’74 Bronco Chills with Aftermarket Air Conditioning

(Marc)>> You're watching Powernation.

(Marc)>> Today on Music City Trucks... We get our bronco closer to done, with an a-c system, door components, wiring, a cooling system and the start to our amazing new dash. Man, that looks good in there. ♪ ♪ [engine revving] ♪ ♪

(Brandon)>> Welcome to Music City Trucks, I'm Brandon Burke.

(Marc)>> And I'm Marc Christ. And as you can see, our Beach Cruiser Bronco is coming along nicely. We got it painted up. We got it shined up and we got all the drivetrain installed. The axle, suspension, engine, transmission, transfer case and it looks like we're ready to just start installing body panels but we don't want to do that just yet because with those out of the way, we can get a lot of other things accomplished. In fact, we've got some things done since you saw it last. We got our hydro-boost installed here for the final time. We got the engine wiring harness in there as well as the e-c-u.

(Brandon)>> Now that's not the only wiring that's going to go in this truck. So, we have the entire body harness that still needs to get ran and terminated. We still have to wire up the dash. And well actually, just build the whole dash. So, we have the original one over there for reference. We even got to build the doors. So, we have most of the components out here on the table and what we don't have here, we're going to rob from the original doors as well. Now, the bronco's a pretty simple vehicle. And you can see all the components that go into just one door.

(Marc)>> It's a lot of work. Just what you've covered so far, in fact I made a phone call to one of my buddies. He's going to be here in just a little bit to help us out. But other than all of that, we still have a ton of plumbing to do. And that's what I'm going to tackle first. Specifically, the a-c system. What you see here on the table, we got from Vintage Air. This is a kit for '66 to '77 broncos. It's a much more modern kit that you would've been able to get back in the 60s and 70s. If you remember, we had a mockup version of this case here, when we did our mockup. But this one's the real deal. It's got the blower motor in here. It's got the evaporator core and the heater core in there. It's got the plenum and all of outlets for our ducting. But the coolest part about it probably is, that it's all electric. So, it's got this little control box here. As well as, all the servos that modify your doors. Your blend door, your temp door as well as your blower motor speed. So, it's pretty cool. But we do have some things we need to do to this thing before it can get it installed for the final time. So, I'm going to go ahead and do that here on the bench and get this thing in the truck.

(Brandon)>> Man, that's cool!

(Marc)>> Brandon's lame joke notwithstanding, one of the things we need to install is are the mounting brackets. ♪ ♪ This bracket, which bolts the unit to the firewall, interferes with the fittings on the heater core. So, we need to go ahead and get those fittings installed now. A little ester oil will keep the o-ring from getting pinched during installation. With the fittings tight, we can install that bracket. ♪ ♪ Since they will be too difficult to put on once the unit is installed, I'll go ahead and get the heater hoses on, leaving them a little long, so I can trim them to fit later. ♪ ♪ And since I mocked this up earlier, all the holes are there so, we just need to get the hardware in. ♪ ♪ Well, I mentioned I had a buddy coming in, well he's here. This is Ben with Smithson Speed and Engineering. Ben, thanks for coming to help us out.

(Ben)>> Thanks for having me man. You've got some cool stuff going on. I'm ready to get to work.

(Marc)>> Awesome! I guess you met Brandon?

(Brandon)>> We already talked. I think you're going to tackle the wiring harness. You got it laid out on the table. I've already started taking the door apart and Marc, I think there's a whole bunch of stuff under the hood for you to do.

(Marc)>> I've got my hands full over there. Looks like you guys have your hands full too. So, I'll let you get at it.

(Brandon)>> I need to get some parts.

(Ben)>> So, we got this harness laid on the table. I like to do this every time. We kind of go through it, trim it up. Make sure that we've got everything run where we need it. So, that when we go to install the harness, it makes for a lot cleaner, easier installation.

(Brandon)>> Oh yeah! That's in pretty good shape. Now that I'm done busting my knuckles getting that old door torn apart, we're going to be working on the new parts. First things we're going to put in is going to be the window lift channel. What you're going to need is this glass setting tape. It's pretty easy to do. What you do is... cut it to length. Try not to break the window. ♪ ♪ Make a little push. Just kind of shake it off. ♪ ♪ Just give a tap with the hammer. [hammer tapping] Before we put that window in the door, I'm going to actually install the door frame.

Oh yeah! Very nice! [ratchet clicking] [glass tapping] Moving on to the vent window. If the sun and the moon align, this should drop right in. [metal clanking] Oh yeah! We've eclipsed that part of the assembly and can move on to the latch and linkage. ♪ ♪ Don't scratch it. ♪ ♪ As with most of our other restoration components, we got all this stuff from Dennis Carpenter. ♪ ♪ Oh yeah! ♪ ♪ Oh yeah! Well, I'm calling the guts of that door done. ♪ ♪ It's getting there. ♪ ♪

(Marc)>> Up next... Ben gets the wiring in place and the taillights sparked. ♪ ♪

(Ben)>> Got them. That should be it. [metal clanking] Alright. Is that good right there?

(Marc)>> Yep!

(Ben)>> So hey guys. We got the fuse panel mounted as you can see. We got the wires pulled to the front. And we got them run through the firewall and pulled to the back. Now we're trying to figure out where everything is going here behind the dash. I know it still looks a little rough, but once we test the circuits, get everything pulled where we want, and we can clean it up at that point. But you know, we've got things such as Vintage Air. We've got aftermarket gauges, aftermarket steering column, transmission controller and engine controller, that all have to be wired up from this chassis harness. We're getting there. We've pulled wires and we're going to get them terminated and hopefully we'll get this thing stared soon. ♪ ♪ So, one of the main causes of wiring frustration is your grounds. One thing that we make sure to do, as you can see here, if there's any paint, rust, debris etcetera, make sure it's clean. You can see here, it's bare metal. We clean it and then we put dielectric grease on it before we land that ground. [drill popping] ♪ ♪ So, we've finished pulling our wires from the fuse box, back here to the rear of the frame. Now we're going to terminate some wires, put some plugs on and get this rear body harness buttoned up. See if our taillights work. ♪ ♪

(Marc)>> This main body harness that we got from Summit Racing, is made specifically for '66 to '77 broncos and all it requires are the ends to be terminated, once you have trimmed them to length. ♪ ♪ A little dielectric grease in the connectors, to keep the moisture out, and we can get the taillight bucket installed. ♪ ♪ [drill popping] ♪ ♪

(Ben)>> So we've buttoned the rear wiring up, let's see if it works. Awesome! Great! So, the wiring is pretty well finished. There's a few things left undone under the dash. When the guys get the dash finished, they'll be able to plug everything up, get it back in there and it should be good to go.

(Marc)>> Unless you have your own repair shop, chances are you don't have a spring compressor like this. Nor, do you have room for this in your garage. But, to replace your struts, there is a better way. And that's with these loaded strut assemblies by Duralast. What's great about these, is that they're made specifically for your vehicle. So, they help maintain o-e ride height and quality. And all this black that you see on here, that's not just cheap spray paint. That's rust and corrosion resistant powder coating. Another thing is, because they are completely assembled, they're super quick and easy to install. So, if you want to increase the ride quality on your vehicle, you can get a set of these at your local AutoZone. ♪ ♪ Up next... I tackle our cooling and a-c systems.

(Marc)>> Well, I've been working up front here, trying to figure out what we're going to do with all of our plumbing, specifically for the a-c system. A big part of the a-c system though, is the heat system as well. Which is also part of the cooling system. So, I'm trying to figure out the radiator and the condenser. What we did was, we got this radiator. It's a replacement for a '97 T-bird. As well as the fan. Just because it has that nice o-e-m look and their easy to mount with these tabs here. I think I've got figure out how I'm going to mount this. We'll get this in and then we can connect the rest of the plumbing. [metal clanging] It's tight. [drill popping] Well, one of the things, when it comes to a job like this, that you have to have are the radiator hoses. And in our case, a coolant expansion tank. It's a late model engine. So, it's a coyote and it has to have an expansion tank, rather than an overflow tank. And you have to have special types of connections for the radiator hoses. And this is what we've got right here. All of this stuff that you see here on this cart, we got from Rock Auto dot com. Reason being, is because this is all o-e-m style coyote stuff. For like, late model F-150 and late model mustangs. The expansion tank, this one right here, we got for a Crown Vic. So, that's very similar as well. And this is for a late mustang, this expansion tank here. This is probably the one we're going to go with. Because it's got the five eighths nipple here on the bottom for the expansion hose. And then it has the 2 steam hoses that go in here. One goes to the radiator and then one goes to the engine. So, we'll probably end up having to use this one. This is really going to help with our Bronco, to keep it kind of o-e-m looking under the hood. Which is kind of what we're going for. Us being able to order all of this stuff from Rock Auto, makes it really simple. Because we can just go through the catalog, order a bunch of stuff. It's relatively inexpensive. And then we can just pick and choose what we need. Another thing, are the heater hoses. This is o-e-m style Mustang or F-150 heater hoses. It's got the connectors on here that we're not going to use on the firewall side, but we will need these for the engine side. So, we kind of need stuff like this. As a matter of fact, I've got a couple of the heater hoses already installed on the engine. And for the radiator hoses, already got these 2 trimmed up here, so I'm going to get these installed, and then fine tune those heater hoses. ♪ ♪ We're just using those o-e style heater hoses and trimming them to fit. ♪ ♪ This one has to be cut right here. One of these heater hoses is three quarter inch diameter, so we need to install a three quarter inch to five eighths inch reducer coupler, so we can connect to the fitting on our bulk-head. ♪ ♪ [drill popping] Well, that pretty much does it for all the components on our a-c system, except for the hoses, of course. Now, you've probably heard lots of terms related to a-c systems, like compressor, condenser, evaporator and you may not know what those components are, what they do, or even where they're located. So, we put something together fun, to show you how it all works. It all starts with the compressor, which is driven by the belt and draws in the refrigerant through the suction line. It then compresses that refrigerant and sends it in to the discharge line, which dumps into the inlet of the condenser. The condenser works like a radiator and is the part that mounts in front of your actual radiator. Its job is condense that hot, high pressure gas into a liquid. It does this by cooling the refrigerant down, via ambient air, passing over the fins and tubes. From the condenser, this liquid refrigerant, collects in the drier which also acts as a filter for the system. From there, the refrigerant travels through liquid line to the expansion valve. This valve meters the amount of refrigerant that is released into the evaporator core. This is where the magic happens. As the refrigerant begins to expand from a liquid to a gas, it rapidly cools. The blower motor in the evaporator case, pushes air across the tubes and fins of the evaporator and is cooled as a result. At this point, the cooled air is blown through your vents and into your interior. Well, now you're up to speed on a-c systems and how they work. Let's get back to getting this thing all wrapped up. All that's left, is going to be a little bit of plumbing. I went ahead and got all the components reinstalled and I made a couple of the lines already. I made the number 8, discharge hose that comes out of the compressor, flows into the condenser here. Got that installed and tight. As well as the number 6 hose, that comes out of condenser and into the drier. Now it's time to make the liquid line. ♪ ♪ You'll notice there's a lot of plumbing under the hood of this truck and we're not done yet. So, keeping all of these hoses routed neatly is key. I'm indexing the hose with a marker. So, I can crimp the end, which actually pretty satisfying. ♪ ♪ Well, this is the last hose and this actually the final hose that the refrigerant travels through, as it goes back into the compressor, to be cycled again and to cool the vehicle. Now, that does it for the a-c except for one thing and that's the controls. ♪ ♪ Up next.... We're getting started on our dash. Man! That looks good in there.

(Marc)>> A common problem with early Broncos is if you run a full cage, like we're doing, even if you put that bar out as far as you can here against the dash, it interferes with the glovebox door and you can't open it all the way. There's several ways to fix this, but in order to maintain the build quality that we want on ours, I think what I want to do is just cut out the glovebox door and move it down. We can either eliminate the ashtray or the speaker grate here. But, since we're going with an aftermarket stereo and some bigger speakers, we're not going to need the speaker grate anyways. So, what I'm going to do is cut that out, move everything down, patch the hole. ♪ ♪ I'm going to go ahead and use my patch I cut here, to mark how material to remove. The masking tape will be my guide and the cutoff wheel, my tool of choice. [wheel cutting] It's a little warm. Fits. I can fill that in with some tig and be as good as new. The tig welder is perfect for this job because it's easier to control the heat and the amount of filler. And since this dash is not a structural component, light penetration is all we need. Alright, well, that's going to go just like that and once we get it in the truck with the roll bar in there, if we didn't tell you, you'd never know that we moved the glovebox. But, well you'll know but that will be our little secret. Well Brandon did a fine job getting our dash all painted up as you can see. And you can't even tell that we moved the glovebox over and eliminated that speaker vent there. Which is what we were going for anyway. Now, as far as things that we're going to be retaining off of our original dash, not much. The glovebox door, the ashtray, which we got set aside, because we need to get those cleaned up and painted as well. But then also our defrost duct here, which I'm going to install first. ♪ ♪ Well, the next thing is going to be our instrument cluster. We went to Classic Instruments for one of their Six Pack kits, for a '66 to '77 Bronco. What's great about this is, unlike the factory cluster, this actually has the tach built in. That's why they call it a six pack. Because it's got the speedo, tach, oil pressure, fuel, battery and temp. Of course, the odometer as well. And we took ours a step further, which they'll do this for you too. And we got the logo installed there onto the face, which we think is a really nice touch. Cost you a little more but it's totally worth it. This thing is completely digital and it even has a little connector in the back and you can get that wired into your harness, which Ben has already done on ours. So, this thing just needs to bolt right in and it just installs in the factory location. ♪ ♪ My favorite thing about this is that it looks factory, so at a glance, you don't even realize that it's aftermarket. Well, that looks awesome. As I knew it would. The next big thing that we're going to be installing in our dash is going to be something that we don't do that often and that is a radio. We went to Retro Sound for one of their Motor 4 radios. This is kind of their top-of-the-line model. It does a little bit of everything. It's compatible with Sirius XM. It's got the little jack here, so you can hook that up if that's what you like to listen to. Or, if you want o hook something up through the u-s-b, you can hook it up there. It also has auxiliary cables. It has an external mic, so if you want to talk on the phone through the radio, like you would a modern vehicle. It's got that feature. It's got 6 preamp outs so you can hook it up to an amp, which we're going to be doing later on, on our Bronco. And then of course, it's got your regular radio features, like an AM/FM. So, if you just want to listen to the regular radio, you can do that as well. I'm just get this thing installed and pretty soon we'll be getting that dash in the truck. We're installing this in the factory location and coincidentally, this radio looks remarkably similar to an original Ford radio. Now, for all the o-e stuff, we went to Dennis Carpenter, yet again. Of course, this is just a small assortment of what we're going to be installing on the dash here. We got the dash control light here, bezels, ignition lock cylinder, all the knobs and everything to make this dash look brand new. ♪ ♪ Hey! That looks good in there.

(Brandon)>> The dash is like half the interior.

(Marc)>> It really is.

(Brandon)>> This being installed and we couldn't install the dash without Ben, you putting in the wiring harness, which is like the biggest job on this truck. So, thank you!

(Ben)>> No problem. I appreciate you having me out here. That dash looks killer. That white against that green. This is turning out awesome.

(Marc)>> If you can't get enough of our Bronco, go to Powernation t-v dot com and check out our Beach Cruiser Bronco project page.

(Brandon)>> We have current build status, before and after pics. Links to parts used and all the episodes right there on one page.