A Project is Born

In November 2004, A very good friend of mine, Scott Sills and I attended our second Baja 1000, our goal was to assist the guys at BFGoodrich with their very valuable pit support effort, Learning very quickly that many Baja racers rely heavily on BFGoodrich for this type of pit support, teaming up with the guys for Pit #6, we learned our location would be in Insurgentes, Baja Sur, we began preparing ourselves for 3 very long days and nights. After an incredible few days, being fully involved with the race and the racers themselves, with our goal being met, our small caravan started north for the border, to once again return to our normal lives and daily grind. We returned home to the states with something that we had not bargained for, We had been afflicted with the desire to race in Baja, One evening, several weeks later while hanging out at the local off-road shop we decided we would try our hand at building a first rate Preruuner, surely with the assistance of the guys at Xtreme Machines Inc. and a few good friends' we could pull this thing off

The Truck

In January 2005, after 2 months of searching, we finally located a truck that would make a good platform for the project about to take place.

Race-dezert.com a popular website among the off-road nation, is where we found our would be race truck. Located in Irvine CA, we commissioned the services of BAMA Auto Movers, to bring our new baby home to the east coast, finally after 4 weeks of waiting, The 1992 Ford Bronco arrived, once sporting a Eddie Bauer coat made of navy blue and mocha, our Bronco now wore a shiny new coat of black metallic paint, with AutoFab fiberglass fenders (Ashley Style) and Rear Quarter Panels, already installed, the Bronco had a very racy look about it. After snapping out of a daydream of flying through the desert, south of Tijuana, we started swapping ideas for our new Bronco.

Seating

One of the first things our crew talked about were seats, since none of our soon to be team members , would ever be fit to ride Sea Biscuit, we made a call to our friends at MasterCraft Seats to see if they could whip up some extra wide seats to keep us safe and comfortable. After deciding 4 would be better than 3, we opted for 2 Proseats for the rear of the cockpit and 2 Sportmans for the front, we had the guys at MasterCraft build all 4 seats with a plus 2” seating area and build both pair with matching gray vinyl and red cloth, utilizing back pockets on the front seats will prove useful for maps and such, we also had Mastercraft provide us with matching red 5-way harnesses for all 4 seating positions, We couldn't resist and splurged on some of the cool MasterCraft rubber door bags, these will be great for the satellite phone and small items during our off-highway ventures.

Tires and Wheels

Knowing the seats would be a few weeks away, the discussion of wheels and tires came up, since there would be no argument on what tires to use, we rounded up (6) 315x75x16 BFGoodrich Baja Project T/As, knowing that 35” tires would work well with our planned suspension setup, the only logical wheel choice would be of the 8” wide variety,

Deciding that the classic good looks and super strength of American Racing Wheels would be a great choice, The AR-23 was the clear winner, and we promptly ordered (6), drop shipping the wheels to Champion Wheel in Fresno, CA. we had Milan install Bead-Locks to keep our BFG Tires married to our wheels. Champion had our wheels back to us in no time, with anodized red rings and standard 24-bolt configuration, our wheels were now ready for anything.

The Front Suspension

With our Bronco prerunner progressing quite well, The team felt good about all of our product choices so far, It was time to talk about the front suspension, for that we turned to Off-Road Racer and stuntman Rich Minga for his advice, after discussing our budget , Rich thought our best choice would be Camburg's Coil-over long travel kit, pulling 21” of travel, would complete the business end quite nicely. Camburg known for specializing in ranger suspensions, had already put together a pretty trick kit for the front of our Black Beauty, The kit consisted of custom cut and turned TTB arms, Chromoly axles, 1.75 diameter .120 wall DOM Radius Arms with beefy heim joints, 2.5 Sway-Away coilover shocks using dual rate Eibach Springs, 500 and 600 pounds respectfully, the kit also included Sway-Away bumpstops, Earl's stainless brake lines and all the necessary installation hardware. In order to use the Camburg front kit we knew we needed upper shock mounts, for this we contacted Giant Motorsports and ordered one of their very cool engine cages, designed specifically for fullsize Fords. When the time came for installation, we realized the smartest thing to do would be to replace all the steering components, such as tie-rods, linkage, ball joints, spindles, hubs, bearings, brakes, rotors, calipers and a new AGR steering gear, this was also the time for the installation of our 5/8 wheel studs from Strange Engineering, The front end also received a fresh set of 456 gears and a Detroit Locker for backup, as well as a new set of Warn Premium lock-out hubs.

Engine Compartment

The Bronco was really starting to take shape, After all the lighting , electronics, and tunes, we had chosen, we had to take a step back and take a closer look at our charging system, We contacted “Spud” Lewis at DB Electrical about our concerns, The solution was a 200 amp alternator and one for a spare, We also chose an Optima Red Top battery to go with our new alternator. The 5.8 factory engine had already been removed, so the team began the daunting task of organizing the engine compartment. We contacted our old friend, John @ Autofab . John sent us some of his new front fiberglass fender mounting kits, his cool new Optima Battery tray and a set of his bulletproof small block Ford engine mounts.

To be continued......