Upgrades

[madmaysey]

what kind of upgrades are common for a new bronco owner?

im not sure if i want to put a lift on it, i don't think im too worried about that.

i am thinking i want an alarm with a remote start(also so i can unlock the doors without the key)

and im thinking of flowmasters.

any advice, ideas, comments?

 

[Broncobill78]

Kinda hard to give advise without knowing what direction you want to go in w/the truck. If you like the idea of flowmasters then sure, throw on a set. If you have no interest in running larger tires then nope, you don't need a lift. An alarm & remote starter can easily be taken care of by local shops.

To be perfectly honest most of the guys here are Bronco enthusiasts and to a large extent that means off-roading or at least a more agressive stance which usually includes larger tires. You can run up to a 33" tire without needing a lift kit. Just to give you an idea here's my 88' with 33's and no lift. Most of us enjoy them as dual use vehicles (daily driver & weekend toy) and the lucky few also have trail-only rigs. Your truck (or at least your potential truck) *already* has manual hubs & a manual Tcase and those are usually at the top of most guys wish lists. Off-roading islike a disease, once you're bitten there's usually a steady progression of improvements & upgrades all designed to take you further off road, get you into more & more inaccessable places and then bring you home again. Broncos are nice because you can bring along family & friends, carry several days worth of cmping supplies and strap a canoe to the roof.

You'll really need to get the truck, start playing with it and get a feel for which direction the Spirit chooses to moves you in before you or anyone else can really start deciding what upgrades & improvements are best. Maybe you like playing in the sand, maybe it's mud, you might prefer to drive out of state to the mountains & go trail riding or camping. Hard to know and each activity is best accomplished with a different setup. Some guys just enjoy the ride and the look of the truck with a mild lift & some 35" tires, some like big a$$ 38's while others are content with 33's. The selection of parts is enormous and it's very easy to setup the truck for either general purpouse 4-wheeling, daily driving or specific activities (mudding, sand, rock crawling, etc)

Might be best to get it home, start working out the kinks and taking time to goof around with it and just have fun. After all, that's why most of us are here, we like to have FUN and our Bronco's are the key to doing that. Some guys enjoy working on them & building them more than driving them, some like to just go out & get them dirty and still others like to see just how far off the beaten path they can venture and still be home before dinner. Take some time to get used to your truck, feel it out and see what appeals to you. In the meantime we're here to help iron out the wrinkles that always seem to accompany a new truck and you might also want to take some time and read through the archives to learn a bit more and get a better feel for how others use their trucks and what yours is capable of.

 

[madmaysey]

yea i want to try and get it nice and muddy nothing too serious but yea i want to 4x4 and i will probably end up gettin that itch you were talking about it will start with some upper engine work with a flowmaster exhaust then i will want it big and mean looking....just kinda stuck right now no $$$

i was just thinking right off the bat

but one thing i was thinking about too how much does bigger tires hurt your miles per gallon....the bronco isn't that well on gas as it is right?

 

[bryan thomas]

but one thing i was thinking about too how much does bigger tires hurt your miles per gallon....the bronco isn't that well on gas as it is right?

I have a 1995 w BFG A/T 32x11.50r15's on my stock XLT chrome wheels and get 14 mpg on highway and my tank lets me go around 360+/- miles or so before I'm on the red empty line if I stretch it. I can't complain to much because new the f150's get about 19 mpg high way. I know it's a bit more than the bronc but your paying around 300 per month for a XL 4x4 f150 and they aren't nearly as tough as these trucks are. So in essence I don't mind the lesser economy as much. Catch my drift?

And if I were you. I would put 33's on. I choose not to because I go on the sand more than the mud and with my tires running at 10psi they balloon out far on the tiny 7.5's and I don't want to risk breaking the bead. Some day soon I'll get the MT Classic Locks in a 15x10 and up grade to 33's. Also get rid of your automatic hubs if you have them and get warn manual lock outs. They will save your a$$ most certainly. And another thing I did too so my paint isn't all messed up from taking air nailers and tool belts and air lines and table saws and materials out of the back of my baby is get it Line X'd. Mine cost $30.00 and it was done within a hour and it has saved my paint a lot since then. And it kinda looks cool because it follows the body lines of the tailgate. Also K&N intake for your beast is a good investment. I'm done rambling I'm like Bill I got a few in me. Work was a pain today, we finally are getting rid of our hack carpenters now that we are reaching the top. Good Hunting. Show us some pictures of your toy. I got some that aren't updated but they are there.

 

[Broncobill78]

How much the tires hurt your milage really depends on how big they get /emoticons/[email protected] 2x" width="20" height="20" /> Sure, the milage will go down as the tire size goes up but it's not like it'll cut it in half or anything. You'll lose a couple mpg's with 36's but if you want to play you have to pay. A set of 33x12.5's is a good size to start off with. You won't need a lift as long as you aren't doing a lot of trail riding that really flexes the suspension, but I get the vibe that most of the off-road action out your way is sand and you should be fine with that. A wider tire will also give you better flotation & traction in the sand since you're increasing your footprint. Later on you may well want to go with a 4" lift & 35" or 36" tires, that's a real good look on the Bronco and is a pretty popular combination.

A good general blueprint to follow would be to add headers & exhaust then go to a better intake manifold & throttle body. After that a cam & chip. Doing it in that order allows you to take advantage of the upgrades as you install them and each one builds on the last (ie. adding a cam won't do much without adding the chip, a larger throttlebody & intake will be choked by the stock exhaust, etc, etc) Considering the milage you may want to install the headers, throttlebody & intake then hold off until you can just install a long block (although a short block & aluminum heads would offer much better performace) because those upgrades are bolt-on's and can easily be removed from the old block & installed on the new one when the engine is swapped. You'll probably get several more years from the current engine but paying a shop to install a cam isn't cheap & a lot of guys prefer to wait & just roll that cost into a new shortblock that just gets ordered with the larger cam. It's really a personal prefrence thing.

 

[madmaysey]

what size headers, i think i want to get dual exhaust on it with some flowmasters i never really thought too much about changing out the intake manifold and throttle body, i was just going to put a cold air intake on it

how much am i looking at to replace those?

 

[madmaysey]

the first couple days i have it, i only have about 600-700 to spend?

any ideas for quick easy upgrades right off the bat?

 

[Broncobill78]

I'd probably start with headers & exhaust. That will easily net you the largest gain on a stock engine. I wouldn't bother with the cold-air intake. You'd be better off just installing a K&N air filter instead. Standard headers with 1-5/8" primaries & 3" collectors will be fine with 2-1/4" to 2-1/2" exhaust downstream from there

 

[madmax]

Depending on how you set up the exhaust system you can actually gain a marginal amount of fuel economy (less power is wasted pushing exaust down the ****** factory system), The intake manifold is actually fairly decent on the fuel injected bronco's, they generate higher velocity's increasing torque, granted that's at the cost of high RPM breathing. The routing of the air intake into the TB leaves room for improvement, you could easily get two short sections of hose and two of those conical air filters and then eliminate the giant box and snorkel mess, then you have some room there for a second battery, or some tools, or whatever really. If you have a mass air truck then you will need to do some fancier plumbing, not sure how you'd set that up off hand. You could also change out the fuel injectors to better ones, even at the same pressure, the quality has improved (it is 16 years later). An MSD 6AL box works wonders on 351W's, they work best at lower RPM's and those engines already generate most of their power down low.

The electronics for the engine is a little more complex for the mass air trucks (un necessarily so I believe), so you may need to have the computer re programed, fortunately most speed shops can do that fairly cheap.

 

[bidibronco]

Speed density is where you come up with more problems. If you have MAF then you're pretty good on "most" mods you would like to do. An open exhaust and intake is usually the cheapest and easiest way to go unless you're a bit skilled at other things. Another thing you can do while the motor is in is a cam swap. Edlebrock has a cam that's computer controled that would be a good start. It's EDL-3782 on summit and it's a flat tappet style so you'll have to get new pushrods but with stock rockes your valves will be fine and you'll have no piston/valve issues either.

 

[madmaysey]

does anyone know anything about making the camper a little easier to take off? like using some kind of pins with a differant type of gasket?

 

[cj_92Bronco]

also if your planning on mudding an intake really isnt that good of an idea. i stuck with the air filter so i had the protection of the snorkle and the air box from the mud and water, instead of having the cold air intake just lying around under the hood without protection

 

[madmaysey]

yup makes sense i didn't think of that