For the last 4 or 5 years, I've tried to get rid of my old 78 Bronco but my youngest son Trevor pitched a fit every time I mentioned it. He loves to play in it and pretend he's on Hells Revenge. So I kept putting it off and putting it off.
The Bronco in better days in Pritchett Canyon...
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Then, about 2 months ago, Brandon out of the blue asked me what it would take to get it back on the road and so I told him about $10K hoping he'd loose interest and look for a nice older Tacoma or Silverado. Nope, he proceeded to ask me what it would take just to get it running again, so I told him it needed a battery and replace the nasty gas with fresh.
Didn't deter him at all, with Trevor's help, he stole (borrowed) the battery out of the boat :facepalm1:, sucked about 5 gallons of stinky gas out of the tank with my SuckUp and replaced it with 5 gal of fresh gas and waited until I got home from work. They sprayed a shot of starting fluid in the carb, cranked the engine over and danged if it didn't fire right up.
Trevor and Brandon getting it ready to crank over.
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Fuel started shooting out of the rubber fuel lines so he shut it down and asked me what to do. Sure enough, by the next day, they had replaced the lines and waited for me to get home.
They fired it up again, let it warm up and everyone hopped in and we took it around the block. We drove it to the church parking lot and Brandon got a crash course in driving a standard trans which he picked up quickly. Trevor got behind the wheel and did pretty good as well (needs to grow a few more inches).
Over the course of the next few weeks, they licenced it, replaced the mirrors, changed the oil (the threads on the pan stripped so he looked it up and found a rubber stopper at NAPA), replaced some speakers, replaced the wiring to the amp and got the stereo sounding pretty good. I was pretty impressed with the way they had persevered.
But then a week or so ago, the power steering went out and with the reservoir full, I suspected that the pump went bad so I told them it needed to be replaced. Sure enough, they went to NAPA and picked one up. They then noticed that the pulley needed to be removed so I told them that NAPA would also rent them the tool to do it and went and picked it up. They pretty much did it all themselves with very little help from me. When they finished, they fired it back up, but with the increased pressure, PS fluid blew right past the upper seal on the steering gear.
I pretty much told them that they had just began to discover problems and that they had better quit while they were behind. But no, they looked up how to fix it on YouTube then searched for the parts on NAPA and since the only store in the valley that had the parts was Orem, they took off to get them. Sure enough, by 7pm, they had the seal replaced and were putting it back together. They did run into a snag with the rag joint flange on the gear as the threads were a little beat up, so I told him to put the tools away for the night and we'd get a new bolt the next day.
The next day they reassembled the rag joint and fired it up. Completely sealed and no leaks. I was very proud of the way they stuck to it and didn't give up solving problems.
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