First of all "Thank you very much for your service to our great Country" and thanks to your wife and family for their commitment to your deployment as well! As for your question about a 390"FE" swap and suspension exchange and all, wait! Fords' FE motors are pretty stout torque motors due to their tall and skinny intake runners, but the intake choices for those motors aint ALL that spectacular. Couple that with the tendencies of the exhaust manifolds on these heads being "NOTORIOUS" for breaking the top bolts off in the heads and having rampant exhaust leaks. (Especially if you run headers!) Well...all of THAT, and I've never had a dang bit of luck makin' the valve cover gaskets keep a seal at the point where the intake and head join under 'em. That's due mainly to the fact that gettin' the intake and heads to match up at the same height is next to impossible with an aftermarket aluminum intake. I don't mean to sound like I'm raggin' on your motor choice, I'm just bringin' up some of the more known issues that are irritating about the FE series!
Your results may vary. Other than that they're stout motors that make a gob of torque and hellacious flat line horsepower curve! Either way- it's your money. It's your motor AND you're buildin' this beast...SO good luck with it! Above ALL else - Don't take ANYTHING that I say as the Gospel Truth either. Do your own research and use plenty of Bing and Google time before you nail anything down.
Okay? I,personally, have never laid eyes on a Bronco rigged up with a divorced transfer case- so I can't make any intelligent commentary on that either way. You "could" try and find another manual tranny that has the "married" type transfer case tail piece, crossmember and mount, if you were **** bent on keeping the hand shaker! Then mate the NP205(?) up to the tranny and hang it where it goes along with all the retrofitted mounts/crossmembers and what not. That'll allow you to use the manual. Again, I reiterrate, do your OWN research to verify what, IF anything I've stated here is true.
Or, you could toss the stick and just put your C-6 back up behind the 390 and use all the original transfer case/drivetrain pieces. Man...that sounds a whole lot easier to me, but then again, like I said "you're humpin' this monkey" so it's all your call. Don't forget the different motor mounts/perches that you "MIGHT" need in order to transplant the FE into the 351M/400M series cradle!!! You "COULD" do a "big block swap" search on these boards and disiminate all that information yourself.
I DO strongly recommend that you balance AND weigh all the different intel you gather here against info you can easily find elsewhere on the internet. Like I said, do searches on "swaps", drivetrain transfers and such as that. I like the axles you mentioned, as far as them being "HEAVY DUTY" and all,
and yes, the fact that they're straight axles up front is cool. Just remember that the Broncos' came with coil springs, either single shock or with the"quad" shock/spring option. You didn't say whether the "highboy", as you called it, front axle was a leafer OR a coil springer! So,
I'll leave that assumption alone.
Well....once again I've written what seems like a College exit thesis on this subject when it probably could've just been a simple smart a$$ response like some folks give out so freely on boards like this-BUT I aint built like that!!
Again, on behalf of my family AND myself: thanks so much for your service to our Country. God bless you and yours!
Good luck and loads of fun with your Bronco's and the projects you'll surely jump in to with 'em.
