The Bronco had to come home on our trailer since the transmission was not working. Under the layer of dirt the body was mostly solid.
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The solid white color just doesn't work for this truck. The front bumper is tweaked a bit.
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Some minor cosmetic damage to the front passenger fender.
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That red streak of transmission fluid is not encouraging.
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The front is remarkably undamaged, considering the previous owner had been off-road with the truck, although the hood would not close properly, since it was tweaked in the center. So why is the bumper tweaked on the passenger corner?
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The tailgate appeared to be mostly rust free. However, the back window will not go up. That could be one of several components. The spare rim does not match the Ram Charger rims on the ground.
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More dirt and more cosmetic damage at the driver taillight.
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The damage is mostly from the rear of the vehical, like someone backed into something.
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One known area for rust is the wheel lips. This Bronco is not bad in that area on any of the four wheel arches, but it is starting to show some rust on both rear arches. We will need to take care of that sooner rather than later.
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More cosmetic damage on the lower driver side front fender.
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The bottom of the driver mirror was very roughed up with an actual break in the plastic. The mirror should fold in, but is frozen in place. We should have started to be suspicious of a hard life just from this.
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Someone stood on the front cowl section, as evident by the boot print and the caved in metal. This will take some hammer and dolly work to fix.
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The driver seat foam is in very bad shape.
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The driver door panel shows dirt and an interesting fix for a light.
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Something had caused the interior to draw a lot of moisture. It reeked of mildew and was filthy. Supposedly this was from a poorly patched cut in the tailpan to repair the fuel sending unit.
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The passenger seat is dirty, but the foam is in ok shape.
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Tha passenger door panel is in better shape, as usual, than the driver side.
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The dash pad has the typical cracks for a vehicle of this age.
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The engine bay is surprisingly clean. Supposedly it had a recent head job. Unfortunately, all the smog equipment was removed. We will have to add that back due to the laws in our area.
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Once the dirt was washed off, it didn't look as bad. Our son decided to investigate the trans leak and found a busted line. Surprisingly, one thing that did work was the under hood light.
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The corner of the drip rail on the driver side. The metal is sheared up and rust is in behind. This could be a tricky fix just due to location.
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The roof is also caved in at several locations. Either someone stood or sat on the roof.
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Ram Charger rims on a Ford. Mopar fans might be cringing about now. But they do look mean.
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The washed front end. It's very plain.
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We had noticed and exhaust leak but in checking out the undercarriage, we found the broken exhaust pipe.
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This was on one of the side windows. A bit optomistic at the moment.
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Since we picked this truck up in the dark, was unable to test drive it due to the transmission, and have only had a few minutes after the rain to check it out and wash it, the Bronco is headed for the garage to see if we can quickly fix the transmission problem.
The goal for this vehicle was a quick buy-fix-drive, then set up for off-road use and a snow plow. This was the plan in January of 2016. But as you'll see on the next several pages, this abused Bronco had other plans.
We started with an oil change. Good thing we did. Several seconds of "water" came out before the oil. This was not a good sign.
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