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The
Quick and Dirty Restoration
Before Jonko.com took on the "Project Bronco" we
decided to do a test run on a pretty beat Bronco we found
on E-Bay. Call us nuts, but we bid on the old gray Bronco
to the left from the online auto auction site and actually
ended up winning. The truck was located in Chico, CA so we
sent our editor, John Mosko, up to pick it up and drive it
home.
Aside
from a few small problems on the trip (voltage regulator was
bad and it burned a few quarts of oil) the ride was uneventful.
The lack of power steering made it a bit of a bear to drive,
but hey, this wasn't exactly supposed to be a Lincoln Navigator.
Our
goal with the quick restoration was to put together a truck
that was serviceable, looked pretty good from a distance,
and would serve as a weekend cruiser for someone that we would
sell it to when we completed the job. The trucks are incredibly
popular here in Southern California and the market premium
on them is pretty high. We figured we could clean it up, do
some basic mechanical work, get it a Maaco paint job and re-sell
it for a profit. Plus, we'd get the added benefit of learning
some things before we get into the "Project Bronco".
Update
10/20/01:
Well folks, the quick and dirty restoration went a bit too
well. We began work on the rig and after fixing a number of
small issues (new valve cover gaskets to shore up leaks, removed
and replaced bad, old, or excess wires, and installed a new
alternator) we got into the body work. As it was meant to
be a quick job we simply used a disk sander, a bit of bondo,
and duraglass. We would sand a bit, patch a bit, and sand
some more. In total, all of about two eight hour days got
us to where we wanted to be. We called around for paint quotes
and and settled on a $700 or so job from Maaco.
Two
days before we were to take the truck in for its paint job,
a neighbor stopped by while we were tooling around on the
truck. After a discussion and test drive, he made an offer
for the truck. Realizing we could use the few dollars profit
on the "Project Bronco" we jumped and never did
finish our quick resto.
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