it turned over so well. Obviously, more than it seems like it’s turning over. It actually is turning over, so that’s a good sign. Well, with a successful test, it does run. Now I got to be careful with this because, like I said in my last video, there’s no coolant, so I can’t run it very long. Um, as a matter of fact, if I run out of gas out of that bottle there, that’s probably even too long to run this without cooling in it. But, um, obviously, like you saw, it does run, and now that there’s a, uh, good battery in here, I can start it up and move it around if I need to, and I can get some cooling in here and, uh, you know, take care of that. And obviously, got to take a look at the fuel system, see what’s going on with that. Uh, I don’t know why the fuel line is disconnected from the, uh, the tank. Um, I have no idea, so we’ll, uh, take a look at that and see what’s going on there.

All right, guys, the last thing I’m going to do today is put in this solar battery charger just to keep this battery that I just put in here in good shape. Um, I’ve had good luck with this particular brand. It’s, uh, OM. It looks like O-M-S. It’s an Amazon brand. I’ll throw a link in the comments to where I got it, but it’s the same one that I have in my other truck, and it’s kept that battery in really good shape over the course of the last year and a half, two years. Um, even when I haven’t driven the truck in, man, up to a month. Uh, so yeah, if you’ve got a project vehicle that, uh, you need to keep a battery in but you don’t drive very often, I definitely recommend something like this. They aren’t too expensive, and, uh, they’re just a really good way to make sure that your battery stays charged up and, uh, in good shape. In the case of this one, I’m just going to stick it in the back window here, which kind of faces south, and, uh, plug this into the cigarette lighter, and, uh, it should just go right to the battery. In these old trucks, the cigarette lighter did actually just go right to the battery all the time, so as long as this works, which hopefully it does, I guess we’ll find out. Let’s see what the battery charger says. Oh, it says charge. Wait, it said charging. Why? What’s going on there? It showed charging for a second, and then it stopped.

All right, so I just spent like, uh, five minutes fiddling with the plug inside here. The, uh, the, uh, cigarette lighter plug and, uh, oh, it just went off again. Wow, this thing is rough. The, uh, lighter plug in this thing is not good. Um, it’s really finicky. So, but I do have a light. So guys, to be fair, one of the things that I really like about this particular panel is that it’s got a little indicator light in the back that tells me when it’s in the sun, when it’s charging, and when the battery is fully charged. And that’s super nice to have so that you know, uh, like for me, I know exactly when it’s plugged in. I don’t have to get out my multimeter and check up at the battery or doing other weird stuff back in here with this. I just, I just know exactly when it’s working, so, uh, that’s really nice. So yeah, now that I got that figured out, it does appear to be charging. Um, I’m going to go ahead and, uh, pop this thing in the back window. Oh, well, that’s a good sign. Ooh, a cigarette butt. Well, that’s interesting. A no smoking sign and a cigarette butt. Use vehicles, guys. Got to love them.

All right, yeah, there you go. Blue means it’s in the sun, red means it’s charging, and actually the sun is over there, right? Well, hold on, and actually it’s not really in the sun very much. The sun’s over on this side of here, but it doesn’t take very much, so that’s great. And you can see my other truck, um, right there in the back window. Now, by now, this one, uh, I’m actually hanging it with, uh, some magnetic hooks because the, uh, suction cups are dead on it after a couple of years, and that typically happens. But yeah, it works out great too. See? And it actually says in the sun, so there’s enough sunshine to trickle charge. Um, this one here, it doesn’t say it’s not charged, but, uh, it’s going to be charged enough to start the truck. So there we go. And then I will do this one, uh, upgrade the terminals off camera. You guys don’t need to see that. You’ve, uh, already seen that once today, so same exact procedure on this side, just changing out the terminals. So, and actually this one should go easier ’cause I don’t really have to, uh, change out or redo any of these wires. I just have to put the new terminals on, so should be easy to go, should be easy to do, should be good to go. Yeah, you know what I mean.

All right, guys, that’s it for today. Short one, real easy, just swapping out a battery. There’s probably a thousand videos on YouTube. I’ll change your batteries. This is mine. If you guys have any questions, comments, gripes, internet ramblings, stickle below. If I did something stupid besides cutting my thumb, tell me in the comments what the heck I can take it. And as always, thanks again so much for watching, guys. We will see you next time. Tinker away, getting things to shine. No garage, she’s considered divine. Thanks again for watching. We will see you next time. Thanks again for watching. We will see you next time.