Since I have 3 bays and the Bronco is in one and my Shop is in the other..

I built this for the kids.

I had gotten them the slot car set for Christmas with the promise I would make a table in the garage.  It took 6 months of Craigslist scouring to score a ping pong table top for $10.  Just add wood for a frame, a set of folding banquet table legs, and some netting to catch the speedy wayward cars and...  TADA!!

The really hard part

I have spoken to a couple of body shops, and they are all in agreement that the Bronco is in remarkably good shape for being 42 years old.  The best time estimate I've gotten is 6-8 weeks for paint and body.  That leaves chassis and everything else to me - I guess I am going to have to find storage for the body because it will be done long before I am ready.

In the meantime, to save on labor costs I have begun scraping away at the undercoating.  I am told that sandblasting will not remove this stuff, just bounces off.   It scrapes off rather easily, just time consuming.  I have finished both front inner wheel wells and 1 1/2 fenders.  Here is the 1/2 that is left

I also purchased some front suspension hoops so that I can make sure of the fender clearances prior to taking the body off.  This is a perfect fit for an off-the-shelf product.  Not too shabby.  This is the first part of the 2 1/2" suspension lift - still need way too many parts for me to even think about for the lift alone.  The shock in the picture is on the stock mount which will come out.  The hoops will allow for dual shocks.

AND ...  I've been working on my welding skills.  Seems that Broncos are rather week when the doors are removed and are likely to crumple when there is no support, following the advice of many on the various lists out on the Internet, I made these brackets to support the door frame.  I am getting better with welding.

Found it

Seems a simple timing issue is where my missing HP/Torque were hiding.  We ended up with 12deg BTC for initial timing, went 4% leaner on the Carb and got the following results

In case you can't read this, it shows 250hp@4300rpm and 350 lbs torque @3000rpm.

Dyno day is done - engine is going to now sit in the garage for quite some time.  I have begun scraping the 42 year old undercoating off the body - this will take some time.

Dyno - Mite

Engine Dyno's are apparently a difficult thing to find these days. There are alot of dyno shops for when your engine is already in the car - but not many for freestanding engine. As luck would have it, the only shop I could find in the entire state of WA is 1/2 mile from my house.

Larry & Bob are retired 60's hotrodders that still dabble a bit since they have a full shop. We finally hooked up schedules and got the engine mounted and wired to fire it up and break in the cam. Here is a sound bite.

I didn't know at the time - but the first two starts they are merely priming the system. Then the room fan kicks on and they fire it up for real the first time. At the end of the sound bite - the engine ran for 30 minutes at 1750 RPM to break in the cam. It felt pretty damn good to hear it run, it was a deep sound that resonated in your chest. Way cool!

Then we replaced the oil and filter and started the dyno pulls and tuning portion of the program. At this time, it is producing 280ft/lbs of torque. I have no idea what that means, but Larry & Bob are not happy. Apparently there should be about 50 more ft/lbs in there somewhere. So we will be changing the jets and such on the carb. For those that care - the cranking pressure on the cylinder is 165lbs which is pretty close to normal for a stock 351W.

We will regroup on Tuesday evening to keep playing, and I will of course provide the final output of the test.