MPC Dust Devil Bronco

[bigbluesd]

I picked up this kit on eBay in January and it has been sitting in my ever growing stack of kits awaiting my skills to improve to a point where I can do it justice (have a soft spot for Broncos, first car was a Bronco II!). Finally ready to tackle it. My intent with this build is to try my hand at some minor modifications and scratch building, to this point I haven't done any real scratch building and have done very few modifications at all to any of the previous kits I've built.

Here is the kit:



And this is the direction I want to go:


With a color scheme similar to this:


I'll be scratch building some body trim (drip rails and the chrome trim on the side of the body), exhaust system (going for dual Cherry Bombs!) as well as running boards similar to the ones in the second photo above. I'm also going to have to scratch build some suspension components for the lift kit although I'm still trying to figure out how I should go about it.

The wheels that come with the kit are pretty puny (shown here beside some toy truck wheels from my parts box that I really like except that I can't figure out how to make them not look like toy wheels!)...



...so I went browsing in my son's playroom for inspiration and realized that these are absolutely perfect:

I picked one up at Walgreen's on the way out of town this morning. Less than $6 with tax (cheaper than I can even buy just the rubber for on eBay)!



The body is missing a few details but is not bad, my biggest irritation is the way that they handled the rear roof. It is "removable" (meaning in MPC talk that it doesn't attach to anything) and instead of being cast as one piece they separated the lower window surrounds so that you have to glue them to the remainder of the roof.



The lower surround is the piece on the table in that picture, very small and flimsy. To strengthen it for putty/sanding/etc. I put some Evergreen strips on the back side of the main piece for the smaller pieces to sit on.



It worked well but the whole contraption is overall still flimsy, I will put some more strips on the bed rails of the body for this part to lie against once I install it. I'm also considering installing some kind of cross brace so that I can work on this piece without gluing it to the body, would make paint masking much easier. I'm going to glue it in place (no "removing"!) at completion anyways and tint the back glass (which will also need to be scratch built I think) so I'm not too concerned about how it looks behind the cover.

Edited May 15, 2015 by bigbluesd

[slusher]

Awesome project and start..

[Guest]

I'll be watching this as I gotta a soft spot for Broncos myself. I own a beat to death '86 with 38" mudders on it. No lift. I just put the wheels and tires on. Then cut the fenders out for clearance. I four wheel it occasionally. But, mostly use it on the farm. I'm going to have to build a replica of it someday. If it wasn't for the scale difference, I could send you a one piece top from the Monogram kit. Also, I have a set of the bigger Desert Dog tires with chrome spoke wheels from the AMT '84 GMC that I would trade for your smaller wheels and tires that came with your kit. If you're interested, send me a PM.

[Maindrian Pace]

My Father bought a red '86 351 Eddie Bauer brand new, it was one of my favorite family vehicles of all time. Before my brother rolled it in the desert north of Phoenix. I'm still mad at him.

-MJS

[bigbluesd]

Took the tires off of the truck I bought this morning, for the benefit of anybody else reading this thread who likes the idea of using the Hot Wheels monster trucks for tires, this is the method I used, god bless this kid for being the only one on the internet to record himself pulling these apart:

The axle is just a straight rod with a texture end:

Here is a mockup of the ride height I'm shooting for with the new wheels/tires:

And beside the old tires for comparison:

Edited November 6, 2014 by bigbluesd

[bigbluesd]

After about an hour of trial and error and two glasses of wine I've now established that I am shooting for a 7mm height increase over the stock suspension. If I'm doing the math right that works out to about a 7" lift 1:1.

Although I know it's probably not mechanically sound or incredibly realistic (and may be chuckled at by those who are far more skilled than I), I opted to get the height increase on the back by reversing the mounting of the leaf springs (they hang from the top of the frame, I figure by swapping the side of the chassis tabs not only do I gain some height but also a little bit of rigidity after it's put together.

Tomorrow night I will tackle the front, not sure yet what my plan of attack is. The only certainty at this point is that it will involve scratch building shocks and springs. Not sure how I should go about raising where the arm meets the chassis. My inclination is to use Evergreen to build up that wall that the mounting post sits in although I know that would be silly in terms of replica (but as I read somebody else say here, I display mine with the bottom side down!). This is how it is set up, any suggestions?

[rsxse240]

It was a very common lift back in the day and a quick Google for "twin i-beam lift kit" should turn up quite a bit of reference photos. There are lots of methods but they are all basically the same...space the pivot points with some sort of bracket.

[bigbluesd]

It was a very common lift back in the day and a quick Google for "twin i-beam lift kit" should turn up quite a bit of reference photos. There are lots of methods but they are all basically the same...space the pivot points with some sort of bracket.

Thanks, that really helped a lot.

Making slow progress, I am a very slow builder. Mainly because my build time coincides with wine time. And I am smack dab in the middle of wine time so please excuse this post if anything doesn't sound right.

Built some new springs for the front end as well as some custom brackets out of Evergreen. I drilled some holes in the brackets because it seemed like the thing to do. I know they are way bigger than they would be on a 1:1, but the Evergreen is soft and somewhat flimsy, they needed the extra meat for support.

Still have a few parts of the suspension to scratch and haven't cut the notches yet in the brackets (that's why wheel connection points are not straight yet) but this was the hard part. Still waiting for the FUBAR moment, I'm certain it is coming.

From the side:

Front end looks like it is riding a lot higher to me but I think it may just be the angle, not stable enough yet to really take any meaningful measurements. Maybe that will be my FUBAR moment.

Any comments, suggestions, criticisms, insults are welcome and greatly appreciated.... this is uncharted waters for me, I appreciate the input of the more experienced!

- B

Edited November 12, 2014 by bigbluesd

[dieseldawg142]

...

Edited May 11, 2018 by dieseldawg142

[bigbluesd]

your rear 7mm lift is actually only 3 1/2mm, you only moved one end of the spring down, put some 7mm spacers under the other end & you will end up with a full 7mm lift, will also improve your pinion angle...

Actually there was a large piece on that side of the spring that I removed, taking into account that piece plus the thickness of the mount tab came out to right at 7mm. If the rear really is lower though you make a really good point, the rear of that spring would be a good place to compensate to bring the pinion angle down for the driveshaft! I've got to get a little bit further into the lift before I can get everything stable enough to test fit tires, right now getting everything to stay in place is a bit dicey.

Edited November 12, 2014 by bigbluesd

[LouO]

I'll be following this one for sure. I had a 1:1 Bronco II, was one of my favorite vehicles ever!
BTW good choice on the rims/tires you show on the 11/6 post.

[MsDano85gt]

I was a 86 ford Bronco II owner 4x4 5 speed awsome truck i regret getting rid of it !

great work awsome bronco need to get me a mpc i prefer their scale over revells 1/24

are you planning on drilling out the holes on the new found wheels for extra added realism/ detail?

[bigbluesd]

I was a 86 ford Bronco II owner 4x4 5 speed awsome truck i regret getting rid of it !

great work awsome bronco need to get me a mpc i prefer their scale over revells 1/24

are you planning on drilling out the holes on the new found wheels for extra added realism/ detail?

I wanted to but I think the design of the wheel is going to make that impossible, have not paid that much attention yet.

[bigbluesd]

Some minor progress... since I have never done any modification like this I am painfully slow. Front end lift is nearly done, the brackets worked well:

I have a couple more components to modify to finish that part up. Loosely checked the ride height and it looks about right on both front and back, won't know for sure though until I get further into it and can hold everything together enough to turn it right side up.

Decided that I didn't like the wheels that I stole off of the Hot Wheels monster truck (since it was not practical to drill them out) but I had a set of wheels from a consignment store NASCAR kit that I parted out that looked like a more detailed version of the original kit wheels. They were just about the right size to fit the monster truck tires but there is a small gap around the perimeter so I'm building sleeves out of Evergreen to close it up and give them some depth as well.

One problem I have is that my thinnest Evergreen is too flimsy so I had to bump up a size, but now the Evergreen is too thick to fit just right. I could sand down the rim but I feel like I'd be better off opening up the holes in the tires a little bit instead, any suggestions on how I can do this uniformly? It doesn't need to be made much bigger, just a little bit. I played around with a round file as well as scraping it with an Exacto blade last night, worked fairly well but the result is not perfectly round. Also, what is the best way to fill the gap where the Evergreen meets after you wrap it around the wheel? I have Bondo, Testors Putty, Tamiya Putty and Milliput at my disposal.... my plan is to use the Tamiya Putty very carefully.

Edited November 19, 2014 by bigbluesd

[bigbluesd]

HALLELUJAH! RUBBER ON THE ROAD!

It has taken me two weeks to get to this point. I don't know how some of you guys have the patience to stick with a real modification project, this alone has me ready to stick it back in the box and start something I can actually paint within the next year.

Suspension is in place, I did some more modifications including using some 12 gauge Romex conductor for front and rear shocks:

Tacked everything up using the superglue sparingly, here is how she sits at the moment:

It's not perfect but with the time it has taken me to get this far I can live with it... further rebuilding of the suspension is out of the question. The front wheels sit too far out just because I haven't made the mounting pins fit just right yet, once they are finalized they will be at about the same offset as the rear wheels.

[Sixx]

Looking pretty tough already!!! Keep it going!! :-)

[bigbluesd]

I regret to inform you that this project is dead.

Tried to get the warp out of the body using hot water, it shrunk the plastic on the front end and now neither the hood nor grill fit. I will probably try to pick up the newer Bronco kit next time I am in town and start fresh.