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Black Sunshine *It's Alive- Again!

72K views 584 replies 92 participants last post by  jbsjunk 
#1 · (Edited)
Yup- just like the song from White Zombie.

1978 Ford Bronco Production date: 7/78

A little history on this one. My friend was the 2nd owner of this and it has never seen snow. It has right around 120,000 origional miles on it and the origional paint is on most of it. He had the old yellow/orange/red stripes painted over as soon as he took posession of it.

It was a Chattanuga Choo Choo Custom truck when bought new at the dealership (RE Barber Ford in Holland, MI) so that explains the red shag carpeting and diamond-cut vinyl everywhere.

He installed the 4" Rugged Trail lift and a 3" body lift to fit up to 38's under it. Currently it's sporting some 35/12.5/15 Goodyear MTRs. The 1st generation with the white letters.

In 1992 he bought the 460 that came out of the Cajun Night show truck and in '95, he and I completely went through it and added a nice cam, D0VE heads, Ford Motorsports performance intake, Holley 750, JE 10:1 pistons, and a few other goodies. The heads, intake, and exhaust manifolds have all been hogged out and gasket-matched. It was a good soild build and it ended up somewhere around the 500 HP mark.

After all that he did a little cruising around town and raced it at the Silver Lake sand drags a few times, but never drove it much after that.

It might have 1000 miles on it since everything was gone through.

He moved up north and it never moved once parked in his pole barn. It just collected dust and he would start it from time to time just to keep the motor healthy.

I have wanted this thing ever since I 1st saw it when I started working at the same shop he was at and about a month ago he told me that he was finally ready to part with it. I had to promise to stay away from trees, rocks, and mud and keep it for weekend cruises, the dunes, and sand drags only.

I'll be giving it a little love and fixing up some of the little bits of rusting that occured over the last 10 years it sat. By next spring, it will be show-quality again and I'll have a fun little runner to play in the sand with.

I'll be posting up some of the repairs and updates in this thread. 1st off will be just some basic repairs- new fuel lines, brake lines, full synthetic fluids change over, and some custom anti-wrap bars for the rear axle. I'm working on getting a set of paddles for playing in the dunes the rest of this season once it's back to runable condition.

Here's the pics so far....











yes- that's a ZZ-Top top-gun sticker on the roof. His girlfriend at the time stuck it there after the concert at Val-Du-Lakes. :sonicjay:
 
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#178 ·
Thanks! Tonight we'll get the topper all sanded and buffed and maybe even stuck on there. While Jim's working on that, I'll start re-assembling the dash. There probably won't be any major notable pics to take until the 35's are back under it and it's out and ready for the street and dunes.

That should be this Thursday night if we can keep up this pace..... :beerbang:
 
#182 ·
Well, it's pretty much done and buttoned up for now. It was dark by the time I was able to roll it out of the shop and drive it around the block so all the neighbors for a couple square miles would know it was back on the road. Either this Sat or Sun we'll take some nice outdoor pics at various locations and I'll get them posted up in less than a week.
 
#183 · (Edited)
OK- Here's the final product. It really turned out better than I had hoped when we jumped into this project. :thumb:
I'll get some more next week after we get the topper back on it.















 
#193 ·
Thanks guys! Next up will be a couple performance mods. I have a MSD box waiting to go in it and the other 9" with a full spool and nodular center section to instal. It might get a carb upgrade as well:naughty:. A cage and some new seats with 5-points are also in the immediate future.

That stuff will be a few weeks out though. Time to just drive it and enjoy it for a while.
I think my wife would like to see me at home more than 5 minutes a day :teehee:.
 
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