Engine run stand

Hi! yes, it’s me dne’~ yes, it’s been a while I know, but I’m still kickin! 😉  Recently, I bought a new project a couple months ago, the project is a ’72 Ford Bronco which is definetly going to be a longer term project! Keeps me sharp, keeps me thinkin!

The Classic Bronco is pretty cool vehicle. I found this one locally a couple months ago, and is in pretty sad shape even though it cost a pretty penny!  I had sold my ’59 Chevy pickup to get this Bronco into my corral.

But Dne’, why do you need an engine stand?  or should I say, why do I want one? I don’t really NEED an engine stand, let’s just say it’s something I’ve wanted to do and so a project within a project~ plus just something to do;)

I belong to a Classic Bronco forum now, and just so happens a fellow member was upgrading his entire Bronco with EVERYTHING, from a complete new suspension, engine, drivetrain! So he was selling all that he had and I bought 99% of what he had including, a nice SBF engine with 19k miles, a C4 automatic transmission, entire suspension and nice set of wheels,  just to name a few things. So, having an extra SBF engine laying around, I may as well check both out and an ERS sounds like a good idea;)

So, off I went to my local steel supplier to buy some steel that I wanted, but since all of this price increase of many things, steel included~ the price of the steel I wanted was way out of the Ball park~ so, went back home to see what I can come up with.  Even the seller at the steel store apologized, but wasn’t his fault.

Lucky me! I just happen to have a left over piece of 3″ channel at 10′ long. It was a tiny bit short, but what the heck, I’ll see what I can do with it. So, got the chop saw out and cut it to make a frame for the ERS(engine run stand). I love fabricationing things! I think most of my faithful followers know this;)

I pretty much used up every piece of scrap I had to make this happen.  My Gantry crane is so awesome for things like this!!  See the headers, I had those blasted and will be using them!

After searching the internet, I found a few designs that I liked, even considered the “idea” of buying one, but really didn’t realize they cost soooo much!  However, gave me ideas for my own design;)

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The Bronco came with a Tow bar, so I cut it up to make the supports for the engine, don’t worry, I already have a nice Tow bar, so it wasn’t any loss.

The bell housing is what came on my bronco, I eventually had it sandblasted along with the Bronco frame along with some other items. My engine stand has to be presentable!

The used engine has some nice features, including roller lifters, roller rockers.  Here was my idea for mounting a radiator~ it needed to be adjustable and be able to be moved in or out away from the engine.  I eventually removed the radiator fan and just relied on a squirrel cage fan. An open fan could be a little dangerous!

The day of firing the engine was quite exciting, now I finally get to hear my newly acquired engine. At first crank, I had the initial timing 180 degrees off and first crank resulted in a “POW” which was almost deafening! I quickly remedied that and the engine fired right up! OMG it sounds really good! I set the timing, allowed to come to operating temp, did some carb adjustments and all seems well.;)

Amongst all the parts I bought as previously mentioned, I also bought his entire exhaust, including the headers.  I wasn’t about to start it with open headers!! Notice my two little mules holding up the exhaust;)

After being satisfied with the running of the engine I’ll be using in my ’72 Bronco, this is the 302 which my Bronco came with; supposedly recently overhauled, but I’ll look into that later~ this is for playing with as there’s much going on with the restoration of my Bronco.

I should be posting more soon as there’s plenty going on~ I hope this has been an inspirational blog~ let me know you guys are still with me~~ 😉

Dne’ of Classic Cars and Tools!!