Yeah the box is kind of crude but I got the whole setup for $200 from a guy here at work. It’s two 12″ Alpine Type-E’s and an Alpine 750w peak amp. It’s a good buy considering I didn’t have to buy materials and spend time building a box, I didn’t really have to do much of anything besides hand him 2 benjamins. I’ll be carpeting it soon and going over the amp and subs with some alcohol and a q-tip. Yeah I’m fanatical.

I wanted a Power Acoustik Mofo-15 and 2000watt amp, but decided that $700 was a little much to invest into a stereo for a hobby/toy right now. Plus I’ll be going topless (the Bronco will be…dirty mind!) this summer and don’t want someone nabbing a $700 system. Sure It’d suck to lose a $200 system but these are hand-me-downs and still hit as hard as I need them too. We’ll see what the future holds. That PA Mofo-15 may not be such a bad idea after all… Hmm… I wonder what 2 12’s and a 15 would sound like with 2700 watts?

$500 big ones. That’s how much it cost me to have a new Ford AC compressor put on (front seal was leaking and I had very little freon left) and a new AC pulley (I apparently had an aftermarket one on that was too wide for the belt and was causing it to whine VERY loudly). I would’ve put something simple like this on myself but it required a recharging of the AC system afterwards and just seemed like more trouble than it was worth. The mechanic that put it in for me is a good friend, so I was happy to oblidge.

That right there is 14 year old carpet in a Bronco that was used for a work truck it’s whole life. Yep, factory original. The floor mats were pressure washed to hell and then hand scrubbed using a couple rags and Ford spot remover (ask your dealership’s parts department)… oh and about 2 hours of nothing else to do but tire your arm out scrubbing.

My sticker goodness.

Bought myself some Warn premium manual locking hubs today from Advanced Autoparts for $96.17 after tax. Not crazy cheap, but that’s the price you pay for convenience. Went to put them on and I realized I needed a conversion kit. If you’re planning on doing this to your Bronco you’ll need this kit as well. I went back and picked it up from Advanced for $58.79 tax included. I’m about to put on some BF Goodrich 33×10.5×15 T/A KM’s on the truck so I’ll take some pictures and put them up here when it’s all said and done.

Took out the old Alpine head unit. Nothing really wrong with it besides the text being worn off of the keys. The Alpine put out 45 watts to each channel and the new one puts out 52 watts. I finally figured out how to change the bass and trebble levels just before I got rid of it. Like I said, nothing really wrong with it, but it couldn’t play MP3 CD’s and was a little dated. Time to replace it with something that can use a jump drive (flash drive), has an auxiliary input and  can play MP3 discs.

I bought the standard adapter at Best Buy (bleh) and spliced the wires in about  10-15 minutes. Swapped out the plugs, pulled out the old unit, dropped in the new one and had me a brand new CD player up and running in less than an hour (including the trip to Best Buy).

Sweet! Was only $150 with tax at Circuit City because they’re going out of business. Good deal I think.

Really had no idea it was muddy enough to spin a tire here but just out of frame in this picture are the 4 holes my tires dug in the mud. We tried to pull it out using a Subaru Baja (was all we had available at the time…) but that didn’t work. The Baja just spun wheels ontop of the grass. Finally got it out (the next day) using an FX4 F150 that had a small lift and some gnarly tires. While we weren’t intentionally “mudding” and simply were riding around off the road I can’t say we were “mudding” in the bronco…but we got stuck…in the mud. Lame. I need manual locking hubs and some more agressive tires.

Update: Pics of the install!

The bracket fit perfectly. It only goes one way so it took a couple minutes to figure out which way it went to make sure all 4 screws lined up with their holes. Anyone who says removing a door panel on a bronco is easy - is a damned liar.

First speaker down! And only about 45 minutes later! Not too bad for the first one. They sound freaking amazing! Compared to what it used to sound like at least. I need a new head unit. I’ve got an aftermarket one it’s just really really old and I can’t seem to find treble/bass adjustments on it (and the remote doesn’t work).

The rear door speaker installed. The foam padding of course is all but gone…that happens after 14 years I guess. I’m pretty sure I also broke every single plastic screw holding a couple of these panels on. They broke like glass…like I said…happens after 14 years.

Decided to do a little upholstery work while I had the door apart. This foam has come loose of the plastic and sticks out a little more on the driver’s side than it does on the passenger side. I gorilla glued it back. Duct tape = holding it in place

Est: $230

Sour patch kids at the checkout line: $2

The second repair was the enourmous slack I had in the shifter. There was no pull-it-towards-you-then-drop-it-into-D… It was simply slide it where you want it and hope it’s in drive and not second gear…hope it’s in reverse and not neutral. Yeah needless to say this wasn’t just a nuisance, it was something that needed to be fixed before I rolled into something thinking it was in park when in actuality it was in reverse. Replaced 2 worn out plastic bushings (a 14 year battle between metal and plastic had seen the plastic get all but destroyed) and a pin that was missing. The shifter came out but gravity wouldn’t let me put it back in without something holding it together where this pin went. I was going to skimp and use something else but decided against it (I’m picturing my rigged pin falling into the steering column and locking it up while I drive down the interstate…) and waited a day for it to come down from Memphis.