Tag Ford Bronco

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.

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.